Outside of the United Kingdom, only the most obsessive music fans were aware of what was known as "Pub Rock" during its brief heyday in the early to mid-1970s. But in England, Pub Rock was a important precursor to the punk and new wave scene; the Pub bands rejected the growing pretension of glam and progressive rock, and instead embraced a back-to-basics sound rooted in stripped down R&B and country rock. The toughest of the Pub Rock bands was Dr. Feelgood, a quartet whose revved-up, no-frills
music was more tuneful and celebratory than punk but communicated much of the same swagger and sense of menace. Dr. Feelgood -- Lee Brilleaux on vocals and harmonica, Wilko Johnson on guitar, Sparko (aka John B. Sparkes) on bass and The Big Figure (aka John Martin) on drums -- never earned more than a tiny cult following in the United States, but for a spell they were a major draw in the UK, and their wild rags to riches to rags again story is brought to the screen in Oil City Confidential, a documentary by Julian Temple that features extensive interviews with the surviving members of the band (Brilleaux died in 1994) and live footage of the group in their prime. Oil City Confidential received its world premiere at the 2009 BFI London Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
What emerges is a film to rank alongside Temple's own Joe Strummer elegy 'The Future is Unwritten' as the very best in British rock documentary. Riveting, even if you don't like the music.
Julien Temple's rockumentary Oil City Confidential looks like a series of Martin Parr photographs of the British by the seaside, and then segues into thrashing guitars on the Seventies New York stage.
The splicing of old home videos, archive footage and new interviews is handled with real finesse, and in the band's mad-eyed, quixotic guitarist Wilco Johnson, the film has a tirelessly charismatic ringmaster.
It's Wilko's peremptory, offbeat monologues that provide Oil City Confidential with its through-line and several of its funniest moments, not least when he describes the clouds and flames of the Shell Haven Refinery as "Miltonic"
Temple tries his best to make the story lively and interesting (even embarking on a brief history of the Thames estuary), but Dr Feelgood remains an R&B band of limited appeal, and Oil City Confidential won't create many new converts.
Julien Temple concludes his cinematic history of punk with an origins story, making a persuasive, highly entertaining case for why rabble-rousing musical renegades Dr Feelgood are the unsung progenitors of the movement.
Julien Temple's superb documentary charting the rise and fall of Canvey Island pub-rockers Dr Feelgood. The twitchily charismatic presence of guitarist Wilko Johnson and some scorching archive performances are perfectly complimented by Temple's frenetic style. If I had to quibble I might say that the b-movie inserts
grate eventually, but otherwise this is top drawer, quite the equal of Temple's Joe Strummer movie and not tainted by pointless superstar talking heads.
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