Idly flicking through iPlayer at the weekend, I came across some documentary about New York in the time of disco, punk and hip hop, which reminded me of Edo Bertoglio’s terrific document, Downtown 81. A beautifully shot drama following one young painter’s look for somewhere to crash, played brilliantly by the graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat, then only 21, it’s also a fantastic depiction of one of the strangest and most influential scenes, the world of no wave New York. Often, the downtown scene is depicted in stark black and white, drained souls at the end of the world, but the striking thing about the scene as shot from the inside is how fun and bright it felt for those involved, and how kind and nice those guys seemed. There’s a huge number of musicians from around the way involved in the drama, including Deborah Harry, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, DNA, Tuxedomoon, The Plastics, Melle Mel, John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, Suicide and Basquiat’s own band, Gray, and it’s totally one to save.
