Niki N. Phaser

            Heavy-metal icon, Lemmy Kilmister, the frontman of Motorhead and the genuine poster boy of true rock’n'roll living is the subject of a new documentary, hitting the festival circuit soon. The movie is titled Lemmy and it is directed by Wes Orshoski and Greg Olliver, who spent a period of roughly three years with the legendary rocker, following him through numerous gigs with Motorhead, as well as in more peaceful and intimate moments.

            Important names, like Dave Grohl, Alice Cooper, Slash, Ozzy Osbourne and plenty more (actor Billy Bob Thorton, wrestler Triple H), make appearances in the film, confessing their admiration for the ‘ace of spades’ of heavy metal and sharing funny stories, as expected. Hopefully, there’ll be more to the documentary than a dithyrambic portrait of the bassist, but also a bit of an analysis of the true consequences of a compromise-free rock’n'roll life, Lemmy’s being one for sure.

TRAILER

French pop-rock legends, Indochine are preparing the official release (November 20) of a new single, Le Lac, taken from their latest album, La République des Meteors, their eleventh. Not the most obvious choice for a single, Le Lac is still a nice song, but not as poignant as Republika, which was overlooked for the third time. Maybe the fourth is a charm. La lettre de métal is also quite a gripping piece of music, displaying once again Indochine’s pop-rock complexity. Nicola Sirkis and co. have been touring the new album, follow-up to 2x masterpiece Alice & June, in all the familiar places, to great success. They’ll keep at it all troughout the next year, when they have scheduled a monster-gig on “Stade de France” on June 26. It’s been sold-out almost a year in advance.

Le Lac VIDEO and also try La Lettre de Metal and maybe also Republika

Even before the release of The Dark Knight and, if I remember correctly, even before the death of Heath Ledger, there was a lot of buzz about his performance as Batman’s nemesis, The Joker. The shock of his untimely death, mixed with that buzz, created a suited environment for the birth of something… well, mythical, Hollywood style. When the movie came out, there was no disappointment, Ledger’s performance was as cool as everyone expected, even more. He received the entire package of acting awards and a new movie legend was born.

But since then, The Joker’s Glasgow grin has become a bit of a pop culture icon, finding itself on plenty of pop art items. I am not talking about Heath Ledger, who might or might not become the James Dean of our generation, but solely about his Joker, who makes Jack’s Joker a Joke… (some pun intended). Not only do we see his face on T-shirts and other clothing, but it actually became a hip thing to wear Joker-type make-up, on special occasions, like weddings and funerals… just kidding, but you do see plenty of Joker faces at concerts or clubs or whatnot. Youtube is filled with “Joker make-up tutorials”.

This face of evil might just become the next big thing in iconic pop images. Take down your Don Corleone and Scarface posters, replace them with the “Why so serious ?” series. Tatoo artists, start practicing Heath Ledger’s face lines. Pretty soon, it will become one of those images that few will remember where it came from, but they’ll know it’s cool to sport it. And the truth is, it is cool. I’m hesitant in claiming that it will equal the Che mania, but there will be a few bands in the future that will reference some of Joker’s lines, some parodies very soon, Halloween masks, the make-up craze will hit the mainstream and you’ll see a buch of pop stars all looking like pretty sexy versions of The Joker doing machine-gun moves and wetting their lips after every word. Just keep an eye on the process to see it unfolding step by step in front of us… And if I’m wrong I’ll probably delete this post, so no one will know…

SEE THE SIGN OF THE COMING