Radiohead, Foals, Supergrass, Ride, Swervedriver and their friends and contemporaries tell, for the first time, the epic and emotional story of the small-town music scene which spawned them. A unique and engaging music documentary about success, failure, good intentions and bad outcomes.
When people talk about music scenes - Merseybeat in Liverpool of the sixties, the Electro scene in Sheffield in the eighties, the advent of Punk in London of the seventies and Manchester's 'Baggy' explosion of the early nineties - they're usually referring to brief regional phenomenons encompassing a few bands, for a short period of time and centering around one genre of music. The Oxford 'sound' is not definable, the scene has been going for 30 years solidly and the sheer volume of completely varied bands it has given the world is amazing.
Anyone Can Play Guitar tracks the inception of this community and follows it from it's roots in the seventies, it's fast growth in the eighties, commercial peak in the nineties and integrity-over-success boom of genredefining innovation of the last few years. Although Oxford is rarely mentioned for its musical heritage, it has had a thriving music community and professional infrastructure going back three decades.
Made completely independently over the last 5 years by film-maker Jon Spira, Anyone Can Play Guitar goes beyond the boundaries of the normal music-doc, telling the story of the people, the bands, the scene and the last thirty years of the British music industry.
Stylistically, Anyone Can Play Guitar is a fast-moving, archival-heavy piece driven by the sheer charismatic force of its interviewees. Coming in somewhere between Dogtown and Z-Boys and The Last Waltz.
special guests Mark Gardener & jon spira
Mark Gardener of shoegazing Oxford rockers Ride, and the director of the film, Jon Spira, will take part in a Q&A session after the screening.
Join us in the Showroom Bar after the film where Mark Gardener will host an alternative music set. Come with open ears to experience the best from the genre-defying Oxford music scene.