Jarvis Cocker has a beautiful mind. How else could you explain the fact that, when invited to curate the Southbank Centre's prestigious Meltdown festival in 2007, he gathered a selection of some of alternative music's finest minds together to perform a showcase of wildly-adapted Disney classics? Exactly. A visionary indeed.
A little background: since 1993, London's Southbank Centre has been hosting Meltdown – a festival where contemporary and avant garde musicians are invited to direct a bill designed to showcase their own tastes and artistic interests. With hosts including Patti Smith, David Bowie, Nick Cave and Robert Smith roping in their famous friends and fans, the line-ups have become known as both star-studded and essential programming, if you like that sort of thing. A trend that arose from this annual meeting of alternative music's sharpest minds was the advent of the festival's slightly shambolic themed variety nights, which always promised plenty of guest appearances both surprising and delighting. Enter: Cocker's Disney plan.
