The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America

Year 10, Day 209 - 7/28/18 - Movie #3,005

BEFORE: I'm spending this weekend on tour with the Rolling Stones, which is something I never thought I'd say, even figuratively.   Mick Jagger (and company) carries over from "Crossfire Hurricane".

THE PLOT: Concert doc following the Stones on their 2016 tour, culminating in their historic stop in Havana, Cuba.

AFTER: This is the kind of stuff that fascinates me, really - not just rock music, or watching a movie or TV show filmed in a part of the world that I'll probably never visit, but the logistics of a band being out on tour, what machinery has to go on behind the scenes to make it all happen.  This was almost explained in "Long Strange Trip", when that doc mentioned that not only the touring was weighing down on Jerry Garcia, but also the knowledge that there were many people who depended on the band to make a living - not just the musicians but the roadies, the managers, staff, publicity people, set designers, wardrobe people, etc.  Any rock band, especially one that's been around for four or five decades, has to keep touring and keep making albums just to feed the corporate machine that's built up around them.  If the band doesn't tour for a few years, that means people they know are going to be out of work.

(Way back around 1990, I got to work on a documentary about a band called the Residents, which was hosted/narrated by Penn & Teller.  Well, Penn Gillette, anyway, Teller didn't talk but he was there.  In one of the segments, Penn made a quip about the Rolling Stones, using a pie chart to show where their income comes from, how much was album sales, how much was from touring, and how much - the biggest part - from T-shirts and other merchandise.  History, therefore, would eventually regard the Stones not as musicians but as very successful T-shirt salesmen.)

About five years ago, my current boss finished an animated feature, and we hired a booker to get it played at theaters across the U.S.  Now, since he's a celebrity in the animation world, and he's used to appearing at this film festival or that comic-con to introduce his films (and also sell some DVDs) he got the idea that he wanted to go to as many of the different theaters around the country that would be screening his film, to meet more fans (and also sell some DVDs).  It was impossible to visit them all, because two or three theaters would be screening the film in different cities at the same time.  But he asked me to chart a course for him to visit as many as possible, assuming that in most cases each theater would pay for one night's stay at a hotel, and a one-way plane fare (to or from that city).  Now, this is the kind of real-world puzzle that I love to solve - I admire those people who drive across the country in order to see a baseball game in every MLB stadium over the course of a summer, or similar endeavors.

After some struggling, I figured out that it was possible to send him out on the circuit, to those cities that would pay for plane fare and hotel, and then started to think geographically - it would make no sense to send him from Florida over to Oregon, then to Chicago, etc. criss-crossing the country several times over.  No, he needed an itinerary that would go from Chicago to maybe Denver, then up to Seattle, down to Oregon, on to San Francisco and such - something that made some kind of sense.  I worked it all out and determined that he could visit about 17 cities in three weeks, and only had to pay for one plane fare, I think from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which was quite reasonable.  And I thought, "This must be what rock tour managers do, figure out the best route for the band to take across the U.S., so my boss must be a real rock star now!"  Of course, I only had to plan HIS trip around the country, a real tour manager has to get all the gear, the lights, the sets, and the extra personnel from place to place as well.  The rock stars take the planes, which is relatively easy, everyone else probably has to take the bus or ride on a truck.

Of course, I've had to ship merchandise and supplies out to Comic-Con many times, but that's nothing compared to the amount of stuff that has to get from place to place to support a band like the Stones.  Whenever I see one of those tour T-shirts that lists all the cities the band played in, I sort of mentally lay it over a map of the U.S. to see if I can figure out the logic behind the order of cities.  Philly to Pittsburgh, sure, then over to Cleveland, Chicago...then Seattle?  WTF?  But I'm sure it makes sense to someone, somewhere in the chain.

So in 2016 the Stones set out across Latin America, with concerts in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo (Uruguay), Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Lima, Bogota, and Mexico City.  Some cities they'd been to before, and others had been under repressive or conservative governments for decades, with rock music practically outlawed. All the while, their management team was negotiating for a concert to be held in Cuba, the last Communist stronghold in the Americas, which was JUST starting to loosen the travel and cultural restrictions from the Castro regime.  So it became this mix of re-visiting some countries where the Stones were well-known, and others that might have never heard their music before.  Not officially, anyway.

This sort of thing happened back in 1987 when Billy Joel played a concert in Moscow, and then I think McCartney finally got there in 2003.  So rock has a long history of breaking down cultural barriers, but it's funny that it only seems to go in one direction, with US or UK rockers bringing culture to "regressive" countries like Russia or Cuba.  You almost never see bands from Communist countries catching on in the underground scene in the U.S., right?  I can't name one Russian band.  Rock is freedom, rock is expression, rock is love, and it's everything that they didn't have behind the Iron Curtain, or in a South American dictatorial regime.  But enough about politics, let's catch up with the Stones, or as they're called across Latin America, "Los Rollings".

It was probably another logistical nightmare to get a good cross-section of Stones songs included in this film - if they kicked off every show with "Start Me Up", for example, then they couldn't show the start of every stop, because then the audience of the documentary would get sick of hearing those opening chords in every stadium.  So sometimes the band had to open with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" just to vary up the footage a little bit.  Then some poor editor probably had to watch 14 versions of "Satisfaction" just to figure out which one should make the final cut, and then, what criteria do you use?  The one where the sound was the best, or the one where the camera coverage was best, or the one where Mick jumped around the most?  Again, I'd love to see the thought process that had to go into this.

Another thing I enjoyed was seeing the Stones get out among regular people, which they could do in some countries (they jam with a family of drummers in Uruguay), but not in others - they'd be mobbed by their fans, the "rolingas" in Argentina.  Those are some hardcore fans, almost like a gang or a cult built up around the Stones.  In Brazil, we get to here a samba band play the drumline from "Sympathy for the Devil", and the film wisely transitions to that same song being played by the Stones in concert, where they've also given it more of a samba-style rhythm.  There's a Mariachi band seen in Mexico that plays a Stones song, too - "Happy", but I don't happen to know that song.  Oh wait, the one that goes, "I need a love to keep me happy..." yeah, sure, I know that one, but I just couldn't place it at the time.  It's not on any of their Greatest Hits CDs so I didn't know it by name.

