Stop Making Sense

Year 10, Day 229 - 8/17/18 - Movie #3,025

BEFORE: I've mentioned before how I'm currently replacing all of my old cassette tapes with digital files, and so far it's taken a year and a half to get where I'm at, at the rate of two tapes per week.  After downloading some of the more "important" bands first, I did the rest alphabetically, and now I'm on the letter "T".  Yup, the first band under that letter is Talking Heads, so today I downloaded the soundtrack to this film, along with their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues".  At the same time, I ripped their 2-disc Greatest Hits collection "Sand in the Vaseline" into an iTunes playlist, so I can now listen to them at work, or anywhere via my phone.

David Byrne carries over from "20 Feet from Stardom", and when I re-worked my rock doc chain to accommodate this film, there was really only one way to do that - to put this film between two other films that he appears in.  He'll be in tomorrow's film too, though I don't yet know in what capacity, whether he'll be interviewed or just appear for a few seconds in some archive footage.  Doesn't matter  really, I'm doing what I have to do to get through the chain and work in every major music doc I missed over the years.  I'm probably going to miss a few anyway, there's no way around it, but as long as I'm happy with the result, that's all that matters.

THE PLOT: An innovative concert movie for the rock group The Talking Heads.

AFTER: Well, it only took me 34 years to get around to this one.  I first became aware of the Talking Heads after the video came out for "Burning Down the House", then I really got into their music during high school when the "Little Creatures" album came out, then when I was in college, I enjoyed the movie and album called "True Stories".  I would often see their records like "Remain in Light" and "More Songs about Buildings and Food" in other people's record collections, but I wasn't intrigued enough to check out those past records, I only wanted to move forward with the band for some reason.  Then their last album "Naked" came out in 1988, and it wasn't that great, so I lost some interest there.

If there were certain bands that encapsulated places and times, like Liverpool in the early 60's or SoCal in the early 1970's, Talking Heads seemed to spring out of the NYC downtown art scene of the early 80's, peaking at just the right time, when MTV was new and eager for material, the weirder the better.  Suddenly music had to be visual too, sounding good wasn't enough any more.  I remember watching that video for "Once in a Lifetime" and wondering what was up with that freaky guy who kept hitting his hand against his head, and making all sorts of jittery movements that were supposed to resemble dancing somehow.  But he seemed really nerdy, which didn't seem to fit with rock and roll at all - before then it was only the cool people performing music, and Byrne seemed like a music nerd who had suddenly figured out a new way to get people's attention.

I can see why this film got so much attention, it manages to combine minimalist "black box" theater techniques with avant-garde video art installation elements, then throwing in pieces of fundamentalist revival preaching or 80's aerobics workouts as needed.  The concert begins with an empty stage, and Byrne enters with a boombox to perform a solo acoustic version of "Psycho Killer", the song that only bilingual French & English speakers fully understand, then is joined by bassist Tina Weymouth (and an off-stage harmony singer) for the next song, "Heaven".  For the third song, they add the drummer, and for the fourth they add the lead guitarist.  During each song, the stage crew rolls in the equipment for the next addition, which is very meta - the typical rock concert would set everything up in advance before the audience arrived, but letting the audience see the band's equipment coming together piece by piece almost turns it into an interactive show.  The audience was probably wondering how long they could keep that trend going, like would there be a 15-piece band by the end of the set?

They added the back-up singers for the "Slippery People" segment, and clips of this song appeared in last night's film, so I'm happy with this transition.  It's happened before during this chain, with back-to-back films using the footage of Jimi playing Monterey, for example.  The Clive Davis doc also repeated a lot of footage that was used in the film "Whitney: Can I Be Me", so they're all drawing from the same pool, really.

By the time they got to "Burning Down the House", the whole band was together, with an extra drummer and the keyboards necessary for that song, so at least someone with a brain put the set list together that would allow for the dramatic build-up of set pieces and instruments.  I didn't know all the songs here, like I'd never heard "What a Day That Was" before, it turns out that song came from a soundtrack that Byrne wrote for a different film.  It seems like a filler song, as does "Genius of Love",  the one performed by the Tom Tom Club, presumably while David Byrne needed a break.  He did do a lot of running around....

No, wait, he probably used that time to put on the infamous "giant suit", which became a cultural touchpoint at the time.  Lots of TV comedy shows made fun of it at the time - but it's basically just a version of the same white suit he wore at the start of the film, only it's much, much bigger than it needs to be, which is like a staple of visual comedy.  I remember there used to be a store down in Soho in NYC called "Think Big", where you could buy a six-foot pencil or a giant watch that you could wear around your waist like a belt.  I never really understood the point of those things, but now everybody talks about the "Big 80's", like when everyone had big hair and over-sized bracelets and even giant cell phones (though we didn't know at the time that they'd be smaller someday).  When Byrne takes off his jacket, you can see the extra padding that he had to stuff in there to fill up the suit, I guess so it wouldn't fall down, but it still affects the way he moved around, he seemed like maybe the Incredible Shrinking Man or something, but he only shrunk by a fraction, so his suit was really loose.  Yeah, I never understood it either.

Also starring Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, Bernie Worrell, Alex Weir, Steven Scales, Ednah Holt (carrying over from "20 Feet from Stardom"), Lynn Mabry (ditto).

RATING: 6 out of 10 stage hands

20 Feet from Stardom

Year 10, Day 228 - 8/16/18 - Movie #3,024

BEFORE: The news broke yesterday that Aretha Franklin passed away, and this is what I sort of figured would happen, with a chain that stretches out nearly two months, and so many musical stars appearing in these films, especially ones that are in their 60s or 70s, it was almost bound to happen.  I've been looking for birthdays and famous dates in music history to connect my films to, I hate to synch my viewing up with something like this - but I just saw her two days ago in the Clive Davis documentary, she was one of the people who had her career resurrected in the 1980's by Clive with hits like "Freeway of Love" and "I Knew You Were Waiting". I don't think she appears in tonight's film, unless the IMDB credits are complete, but they look pretty extensive on this one. 

