Rush: Time Stand Still

Year 10, Day 250 - 9/7/18 - Movie #3,046

BEFORE: And so I come to the last of 52 films in this documentary chain - it's really 53 if you count the one about 90-year old people staying active (Mick Jagger turned 75 during my study of rock music, he only LOOKS 90 years old...).  I've gone from the beginning of the Beatles to the end of Rush, from 1963 to 2016 over the last 6 weeks.  From four lads from Liverpool to three dudes from Canada, I guess there's a certain form of symmetry there.  And the stories of the bands were all the same, really, except for all those places where they were different.

Geddy Lee carries over from "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage", and he and his bandmates get the last encore.

THE PLOT: An account of the final tour of the band Rush, including in-depth interviews with members of the band, the crew, and various fans.

AFTER: Damn, I really wanted this to be JUST a concert film.  Would that really have been so wrong, to just watch Rush play for 90 minutes, run down the whole set list from their final concert?  I mean, if that last concert in L.A. was so meaningful, why didn't we see all of it?  Heck, why didn't we see HALF of it?  Or even maybe three full songs?  Now I feel ripped off.  I already watched the interview format Rush documentary yesterday, why did we need another one that discusses the band's history and the influence they had on modern music?  Can't people who want to see all that just watch "Beyond the Lighted Stage" again, and why couldn't we just have rocked out tonight?

See, I really wanted to go out with a bang, and instead it ends with the whimper of Rush fans, crying because it's the last time they'll see their favorite band perform live.  Boo freakin' hoo.  Some were so overcome with emotion that they stood next to their seats for an extra half-hour, unable to go home, because that would mean that the evening was truly over, and they'll have to find something else in their lives to obsessively keep track of.  Or perhaps they were still hoping that the band would come out for another number - but dude, come on, the house lights came on and the janitors are cleaning the floors, it's time to go.  The band's on the bus already, they're not going to come out and play "Tom Sawyer" again.

Rush stayed together for 40 years, that's certainly an accomplishment - heck, that's about five times as long as the Beatles stayed active, together, on the rock scene.  But NITPICK POINT, the narration here says that they "never took a break, never stopped touring..."  Umm, that contradicts the information from yesterday's film, when Neil Peart drove his motorcycle across North America for FIVE YEARS and the band didn't create music or play any concerts together.  If that's not a break, then what was it?  That's five years when they didn't tour, right?

And Neil's the one who suggested that the band stop for real, right after the final tour.  Health concerns are bound to be an issue when a band has been together that long - the rigors of a tour are probably hardest on a drummer, and he suffered through everything from teeth issues to callouses to chronic tendinitis, and then Alex Lifeson also developed arthritis.  They just couldn't rock out like they used to if their bodies had started breaking down.  Do we really want to see bands like the Stones perform using canes and walkers to get around on the stage?  That would be very sad.  I don't know how Jagger and Richards are still able to do what they do - my theory is that the drugs have developed sentience and are walking around in the skin-shell that was once Keith Richards.

No, I think it's better to leave the stage while you can still do so under your own power.  Canadians may be hearty cold-weather folk, but even they have their limits.  I applaud them for sticking together as a trio and honoring the agreement that if one of them wanted to pack it in, then they'd all pack it in.  Their management did point out that each member has wanted to quit at various times, and the band has always gotten back together after their sabbaticals, but if this really is the end, it feels like these guys will be well taken care of, at least if the number of shiny cars in their garages is any indication. Peart only agreed to the final tour as long as he could ride his motorcycle from each city to the next, which allowed him to obsessively plan the most scenic and bike-friendly routes possible that would still get him to the next gig on time.  I admire people who plan trips like this, whether it's visiting all the MLB stadiums over the course of a summer, or hitting every diner on Route 66, whatever their thing happens to be.