Finally the band gets the OK to play in Cuba - after a delay caused by President Obama visiting the country, for some reason the country couldn't handle both visits at the same time, and then the Pope, who spoke out against the Stones playing in Cuba on the make-up date, which was Good Friday.  Hey, Pope, it' wasn't the Stones' fault, for the first time in my life, I say blame Obama for this one. Then once the Havana (or Ha-VAAH-na, as Mick says...) concert is set, the organization has to ship the sets over from Belgium.  I didn't really get this part, like, didn't the Stones have gear with them in Brazil, Peru and Mexico?  Why didn't they ship THAT set from Mexico City to Ha-VAAH-na?

Well, Latin America, I hope you enjoyed the Rolling Stones.  Since Mick just turned 75 and Keith's not far behind, who the heck knows if they'll make it around to your country again, those guys aren't buying any green bananas, if you know what I mean.  Then again, maybe Mick and Keith WILL outlive us all in the end.  That would be sad, the Stones playing to an empty stadium because they're the only people left...

But hey, no rock stars died tonight!  And nobody talked about taking a lot of drugs, either!  This makes me happy, because the rock chain so far has been constantly tainted by those things.  I also really enjoyed the Jagger/Richards acoustic version of "Country Honk" that took place backstage in Brazil.  After watching "I Saw the Light" I could really hear the influence of Hank Williams in that song, and I'll probably think of that every time now.

Also starring Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood (all carrying over from "Crossfire Hurricane"), Darryl Jones, Chuck Leavell, Bernard Fowler, Matt Clifford, Tim Ries, Karl Denson, Sasha Allen, Joyce Smith, Jane Rose, Adam Wilkes, Paul Gongaware, Dale Skjerseth and archive footage of Barack Obama.

RATING: 6 out of 10 tattooed logos

Crossfire Hurricane

Year 10, Day 208 - 7/27/18 - Movie #3,004

BEFORE: It's really helpful that the Rolling Stones appeared in archive footage in "Long Strange Trip" - I was hoping they would, even though they were not listed in the IMDB as such.  But now I can drop "Gimme Shelter" from my chain, which makes me happy because I believe that I've seen it before, and I don't want to get credit for a film previously seen.  This project is for watching only films that I have NOT seen, and since I've owned a copy of that 1970 concert film for a long while (possible taped off VH-1 Classic or such) now I can drop it, and the number of films in the Rockumentary chain returns to a nice, round 50 films.

So, I can say after 10 films now that I'm 20% of the way through the chain.  So still much more ground to cover, but 20% is a good marker of progress having been made.  40 films still to come, which will last me until the first week of September - and now I get to finish a day earlier than planned.  Ten films in, I did a quick count of who's appeared the most, and so far the leader is Jimi Hendrix with 6 appearances, counting concert footage and archive interviews.  Tied for second place with 5 appearances are Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Paul McCartney - with three Stones-centric films on the docket, plus more guest appearances to come, things are looking good for Jagger at the end of the year.

I'm going to quickly re-watch "Gimme Shelter" this afternoon, in preparation for "Crossfire Hurricane", which I'm sure will reference the famous Altamont concert which is not only the connection between the Grateful Dead and the Stones, both acts played there, but is unfortunately famous for the fact that the Hell's Angels stabbed and killed a concert-goer there.  That act does not appear in the film, so don't look for it - and in fact, if you want to see the guy get stabbed, you should sit down and take a long, hard look at yourself and ask yourself why you would want to see that.

"Gimme Shelter" is a film with a number of structural problems - there are too many shots of the Stones in the editing room, watching the concert footage and talking about the incident with the Hell's Angels after the fact.  This not only messes with the time-stream, but also gives away the ending at the start of the film.  Though, to be fair, it was in all the newspapers.  But the concert film "Woodstock" managed to play out in real time, starting with the set-up for the event, the planning at the location, rock stars flying in by helicopter, fans driving and walking to the concert location, and then from there it plays out (more or less) in chronological order, the late-night concerts are followed by Wavy Gravy's announcement of breakfast the next morning, and so on.

In "Gimme Shelter", we see the Stones perform a few numbers, then it's back to the editing room (because watching the film over Mick Jagger's shoulders, and seeing Keith Richards lying on the floor is SO visually interesting...NOT) and then another Stones number, followed by lawyer Melvin Belli on the phone, arranging the concert and venue and such.  This is not why people tuned in, to see the legal negotiation for the use of Altamont Speedway.  The only possible reason to include this footage is to demonstrate after the fact that lawyers WERE involved, and that the parties involved did their due diligence before just playing a free concert with minimal security.  And again, that tips off the ending.  THEN we see Ike & Tina Turner perform as an opening act (I assume) and then it's time to start (??) the concert.  Did anyone here understand the order in which things happened?

The only thing I can think of is that someone said, "Let's deal with the elephant in the room" and moved all talk of the dead fan up to the start of the film, to get it out of the way.  Then there are shots following of people crowding the stage, and security people clotheslining them, and pulling them away from Mick Jagger.  Later, more shots of Hell's Angels roughing up people who wouldn't give the roadies enough space to work.  So the whole event may have been well-intentioned, but it was a complete mess.  That's reflected in the jumbled structure of the film, maybe?  I don't know.  Maybe I'll get some more understanding about what went down at Altamont in tonight's doc.

Ah, a check on Wikipedia explains that the footage of the Stones seen early in "Gimme Shelter" is from their earlier concert in Madison Square Garden, and so is the footage of Ike & Tina Turner performing. That clears up SOME of the time-jumping, but not why the Stones are seen before the concert listening to audio of someone on the radio talking about the guy being stabbed, when that hasn't happened yet.

People erroneously believe that the stabbing took place during the performance of "Sympathy for the Devil" - fans of irony, perhaps, considering the presence of the Hell's Angels, but it was really during "Under My Thumb" - and then the next song seen in the film is "Street Fighting Man", which might be ironic for real.  The stabbed man, however, was later determined to be high on meth, and was storming the stage with a gun - so who's to say that a worse tragedy wasn't prevented?  It's up for debate.

Also, it appears that the Grateful Dead never played at Altamont, the "Gimme Shelter" movie shows them arriving for the concert, but then finding out that there was some trouble with the Hell's Angels punching Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane, so they left.  Probably smart from a safety standpoint, given what came later, but perhaps also a terrible business decision. 