Of course, Aretha sang about a pink Cadillac in the song "Freeway of Love", and there was another song called "Pink Cadillac", written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen, who carries over from "Springsteen & I" today, to another one of those films with a HUGE cast of musical artists.  There's one specific artist that I'll need to connect to tomorrow's film, which has a very small cast.  Again, I had to sandwich THAT guy between two films that he happened to appear in, and I made my chain from there.

THE PLOT: Backup singers live in a world that lies just beyond the spotlight.  Their voices bring harmony to songs by the biggest bands in popular music, but we've had no ideas about what lives they lead, until now.

AFTER: When I was putting this chain together, I remembered back to a few years back (2013) when this one came out, and I figured I should probably include this one for a complete look at rock music documentaries.  It seemed to get pretty good reviews, and it's a pretty noble cause, trying to shine a spotlight on some performers who are mostly under-appreciated, yet crucial to creating a certain sound on the rock and pop records made in the 1960's, 70's and 80's.  It's sort of ironic to think of these singers as "unsung heroes", but that's where we find ourselves.

Phil Spector had his "Wall of Sound", which was usually three or four African-American girls singing in tight harmony, and then over-dubbed again and again to sound like a whole choir.  Then everyone went nuts for a while trying to replicate that effect, or at least the feeling that it conveyed.  Even the British acts, like Bowie and the Stones, wanted to use the back-up singers to give their rock records that classic soul sound.  Joe Cocker wanted that sound because Ray Charles used that sound, and so on. 

Of course, I already knew who Merry Clayton and Darlene Love are - Merry Clayton recorded the original "black woman" vocals on "Gimme Shelter", anybody who knows the Rolling Stones story should be aware of that.  She also sang a track named "Yes" on the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack, and back in the late 80's I worked for the company that made the music video for that song (though it was done a few months before I started working there).  Darlene Love, of course, is famous to any fan of David Letterman for her annual performance of the holiday song "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and my BFF and I managed to catch tickets to the final Letterman holiday special, a few months before Letterman retired from his show, and seeing her sing that live was a real treat.

I can't say that I knew any of the other back-up singers profiled here, but that's sort of the point, not many people did before this documentary came out.  When you listen to a song like "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Young Americans", or even the Halloween song "Monster Mash", knowing the names of the back-up singers on the original versions is probably the last thing on your mind.  Sure, there are probably credits on the inside album cover, way down the bottom, in very tiny print, and who takes the time to learn all that?  Only real music-nerd completists, that's who.  For the vast majority of the time, the contributions of back-up singers have gone largely un-recognized. 

A notable few singers have managed to make that leap from the back-line to take center stage - like Luther Vandross, who sang back-up for David Bowie, or Sheryl Crow, who backed up Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Don Henley.  But for every person who made that transition effectively, there are dozens who tried and failed, some who released solo albums that didn't succeed for one reason or another (maybe Clive Davis was too busy to get involved...) and then they tried to resume their career as back-up singers.  Still others have been satisfied with being CLOSE to stardom, without seeking it directly, and for whatever reason prefer a lifestyle that puts fewer demands on them, and also allows them to keep their relative anonymity and their sanity. 

It's a heavy thing to think about spending so much time in an industry and never making it big, it's even harder come close to success and not achieve it.  But perhaps there's a lesson there in learning to be satisfied with the opportunities that DO come your way, everybody has to find that balance between pushing for better jobs and just taking their career as it comes, there's no one right way to do it, as long as one can maintain a sense of accomplishment.  I speak, of course, as someone working in the world of independent film and some of the same questions and challenges apply.  Then you just have to chalk the rest up to luck, or fate, or not making the right moves at the right time.  Some people are going to succeed, others are going to fail and still others will have to find paying work while waiting for their plans to succeed or fail.

It's not stated outright, but it's strongly implied that some of the back-up singers might have taken the quicker road to the top, so to speak, by sleeping with the bands' lead singers, or perhaps someone in management.  One woman here discusses her fun times with Mick Jagger, and he certainly doesn't deny it, so perhaps as bad as that sounds now, it could be a factor in why some singers had successful careers, and some didn't.  (And tangential to that, the possibility that some of them were less attractive than others, or getting to the age where they were replaced by younger back-up singers.)  I know it's not PC these days to talk about such things, but clearly there was a "casting couch" system for advancement back in the 1960's, which was dominated by the patriarchy of horny males, and it seems silly to not at least talk about that now.  Nobody can fix the system without talking about what was wrong with the old way of doing things. 

Wow, this film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of 2013, and I usually have no interest in seeing the winner in that category - it's nearly always about Holocaust survivors or refugees in some far-off country, right?  It's great to see something that's a bit more upbeat (relatively speaking, I guess...) take that award. It also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, and also the Grammy Award for Best Music Film. I've got another film coming up in a few days that covers a similar subject, only it highlights studio musicians, not back-up singers.  But I'm sure it will probably make a lot of the same points. 

NITPICK POINT: I wish that everyone could agree on the best way to talk about this profession, singing back-up.  A few of the people here say things like "I've been back-up singing..." or "I back-up sang..." and that just doesn't sound right.  I have a similar problem with people who say "I've been bartending for 10 years" when the proper way to say that is "I've been TENDING BAR for 10 years".  Come on, let's get it together, people. The right way to say it is "I've been SINGING BACK-UP for (x) years..."  I realize that the English language is a fluid thing, and it changes over time, but we've got to maintain some standards. 