As I've seen in a number of documentaries, like the one about Chicago and the one about the Eagles, it's fairly standard practice to include footage from a band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Rush was first eligible in 1998, but the band wasn't nominated until 2012 - you can say that's because of their genre, or maybe it's record label politics, or this or that, but it doesn't really matter.  You get in when you get in.  So it wasn't really fair for those Foo Fighters to hold Jann Wenner (the event's MC) responsible or hypocritical just because Rolling Stone didn't cream all over every one of their albums - there's no way that had anything to do with the 14-year delay.  Anyway, it's not that magazine's duty to love every rock album that gets released, the staff are journalists who need to remain impartial, plus critics who are supposed to criticize things, that's right there in their name!  I used to read a magazine about comic books called Wizard that raved about EVERY single comic book that came out, and it just came off like a bunch of B.S., because not everything in any genre can be "good", there will always be comic books and albums that are "better" than others, which of course is a matter of opinion, but that means there will always be some that will feel not as good. At the end of the day, the only thing you can do is try to find the books, record albums and TV shows that appeal to you, not waste your time on the ones you don't like, and not fault anyone else for making different choices.

I knew who Geddy Lee was years before I ever heard a Rush song, and just like with Frank Zappa, that was due to my interest in novelty records in the early 1980's.  Geddy sang on the famous comedy track "Take Off" by Bob & Doug McKenzie (aka Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas from "SCTV") and for a long time, that was all I knew about him.  But that's all right, I caught up with him again later during college.

NITPICK POINT: This film shows some of the Rush superfans, the people who keep track of how many concerts they've seen, how many times they've gotten selfies with each band member, vital stats on the set-lists, etc.  Some even go to something called "RushCon", which is a gathering of fans that meets up at important concerts, and of course many of them had to attend the final concert.  (Last chance to add to their totals!). There's even a super-fan who's collected so many press clippings and so much memorabilia that he essentially runs a Rush archive that other people can draw from.  Now, with all those superfans out there, how come none of them submitted complete credits for this film to the IMDB?  Why did I have to do it?  All of you obsessive fanatics looked at the IMDB cast page with just four names on it and said, "Yep, that seems about right for a documentary that probably interviewed DOZENS of music experts and fans..."?  Really?

Also starring Alex Lifeson (carrying over from "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"), Neal Peart (ditto), Ray Danniels (ditto), Liam Birt (ditto), Michael Moore (last seen in "Sicko"), Randy Johnson, Martin Popoff, John Virant, Gerry Barad, Gavin Brown, Pegi Cecconi, Brian Hiatt, Jillian Maryonovich, Eddy Maxwell, Howard Ungerleider, with narration from Paul Rudd (last heard in "The Little Prince") and archive footage of John Rutsey (also carrying over from "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"), Taylor Hawkins (ditto), Dave Grohl (last seen in "Lemmy"), Mick Jagger (last seen in "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), Brian Jones (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Charlie Watts (ditto), Bill Wyman (ditto), Ronnie Wood (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Keith Richards (last seen in "The Kids Are Alright"), Roger Daltrey (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), John Entwhistle (ditto), Keith Moon (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Jann Wenner, Barack Obama (last seen in "The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé: A Trip Across Latin America").

RATING: 5 out of 10 road trips in the camper van

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

Year 10, Day 249 - 9/6/18 - Movie #3,045

BEFORE: Oh, I'm so close to the end now - just one more "talking heads"-type documentary, and one more concert to go.  It's been over FIFTY films since I've watched anything even close to a narrative, and I can't wait to get back to that this weekend.  But now I'm second-guessing my choice of film for that return to fiction, because I found out that the actor in question doesn't REALLY appear in that film - I'll explain this in a couple of days, I guess.  But I spotted a possible replacement film on Netflix with the same actor, so I've got to make a decision in the next 48 hours.

Kirk Hammett carries over from "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", presumably to be interviewed about his thoughts on Rush.

THE PLOT: An in-depth look at the Canadian rock band Rush, chronicling the band's musical evolution from their progressive rock sound of the 70's to their current heavy rock style.