Mick Jagger and two other Stones carry over from "Long Strange Trip".  Yesterday was Mick Jagger's 75th Birthday, if you can believe that coincidence!  OK, so I missed it by one day sort of, but I did re-watch "Gimme Shelter" on the proper day in honor of Mick's birthday, so I think I'm covered. 

THE PLOT: Legendary British rock band The Rolling Stones mark their 50th year together.

AFTER: Whoever made this documentary conducted interviews with the Rolling Stones for their band's anniversary, but we're told at the start of the film that the Stones did NOT allow cameras in the room - so only new audio was created for this film.  (Umm, you know a band is getting old when they don't allow anyone to see them, am I right?)  So really, this is a compilation of a ton of archive footage, from concerts, news reports and previous interviews, to attempt to create something new, a de facto video history of the band.  And they still brought it in under two hours, something the makers of "Long Strange Trip" really should have considered doing.

I think the footage sort of goes in reverse chronological order first, to give the audience the sense that we're stepping back in time, back to the band's early days, when they were the anti-Beatles, the villains to the Fab Four heroes.  I mean, the Beatles caused teenage girls to scream and faint and go crazy, then the Stones did all that again, plus their music made teenage boys RIOT.  I'm serious, whatever crazy stuff was going down in the U.K. in the 1960's, somehow somebody figured out that if you put Jagger and Richards and a bunch of other longhairs on stage, the shit was gonna go down, a riot was DEFINITELY going to break out, it was just a question of WHEN, and whether they'd make it through a full set before the theater would be destroyed.

So apparently there's a long history of people jumping up on stage at Stones concerts, back to the early days.  And then if some lucky girl (or guy) managed to reach Mick Jagger, what was their goal?  Tear off a piece of his clothing?  Have sex with him right there on stage?  Seriously, what's the end game here?  But then usually this fan would be rewarded with a beatdown from security, so I hope the concussion was worth it, kids.  This plays out as some kind of foreshadowing of Altamont, if you think about it - only the fans at Altamont were tripping on LSD, and many of them were also naked, and apparently in this state they love the Stones SO MUCH that they just HAVE to try to make it to the stage.

Yes, footage from the infamous Altamont concert is repeated here in "Crossfire Hurricane" and we can clearly tell that even the Hell's Angels were absolutely tripping balls, though probably on meth or crank instead of acid.  One biker in particular looks like he's being tortured, as if he's ready to tear out all of his hair, or break into a cry, or possibly both.  It's not hard to see what went wrong at Altamont, because if your security is a bunch of strong bikers who are put in a position of power, AND they're high AND some fans touched their bike, well, jeez, that's just a recipe for disaster.  And yeah, you can totally see the guy in the lime green suit get stabbed, so I take back what I said above, but you have to know what to look for, and as I said before, why would you want to see that on film, anyway?

Before that, we get the news reports of Jagger and Richards being busted for drug charges (though the newspapers all referred to Keith RICHARD'S arrest, not Keith RICHARDS', so none of the British reporters apparently knew how to spell his name, or maybe the Brits do possessives differently?)  and then there's the difficult decision to kick Brian Jones out of the band because he was doing too many drugs - or maybe it was the wrong KIND of drugs - and not contributing during studio work.  Jones died a few months later, and the Stones had a free concert coming up that turned into a tribute to him, and if I didn't know better I'd think there was some suspicious timing there.

Then Keith got clean (or at least off of heroin) a couple years later, after being on trial and spending a short time in jail, getting released and agreeing to do a free concert for the blind in Canada as some sort of community service.  I don't know whether Keith went all macro-biotic and health-conscious like some rockers do, or if he just found a better mix of chemicals that includes Captain America's super-soldier serum or something, but I firmly believe that he and Jagger will somehow outlive us all.  
I never knew much about Mick Taylor (who replaced Brian Jones) before now, because I got into the Stones in college, shortly after I got into the Beatles (because that's a natural progression, right?) and by then, Mick Taylor had been replaced by Ronnie Wood.  God, Mick Taylor looked so young when he moved from John Mayall's BluesBreakers to the Stones.  He's kind of like the Bob Weir of the Stones, right? Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor - that had to be confusing, right?  Then originally there was a guy in the band named Dick Taylor, so I don't know how anybody in the 1960's kept this all straight...

Also starring Keith Richards, Charlie Watts (both carrying over from "Long Strange Trip", Brian Jones (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child"), Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood, Mick Taylor, Andrew Loog Oldham, Dick Cavett.

RATING: 6 out of 10 unpaid tax notices

Long Strange Trip

Year 10, Day 207 - 7/26/18 - Movie #3,003

BEFORE: Bob Weir carries over from "The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir" and I suspect many other people will as well.  This one's not on Netflix yet, it came out just last year, but I'm borrowing an Academy screener from one of my bosses to cross it off the list.  It's not on iTunes, but I guess it's also available on Amazon - I'd rent it there but I haven't been able to get the movie plug-in working with the browser on my Mac, so there's my excuse for watching this one as a borrowed freebie.  Hey, I'm keeping with the spirit of the band, man - it's cool to tape or dub as long as you spread the word and trade tapes with another fan, right?

THE PLOT: A look at the 30-year career of The Grateful Dead.

AFTER: Well, I've got to credit them for picking the right title.  "Strange" certainly applies to anything regarding the Dead's journey, but really the emphasis should be on "LONG" here - this film is nearly FOUR HOURS long. The last time I watched anything this long, it was another music doc, the one about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers titled "Runnin' Down a Dream".  But that was years ago, when I was home sick on a weekday, and just needed something to occupy my time.  Tonight I didn't fare as well, because I fell asleep in the recliner sometime during Hour 3.  My wife said I should have split this one over two nights - and it was on two DVDs, so maybe that would have been the best strategy.

The question then becomes, did this film NEED to be four hours long?  Chicago's career was just as long and extensive as the Grateful Dead's, and their documentary came in under two hours.  It's almost ironic that the Dead's documentary would mirror a song performed in one of their concerts - way too long, mostly unstructured, and largely unnecessary.  I refuse to believe that there wasn't a shorter, more coherent way of delivering all of this information, even when you factor in all of their personnel changes, personal histories, and the concert performances from over the years.

