Caught In The Net - The Unforgettable Fire

There’s no Grammy for best music publicist, but if there were it’d have to go to the person or persons responsible for making Arcade Fire’s Reflektor even more keenly-anticipated than David Bowie’s The Next Day, which Caught In The Net has just stuck a pony on to scoop this year’s Mercury Music Prize. If we’re replaced post-October 30 by a gardening column, you’ll know we’ve buggered off to Rio with our winnings.

Not content to just play the other week on Saturday Night Live, Win and the chaps assembled a 22-minute film with director Roman Coppola’s help – it really does run in the family – that was shot in a tiny Montreal disco and features cameos from Ben Stiller and Bono who, lest we forget, gave the Canadians a huge boost when U2 adopted ‘Wake Up’ as their Vertigo tour walk-on music. Subsequently released onto YouTube, Here Comes The Night is a fabulous piece of work that should ensure Arcade Fire climb another few rungs up the stadium rock ladder with Reflektor.
Heading due south from Montreal, Narco Cultural documents the links between Mexico’s drug cartels and the musicians who mythologise them.
So cosy is the relationship that, wanting to ensure lyrical authenticity, a songwriter phones a Senor Grande up to find out what type of gun he used to kill a rival. With “The hits just keep on coming!” as its strapline, Narco Cultural is a downright scary look at how art so slavishly imitates criminal life.
Cop an eyeful of the trailer at narcoculture.com/and hear one of the tunes at soundcloud.com/narco-cultura/buknas-de-culiacan-soy-de-la Mark Rutherford, the English midfielder who became a League of Ireland legend courtesy of spells with Shels, Bohs, Shamrock Rovers, St. Patrick’s Athletic and Longford Town, is the subject of an excellent mini-doc by the 1895 Trust.
In it, he talks about the highs and lows of his football career – the latter including the various incidents of racial abuse he’s encountered both in Ireland and the UK where he plied his trade in the early ‘90s with Birmingham City and Shrewsbury Town.
What Sparky has to say is mandatory listening for everyone connected with the game. Check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VwPKTrdRqI&feature=youtu.be
Which just leaves time for quick visits to toys.usvsth3m.com/are-you-hated-by-the-daily-mail (if you’re female and/or foreign, the answer is undoubtedly “yes”); www.simonmenner.com/pages/Stasi-Index.htm (photos from the Stasi archives); shitroughdrafts.com (on second thoughts…) and marvel.com/tv/show/190/marvels_agents_of_shield (America’s highest-rated new telly show).