Christopher Culver
Creation Records was a UK independent record label active in the 1980s and 1990s that was at the center of several legendary movements in popular music, namely shoegaze, acid-house-influenced pop, and Britpop. UPSIDE DOWN, released in 2010, is a documentary by Danny O'Connor looking back at the label's rise, heyday, and eventual decline.The documentary is centered around freshly-shot interviews with people recounting the history of Creation Records. The label's founder and all around colourful character Alan McGee is featured most, as McGee's initial obsession, increasing drug use, and mid-1990s crash offered the documentary's maker a clear dramatic arc. There are, however, abundant interviews with members of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Ride, Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub, Sugar, Oasis, and Super Furry Animals. Other talking heads are McGee's fellow label co-founders and Creation office staff, and a few music journalists. A major lacuna is Slowdive: the only sign we see of this highly acclaimed band is the cover of their album SOUVLAKI. The interviewed musicians are also entirely male; the sole female artist interviewed is Heidi Berry, who only says two sentences (neither about her own music). It is strange that neither Slowdive's Rachel Goswell or MBV's Bilinda Butcher were interviewed to give a slightly broadened perspective on the label than all these lads.The documentary will prove informative enough to someone completely new to all this, but if you are a viewer who is already familiar with some of these bands and passionate about them, there is little information here that you probably haven't already picked up elsewhere. For example, McGee's issues, the fact that My Bloody Valentine nearly bankrupted the label, and the label's merger with Sony had already been pretty hashed out in UK pop journalism. That said, there is a lot of great archival footage here that you may have never seen before, like some scenes of people off their heads in clubs during the mythical days of acid house in the late 1980s.
Framescourer
It's often difficult to separate oneself from documentaries that cover one's own, halcyon experience. I remember watching and listening as the Creation records legend created itself and its romance is utterly compelling. Danny O'Connor blends everything at a consistent pitch of music, rosy reminiscence and very cunningly selected and edited footage.The key moments - The Jesus And Mary Chain's Upside Down (providing the film's title), Screamadelica and the signing of Oasis - flow into one another with the inevitability of hindsight, but also with the blurred penumbra of drugged vision. So similarly the interviews are shot in yesteryear-black-and-white and the media flows across itself. However, just as the talking heads are older and cleaner so the audio-visual melange clarifies rather than muddies. It's classy.Irrespective of anyone's investment, it is a great tale, tumescent with the romance of the greatest period in British popular music since the 1960s (it's also the final noteworthy period of music-making before the paradigm shift of the iPod and iTunes). A super film. 8/10