Look, I'm not a "deadhead", probably never will be, though I enjoy some of their songs - but I guess that puts me in the minority here, because people either REALLY LOVE the Dead, or they don't care at all, and you rarely meet someone like me who's square in the middle.  Of course, I was one of those "Johnny-Come-Latelys" whose first Dead album was "In the Dark" because I liked that "Touch of Grey" song, their first hit after the advent of MTV.  Eventually I went back and collected their greatest hits, plus the "American Beauty" and "Workingman's Dead" albums, and I never saw them perform live, so I guess that makes me a fair-weather fan.

Of course time must be spent paying homage to Jerry Garcia, interviews with his girlfriend/wife that he reconnected with shortly before he transcended this plane, or maybe returned to his home planet.  You can't really cut that stuff.  I remember back in summer 1995, things were getting a little rough between me and my first wife, and so we were out on a camping trip with some of our friends (including her future girlfriend, but that's neither here nor there...) and when we heard all the other campers in the park singing Grateful Dead songs, that's how we found out that Jerry had died.  I didn't really get the importance of it, but I at least respected the other campers and their need to break into these sing-alongs.

But there's SO MUCH here that could be excised out, or trimmed down.  For example, one band member is allegedly going through the archives, looking for filmed material, presumably to include in the doc (I find this a bit hard-to-believe, because who films all of the research for a doc, as opposed to just the results?) and they find this footage of Jerry Garcia that was thought lost, from the time their record company wanted the Dead to make a movie, and sent a bunch of filmmakers to follow them around.  Now, the Dead ended up giving those filmmakers LSD to distract them and ruin their film, but once this "lost" footage is found, it ended up appearing in "Long Strange Trip" at least three times.  But it's JUST Jerry looking in the camera making faces, and he's probably stoned - so it adds NOTHING to the narrative, why include it three times?

Similarly, did we really need a breakdown of all the types of fans that attended Grateful Dead concerts - the tapers are in THAT section, the deaf people are in THAT section, the spinners are out in the lobby - what possible difference could it make to show me a seating chart, at this point in time? Then it gets into the process where people exchanged tapes of different shows, intricately designing labels with the set lists (and they went by quickly, but I still noticed spelling errors in the names of the songs...) and it's like BIG DEAL, people tape all kinds of bands, people swap tapes, maybe a little more with the Dead than with other bands, but come on, really, who gives a crap? 

Another thing that could easily be jettisoned is the recurring clips from the "Frankenstein" movies, especially the ones with Abbott & Costello - there doesn't seem to be any point to them at all, except then the connection is (sort of) explained near the end, but there's just no real payoff to them.  So, out they should go.

Drugs and alcoholism, which I now realize has been a constant theme since starting the rock & roll chain.  I know, I should have expected that, but I didn't realize that I'd be breaking all these bands down by their drugs of choice, which I supposed are somewhat dependent on each band's time and place - like the Beatles took speed in Hamburg, then switched to pot and LSD. Clapton took heroin, then booze to get off the heroin, then back to heroin to get off the booze.  Jimi and Janis both overdosed, Jimi on barbiturates and Janis on heroin, and then even Chicago admitted to taking a lot of drugs up at the ranch, basically whatever they wanted from pot to coke to harder stuff was brought right to them.  It's no shock that the Dead took acid, and Garcia's cause of death was officially a heart attack, but it happened while he was at rehab.  Smoking, drug addiction, diabetes all combined with exhaustion, probably - it's just not a healthy lifestyle, this 1960's rock and roll thing.

Checking the music history for today, July 26, Brent Mydland from the Grateful Dead died on this day in 1990. Another overdose - it's getting to the point where I'll be pleasantly surprised if I find a rocker who died where drugs were NOT involved.

I can see how the film in general has some worth, even if you're not a hardcore fan, but it's GROSSLY in need of some more editing.  But I held this one for the second of the two films about the Grateful Dead, because I was hoping for a particular cameo, which is in there (even if all the people appearing in archive footage are NOT listed in the IMDB...but I'll try to fix that).  More on that tomorrow, but it's going to enable me to drop one film from my chain, one I think I might have seen already.

I don't know, maybe I should have made this film my 3,000th film, because making it through this ordeal of a film seems like more of an accomplishment - and Bob Weir estimated that the Dead played about 3,000 concerts.  But I'm just not that big of a fan, and anyway, both Wikipedia and the Guinness Book of Records say that number is really more like 2,300.  So let's let it stand. Anyway, tonight's film number is a palindrome, just like "Aoxomoxoa" was, so that's good, right?

Also starring Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, John Perry Barlow, Natascha Weir, Trixie Garcia (all carrying over from "The Other One"), Robert Hunter, Keith Godchaux, Donna Jean Godchaux, Sam Cutler, Dennis McNally, Barbara Meier, Steve Parish, Nick Paumgarten, Steve Silberman, Joe Smith, Alan Trist, Al Franken and archive footage of Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Brent Mydland, Ken Kesey, (all carrying over from "The Other One"), Tom Constanten, Vince Welnick, Mick Jagger (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix"), Keith Richards (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Charlie Watts (ditto), Hugh Hefner, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Kurt Loder, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello.

RATING: 5 out of 10 recordings of "Althea" (check out the one from 5/16/80, man, recorded at the Nassau Coliseum show...)

The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir

Year 10, Day 206 - 7/25/18 - Movie #3,002

BEFORE: Since Bob Weir was interviewed in "Janis: Little Girl Blue" it makes sense to follow up with two films about the Grateful Dead.  I have a hunch that two other band members will also carry over via archive footage, but we'll have to see - once again, the IMDB cast list for a film is terribly incomplete, I'm betting - because it only lists 8 people.  Time for me to start keeping notes again...

THE PLOT: A documentary that explores Bob Weir's life, through his childhood, the Grateful Dead and Ratdog.

AFTER: Yep, I'll be making another submission to the IMDB later tonight, there are at least 20 people interviewed or seen in archive footage that are not listed in the official cast.  The most glaring is Jerry Garcia, he's all over the place in the footage from the Dead concerts and interviews, how could anyone leave him off the IMDB list?  This shall not stand...