Also starring Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Stevvi Alexander, Charlotte Crossley, Tabitha Fair, Susaye Greene, Fanita James, Gloria Jones, Dr, Mable John, David Lasley, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, Lynn Mabry, Cindy Mizelle, Jenni Muldaur, Janice Pendarvis, Nicki Richards, Tiffany Monique Ryan, Rose Stone, Tata Vega, Martha Wash, Julia Waters, Maxine Waters, Oren Waters, Edna Wright, Lou Adler (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Cissy Houston (ditto), Stevie Wonder (ditto), Patti Austin, Chris Botti, Todd Boyd, Sheryl Crow (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Mick Jagger (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Bette Midler (last seen in "What Women Want"), Sting (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), with archive footage of David Bowie (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), David Byrne, Ray Charles (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog With Soul"), Joe Cocker (ditto), Leon Russell (ditto), Tina Turner (ditto), Clarence Clemons (also carrying over from "Springsteen & I"), Nils Lofgren (ditto), Patti Scialfa (ditto), Steven van Zandt (ditto), Max Weinberg (ditto), Perry Como, David Crosby (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), Michael Jackson (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World"), Elton John (also last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Rod Stewart (ditto), Luther Vandross (ditto), Tom Jones, Spike Lee, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kylie Minogue, Nia Peeples, Billy Preston (last seen in "The Beatles - Eight Days a Week"), Phil Spector, Ike Turner (last seen in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Charlie Watts (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Ronnie Wood (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), Mel Gibson (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Danny Glover (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Jay Leno (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), David Letterman (last seen in "Amy"), Paul Shaffer (last seen in "Now More than Ever: the History of Chicago"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "No Reservations"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 talk show appearances 

Springsteen & I

Year 10, Day 227 - 8/15/18 - Movie #3,023

BEFORE: Checking the records for what happened on this day in music history, I find that August 15 was the date in 1969 of the original Woodstock Festival - damn, I wish I'd known that, I could have delayed the Joe Cocker film by 2 days to get that to line up right.  Watching Joe Cocker sing "With a Little Help From My Friends" at Woodstock on the anniversary of that could have been really cool.  (Ah, but it was a 3-day festival, right?  I'd probably have to check whether that performance happened on the first day or the second, or what...that seems like a lot of work.)  But it's also the 49th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner, and all those other great performances from bands like Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead, the Who, and, umm, yeah, Sha Na Na was also there.

Screw it, I'm taking a look, but it's not like today's the 50th Anniversary or anything, that will come around next year.  Gee, I wonder if anybody's planning anything to mark that.  Everyone who was there is probably either dead or in a nursing home by now, right?  I guess Carlos Santana's still in pretty good health, and a couple of guys from the Who are still alive.  But Joe Cocker's gone, Jimi's gone, Jerry Garcia's gone, a couple of guys from The Band are gone, Johnny Winter's gone - maybe they can cobble something together from whichever senior citizens, like CSNY, are still breathing and available.

(The first day of Woodstock, by the way, featured Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez.  In my opinion, anyone who showed up on Day 2 didn't miss much.)

Bruce Springsteen carries over from "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives" - really, I could have gone in a hundred different directions with a cast list as large as that film had.  But to get to THIS film, with only one notable star (at least according to the IMDB) I had to follow the Springsteen connection.  And tomorrow's film is another one with a very large cast, Springsteen's in that one, too - so really, I had to arrange the whole chain so that there would be two docs with Bruce in a row, so I could sandwich this one in between those two.

Again, I really should have flipped things, and gone from "Whitney: Can I Be Me" to the Clive Davis film, then linked from there to "History of the Eagles" and "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul".  Linking from there to "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me" would have enabled me to follow the Springsteen link to here - I guess I would have ended up here today no matter what, so I just have to be satisfied with that.

THE PLOT: For 40 years Bruce Springsteen has influenced fans all over the world.  This film gives the fans just as much time as the Boss himself, with fan-recorded footage and live performances from his past tours.

AFTER: Well, at least this is an innovative way to string together a bunch of concert footage from different tours and make something new out of it.  I support recycling in all of its forms.  But this is also a bit like when your favorite TV show says to tune in for an "all-new" episode and it turns out to be a damn clip show, like the main characters are stuck in an elevator or a meat locker and they think back on the funny things that happened to them before - which gives them an excuse to run old footage for most of the show.  By all means, call that a "new" episode, but in no way is it "ALL-new".  When I was a teenager that used to piss me off, I was a stickler for details even then.

They asked Springsteen fans to record phone-camera tributes to Springsteen, which is a similarly effective cost-cutting measure.  Clearly there were some assigned parameters, like "describe what Springsteen means to you in three words", and some people followed that, and others didn't.  Some people tried, but had trouble counting to three, if you can believe that. (I sure can.)  This is really a double-edged sword, because for those fans that just want to tell a story, some succeed, and others just end up demonstrating how illiterate most Americans seem to be getting these days, unable to form sentences together to prove a coherent point.  Others (mostly teen girls) are so vain and ego-centric that every time they make the slightest speaking error, they have to start over again from the beginning.  Come on, people, you're not making a great work of literature here, just speak from the heart.  One teen is particularly annoying, stopping and re-starting a dozen times.  I bet she's got a zillion selfies on her phone.

But this ended up being just as unbalanced, if not more, than the Clive Davis tribute film from yesterday.  Because who would go to the trouble of recording a tribute to Bruce Springsteen and then say something negative?  And then even if they did, why would they take the time to submit it then?  So OF COURSE you're going to get stories from people who hold the Boss in high regard, talking about the time that Bruce noticed them in the crowd and READ THEIR SIGN OUT LOUD!  Like, Oh my god, you'd think that Jesus cured their leprosy or something.  All that really proved was that Springsteen is literate, has good vision and needed to kill 10 seconds between songs.

