We take a trip to the gym today, where my ankle can cope
with the bike. I try and read my book on audio but fail, the background music
in the gym was just too loud and I had to go back to drowning it out with my
own.
In the evening, it’s film time at Broadway again.
The film ‘Good Vibrations’ is his story, a biopic of his
life. Terri with an 'i' (Richard Dormer) lost an eye when he was a child but
this didn’t hold him back and fitted with a glass eye, he opened his record
shop on the most bombed half mile in Europe in late
1970's Belfast at the height of the troubles.
Hooley had seen his friends divide up along political and
religious grounds as the troubles escalated. He never felt he belonged in either
camp despite coming from a political involved family, having a communist
leaning father who was an expert at losing elections.
Instead, inspired by the local band Rudi, part of the
emerging punk scene, who seemed as oblivious to this religious divide as he
was, he tried to bring these camps together using his passion for music. In an
ever increasing amount of cigarettes, beer and brandy everything else falls by
the wayside, including his long suffering wife Ruth (Jodie Whittaker).
Considering the on screen scale of his consumption, it is amazing he is still alive
today.
Hooley helps emerging punk bands like Rudi and another band
he discovered, The Outcasts, record and distribute their music through his Good
Vibrations shop, label and concert promotions.
Many thought he was mad and they’d be right. He was
also
possibly the worst business man ever born. Even when he fills the Ulster
Hall for a concert he still makes a loss. Every so often he appears to
be on the
edge of a major breakthrough, only each time managing to snatching
defeat from
the jaws of victory.
When a certain Fergal Sharkey begs him to release a record
by Sharkey’s band The Undertones, who were a far from punk looking outfit in jumpers
their mothers must have bought for them. Hooley was initially reluctant, until
he hears the record itself.
He releases ‘Teenage Kicks’ on the Good
Vibrations label and then hikes it all round London trying to get a major label
interested. No one was but he did manage to get a copy to John Peel. Who played
it not once but twice, in a row. The first time he’d ever done that. The
Undertones were launched, Hooley wasn’t and again lost money.
Meanwhile Rudi and The Outcasts never hit the big
time at all.
Film wise, the script could be pacier and there’s no real
plot, it is more a montage of the key moments in Hooleys life but its
informative and at times humorous. It is a film about the power of
music and that music is of course excellent.
To this day the record shop still
exists, although it has closed and reopened many times.
(Sunday 31st March)
No comments:
Post a Comment