The Portal

Richard Dawson Meets Noel Coward and Chic in This Week's Archive Dive

Word reached us last week that the BFI are issuing a new Blu-ray and CD of Pet Shop Boys’ soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, so the first items dug out from tQ’s archive in the new incarnation of The Portal are two pieces related to Messrs Tennant & Lowe and the moving image. These are an essay on their own film, the arguably misunderstood It Couldn’t Happen Here, along with a classic interview via Rock’s Backpages with Tennant and Brett Anderson of Suede discussing the legacy of Noel Coward.

With Green Man this coming weekend, we’ve dug out Darran Anderson’s 2024 essay on Underworld’s 1994 album Dubnobasswithmyheadman. Richard Dawson also plays the Brecon Beacons Festival, followed by Krankenhaus and Supersonic on the following weekends – obviously we’ve got a tonne of Dawson in the archive, and this time around we’ve fetched up his wonderful Baker’s Dozen interview with Jennifer Lucy Allan from 2019. One of the best things we’ve run on tQ is Phil Hebblethwaite’s Junk Shop Classical column, and here’s a superb instalment on how sex magic and the occult threatened to destroy the Sydney Opera House – even before it was built. Then we’ve got Gudrun Gut’s Baker’s Dozen, the story of Democratic Republic of Congo’s street musicians Staff Benda Bilili, the Low Culture Podcast episode on Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief, and reflections on the debut album from Chic.