I'm not much of one for a bandwagon, but when this one passed my door I stepped right on. To be fair to myself, I was one of the lucky few who had a snaffle of the Arctic Monkeys work before they hit the big time by way of unreleased material via a friend of a friend. I've proudly watched them grow from fan-based obscurity to riding the crest of mega-stardom with barely a wobble. I've even weathered the bitterness of The Terrible Incident in which original bass player, Andy Nicholson, dropped out of a tour due to "fatigue," only to be replaced by That New Guy, Nick O'Malley. In this oh-so-fickle industry, they've bared the brunt of silly amounts of sudden fame and critical appraise to last well past the insidiousness of passing popularity.
With this Sheffield quartet still going strong, a testament to which will be the shortly upcoming and limited release of a 76-minute film consisting of gig footage from the band's acclaimed 2007 world tour. Titled Arctic Monkeys At The Apollo, it does, as the title suggests, base itself on footage shot from their final gig of the tour at Manchester's Apollo. Directed by Richard Ayoade (Dean Learner/Thornton Reed from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace,) At The Apollo is a pie poked by many of the finest cutting-edge fingers of the British music and film industry. If you can't make it to the screenings you needn't leave the heavy petting to the industry folk alone; if you head on over here you can have yourself a taster of this finely-fingered Monkey pie, which, I think you'll agree, is a highly polished affair, albeit one which happily retains a certain Rock 'n' Roll quality.
Above, for your viewing pleasure, I have included the video for their first single, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, courtesy of youtube. The purpose of which is, of course, to entice a little nostalgia for the time when these northern lads burst onto the scene with a sound that took our nation by storm in the likes of which Britain hadn't seen for far too long. Also, not only is this their first video, but it is also my favourite and is in stark contrast to At The Apollo in exhibiting the affected rawness that we so welcomed not all that long ago. After all, is that not why we love them?
Arctic Monkeys At The Apollo will screen at selected cinemas from October 14th, see here for details.