AFTER: The back-story of Rush is just like the back-story of any other band, only it's not, right?  There are always those little details that make any particular band stand out, like Geddy Lee (who was born Geddy Lee Weinrib) being the son of Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Canada.  He met Alex Lifeson, himself the son of Serbian immigrants, in high school in Ontario, and a long friendship was born, one that has stood the test of time and touring and fame.  Both had old-school European parents who didn't consider rock music to be a viable career, but if you were born in 1953 and were a teenager during the 1960's, great rock was everywhere, and who wouldn't want to be in a band after the Beatles and the Stones and the Who came into being?  (Not to mention Clapton, and Zeppelin, and such...I'm thinking now that rock music is a virus, and the desire to create it spread from person to person during that decade.)

After a few years on the Ontario high-school circuit, Rush broke into the American market by way of Cleveland, when a few DJs played their early records, causing fans to call the station and ask when that new Led Zeppelin album was going to be released.  Both bands had singers with high voices, you see, and Rush probably didn't mind being confused with Zeppelin, or thought of as the "Canadian Led Zeppelin". 

I don't own any of Rush's music myself, but of course I know quite a bit of it from listening to mainly classic rock stations over the years.  I think my wife has their Greatest Hits CD, I should probably just borrow that next week and rip the CD on to my iTunes so I can save some cash.  Renting all these rockumentaries on iTunes has put a serious dent in my expenses over the past two months.  They've got a lot of great tunes, but I admit that I had no idea before this what the "2112" album was all about, or that albums like "Hemispheres" got them labelled as a prog-rock band, whatever that means.  I didn't know that they dabbled in reggae sounds on "Permanent Waves" or went through a new wavey-period in the mid-1980's when they used a lot of synthesizers, which apparently pissed off a large number of long-time fans who just wanted Rush to return to good old guitar-oriented rock.

Which they did (after, it seems, more brief dalliances with jazz-like sounds, and even some elements of funk and hip-hop) but then the band went on hiatus in 1997 after Neil Peart lost his daughter to a car accident and then his wife to cancer in 1998.  He dealt with this by getting on his motorcycle and just riding around North America, more or less incognito, for nearly five years.  Hey, if you've got the money and the freedom to take five years off and mourn, why not?  Most of us wouldn't have the means to do something like that, but whatever gets your head back in a good space...

But eventually drumming, and music comes back to creative people, and it does so on its own schedule, because it turns out you can't mandate songwriting like Metallica tried to do.  Hetfield tried to say, "OK, we'll write songs on weekdays between 12 and 4, as long as that doesn't interfere with my sobriety and our therapy session schedule."  Yeah, that's not how creativity works, you can't schedule it or mandate that it only occurs during certain time periods - nice try, though.

There was a segment here where Neil Peart sort of had to re-invent his drumming style, because anyone can hit a drum kit, but not everybody can do it RIGHT, and it turns out there are different ways to do it, which can have long-term health consequences, so to find a BETTER way to play drums, he turned to the "Yoda" of drumming, Freddy Gruber.  (I thought they said "Freddie KRUGER" at first, like the evil guy from "Nightmare on Elm Street", but no, I just mis-heard it.)  Gruber's an older guy who knows just about everything there is to know about drumming, and how to drum, and the meaning of drumming, from both a physical and a meta-physical standpoint.  Like, he knows what the sound of one hand NOT hitting a drum is, if you know what I mean.  This kind of makes me want to be the "Yoda" of something, like I want to train somebody to do what I do, whether that's setting up a Comic-Con booth, or keeping proper payroll records, or maybe it's linking movies according to actor appearances to set up 300-movie chains, I don't know.  But now I really want to train someone to do something that I'm good at - maybe just to prove that I'm good at that.

There's no shortage of rock musicians and bands here who say they were influenced by Rush - from the Smashing Pumpkins to Primus to the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails and Death Cab for Cutie - it's a great list that's probably not even complete, but it's contemporary enough for me to feel like I've maybe come to the end of the cycle, over the last (almost) two months I've gone from the birth of the Beatles to the end of Rush.  I'll watch the film that features their final concert tomorrow, and then that will be that.

