If anyone's interested, I was at the premiere of Part 1 of The Beat Is The Law last night. It's a really good film - basically it follows the Sheffield music scene (or a certain facet of it) from about 1983/84 to the late '80s. The principal subjects are the bands Chakk, Hula and Fon Records, with the story of the Miner's Strike and the related dole culture as a backdrop. There's also a hell of a lot of Pulp in there, with extensive on-screen input from Hawley, Jarvis, Candida, Nick and Russell - all very entertaining and insightful with plenty of Pulpy snippets that (for once) aren't retreads of the same old stories. There are some great old pictures and we also get to see a bit of the video from They Suffocate at Night and the Sheffield Bands 84/85 doc, and the music over the closing credits is... Rattlesnake!

Stayed around for a drink at the Showroom afterwards and had a nice chat with Tim Allcard, who is now painting in Sheffield and has yet another extraordinary facial hair arrangement. Mildly surprised that he was the only Pulpy person to turn up, as it was the sort of thing you'd expect to see Nick and Hawley at. Maybe they were busy. I also finally got a copy of Martin Lilleker's brilliant book Beats Working for a Living, which is an absolutely essential history of Sheffield during roughtly the same period covered by the film. Again, lots of input from Jarv (he seems to have something to say about just about every single band from Sheffield ever), and a great Pulp section with an entire double page spread of posters from early gigs and so on. Again there's loads of stuff from Jarvis on the early records, the Wicker factory days and so on. Just the sort of thing I'd have nicked for my book if it'd been out a few years earlier!