In the filament of Amazon Prime the insanity that is the new Dead Ringers – for those late to the party a new telly take on David Cronenberg’s 1988 horror film about twin gynaecologists who impersonate each other, sharing patients and taking them as lovers while devising gothic means in pursuit of brilliance in their field. You would of course hope this wasn’t a based-on-a-true-story thing but sadly no…something like this happened in New York in the 1970s before it all went fatally south. The twist with the reboot is we get Rachel Weisz instead of Jeremy Irons playing the two sibling leads.
Thus we get hardass Eli (Weisz) and love-hungry Beverly (also Weisz) charging around in 
scrubs swearing a lot while slicing open this and pulling out that and putting their hands in God-knows-where…all the while negotiating for a revolutionary new birthing lab in the hope of giving infertility the sci-fi heave-ho. Viewers hardened by years of exposure to All Creatures Great And Small in their youth may cope better with the candid procedural stuff…though if you’re allergic to television on cocaine you may need an epidural yourself to get through the unravelling of the twins’ world after Beverly falls in love with actress Genevieve (Britne Oldford). Possibly, if you’re like me you’d forgive if it was swearily witty but it isn’t quite as ballsy as it thinks it is.
Not the most obvious material for a telly remake, of course, and it does occur that whether you do it with men, women, or cartoon dash-hounds Dead Ringers might always seem like 
an idea struggling to justify its existence. In the Jeremy Irons one we got the patriarchy bisected: the contradictions in the male psyche, the sexual surgery at the heart of the masculine world. In this Weisz one it’s more about Big Pharma and the race to exploit clinical advance. What’s big business about if not the patriarchy, though? Cinema and telly are two different worlds but while the original was austere for the form this one gorges itself on junk (and not in a good way). To a certain extent neither makes the best case for itself.
Richman wrong
In the flush of a spring Friday, an encounter with Dave Haslam in the Royal Exchange café. Which seems as good a chance as any to get to the heart of the issues. “You’re a historian of Manchester, Dave…what do you make of this business with The Guardian and the ship?” The unfazed look momentarily furrows in calculation. “I honestly have not been following it,” he deflects, probably wisely. Fair enough. Last time I interviewed Dave I ended up apologising for being too cheeky so I’m on best behaviour. His new Art Decades mini-book about Picasso in Paris is fresh out and he’s had a big launch event the night before at The Whitworth with Jeremy Deller – a proper bilateral exchange of wisdom by the sound of things. “What about their ‘should we cancel Picasso piece’ then?” I ask, mindful that people are now calling the artist an asshole, and in increasing numbers. “Well I did give out a long sigh when I read that,” he says. “Retrospectively cancelling people who lived over a hundred years ago is kind of nonsense.”
The book centres on that circle of bohemian reprobates knocking around Montmartre at the start of the last century: Apollinaire, Erik Satie, Braque, Dora Maar, Jacqueline Lamba. Plus Pablo, of course. In Haslam fashion it zones in on the café culture and the night life, which is where the fresh slant is to be found. “I’m on a constant campaign, 
almost, to show the potential of nightlife as a catalyst for all kinds of things…when I got to Cubism, for example, I realised that the iconography is all about that. You’ve got newsprint from picking up the newspapers in the café at lunchtime. Then you’ve got the evening…the wine glasses, the absinthe bottles.” He stops short of telling me the artist was the Roger Eagle of his day.
So how is life for Manchester’s keeper of the Factory era flame? How’s the modelling, after the Fred Perry campaign? “I didn’t realise quite what I’d signed up to. Every time I go on social media now, I see my photograph. I’m continually advertising myself to myself.” There’s a ‘but’ coming. “Having said that I’ve had two more offers, one from a very new young brand from London who look very cool. I’m honoured, they messaged me on every platform, so they must be keen. And there’s another one, I think they want to get me on the catwalk. I like to say yes and then stuff happens…” Blimey.
You do not play things as they are
At the Band on the Wall perhaps the hottest jazz guitarist in the world right now: Julian Lage, a man gifted by God with eight fingers on his left hand. Either that or the ability to kid you he was. A first time in Manchester for the thirty-five-year-old, the opening night of a European tour, and the place is a sell-out. Possibly there are others like me who have heard the buzz despite listening habits which extend only to about two living jazz axemen (Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell in my case), both of whom are knocking on a bit now, so there may be room in our hearts for a new hero and his trio if they play their cards right. “It feels like I haven’t left the house in months,” blinks the willowy Californian, early on. So go on, you’ve been practising. Impress us.
Kicking off with the half-asleep noodle of Twilight Surfer (from 2021’s Squint album) he plays a butterscotch Telecaster through a pair of mid-sized Fender amps mic-ed in stereo to give a honey tone which growls gorgeously when driven – it’s a dream of a sound – opposed to the woodier sound of an arch top / semi-acoustic you’d associate with older
players like Charlie Christian on whom his technique is essentially based. Cuffs and collar jut from jacket, a bit foppishly, and there’s a smile never far from his lips. You can see the child prodigy in him (he performed at the Grammys when he was twelve), he looks pleased with himself to be showing you what he can do, taking one or other hand off the instrument frequently as he goes, but as drummer Dave King, and bassist Jorge Roeder fill out the picture, they begin a splatter-painting of the music of the world which becomes increasingly terrifying in terms of its skill and imagination.
This is jazz, now, of course…painting in elements, bar-to-bar, of be-bop, blues, show tunes, standards, classical music, world music, new wave, atonal music, modal jazz, math rock and heaps of the plain old avant-garde. That internal panic which can set in upon hearing something like this…it’s an abstract painting it’s an abstract painting it’s an abstract painting you think to yourself as you try to get the measure of it…resolves to an understanding that the pictures they’re painting are strangely joyous, not without space or melodic reward, and for all the superhuman technique every one a unique canvas. At one point they play four minutes of a blues turnaround performed first completely straight – and somehow without a single cliché – then the band stops on a sixpence and shreds it in a hail of atonality. “From the next record, God willing,” he says, once it’s done. “We like that one. We got a bunch of ‘em.”
Adventure Everywhere: Pablo Picasso’s Paris Nightlife by Dave Haslam is available HERE
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