But there were three fan stories that I liked.  One of them actually did supply some balance, it came from a woman who's a huge Bruce fan, but her husband is clearly not.  He goes with her to the concerts because he loves HER, not Springsteen, and he's not afraid to say so.  His message to Bruce was basically, "Could you please make the concerts a bit shorter, because three hours is just a bit too long."  Like, I love my wife, and I'll keep going to shows with her, but it's really starting to become a bit of an inconvenience.  I totally feel this guy, I go to Broadway shows with my wife, and mostly I have a good time, but that does vary a little.  I'm mainly there because it's her birthday and I bought her tickets, and I want to have that experience with her.  Like, OK, I'll try to enjoy "The Lion King" on stage, but I never would have gone to see that by myself - someday I'll probably have to sit through "Hamilton" too, if the cost ever goes down, but it's not really my thing.

I also liked the story from the guy who dressed as Elvis Presley, and held up a sign at a Springsteen concert that read, "Can the King sing with the Boss?"  Springsteen called the guy up on stage and started playing "All Shook Up", inviting the Elvis impersonator to join in.  Elvis took over and went right into "Blue Suede Shoes" and the band followed.  Imagine the balls on that guy, Bruce gets him up on stage to sing part of one song, and he launches into ANOTHER one.  And now he's got a story that he can tell for the rest of his life.

The final story that I enjoyed came from a British fan who came all the way to NYC's Madison Square Garden with his wife to see his first Springsteen show, and as they were walking to their seats in the nosebleed section, way up in the back rafters of the building, a stranger approached and said he worked for Bruce, looked at their tickets and said he would give them an "upgrade".  He gave them orange wristbands, held on to their upper section tickets and gave them a couple of tickets for floor seats.  Now, I walk by MSG all the time, and on concert days there are always scalpers about, asking for both buyers and sellers - so this seemed like part of a scam where this guy would give them phony tickets and bogus wristbands, and hold on to their original tickets.  This just seems like a natural way for scalpers to get tickets to re-sell, and out-of-towners with thick accents are probably easy targets for scams like that.  But it turned out that the tickets were legit, and the couple got to sit in the front row for their first Bruce concert.  Really, that story could have gone either way.  It's great that some concerts keep that front section available, I'm guessing maybe the promoters want to get a look at the audience first-hand so they can find older people to sit there, people who look like they're going to behave and not get all grabby with the band, or try to climb up on stage uninvited.

But I'm just not a big Springsteen fan myself, I own his Greatest Hits CD, but that's about it.  So as always, your mileage may vary.  I just cleared another film off my Netflix list today, that's all.  I just don't care about some female fan's budding sexual interest after attending her first rock concert when she was 13.  At least most people remembered to turn their phone 90 degrees before recording their videos.  And I've got to hand it to anyone who not only crowd-sources funding for a film, but finds a way to crowd-source the film''s footage!  If nothing else, it's a hell of an idea.

Also starring Clarence Clemons, Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa, and Courteney Cox, all appearing in archive footage.  (I don't know enough about the E Street band to name the other members seen here, but I've updated the IMDB listing for this film with the ones that I do know...)

RATING: 4 out of 10 "Born in the USA" posters

Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives

Year 10, Day 226 - 8/14/18 - Movie #3,022

BEFORE: Well, the last few films have been fairly unkind to record company executives - these are the people that FORCE rock singers to go out on tour and earn MONEY, because they signed a very constrictive concert years ago.  And then they HAVE to make more albums to keep the money flowing in, and worst of all, then they have to go out on TOUR and PLAY those new songs, even though the fans only want to hear the classic stuff.  So basically they're evil bastards who sit in an office in New York or L.A. and collect all the money while the musicians are out there doing all the work, writing songs, going up on stage, being chased by fans and then having identity crises a few years later and realizing they're nothing but a commodity to the record industry.

But is all that really fair?  It seems like maybe I'm only hearing one side of that argument.  So once again, I'm looking for a little balance.  Let's see if I get any.  David Geffen carries over from "History of the Eagles".

THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of music producer Clive Davis.

AFTER: Well, this certainly paints a different sort of picture about record executives - or is it producers?  Clive Davis certainly seemed to have a lot to say over the years about the WAY that records should be produced, but at the same time he had no formal training in music or sound, he only seems to know what he likes and therefore what will sell.  So either he's a gifted savant, or he's incredibly lucky, or if neither of those are true, then it turns out the job of being a music company expert is very easy in the end.  Unfortunately there's so much ground to cover here in his long career that we're never given an understanding about the nuts and bolts of the whole process, it's really just a string of "Then we had a number one hit with THIS guy" and "Then we had a platinum album with THIS gal." 

From the day that Clive signed Janis Joplin, after he attended that famous Monterey Pop Festival where she performed, he's had an enormous, perhaps unmatched string of hits.  But by focusing only on those, one after the other, it's tempting to think that he's got the golden touch, that he can do no wrong when it comes to spotting talent, or matching the right song with the right artist and the right producer to make hit records.  This is the guy that told Simon & Garfunkel which track from their album to release if they wanted the biggest hit, the guy who signed Bruce Springsteen, the guy who finally got the Grateful Dead a Top 10 hit with "A Touch of Grey".  He engineered career revivals for Aretha Franklin in the 80's, Carlos Santana in the 90's, and then worked with all the "American Idol" winners in the 2000's. 

And then, don't forget Whitney.  Clive Davis "discovered" Whitney Houston, got her first record released, and promoted the hell out of it.  Then he stood by her through all the controversy when she got booed for sounding "too white" and then tried to help her when she was having problems with drug abuse.  OK, great, he tried to help her, which is more than what most people did, but maybe he didn't try hard enough?

(I'd seen Clive already in the "Whitney: Can I Be Me" documentary, but I didn't link this one to that one because there was no mention of Whitney Houston in the IMDB credits for today's film.  Which was a blatant mistake, because footage of her dominates about 15-20 minutes of this film.  It's too bad, because I see now how I really should have flipped this and the previous three films around, followed the Whitney doc with THIS one, and then the Glen Campbell documentary would have linked to tomorrow's film, and everything would have fallen back into place.  This is why film companies need to keep their IMDB credits updated.  I've submitted Whitney's name for addition to the credits of this film, along with 159 other people who appeared in interviews or in archive footage, so this won't happen to anyone else.)