I'm probably really late to the party on this one, because what I don't know about the Grateful Dead could probably fill a whole movie - but if you look at the footage of all the old 1960's concerts they gave, there's one guy who looks like a teenager.  But that's only because he was a teenager - that's Bob Weir.  I knew the name, of course, but only as an older man, but he co-founded the band at the age of 16 and was its youngest member.  I guess he still is the young one, but of course he's 70 now, with a wife and two daughters.

These days a documentary really will go out of its way to avoid that old "talking head" format, but sometimes you just can't get around it.  They need to talk to the people who know the subject matter, and for that you just can't beat the old one-camera interview.  But at least there's a ton of concert footage to break it up, plus the camera follows Bob Weir back to visit his childhood home in California, only it turns out to be not there any more.  (Yeah, that was time well spent...)  But at least he can re-visit the back alley in Palo Alto behind what used to be the guitar shop, which is where he met Jerry Garcia one New Year's Eve.  And then later he brings his wife and daughters to the house in San Francisco where the band used to live, because that probably wouldn't be awkward at all.

Weir became the yang to Garcia's yin, or perhaps the other way around, and Weir's got belief in a lot of things like telepathy and ESP that took place during acid trips - nah, he couldn't possibly have imagined that - but he also firmly believes that the LSD contributed greatly to the free-form nature of the majority of the Grateful Dead's long live jams, and freed them all up to be more experimental with their music.  It seems like a long way to go to turn drug use into a positive thing, but that was the 1960's, I guess. Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign was still two decades in the future.

Weir has a unique take on the Deadhead culture that built up around the band, once they realized that there was a community of people who had dropped out of society to follow them around on the concert circuit, he couldn't really blame those people, because they were basically doing what he did so many years ago, dropping out of life to go on tour with the band.  But then it also seems hard for him as a successful, hard-working musician to envision stepping away from the comforts of society to live in an RV or sleep in a tent outside a concert venue just to sell tie-dyed shirts to try to raise enough money for a ticket.  I mean, follow your bliss, but also maybe get a real job.

Discounting all of the solo acts I've covered so far, if I just focus on the groups - Beatles, Chicago, the Grateful Dead - the details of their stories differ, but the basic story is the same.  Some teens form a friendship and become the core members of the band, other members drop in later, but success comes from hard work and innovative songwriting, then drugs lead to wild creativity and even more innovative songwriting.  Bob Weir was sort of the McCartney of the Dead (the cute one) but he was also a bit like the George Harrison (the young one).  But he was the rhythm guitarist, and that was Lennon's role at first.  OK, so the Beatles comparisons don't really work, the Dead were really their own thing, but I still don't know all the details about the band, but hey, that's what tomorrow's film is for.

Also starring Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Trixie Garcia, Mike Gordon, Sammy Hagar, Bruce Hornsby, John Perry Barlow, Wendy Weir, Natascha Weir, Carolyn Garcia, Peter Coyote (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Blair Jackson, Jerry Harrison, Lee Ranaldo and archive footage of Jerry Garcia (carrying over from "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (ditto), Brent Mydland, Chuck Berry (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Paul McCartney (ditto), The Everly Brothers, Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, John Coltrane, Dan Rather, Tom Snyder.

RATING: 6 out of 10 side projects

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Year 10, Day 205 - 7/24/18 - Movie #3,001

BEFORE: If I've got time tonight after this Janis Joplin-based film, I'm going to speed through "Monterey Pop", which I'm fairly sure I've seen before.  Just as a refresher - I can skip the Hendrix performances, because I've seen them several times over the last few days, and I can skip the 20-minute Ravi Shankar performance at the end. But re-immersing myself in this San Francisco music scene of 1967 could be very helpful as a background for the Joplin story.  More on this later.

Remember about 4 or 5 years ago, it seemed like three different movie studios had Janis Joplin biopics in the works, whatever happened with that?  There seemed to be a race to get one on the screen, and we're still waiting.  More on this later, too, if my research turns anything up.

I've accidentally re-created a line-up from the famous Whiskey-a-Go-Go club in L.A., with Jimi Hendrix, Chicago and Janis on the same bill.  Janis Joplin carries over via archive footage from "Now More Than Ever" but just to be on the safe side, two other people carry over, both interviewed here in live human form.

I suppose this was bound to happen, with so many of my music docs coming to me from Netflix, but today's film WAS available on Netflix when I designed this chain, and now it's not.  Fortunately there's iTunes, where it's available for rent for just 99 cents, so that's not too bad of a punishment for my delays.  But I wish things could stay available on Netflix longer, so I could be sure of getting to them without paying extra.

THE PLOT: Musician Cat Power narrates this documentary on Janis Joplin's evolution into a star from letters that Janis wrote over the years to her friends, family and collaborators.

AFTER: This film sort of takes the same approach as "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", by hiring another person with a similar voice to read letters written by its subject, and then surrounding that with a bunch of photos, archive footage, and interviews with people who were around back then.  You've got to hurry up and make these docs now, while the people who knew the subject during the late 1960's are still alive - that clock is ticking.  My fear in doing this rock chain was that so much of it might seem sad, based on how many rockers and rocker-tangent people are already gone.  Then this just becomes a roll call of the fallen, like in "Hunger Games".

Two years ago, Michelle Williams was in talks to star in a film called "Janis", while another studio was producing a rival Joplin film called "Get It While You Can", to star Amy Adams.  That first film's apparently been in the planning stages since 1999, when Lili Taylor was cast.  By 2006 they were talking about Zooey Deschanel, then Nina Arianda in 2012.  Shooting with Michelle Williams was supposed to start in May 2017, but I'm not sure if it did, and the project starring Amy Adams is now listed as cancelled.  It's funny, Juliette Lewis appears during the closing credits of "Little Girl Blue", and I wonder if she was ever considered to play Janis, because there is something of a resemblance there - plus, doesn't she play in a rock band?