Also starring Geddy Lee (last seen in "I Love You, Man"), Alex Lifeson (ditto), Neil Peart (ditto), Sebastian Bach (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Jack Black (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Mick Box, Danny Carey, Jimmy Chamberlin, Les Claypool, Tim Commerford, Billy Corgan, Taylor Hawkins, Jason McGerr, Kim Mitchell, Vinnie Paul, Mike Portnoy, Trent Reznor, Gene Simmons (last seen in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"), Matt Stone (last seen in "Bowling for Columbine"), Zakk Wylde (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne") Liam Birt, Terry Brown, Cliff Burnstein (also carrying over from "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster"), Peter Collins, Ray Danniels, Bernie Finkelstein, Freddie Gruber, Donna Halper, Rupert Hine, Nick Raskulinecz, John Roberts, Kevin Shirley, Vic Wilson, with archive footage of John Rutsey, Stephen Colbert.

RATING: 6 out of 10 time signatures

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

Year 10, Day 248 - 9/5/18 - Movie #3,044

BEFORE: Just two films left to go after tonight, and I think I can safely say which music stars have appeared in the most films.  The clear winner is Paul McCartney, with 18 appearances (either being interviewed, performing in concert or just in archive footage).  He was in just about 1/3 of the films, and it turns out you almost can't make a rock music documentary without at least referencing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. In second place is John Lennon, with 14 appearances, and Ringo Starr with the same number.  In third place is Mick Jagger with 13 appearances, and George Harrison and Keith Richards are tied for 4th place with 12.  I'll take all this into consideration at the end of the year when I do my round-up, but these guys are all going to be near the top of the charts, fittingly enough.

Robert Trujillo carries over from "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne".

THE PLOT: A documentary crew followed Metallica for the better part of 2001-2003, a time of tension and release, as they recorded their album St. Anger, fought bitterly and sought the counsel of their on-call shrink.

AFTER: This is a case where the documentary filmmakers set out to make one kind of movie, and then the situation changed, and they had to roll with the punches and make a different kind of movie. They had a deal to follow around the band through the production of their next album, and then the band opted for therapy to deal with some long-standing issues, plus one band member went into rehab, so that not only slowed down the album and the film, it meant the whole process went kind of sideways. But then they all came out the other end with the album, the film, and a new attitude - and a new bass player.

Much of this I've seen before over the course of the Rockumentary chain - band gets famous, gets rich, gets drunk and stoned, and at some point those creative juices start drying up, but there's all kinds of pressure from the record company and from within the band to make a new album, get back out on tour, and start feeding the machine again.  Because it's never enough, really - even for THE biggest band of the 1990's, they apparently couldn't just say "OK, we each have a few million, we're in a good place, so let's just, umm, stop."  That's just not how this crazy thing works.

Even when the band seemed to be down to just three members, then two during Hetfield's rehab, it feels like nobody seriously considered calling it a day, because they all believe in the collective, that somehow the collective is bigger than the individuals that comprise it, and instead they decide to work toward some new form of balance, where the collective still exists, but each individual member has an equal share in the creative process, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or whatever new-agey psycho-babble they can come up with to justify their actions, as long as it results in more money down the road and keeping the crazy train on the tracks.  So they hire a band therapist at an enormous monthly fee, and spend time sitting in a room talking about their feelings and learning better ways to communicate with each other.

This is so not metal - and part of me agrees with their bassist, Jason Newsted, who found the therapy sessions "lame" and chose not to participate if this is the way the band was going to be, going forward.  Hey, some people just aren't ready for therapy, can't sit in a room and be vulnerable - or maybe he just wanted to keep rocking out, which is what he signed up for in the first place.  But this also makes you wonder, would other bands have stayed together longer if they had thought to go to some form of therapy or counseling together?  Would the Beatles not have fought so much during the "Let It Be" sessions if they had a therapist on the payroll?  Would the Eagles not have broken up in 1980 if Glenn Frey and Don Felder had found better ways to channel their anger and work together?
Would Ozzy still be Ozzy if he had gone into rehab sooner?  Would anyone from the "27 Club" still be around if they'd seriously considered getting clean and sober?