And that's the main problem here, this documentary's subject can do no wrong, whether it's his opinions over how records should sound, or fending off lawsuits or allegations of wrongdoing, he always manages to come out on top and in the clear.  OK, so he seems like a nice enough guy, but how do I know that isn't just the way he wants to be seen?  Was Whitney Houston happy with her contract with Arista, or did she feel like it was too constrictive, that it put too much of a burden on her to do press interviews?  Was George Michael the only recording artist ever who felt like a slave? 

To be fair, a few of Clive Davis' misses are included here to balance out all of his hits - his label released the infamous Milli Vanilli album, for example, and nobody bothered to check to see if the guys they paid were the same guys who sang on the record.  Big crowds turned up for their live concerts and heard performers who sounded nothing like they did on their album, then it was revealed they were just a couple of actors lip-synching in their videos to someone else's tracks.  A couple of other bands that went nowhere are also mentioned, but there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of failures in this guy's career, right?  Logic sort of demands that for every hit record that connects with the audience, there must be at least 10 that don't. 

Unless it really IS much easier than it seems - I mean, one of the big record companies like CBS or Arista probably has more control over the marketplace than we realize.  And when you control what records are being released and marketed, you kind of control which ones people are going to buy - I mean, they can't buy ones that don't get made and don't ship to the stores, so on some level, people are going to go to the record store and select from whatever's there, even if it's shitty.  I collect comic books, mostly Marvel and a little DC, so I base my purchases on whatever Marvel's releasing, I can only choose the best of what's being released each week, with the characters I like, but that doesn't mean that the stories are going to be GOOD. 

So I think I'm not sold on the genius and benevolence of record company executives just yet.  Nice try, though - I almost fell for it.  This is what we used to call the "shovel approach" back in high-school when we were writing term papers.  If you pile on enough evidence to support your argument, and conveniently leave out any information to the contrary, you just might convince your teacher of the point you're trying to make.  Similarly, I think we're only being shown one side of the story here, the one where Clive Davis could never do anything wrong, and I wonder if there is a conflicting argument to be made. 

Also starring Clive Davis (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me"), Dionne Warwick (ditto), David Foster (ditto), Sean "Puffy" Combs, Simon Cowell, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Kenny G, Berry Gordy, Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Jimmy Iovine, Alicia Keys (last seen in "Amy"), Barry Manilow, L.A. Reid, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Rod Stewart (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"), Steven Tyler, Diane Warren, Bob Weir (last seen in Long Strange Trip"), Lou Adler, Jim Budman, Bobby Colomby, Tom Corson, Nicole David, Doug Davis, Fred Davis, Mitchell Davis, Anthony DeCurtis (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World'), Tim DuBois, Peter Edge, Kenny Gamble, Charles Goldstuck, Allen Grubman, Pat Houston, Leon Huff, Don Ienner, Larry Jackson, Steve Jacobson, Monte Lipman, Roy Lott, Doug Morris, Keith Naftaly, Richard Palmese, Neil Portnow, Jo Schuman, Joe Smith, Abe Somer, Arnold Stiefel, Julie Swidler, with archive footage of Janis Joplin (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Jimi Hendrix (ditto), Brian Jones (ditto), Rob Thomas (last seen in "Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago"), Terry Kath (ditto), Robert Lamm (ditto), Lee Loughnane (ditto), James Pankow (ditto), Walter Parazaider (ditto), Danny Seraphine (ditto), Robin Thicke (ditto), Whitney Houston (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me"), Bobby Brown (ditto), Bobbi Kristina Brown (ditto), Cissy Houston (ditto), Kevin Costner (ditto), Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Joan Rivers (ditto), Merv Griffin (ditto), Katie Couric (ditto), Diane Sawyer (ditto), Paul McCartney (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Elton John (ditto), Joni Mitchell (ditto), Carole King (ditto), John Belushi (ditto), Tony Bennett (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), George Michael (ditto), Stevie Wonder (ditto), Gladys Knight (ditto), Paula Abdul (ditto), James Corden (ditto), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Robbie Robertson (ditto), Dave Grohl (last seen in "Amy"), Natalie Cole (ditto), Rihanna (ditto), Jay-Z (ditto), Lou Reed (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix"), Taylor Swift (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Ahmet Ertegun (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Bill Graham (ditto), Alan Jackson, Billy Joel (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"), Jerry Garcia (last seen in "Long Strange Trip"), Phil Lesh (ditto), Bill Kreutzmann (ditto), Pink (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Clay Aiken, Philip Bailey, Fantasia Barrino, Beck, Toni Braxton, Kix Brooks, T-Bone Burnett, Eric Carmen, Vicki Carr, Kelly Clarkson, David Clayton-Thomas, Miley Cyrus, Ray Davies, Miles Davis, Taylor Dayne, Ronnie Dunn, Cass Elliot, John Fogerty, Justin Guarini, Taylor Hicks, Russell Hitchcock, Quincy Jones, Adam Lambert, Annie Lennox, Adam Levine, Craig Mack, Melissa Manchester, Johnny Mathis, Sarah McLachlan, Katharine McPhee, Meat Loaf, John Cougar Mellencamp, Mitch Miller, Rickey Minor, Fab Morvan, Notorious B.I.G., Ray Parker Jr., Alan Parsons, Dolly Parton, Billy Paul, Teddy Pendergrass, Rob Pilatus, Busta Rhymes, Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, Graham Russell, Gil Scott-Heron, Carly Simon, Slash, Russell Simmons, Barbra Streisand, Carrie Underwood, Usher,  Luther Vandross, Scott Weiland, Kanye West, Maurice White, Verdine White, Andy Williams, Paul Williams, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Dick Clark, Mo Collins, Jane Curtin, Ann Curry, Sam Donaldson, Brian Dunkelman, Arsenio Hall, Harry Hamlin, Randy Jackson, Magic Johnson, Don Lemon, Nigel Lythgoe, Bill Maher, Michael McDonald (MAD TV), Garrett Morris, Bill Murray (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Burt Reynolds (last seen in "The Crew"), Melissa Rivers, Charlie Rose, Ryan Seacrest, Dinah Shore, Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Ralph Waite, Mike Wallace, Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Black Panther"), Debra Wilson, Strauss Zelnick,