As for the "Monterey Pop" film (which I breezed through in about 30 minutes, by skipping the Hendrix and Shankar performances) "Little Girl Blue" shows us a bit about what went on behind the scenes - famous documentarian D.A. Pennebaker set up all the cameras aimed at the stage, and the acts did not know that they would be filmed for his movie until just before they went on stage, when they were asked to sign release forms at the last minute.  Now I don't know what the filmmaking rules were back in the 1960's, but today this would be considered dirty pool.  Everyone has a right to their own image, and to know when they're being recorded, and to force them to make the decision on the spot between appearing in a big, film and reaching a much wider audience than ever before (while waiving all possible salaries and royalties) and keeping the rights to their own image and performance was simple for most of the acts, but it's still an underhanded move.  The members of Janis' group, Big Brother and the Holding Company, rightfully complained and did NOT want to give up on their rights or royalties, so they performed on the first day of the festival without the cameras rolling.  Something got worked out, because the group came back on Day 2 and did an encore performance of two songs, so they could be included in the film.

But several acts who performed at the festival, most notably the Grateful Dead, are still absent from the film.  Phil Lesh later said that the Dead did not perform well at Monterey, which could explain why they're not in the movie, and that their band had a habit of blowing their big chances.  They did play between The Who and Jimi Hendrix, both acts notable for destroying guitars at that venue very cinematically.  (Perhaps I'll get more insight on this from the Dead's perspective in tomorrow's film.)  Hey, at least the Grateful Dead got to play at the event, the Beach Boys were booked, but didn't show since Carl Wilson was in trouble for refusing to be drafted, and Brian Wilson was beginning his life of seclusion after the "Smile" album was scrapped (more on the Beach Boys in a few weeks...).  Dionne Warwick was double-booked and did not appear, same goes for the Rascals, Bob Dylan was recovering from his motorcycle accident, and the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart all declined. Donovan, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks couldn't get work visas in time.

(What a great gig it must have been in the 1960's, being a photographer or filmmaker, you just showed up at a concert and filmed history being made, and then if you somehow got a photo of Jimi fanning the flames on his guitar you probably just knew that Rolling Stone magazine would pay you a couple of grand for it.)

Anyway, back to Janis.  The film traces her journey from Port Arthur, TX, where she grew up listening to Bessie Smith and Leadbelly records, then playing blues and folk music in high school. She became a misfit due to her weight, appearance, and support of integration.  She briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she performed with a folk trio called the Walter Creek Boys, and hung out with the staff of the campus humor magazine.  But she left Texas and hitchhiked to San Francisco, where she fell in with a crowd even worse than comedy writers - musicians.  Naturally that led to shoplifting, heavy drinking and drug abuse (really, after a week of rock documentaries, we should be used to all this by now.)  But after becoming emaciated, her S.F. friends threw her a party to raise the bus fare to send her back to Texas - on some level, they understood that if Janis stayed in San Francisco and kept hanging around with music people, it wasn't great for her health.

So she moved back to Texas, went back to college, wore her hair in a beehive, visited a drug counselor and got engaged.  Yeah, that didn't take, before long the promoter for Big Brother found her performing in Austin and sent his friend to bring her back to San Francisco.  Thus began a string of relationships with both men and women, many of whom were fellow musicians, like Country Joe McDonald and Dave Getz (from Big Brother).  At some point, somebody realized that the band name "Big Brother and the Holding Company" was very confusing - like, is Janis Joplin "Big Brother", because that sounds like a man should play that role.  Why not "Big Sister" or "Big Momma", why hang on to the connection to "1984" if it's not working?  So on some posters it started appearing as "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company", which managed to be even MORE confusing.

We all know the story from here - Big Brother released their second album, the famous "Cheap Thrills" LP, with cover art by R. Crumb and the song "Piece of My Heart", then Janis left the band soon after that for a solo career.  Janis brought Sam Andrews along from Big Brother to her new backing band, the Kozmic Blues Band, influenced by the Otis Redding sound but with a horn section much like Chicago's.  Hey, steal from the best, right? She toured Europe, where security was so lax that there were more audience members on stage than musicians, and came back and made appearances on Dick Cavett's shows, several of which are shown here.  (Cavett speaks fondly of Janis, and strongly implies that they had a relationship thing going as well.  Hey, it was the 60's, the era of "free love", no judgments.  People didn't start paying for love until the early 80's.)

The Kozmic Blues album went gold, and this brings us up to Woodstock, where Joplin had to wait hours to perform, because many acts had clauses in their contracts that stated they needed to perform before her, apparently.  Which gave Janis TEN HOURS to wait to perform, and nothing fills up such a big space like that better than heroin and alcohol.  You know, to calm her nerves before performing in front of 400,000 people - just to take the edge off, I'm sure.  But by the time Janis went on stage (2 am) it was probably hard to tell if she was more drunk or stoned.  But Pete Townshend famously remarked that Janis was incredible, even if she was having an off-night.  It's notable, however, that her performance was not included in the 1970 "Woodstock" documentary, and this was at her own request.  I guess by 1970 filmmakers learned that they couldn't pull that last-minute release form trick any more.

Supposedly at this point, after she'd been drug-free on a trip to Brazil, she came back to America, formed the Full Tilt Boogie band, and began using again - but even when she kicked the heroin, alcohol was readily available to pick up the slack (the detox process now known as the "Eric Clapton Special"...)  In the summer of 1970 she went back to Texas to attend her high-school reunion, and then recorded the tracks for the "Pearl" album in the fall of 1970 - then of course she overdosed in early October and that album was released posthumously.  It did very well, if that's any consolation.

End on something positive, end on something positive - I know, how about the fact that there are members of Big Brother and the Holding Company that are still alive?  That's good news, right?

Also starring Dick Cavett (carrying over from "Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago"), Clive Davis (ditto), the voice of Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power), Karleen Bennett, Laura Joplin, Michael Joplin, J. Dave Moriaty, Jack Smith, Powell St. John, Jae Whitaker, Travis Rivers, Dave Getz, Sam Andrew, David Dalton, Bob Weir, Peter Albin, Julius Karen, D.A. Pennebaker, Country Joe McDonald, Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, Peggy Caserta, Dave Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Payback"), with archive footage of Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix (also carrying over from "Now More Than Ever"), Cass Elliot, Don Adams, Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Pete Townshend (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix"), Roger Daltrey (last seen in Quadrophenia"), John Entwhistle (ditto), Keith Moon (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today", Yoko Ono (ditto), John Lennon (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars")and cameos from Pink, Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Kalifornia"), Melissa Etheridge.

