Lights! Camel! Action! – The Story of Stump
Lights! Camel! Action! – The Story of Stump is a documentary about Stump, the Anglo-Irish experimental, rock band from the 1980s produced by Paul McDermott. The documentary has been in production for the past year and sadly in November 2015 Mick Lynch, the enigmatic front man and lyricist with the band fell ill and passed away on 17 December, 2015. Stump were one of the bright lights of the mid-80s UK indie music scene. Their music was a dense, complicated, experimental repertoire of angular riffs, rhythms and beats which used shifting time signatures twisting around Mick’s surreal lyrical output. They made abrasive music but with a keen pop sensibility. They always felt out of place and out of time. This documentary is more than the story of Stump, it’s a story that also encompasses the history of the UK independent music scene of the 1980s. It’s the story of indie record labels, satellite major labels and the mavericks who ran them. It records a time when the UK weekly music newspapers, the BBC’s John Peel, and Channel 4’s The Tube TV show reigned supreme. It’s the story of fanzines and underground gig circuits; big budgets being spent on recording studios and expensive videos. Stump’s story is also a microcosm of the wider social, cultural and political history of Ireland’s mid-80s emigrant community in London. The documentary is compiled from over 15 hours of interviews with the four members of Stump and key figures from their story.
Lights! Camel! Action! – The Story of Stump was broadcast @ 17:00 on Friday the 8th of January 2016 on 98.3FM around Cork City and county and streamed online at the same time from the stations homepage.