Look, any band is going to have a few people who are just more creative, or better at songwriting, than the others.  The Beatles had Lennon and McCartney, two genius songwriters, so the path was clear, they'd bounce song ideas off each other, and through collaboration and friendly competition, they'd usually land on a hit song.  George Harrison developed those skills later, so by their last few albums, he was really on a roll, while Lennon and McCartney were writing songs individually, but still sharing credits.  So even over the course of just a few years, those roles are going to shift or change - Glenn Frey and Don Henley are another great example, together they wrote most of the Eagles songs, but not all.  But an imbalance is created when one or two people write the majority of the songs, and then you've got your Harrison or your Don Felder who feel like their song contributions are not being considered, or are somehow being diminished.  There might be no "I" in "team" but there's definitely one in "I wrote this song, why isn't it being considered for our album?"

Things get more complicated when you then throw relationships and family into the mix.  Can a band member be committed to his music and also have a wife and kids?  And then even if he finds that proper balance, what then happens when he goes out on tour?  What happens to the kids when Daddy's on the road for months at a time?  Can he bring the wife and kids along, but then what does THAT do to the band?   What about staying faithful and/or sober while on the road?  The very nature of touring is a virtual minefield of problems, but then not touring creates a different set of problems. I think I'm ready to conclude that most people would be better off not becoming famous rock stars in the first place - but for some people that just doesn't seem to be an option.

I do believe in therapy, it was very helpful to me for a couple years after I got divorced, to help me sort out whatever doubts were in my brain about the nature of the world and how I needed to approach the next chapter in my life - but one of the hardest things about it is knowing when to end it.  And if you don't, that's fine too, as long as you're still getting something out of it that's equal to or greater than what you're putting into it.  Once I'd sorted myself out, I realized that the therapist was never going to tell me I was "cured", or perhaps that wasn't even the right term, that he sort of had a vested interest in keeping the sessions going, not letting anything completely resolve, and that the decision to end the sessions had to come from me, if I had the strength and the determination to carry on without them.  So that's what I did.

I feel I should point out that when I started this chain, I saw that I could use this film as a link to get to the end, but I didn't have a copy, and it was NOT available on Netflix. OK, fine, my wife said she probably had a copy somewhere (though she couldn't put her hand on it at the moment) and anyway, there was always iTunes, I was already planning to watch 5 or 6 films via iTunes, so what's one more?  But then Netflix ADDED this doc to their service when I was about a week in to the chain - now that's some quality service.  So I didn't have to pay an extra fee to complete my plans.

However, they're running it as a "series" of two episodes - Episode 1 is the original film, and Episode 2 is a 26-minute "update" set 10 years after the original doc's release.  I happen to know that Netflix is trying to turn everything into a "series", like if you pitch them a feature, their development team may ask you how they can make a series out of it.  But two episodes does not a series make, and there's really nothing new in Episode 2, except some bits about Metallica's next film "Through the Never", which is a completely different animal.  Other than that, it's just a re-hash of what was seen in Episode 1, so it can easily be avoided.  Unless you like hearing people talk about their thoughts on what it means to make a movie about people talking about their thoughts on what it means to make an album.  That's way too meta for me.

Also starring Kirk Hammett (last seen in "Lemmy"), James Hetfield (ditto), Lars Ulrich (ditto), Jason Newsted (ditto), Pepper Keenan (ditto), Dave Mustaine (last seen in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"), Bob Rock, Phil Towle, Eric Avery, Mike Inez, Danny Lohner, Scott Reeder, Jeordie White (aka Twiggy Ramirez), Chris Wyse, Cliff Burnstein, Peter Mensch, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, Dylan Donkin, Brian Sagrafena, Zach Harmon, Peter Paterno, Steven Wiig (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn").

RATING: 5 out of 10 rejected album titles

God Bless Ozzy Osbourne

Year 10, Day 247 - 9/4/18 - Movie #3,043

BEFORE: Winding down to the last four rock music documentaries, and there were a few that popped up DURING the chain, and I'm just not going to get to them.  One cable channel is now running a doc about Lynyrd Skynyrd, and there's just no way I can work that in at this point.  PBS is also running some doc called "Downhill From Here" about a famous Grateful Dead concert, but the time to work that one in was about 6 weeks ago, and that time came and went.