RATING: 6 out of 10 feather boas

Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago

Year 10, Day 204 - 7/23/18 - Movie #3,000

BEFORE: And now big movie THREE THOUSAND is here, I figured this milestone would hit sometime during the Rock Doc chain, and I worked hard to make sure that if it had to happen here, that it would happen on a film for a band that I not only enjoy, but one that I've seen in concert - twice, as a matter of fact.  I think one time we saw them on a bill with Hall & Oates, and the other time they played with REO Speedwagon.  Umm, yeah, we like to go see the acts that are still out playing on the nostalgia circuit.

And Chicago's a big band, don't sell them short, because they've been recording and touring since 1967, which is over 50 years by my count, 49 gold and platinum albums, 40 million records sold.  And they're one of the FEW bands active in the 1960's who are still touring - I think it's just down to the Stones, the Eagles and Chicago now, is that right?  Oh, yeah, the Beach Boys, but how many original members are still playing in each band, that's the question.  (Well, I'm going to get to all of those bands, and a whole lot more, coming up in my Rockumentary chain!)    

Great news about the films "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars" and also "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child" - I kept such cohesive notes about the people who were interviewed for both films and the ones who appeared in archive footage that I submitted updates yesterday to the IMDB, listing all the cast members who were missing.  Within a couple of HOURS the cast lists were updated!  I'm used to submitting updates to the IMDB and watching them take weeks or even months to be processed, checked and then updated.  So now everyone will know who appears in these films, the interviewed people will get proper credit, and it's all thanks to me!  I think maybe I've built up a good reputation with the IMDB, because I've submitted information often, pointed out where mistakes were made or when two records need to be combined, and I'm usually (always) right about these things. 

The other reason for putting a film about Chicago HERE in the countdown, as movie #3,000, has to do with their band history, the way they title their albums, always with a number or roman numeral. Even their Christmas album was "Chicago XXV" - because Christmas is on Dec. 25, get it?  So numbers are very important to them, and I figured, why not make the film about them fall on a very important milestone number? 

According to the IMDB, Jimi Hendrix carries over from "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", and so does one other person, which leads me to believe they used some of the same talk-show footage that was in the last two docs.  

THE PLOT: The history of legendary rock band Chicago is chronicled from their inception in 1967 all the way to the present.

AFTER: Yep, I was right.  Jimi Hendrix appears here in archive footage from the Dick Cavett Show, and that makes three films in a row that used that - I'm guessing Jimi didn't do a lot of TV interviews in the U.S.  But what I did NOT know was that Chicago (then known as the Chicago Transit Authority) toured with Hendrix (I'm not sure if it was before or after the Monkees did) and then later on in Hollywood, Chicago played with another famous artist, who is the subject of tomorrow's film!  Am I a great planner or what?  But even if you think of Chicago as an 80's band, their roots put them squarely in the late 1960's, so their place here in my chain is therefore justified.  (Whew!) 

They toured with Hendrix, they made it through the disco 70's, the pop-ballad 80's, returned to their old sound in the 90's, and Jesus fuck, they're still playing to huge crowds.  Thinking about the 1960's rockers is a bit like thinking about the dinosaurs and how they all died out, but then you remember, "Oh, yeah, they evolved into birds, so they're sort of still around, just in a different form." 

Obviously, when a band has been around for so damn long, there are going to be a lot of phases, a lot of changes, a lot of comings and goings.  Chicago started with 6 core musicians, then that became 7, then for a while it was 8 (still containing 5 of the original 6), and since 1990 it's basically been the "Core Four" plus 4 or 5 newcomers, with additional musicians added as necessary to make up the touring band.  But when a guy's been in the band for 25 years and is still considered the "rookie", you know that band's been active a LONG time.  Three of the four originals left comprise the horn section, so that should maybe tell you where the band's priorities are. 

When we saw Chicago play live, they mentioned Terry Kath, how important he was to the early days of the band - I never really understood this until I watched this doc, so now I feel like more of an expert.  Dealing with Kath's death in 1978 really shook the band, and while grieving they had to decide whether to continue to play as a band, and in what form.  That led to some rough starts, and a very unlucky thirteenth album (Chicago 13) that failed to produce any chart hits.  Again, it was the disco era, and jumping on that trend might have been part of the problem. 

By the time they got to Chicago XV, Columbia had dropped them from their contract, and turned that album into a Greatest Hits compilation to fulfill their obligation.  New record label, new producer (David Foster), new sound, and then they were making hits again - only they were ballads that didn't even use the horn section.  Peter Cetera, the bassist, really clicked with the new producer, and took center stage both in the songs and in these new things called "music videos", because he had a certain Hollywood-star look. 

But that sort of success is a double-edge sword, and if the change in sound and producers resulted in number one hits, the record company obviously wants a repeat of that success, only more so, and that means to repeat what seems to work - which created tension between the new lead singer and the rest of the band.  Then comes the question about what to do during the live concerts - play the radio hits, which don't give some band members anything to do, or put on a bigger show with the horn section and play something else.  Still, if you think about it, having such a huge catalog that you're not sure what songs to play live seems like a nice problem to have.  And so does wondering what exactly your next platinum album should sound like.

I wonder if it took so long to get Chicago into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because they had those stigmas of being a "horn band", then a "pop band", and people just sort of forgot that they started covering rock songs (like "I'm a Man", first recorded by the Spencer Davis Group) and then rocking out on their own before all of the changes in the music industry.  From the looks of things, it was a very special moment when Chicago was finally voted into the Hall in 2016 - I nearly teared up myself.  This was long overdue.  

Now, as the core four members of Chicago look back on their careers in this film, they display an attitude where they can be both proud of what they've accomplished and also aware enough to try to live in the moment, and instead of just resting on their laurels, express a desire to ask, "What's next?" and that's a perfect mantra for me as I hit my own milestone tonight.  I look back on how many films I've watched, but still want to live in the moment and enjoy tonight's movie, and then ask, "OK, what's next?"

