Twin Headed Wolf

Lauren Bacall was dead. She was the last tie to that Golden Age of Hollywood where every shot, every look, every pot, lamp and table onscreen was there because somebody made the active decision to put it there. In Hollywood in the 1940s, nothing was left up to chance, and any bit of crockery or furniture in a shot, while not drastically changing the basic outline of the film, could be the difference between it feeling warm and lived in, and feeling empty.

Similary, Twin Headed Wolf don’t have to perform music with the assortment of trinkets they carry onstage with them. If they didn’t, the song would still be the same basic song. But they realise that there is value in the minor variations, the almost imperceptible difference in tone you get from, say, singing into a teapot.

Deciding to take the Twin Headed Wolf ethos into directing a short video of them performing one of their original songs, the natural choice was to hit up The Ferocious Mingle Marcade on Camden Street. An indoor market in the business of selling all sorts of bits and bobs, we were sure to stumble on something visually interesting. It was a hunch that paid off.

The song Up the Airy Mountain features a line: “we daren’t go a-hunting/for fear of little men.” So when we arrive, who should we find lounging about in the screening area where Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not was flashing the faces of Lauren Bacall and her soon-to-be husband Humphrey Bogart before us, but those self same little men. There wasn’t much to fear about them as it turned out, but their mischievously shutting down the projector did set us back for a while.

Twin Headed Wolf at KnockanStockan – Photo Gallery

Photos: Abe Tarrush