I'm not going to get to the one about Jeff Lynne and ELO playing at Wembley, either - I could have linked to it from "Concert for George", but I had no way to link OUT of it.  Same goes for that documentary "Sound City", directed by Dave Grohl, about that recording studio in California, which has another of those all-star casts.  I probably could have worked that one in during the 11th hour, because the cast is so large, but I've shuffled things around three times already, and I sort of just want to finish and get back to narrative movies again. 

Ozzy Osbourne carries over from "Black Sabbath The End of the End", and I think this makes five appearances in a row for Ozzy.

THE PLOT: Ozzy Osbourne's four-decade track record as a culturally relevant artist is well-known, but his personal struggles have been shrouded in secrecy, until now.

AFTER: Well, if anyone is living in their overtime, it's just got to be Ozzy, right?  He was basically the poster child for excess drug and alcohol use during the 1980's, and somehow came out the other end.  He was heavily self-medicating during the entire run of the reality show "The Osbournes", which is when middle America stopped treating him like a Satan-worshipping rock star and started regarding him as a lovable-yet-hard-to-understand family man, but the truth of the matter is that he was smashed out of his mind at the time.  So suddenly watching Ozzy staring blankly at the TV set, trying to figure out why the satellite dish isn't picking up any signal isn't so funny any more. 

(Meanwhile, mom Sharon's on cancer medications, daughter Kelly is taking drugs to deal with her mother's diagnosis, and son Jack is drinking heavily and suicidal.  Yep, nothing but a nice, normal, famous SoCal family...)

Somehow this all gets traced back to Ozzy's dad, who was your typical 1940's/1950's dad, in that he didn't see the need to develop a close personal bond with his children.  Who had time for that, anyway, what with working three factory jobs while struggling in post-war Britain where nobody had any decent food to eat, or even any time to clean up all the bombed-out buildings from the war?  That was just the way things were, men weren't supposed to show any emotion, it was considered a sign of weakness, and anyway, that was women's work.  Men just had to work themselves to death to keep feeding all six kids, because somehow birth control was not in the cards either - I don't know, maybe don't have a sixth kid if you can't feed five, I'm just spitballing here...

And so Ozzy grew up with low self-esteem, plus a distant father figure and oh, yeah he had dyslexia or ADD or something that made him not able to perform in school.  Plus, he was bullied, so this only drove him further into himself.  Great, now I don't know whether to admire Ozzy or pity him - but a lot of this sounds like a bunch of excuses that somehow justify his rampant alcoholism and drug use during the entire decade of the 1980's.  This is what alcoholics do, as Ozzy himself tells us - they lie.  They even lie about how much they're lying, so saying that the drinking is from a bad childhood, or this, or that, or dealing with fame, or some childhood trauma, I just don't know if I'm buying it.

To compound things, we hear stories from the likes of Tommy Lee, Motley Crue's drummer (I want to say drummer, was he the drummer?) about Ozzy and Crue members doing "gross-out" contests while on tour, freaking out the tourists in a nice Hilton hotel while they piss out on the patio and dare each other to lick it up, then drunk Ozzy went up to his room and took a dump on the floor, then started smearing that all over the walls.  I mean, there's drunk behavior and then there's stuff for which there's just no excuse. 

Again, this guy should have died several times over, only he didn't.  And I know it sucks to see your best friend and guitarist die in a plane crash, but that's no excuse either - those hotel rooms were not responsible for your pain, Ozzy, so it's not going to accomplish anything when you trash them. 

Anyway, regarding the music, I probably know more Ozzy songs than Sabbath songs, like "Bark at the Moon" or "Mr. Crowley" in addition to "Crazy Train", of course.  For the sake of this documentary, Ozzy is forced to watch all of his silly music videos from the 1980's and comment on them, but when he tires of them after three or four videos, he's allowed to leave the room.  That just isn't fair, if his fans had to watch them during the 1980's, he should be forced to watch them too.