RATING: 5 out of 10 lifetime achievement awards

History of the Eagles

Year 10, Day 225 - 8/13/18 - Movie #3,021

BEFORE: Kicking off the second half of my 52-part Summer Music Concert Series / Documentary Investigation, and it's another long film tonight, this was made as a two-part series, one part covering the initial 1970's run of the band, and the second episode covering the reunification and subsequent touring, the time during and after "Hell Freezes Over".  It's really perfect timing, because I launched the whole thing back in July with the Beatles, the most popular British band ever, and now I'm starting the second half with the most popular American rock band ever.  Who's going to argue that point, it's the freakin' EAGLES, man, their music is everywhere, with its blend of country, bluegrass and rock it's just part of the fabric of our country.

And it's very easy to draw a comparison to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones - after about 10 years time, any band is likely to collapse under the weight of its own members' egos, along with other factors.  The Stones had "World War III", those five years when Mick and Keith weren't talking to each other, and working on solo projects.  The Beatles also broke up after just 8 years of recording, possibly for very similar reasons, and maybe after 15 years apart they might have reunited too, if not for Lennon's death.  Who can say?

I'm going to try to watch this all in one go, late night in the hotel at a Connecticut casino.  Maybe I should spread it out over two nights, but I don't want to slow down at this point.  Before watching this documentary, though, we caught a Meat Loaf concert on TV, on a channel in the hotel that I'd never heard of before, called AXS.  They seem to have a lot of rock-oriented programming, like Ronnie Wood from the Stones has an interview show, there's a travel show that goes to different rock festivals, etc.  This was a concert from Meat Loaf's "Guilty Pleasures" tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2004.  Earlier in the day, we'd watched a good part of a Peter Frampton concert, too - and together they raised questions about when an aging rocker should stop touring.  In the case of Frampton, he seems very happy, agile and vibrant on stage, but Meat Loaf (and this concert was recorded in 2011) was anything but.  He was shaking quite a bit while singing - I realize he's got a powerful voice and singing takes a lot out of him, but watching him shake, I was genuinely concerned for his health.  Most of the time he was lagging behind the beat, or singing the harmony part instead of the melody, I'm guessing because he can't reach the high notes any more.  In some cases, it sounded like he was singing a totally different song.

So, I have to ask the question, at what point should an aging rocker stop touring?  I'm going to say when the quality of the performance starts going downhill.  We saw Meat Loaf live in concert in 2003 or 2004, a tour called "The Last World Tour", and since then he's broken that promise by touring 11 times, so I feel pretty ripped off.  And speaking of farewell tours, let's get to the Eagles.  Record producer Glyn Johns carries over from "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", and so do two of the Beatles.

THE PLOT: The life and times of the super-successful American soft-rock band, the Eagles.

AFTER: This film was very informative about where the Eagles came from, how they met and came together, and how they developed their musical style.  There's also a lot about how they functioned together as a band, and in some cases how they failed to, which of course eventually led to their break-up.  A foot can only have one big toe, and a band can only have one leader - occasionally two, like the Beatles or the Stones.  Glenn Frey and Don Henley were and are the clear leaders here, they wrote most of the best Eagles songs (though there are exceptions and differing opinions, of course), and threw their weight around the most when they were unhappy with something.  They were also the first two members of the band, they met while backing up Linda Ronstadt and then built up the band around their pairing, adding THIS guy from Poco and THAT guy from the Flying Burrito Brothers.

All of this set the tone for the years to follow - band members would come and go (umm, mostly go) but without Frey and/or Henley, there simply was no band.  If Frey and/or Henley brought a song to record, the other members were expected to approve it, more or less, while other members had to fight harder to get their material considered for the new album.  This all is explained by putting the cream of all the Southern California bands together, taking the Alpha Male from each band and thinking they'll play nice together.  So was it just too many chiefs and not enough braves in the end?  That's probably a debatable point.

Of course, I had to buy the two Eagles Greatest Hits albums during the 1980's, when I was really getting into the rock Genre - I didn't have many 70's albums, but basically every record collection back then had to have their Greatest Hits I and Greatest Hits II.  But my knowledge of the band MEMBERS didn't really extend past Frey, Henley and Joe Walsh.  Before watching this documentary I knew a little bit about Timothy B. Schmit, just that he was the lead singer on "I Can't Tell You Why", but I didn't know when he joined the Eagles, who he replaced, and so on.  I also couldn't have picked Randy Meisner or Bernie Leadon out of a line-up, and didn't have a handle on what Don Felder's contributions to "Hotel California" were.  Now I think I've got a better idea on the whole timeline, at least.

Part 1 of this documentary is amazing, I loved seeing the Eagles come together, and I think I also enjoyed watching them fall apart.  The famous on-stage threatening words between Frey and Felder makes for a great story, even the back-story of that one is good, it's one of those rock feuds that was simmering for years, and finally came to a head one night over something stupid.  These guys seriously seemed like they were going to kill each other - but again, on one level that's just alpha males reacting to each other.  There are situations where two male friends could punch each other out, then maybe have a few drinks and the next day be playing in the band together, like nothing had every happened - but since Felder got right into the limo after the show and drove away, things didn't get resolved for about 14 or 15 years.

