Oil City Confidential

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Videodisc release of the 2009 documentary.
Dr. Feelgood: Lee Brilleaux ; Wilko Johnson ; John Martin ; John B. Sparkes, Chris Fenwick.
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-'n-b and country-rock. The toughest of the pub rock bands was Canvey Island's 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 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, Julien Temple's last film in his trilogy on British music of the 1970s. Rather than following the rules of standard rockumentaries, Temple uses the music as a prism through which he examines the social and cultural conditions of the times.
DVD; stereo or 5.1 surround.

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