We watched the film This is England last night on IFC OnDemand. It’s set in the early mid-80s in Britain, during the Faulkland War, and it’s about a young kid whose father has died in the conflict. He gets taken in by a bunch of semi-friendly skinheads, the ska-loving type, not the neo-Nazi brand. After getting his head shaved, scoring some boots, tight jeans and braces, the kid finally has a posse, complete with a sort of jovial father figure and a sometimes girlfriend. But things take a bad turn when one of the skinheads’ former associates gets out of prison spouting some nationalist racist garbage, splitting the ranks and taking the kid under his wing. In one of the film’s pivotal scenes, the racist skinhead makes an ultra-brief thaw in hostilities with a member of the other crew, a Jamaican, in order to justify hanging out with him and smoking his weed. As everyone gets thoroughly baked, Percy Sledge’s "At the Dark End of the Street" comes on the stereo, and one of the borderline racist punks, a chubby loser, has what seemed to be a Sledge-and-weed-induced teary-eyed emotional meltdown, driving his head into the stereo speaker and crying about the buttery beauty of the bass line. This seemed like a pretty reasonable response to me.
As we’ve said before, one of the Driftwood Singers goals for the 2007-2008 fiscal year, as established by the board of directors, is to further promote the greater glory and honor of Percy Sledge.
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