Somehow Ozzy also gets a pass for beating up his wife, knocking our her two front teeth in one altercation, and nearly choking her in another.  Sure, he was drunk - yes, he got arrested for it.  But why, for God's sake, did she forgive him?  How are they still together?   Is it because of the money, or the fact that he's clean and sober now, and acting like the semblance of a good parent?  I think the average guy, who's not a rock star, with a self-respecting woman, would never be cut this much slack.  Yes, he's a senior citizen now and just sits around mostly drawing when he's not on stage, but come on, there's got to be some kind of long-term accountability for all of his bad behavior, no?

Also starring Tony Iommi (also carrying over from "Black Sabbath The End of the End"), Geezer Butler (ditto), Adam Wakeman (ditto), Bill Ward, Sharon Osbourne, Paul McCartney (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Rudy Sarzo (ditto), Henry Rollins (last seen in "Lemmy"), Robert Trujillo (ditto), Tommy Lee, John Frusciante, Serj Terkanian, Zakk Wylde, Aimee Osbourne, Jack Osbourne, Kelly Osbourne, Louis Osbourne, Paul Osbourne, Jessica Hobbs, Tony Dennis, Ross Halfin, Billy Morrison, Mark Weiss, with archive footage of Randy Rhoads (also last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Vince Neil (ditto), Nikki Sixx (also last seen in "Lemmy"), Alan Hunter, Queen Elizabeth II (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World").

RATING: 5 out of 10 manginas

Black Sabbath The End of the End

Year 10, Day 246 - 9/3/18 - Movie #3,042

BEFORE: I've got just five films left before I return to narrative movies, and they cover three bands: Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rush.  From the Rush film I can make an easy transition back to fiction films, believe it or not.  But that will happen during the coming weekend, so here comes my last week of the Summer Music Concert Series, and I'm going out with a bang-your-head heavy metal-thon, which includes TWO famous bands performing their farewell concerts.

Ozzy Osbourne carries over again from "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"

THE PLOT: The heavy metal band Black Sabbath plays its final show in their hometown of Birmingham on February 4, 2017.

AFTER: This is another band that I know almost nothing about, except the fact that Ozzy Osbourne came from this band, left it for a while, and came back to it.  "Iron Man", "War Pigs" and "Paranoid", those are the only Black Sabbath songs I think I know.  But I'm taking this as a learning experience - hey, I didn't know all the names of the Eagles before I started this chain, so that's what this has been all about, plugging up some of the holes in my musical knowledge.

It turns out there have been a LOT of people in Black Sabbath over the years, like Ronnie James Dio and Glenn Hughes (from Deep Purple) and others that were also in KISS, the Clash, and even ELO.  But here in the end times, the band reverted to the "classic" line-up of Tony Iommi (who never left), Ozzy (who left and came back) and Geezer Butler (who also left and came back).  They made a few references to someone named "Bill", but I didn't know who that was - apparently that was drummer Bill Ward, who was fired from the band over his drinking, but did six stints overall, most recently in 2011-2012, but did not want to come back for the final tour.  There seem to be various stories over whether he was healthy enough to tour, or whether he was unable to come to proper contract terms.

Another thing I learned tonight was that Black Sabbath's guitarist, Tony Iommi, is missing the tips of two fingers on his right hand from an industrial accident at a sheet metal factory that happened when he was 17.  Which would only be a problem if he ever wanted to play guitar again.  One option would have been to learn to play guitar the other way, like switch hands, but he didn't want to do that.  So he fashioned some plastic fingertips for himself, learned to play chords differently, and developed some new techniques.  That might have slowed him down, but it sure didn't stop him. From the small amount of guitar-playing that I've done, I find this incredible - I didn't play long enough to develop any callouses, instead I played a smaller guitar with rather soft strings, and my giant fingers could each cover two strings at a time.  So I also had to develop some different ways to play chords, just because my fingers were big and my guitar was small.  I've got a regular-sized guitar, but I just don't have the time to play it or the patience to develop the necessary finger strength - this guy was missing pieces of TWO fingers, but he found the time and he played through the pain.  My hat is off.

