Search For "pre swinging london"
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Dance With A Stranger and late night dissolution…
It’s curious the things that stay with you over the years – for a fair few years now I’ve been slowly sending the shelves and shelves of books, records, magazines and the like that I’ve amassed over the years (at the same, it seems, slowly filling up the self-same shelves with more books, records, magazines and the like)…Anyway, one thing that has survived those various clearings out is the vinyl version of the The Dance With A Stranger 1985 film soundtrack.
It’s a fine collection of songs – all pre-swinging, pre-cool London – She Wears Red Feathers, How Much Is That Doggy In The Window and a lead vocal by Ms Beehive Mari Wilson.
One of the things that makes it, is that it isn’t just a clean presentation of the songs but rather is interspersed extensively with dialogue from the film, which sets the scene, story and atmosphere and which have become as memorable as the music itself for me and help invoke the film itself.
Aside from and with utter respect for the sad, indeed tragic story of Ruth Ellis, for me the film was an early(ish) pointer towards what has become Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity – in particular the – unlicensed? – afterhour bar scenes (with a future Ms Christine Keeler, Joanne Whalley, as a barmaid no less)… all “set” hairdos, suits and late night dissolution.
Peruse the soundtrack here (for but a couple of your good English pounds at the time of writing) and the film here.
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Index
All posts so far(ish)…
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uke Joint by Birney Imes – a capturing of a lost world…
Alfred Cheney Johnston’s Jazz Age Beauties
Further archetypes and show gals…
Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be: Daniel Farson’s Soho In The Fifties, Frank Norman, rogues and gents…
Mr Vince Ray and The Death Of The Teenage Death Song
Soho Night & Day – a lost book of a lost world…
Now It’s Dark; Blue Velvet and a sublime touch of Angelo Badalamenti courtesy of Ms Rossellini
Nick Clements, cultural memory and vintage simulacra / re-creation
Deborah Turbeville – Past Imperfect, filmic ghosts, grain and the deconstruction of traditional photographic perfection
James Ellroy and imaginative time travelling