Also starring Robert Lamm, Lee Loughnane, Walter Parazaider, James Pankow, Danny Seraphine, Peter Schivarelli, Jason Scheff, Tris Imboden, David Foster, Keith Howland, Lou Pardini, Chris Pinnick, Walfredo Reyes, Ned Colletti, Carlos Amezcua, Irving Azoff, Larry Fitzgerald, Clive Davis, Joe Mantegna (last seen in "Alice"), Jimmy Pardo, with archive footage of Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Don Dacus, James Guercio, Bill Champlin, Dawayne Bailey, Dick Cavett (also carrying over from "Voodoo Child"), Bill Clinton, Merv Griffin, Janis Joplin, Paul Shaffer (last seen in "Blues Brothers 2000"), Robin Thicke, Rob Thomas.

RATING: 7 out of 10 Grammy awards

Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child

Year 10, Day 203 -7/22/18 - Movie #2,999

BEFORE: I finally finished "Stranger Things" season 2 a few nights ago, there was about a 9 or 10 month break for me between episodes 4 and 5.  Simply put, there's less new TV during the summer and I've got some more time to catch up on my binge-watching.  The fact that most documentaries tend to be on the shorter side is also helping, so now I'm working my way through "Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp", watching 1 or 2 episodes after each music doc.  Rock and roll plus camp equals rock fantasy camp, get it?  And it clears one more thing off my Netflix list, down to just over 80 items now.  I'm hoping by Labor Day to have it down to 50 or even 40 items.

This whole week has been a chance to catch up, since I'm not in San Diego, where I usually am at this time of year.  (I haven't even seen much coverage yet of what's taking place at Comic-Con, because a clean break is usually best.).  When I get back from that trip, it always feels like I spend the next two weeks catching up on what I missed at the office, plus whatever was on TV, and my wife reminded me that I usually come back sick in addition to exhausted, angry and stressed-out.  So none of that is happening now, and those are all good things.

And I didn't have to put my countdown on hold for a week, so the Summer Rock-Doc-a-Thon can keep moving forward.  Jimi Hendrix obviously carries over from "Jimi Hendrix" into "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child".  And I'll move on to another musical act for big movie #3,000 tomorrow.

THE PLOT: Jimi Hendrix talking about how he became who he is.

AFTER: This documentary (currently on Netflix, though who knows for how much longer) was released in 2010, 37 years after last night's doc.  Though it tells the same story, it does so in a different way - thank God, or I'd end up watching the same film twice in a row, like I did with those "Eleanor Rigby" films.  Gone are the interviews with Jimi's friends, many of whom were incapable of putting a coherent sentence together, and instead Jimi's own words from letters, diaries and interviews are used.  When not spoken by Jimi directly, those words are spoken by Bootsy Collins, in sort of a dramatic re-creation. Even though entire films in that format are being rejected in my chain, I'll allow this because it's only a portion of the film, and it sheds light on times in Jimi's life when his words weren't being recorded, like when he was in the Army, or playing the little clubs in Greenwich Village.

I've got another one of those "This Day in Music History" coincidences - on this date in 1966, Jimi Hendrix went over to his girlfriend's house, because he hadn't seen her in about 99 1/2 days, and found that his key wouldn't unlock the door.  "Wait a minute, something's wrong," he thought, and paused to consider that maybe his girl didn't live there no more. "Aha, perhaps there's a song there," thought Jimi.  OK, I'm kidding about this.  The song "Red House" was really based on blues songs that Jimi performed with Curtis Knight and the Squires, especially an Albert King number called "Traveling to California".

(You may notice that one group is notoriously absent from my Rock Doc chain - Led Zeppelin.  This is partially because musicologists have proven that they ripped off nearly all of their songs from older blues singers like Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson, and never credited those men as songwriters.  Unlike Clapton and Hendrix, who from what I can tell, always acknowledged when they were covering another person's songs.  So Zeppelin is hereby banned - this is helped by the fact that I've already seen "The Song Remains the Same", and don't have any other movies made about them available to me.).

Once again, I find that someone did not do their due diligence in keeping track of who appeared in archive footage (much like "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars") so once again I have to keep notes as I watch the film.  Fortunately my linking was possible just with the 4 names listed on the IMDB, but it could have been made easier.  I guess I'll have to step up and update the IMDB myself.

In terms of concert footage, there's a lot of overlap between this film and last night's documentary from 1973, which itself used clips from the "Woodstock" and "Monterey Pop" movies.  There's no way around the fact, I'm guessing, that there's just not that much footage of Hendrix out there, and every film is drawing from the same small pool.  But at least it's all used coherently here, where last night's film tried to go mostly chronologically.  After Hendrix talks about Chuck Berry as an influence, this film drops in his high-speed cover of "Johnny B. Goode".  When it talks about him meeting Bob Dylan in the Village, that's the time to cut to Hendrix performing Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".  That all works.

Jimi talks about what it was like to play Woodstock, and for a guy who didn't like large crowds, what could have been worse than playing for 400,000 people?  The footage of him playing "The Star Spangled Banner" there is repeated here, but at least it's preceded by "Fire" and followed by him going into "Purple Haze" so there's a little more context.  The Isle of Wight performance of "Machine Gun" is also repeated, but it's mixed with footage of Vietnam, and when you think about how Jimi started out in the Army's Airborne division, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that the greatest guitarist ever easily could have been sent to Vietnam if he hadn't injured his foot on a parachuting exercise.

Jimi's thoughts end up being very insightful, with his musings on touring in the U.K. and how it's different from touring in the U.S., and even his thoughts on drug use - though once you know how his story ended, this moment becomes chillingly ironic, much like John Lennon in "Eight Days a Week" when he mentioned the dangers of touring, and his fear of being shot by a fan.  I didn't know before last night that Hendrix played in Little Richard's band, and then suddenly left for some unspoken reason (though I've got a theory...).  But he apparently played in a couple dozen bands, and was willing to sign a contract with just about anybody if it meant a paycheck.  At one point Hendrix toured with and opened for the Monkees, and that must have been an interesting show.

Also starring the voice of Bootsy Collins, with archive footage of Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell, Dick Cavett, Al Hendrix, Billy Cox, Buddy Miles, Little Richard (all carrying over from "Jimi Hendrix"), Muddy Waters (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Bob Dylan (ditto), Brian Jones (ditto), Maurice Gibb (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today"), Chas Chandler, The Isley Brothers.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Screaming Eagles patches