Tuesday, February 11, 2014
The Life of Rock with Brian Pern, BBC Four, review
Now not a lot of people know this: Brian Pern, former frontman of the Seventies prog rock outfit Thotch, was the person who invented world music. He was also the first musician to use Plasticine in his videos and record with animals; he has the distinction of creating the song with the lowest bassline ever; and he once wrote a song with the lyric, "why are there no black folk in Jersey".
Clearly we are in This is Spinal Tap territory here. And while no mockumentary can ever better that 1984 classic, The Life of Rock with Brian Pern (BBC Four) certainly brought no shame upon the genre, and was quite entertaining at times.
MUST-HAVE MOVIES: This Is Spinal Tap
To be honest, it would have been outrageous if it hadn't been good. Among the big names attached to the programme are Matt Lucas, David Baddiel, Roger Taylor, Jools Holland and Michael Kitchen, not to mention The Fast Show 's Simon Day and Paul Whitehouse.
As we all know, the mockumentary – like all po-faced comedy – works best when it is just two degrees from reality. Bearing that in mind, some sections of Life of Rock were a touch too hammed-up to be funny, such as when Pern discovered some prehistoric musical notation on on the wall of a cave and had it transcribed and played by Holland, only to discover that it was the theme tune to EastEnders. Nice idea, but there was too much pantomime in the execution.
But there were many jewels, too. Whitehouse was very funny as Pat Quid, the Thotch guitarist. "I was very unfortunate," he confided, "in that I was born to very loving and rich parents and I never wanted for anything. I think that's held me back".
Lucas was priceless as Ray Thomas, a "legendary" producer with a faux American accent who had lost 97 per cent of his hearing due to the overuse of headphones. At one point he recalled that he once "put a mic up to an egg", even though "it doesn't make a sound". A cynic may say that this was derivative of the Spinal Tap scene in which the guitarist said, "just listen to that sustain", followed by "yes, but you would hear it if I was playing it". But this doesn't mean that the egg shtick wasn't genius.
Overall, the star turns were entertaining; the premise was sound, if not entirely original; and there was the occasional moment of comedy nirvana. But the sections that were overworked held the thing back.
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/36fa8a57/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0Ctv0Eand0Eradio0Ereviews0C10A631510A0CThe0ELife0Eof0ERock0Ewith0EBrian0EPern0EBBC0EFour0Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