For the record, as one Eagle stated at the start of the "Hell Freezes Over" concert, officially the Eagles never broke up in 1980, they just took a 14-year vacation.  Come on, nobody's buying that.  There's a good deal of material here devoted to the "solo years" in the 1980's, when Don Henley released "The Boys of Summer" and "Dirty Laundry", while Glenn Frey was busy guest-starring on "Miami Vice" and releasing "The Heat Is On" (from the "Beverly Hills Cop" soundtrack) and "You Belong to the City" and "Smuggler's Blues" (from the "Miami Vice" soundtrack.  That's probably how I first knew who Glenn Frey was, I watched a lot of "Miami Vice" when I was a teen.

Meanwhile, the other Eagles were scrambling quite a bit during the hiatus.  Joe Walsh and Timothy Schmit both went out on tour with Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band at various times, and Schmit (who had the bad luck of joining the band just three years before the "vacation") also played and sang background vocals on songs by Toto, Richard Marx, Sheena Easton, Jars of Clay, Stacey Q, and toured with Jimmy Buffett and Dan Fogelberg.  Don Felder, meanwhile, found session work for Diana Ross, Andy Gibb and Barbra Streisand and wrote a couple songs for the animated movie "Heavy Metal" - hey, you do what you have to do to keep working, I guess.  Joe Walsh released solo albums that didn't achieve much success, and you have to wonder how much a part alcohol and drugs played in that.

Yep, it's the same old story here, even for the damn Eagles - alcohol, drugs, fights with record company executives (David Geffen again, fighting not once but TWICE with the Eagles) and that struggle for identity - are we a rock band?  Are we a country band?  Can our band survive without all of its original members?  Can we maintain both relationships and a busy touring schedule?  How do we achieve fame and success without feeling like a "commodity" controlled by Big Vinyl?  And how do we do all that without burning ourselves out?

But while Part 1 is a great thrill ride, Part 2 is too much of the same, over and over again.  I don't recommend anyone watch Parts 1 and 2 back-to-back like I did, because you're just going to hear the same songs again, mostly, once the Eagles get back together in 1994.  And then they really feel the need to play ALL of the good ones again, in order to prove that they sounded even better when they were older and sober.  "Hey, this is what we sounded like when we played "Take It Easy" after we got back together, isn't it GREAT?"  OK, fine, I get it, enough already.  "Hey, this is what we sounded like when we played "Desperado" after we got back together, isn't that one great, too?"  ENOUGH!
"Hey, wait, you haven't heard what "Life in the Fast Lane" sounded like after we got back together, here's that one..."  Jeez, if I wanted to hear the whole "Hell Freezes Over" concert, I would just watch that!

As for the Eagles group that's touring now, with only three original members left, they seem to have followed the example of that other huge American band, the Beach Boys.  As long as there's one original Beach Boy on stage, they get to use the name, and the other band members are hired guns, studio musicians, family members, friends, and John Stamos for some reason, if you're lucky.  The three official Eagles are now touring with Deacon Frey (Glenn's son), Vince Gill, Will Henley, Steuart Smith, and I presume a whole posse of hired guns.  By all means, go to see them now if you want, but be aware that there are now more former and deceased original Eagles than current ones.

Also starring Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), Timothy B. Schmit, Jackson Browne, JD Souther, David Geffen (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Jack Tempchin, Irving Azoff, Bill Szymczyk, Kenny Rogers, Stevie Nicks, Steuart Smith, John Boylan, Gary Burden, Henry Diltz, Gov. Jerry Brown with archive footage of John Belushi (last seen in "National Lampoon: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead"), John Bonham, Jimmy Buffett, David Crosby, Tom Cruise (last seen in "American Made"), Roger Daltrey (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Keith Moon (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), Melissa Etheridge (ditto), George Harrison (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"), Paul McCartney (ditto), John Lennon (also last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Elton John (ditto), Don Johnson (last seen in "The Other Woman"), Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Keith Richards (last seen in 27: Gone Too Soon"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Linda Ronstadt (last seen in "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Dee Snider, Stephen Stills, Sting (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), James Taylor, Philip Michael Thomas, Travis Tritt, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Hillary Clinton, Sen. Alan Cranston, Martin Luther King Jr. (last seen in "The Doors: When You're Strange"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Robert Kennedy (ditto), Ted Kennedy,

RATING: 7 out of 10 lawsuits

Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul

Year 10, Day 224 - 8/12/18 - Movie #3,020

BEFORE: After tonight I'll have reached the halfway point in the Summer Music Concert series, this is movie #26 in the chain, with 26 to go.  I'll total up the standings here at the half, at least in terms of appearances.  We're going on a road trip for a couple of days, just up to Connecticut for a bit, and I'm taking Monday off from work.  Now that I know our screenings are going well in both New York and L.A., and my boss is on the road and he's not calling with any emergencies, I can take a day off from putting out fires.  My job sometimes resembles that of a rock band manager, and I assume they also sometimes need a mental health day off, once they know that the tour is in full swing and seems to be going well.

Songwriter Jimmy Webb is the connective tissue this time, he was interviewed in the Glen Campbell doc as the writer of "Wichita Lineman" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix".  I'm not sure what song he wrote for Joe Cocker, but since he's interviewed here, I guess I'll find out shortly.

THE PLOT: The story of singer Joe Cocker is told through archive footage and interviews with close associates.

