Video
Blue Orchids, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Elbow, Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, The Charlatans, Peter Hook, Guy Garvey
2019

April saw the iTunes release of 'Dennis and Lois', a documentary about two New York-based Manchester music obsessives, who have spent 40 years devoted to music and the musicians they love. The film features footage shot by MDMA co-founder, Mat Norman and Mark Thomas of Soup Collective.

Dennis and Lois met in the mid-1970s and have spent almost every day since with each other.

A love of music and collecting helps keep them together - their house on the outskirts of New York is a shrine to pop culture.

They count Manchester as their second home, and among their good Manchester-based friends are John Cooper Clarke, Marc Riley, Doves, Stone Roses, Peter Hook, Elbow and of course the Happy Mondays, who named a song after them. But they are close to loads of other bands, old and new, including the Ramones, who they toured with selling merchandise.

This film is the first full-length documentary about the couple who think nothing of driving a 500 mile round trip to watch a band they love, or taking a couple of months off work to follow a tour around the USA.

They even flew to the UK once to watch a gig before flying back the next day.

Their twenties were spent hanging out in CBGBs, and in fact you can see them standing mesmerised, watching the performers in many of the famous 1976/77 era photographs of CBGBs. The film is full of amazing stories and the perfect antidote to lockdown boredom. And Manchester is in it throughout...