In which I talk about bands and movies

I had my hair cut today and the stylist and I talked, as one does, about the last movies we saw. She told me about The Hurt Locker (sounds interesting). I told her about It Might Get Loud and she took off like a rocket. She loves Jack White! She loves Jimmy Page! So she'll go see it tonight, hopefully.

It did well over the weekend. Indiewire reports:

Davis Guggenheim’s “It Might Get Loud” topped all specialty openers this weekend, according to estimates provided by Rentrak earlier this afternoon. The doc - which features rare on-the-road discussions with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White - grossed $101,078 from its 7 initial screens. That made for a promising $14,439 average, the third highest for a specialty doc so far this year (after “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “Food, Inc,” which notably opened on just 1 and 3 screens, respectively). Sony Pictures Classics will expand the film in the coming weeks as it attempts to become the distributor’s top 2009 doc, a title currently held by “Every Little Step,” which averaged $8,563 from 8 theaters in its opening weekend, but held on to gross $1,684,591.

That's promising.

Jimmy Page went to see U2 at Wembley last week (Ross Halfin, 15th August) and apparently hung around for The Edge's birthday party. Nice to hear about him getting outside his house for once and particularly without his shadow, the aforementioned Ross, hanging around scowling at all comers. Maybe this independence marks some sort of determination to engage the world again? The Sun seems to think so, but then The Sun never struck me as a paper that had the slightest idea.

Jack White's brother is in a band, Tin Knocker, with Jack's old bandmate in the Upholsterers, Brian Muldoon. I did not know that. Young but promising blog Walking Candy Store told me.



I can see and hear the resemblance.

Cracked Magazine has a piece on Indie bands. How to recognize Indie, how to see enough Indie bands to be a hipster and how to pick up Indie chicks. I'm currently memorizing the flow charts because I'm going to San Diego's Street Scene on August 28th and I've never heard of anybody on the bill apart from Public Enemy (who blew away U2 when I saw them both about 4,000 years ago on the Zooropa tour) and The Dead Weather, who blew me away about five minutes ago on their tour supporting Horehound (which came out about five minutes ago). The idea of The Dead Weather billing above Public Enemy seems weird to me.