AFTER: Well, the story's the same, only the name of the singer changes each day, here in Phase II of the documentary chain.  If anything's constant in the ever-changing music industry, it's the fact that the talent is the fuel that makes the machine work, only the fuel ends up being consumed by the engine, doesn't it?  Be it Amy Winehouse, George Michael, Whitney Houston or Glen Campbell, the combination of an exhausting tour schedule plus a record company that demands promotion work, combined with some form of addiction, along with a belief that they've got a handle on their drinking or drug use, it just doesn't work in combination.  Throw in some personal problems or issues on top of that, maybe an attempt to work in some kind of relationship or personal life, and there are going to be issues.  Then once some success is achieved, the star starts to feel like a "commodity" that's being packaged and sold to the public, this leads to identity issues, and alcohol and/or drugs are readily available to help take the pain away.

It's always too much too soon, isn't it?  Does anyone become famous at the "right" speed, get some kind of handle on what it means to earn a big payday from their first few hits, and do something sensible with the money?  In the case of Joe Cocker, the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour of 1971 was a 7-week affair during which he played 56 concerts in 48 cities, backed by a 40-piece band put together by Leon Russell, and traveled with a film crew documenting the whole affair, which then ended up being so costly that it didn't turn any profit in the end.  Once again, we see the madness of promotion, which never seems logical in the short term, but of course could pay off in the long run.  They say you have to spend money to make money, but that only works if you STOP spending money at some point.  Joe Cocker put out 22 studio albums in 43 years, which means he was always either touring, promoting the latest album, or working on the next one.  There's that hamster wheel again, and you can step off of the wheel for a short time, but not for a long time, unless you want the money to stop coming in.

Joe Cocker, of course, came to prominence at the famous Woodstock concert in 1969, singing a re-worked version of the Beatles song "With a Little Help From my Friends".  He slowed it down, sang it with his soulful, gravelly voice, and it became a hit again (Number 1 in the U.K., anyway), just 2 years after the "Sgt. Pepper" album.  Tons of people covered the Beatles' songs, of course (I should know, I collect those covers) but few people back then had the balls to re-work their songs into a different style.  Cocker had covered another Beatles song, "I'll Cry Instead" four years earlier, and then later also covered "Something", "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", "Let It Be", and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away".  Then he did one last Beatles cover, "Come Together" in 2007 for the film "Across the Universe".

Because that's who Cocker was, not a singer/songwriter, but a great cover artist.  Maybe the best cover artist ever, because he made the most out of every song that he screamed/sung in his style.  "The Letter" by the Boxtops was a simple little ditty from the early 60's, but he slowed it down and gave it some soul.  Randy Newman wrote and recorded the song "You Can Leave Your Hat On" in 1972, but it took Joe Cocker's version, and its appearance in the 1986 film "9 1/2 Weeks" to make it a hit.  "Unchain My Heart" was a hit for Ray Charles in 1971, but Cocker's version in 1987 made it a hit again, and so on.  Traffic's song "Feelin' Alright" and Billy Preston's song "You Are So Beautiful" are more often remembered by people today as Joe Cocker songs.

I think I became aware of who Joe Cocker was through "Unchain My Heart" and "You Can Leave Your Hat On", but then I bought a few of his Greatest Hits cassettes (yes, there was more than one) and the 1992 album "Night Calls".  By that point his career had gone through many ups and downs, but of course I didn't know that at the time.  He'd been something of a joke, with John Belushi  on SNL impersonating his strange on-stage movements, or maybe something of an anomaly, because it's harder to be a fan of someone who just re-interprets other people's hit songs, especially during the singer/songwriter movement of the 1970's.

He also struggled with alcoholism, or more likely, didn't do much struggling at all, just kind of leaned into it.  A reporter for Rolling Stone magazine watched him drink a whole 6-pack of beer during an interview, which took place in the afternoon before an evening concert, and he probably drank all through that concert, too.  Band members and tour managers interviewed for this film report on not only how much Cocker could drink, but also how many times he was likely to throw up during an average concert.  Through all this, he found time to get married and buy a ranch in Colorado.  Eventually he decided to sober up, because he was finding it difficult to do that primal scream at the end of "With a Little Help From My Friends". Hey, whatever it takes.

He toured Europe with Tina Turner after her comeback in the 1980's (they had the same tour manager at the time) and became really popular in Germany, right around the time the Berlin Wall came down.   He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013, right after coming off of tour, and died a year later. He's still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite Billy Joel's best efforts, but hey, you never know. I think that's a pretty tough call, whether someone gets in just for re-interpreting other people's songs - though he did that very well, it might not display the level of creativity that the induction process tends to favor.

Oh, yeah, those half-time totals.  After 26 music documentaries, the two people who have appeared the most are (no surprises here) Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, if I count today's "blink and you'll miss it" appearance of Macca at the Queen Elizabeth 2002 Jubilee Concert, where Joe Cocker sang, of course, "With a Little Help From My Friends".  Mick and Paul each have 10 appearances, and next comes John Lennon with 9.  Rounding out the top five are Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards, each with 8 appearances.  It seems impossible to make any rock documentary without letting a Beatle or a Rolling Stone in there somewhere.  Can these two rockers can hold on to their lead in the 2nd half of the chain, or will someone else make a bunch of uncredited appearances?  I can't even predict this one, which is why the games have to be played out.

Time for a break, I'm off for a couple days but I can still get Netflix on my phone, so I'm going to try to watch at least one long film while I'm on the road, but I may not be able to post until Tuesday.  I'll try to double-up when I get back so I can stay on track.

Also starring Pam Cocker, Vic Cocker, Rita Coolidge, Billy Joel, Randy Newman, Phil Crookes, Deric Dyer, Cliff Goodwin, Glyn Johns, Michael Lang, Chris Lord-Alge, Charlie Midnight, Jerry Moss, Ray Neapolitan, Chris Stainton, Ben Fong Torres, and archive footage of Joe Cocker, Ray Charles, Roger Davies, George Harrison (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Nicky Hopkins (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), Bobby Keys (last seen in "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Brian May (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Paul McCartney (also carrying over from "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Jimmy Page, Leon Russell, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Jennifer Warnes, Steve Winwood (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars").

RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of brandy