Even if you don’t know Don Fleming by name, chances are you own a ton of records he’s helped make. As a producer, he’s collaborated with the likes of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, Screaming Trees, the Posies and Hole, to name just a handful. He works for the Alan Lomax Archive and has done archival work for the estates of Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey and others. He’s fronted such groups as the Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L. and Gumball and was a member of the band that provided the music to 1994 Beatles biopic Backbeat. Fleming also runs the Instant Mayhem label, which recently reissued the Velvet Monkeys’ 1982 debut Everything Is Right and is about to release the solo Don Fleming 4, which features Kim Gordon, Julie Cafritz and R. Stevie Moore. If all that weren’t enough, Fleming is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Fleming: Odd Man Out is a gripping film from 1947 starring James Mason and directed by Carol Reed. It’s a rebel noir that centers on an IRA action gone wrong in Northern Ireland. The book, by F.L. Green, is a fantastic read, too. The film’s shadowy look came from cinematographer Robert Krasker, who also filmed The Third Man for Reed in 1949. The bar scene in the film was based on the Crown Bar in Belfast, which has these great enclosed seating sections for a private pint with your mates. I went there a couple of times while staying down the street at the Europa Hotel, which has the distinction of being the most bombed hotel in the world. It was hit 28 times during “the Troubles.”
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WMccnAH-ho