My biggest problem with this film was connected to the fact that I only knew TWO of their songs - but this was a 90-minute (mostly) concert film, so that meant that there were bound to be a few songs that I was just not going to be familiar with.  And that would only be a problem if they were sung by Ozzy Osbourne, who's close to incoherent when he's talking, let alone singing.  I struggled through the first half-hour, and I couldn't understand a word he sang, or even said.  After about 30 minutes I couldn't take it any more, and I had to enable the captions on my TV.  My hearing is getting worse, but I can usually compensate by turning up the volume - but that doesn't help when the words are hard to understand at ANY volume.  At least with the captions on, I could see most of the lyrics as they appeared on the screen (it wasn't perfect, about 10 or 20% of the lyrics were missing) and I could at least tell what Ozzy was singing about.

It didn't help that the band returned to their Birmingham roots for this final concert - Ozzy said that as soon as he crosses the border to his hometown, he gets that thick "Brummie" accent back, and he's even harder to understand than usual.  Unless, of course, that your ear is tuned to that thick, slurring accent, and mine just plain isn't.

In their final concert, the band played a number of their "classic" songs, which as you might expect, was intended to reward the long-time fans.  With no new album to promote, the band was free to play whatever songs they liked from their early years.  Then, and I thought this was a bit weird, the band got together at a recording studio a few days AFTER their final concert, to play some more older songs together.  I thought the reasoning for this was really suspect - why would they want to play another gig, right after their final gig?  Iimmi says something like, "Well, you don't have a chance to talk during your last show, so I thought we'd get together again a few days later?"  Huh?  How would he know in advance that he wouldn't get to talk to his bandmates during their final show, if they'd never done a final show before?  This makes no sense - I'm willing to bet this was arranged for the benefit of the film, like maybe the concert footage wasn't long enough to fill up the 90 minute film, so they had to quickly book some time to get a few more songs in there.  Just admit it, man.

Aha, I figured it out - the DVD that was released of their final concert came with a bonus CD, and that CD ("the Angelic Sessions") featured 5 songs, two of which this film shows being recorded at that studio - "The Wizard" and "Changes".  So that's probably the real reason the band got back together a few days after their last show, to record this bonus CD.  There's no shame in that, why make up a lame excuse like getting together to discuss the final show that took place just a few days before.  What was that session supposed to be, some kind of exit interview?

The whole thing wraps up with the band performing the song "Changes" in the studio, and even though it's an older song (from 1972 apparently), I couldn't help but wonder if it applies to Ozzy's current state of affairs, since it's a song about letting one's lover go and then regretting that decision.  There always seem to be some kind of divorce rumors circulating around Ozzy and Sharon, but it seems they're still together in some fashion.  Perhaps it's a very complicated relationship that I'll learn more about from tomorrow's film.

There's that same old rock and roll story again, that the band got screwed in their first recording contracts, and didn't make much money until late in their careers.  But at least Black Sabbath is able to put a positive spin on all that, pointing out that if they HAD received millions of dollars when they were younger, they probably would have spent more money on drugs, and then overdosed.  So if they'd been richer sooner, they'd also be deader sooner!  I guess that's one way of looking at the brighter side of things.  Sort of.

Also starring Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Tommy Clufetos, Adam Wakeman

RATING: 5 out of 10 apocalyptic references

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years

Year 10, Day 245 - 9/2/18 - Movie #3,041

BEFORE: What would Labor Day weekend, the unofficial close of summer, be without some kind of big all-star rock concert?  I guess I've been building up to that, without even knowing it, it's just the way the schedule played out.  Though sometimes I wonder if my subconscious plays some kind of role in scheduling things like this - I guess I've learned not to think too much about specifics, I mostly just follow the chain and let things play out like they seem to want to, and I'm usually rewarded by the nature of coincidence.  Or maybe there are no coincidences, just the accidental ability of taking advantage of happenstance.  It doesn't really matter in the end, as long as I get from the first film of the year to the last one somehow, in a manner that pleases me and satisfies my O.C.D.

Ozzy Osbourne carries over from "Lemmy", and so does at least one other person, and Ozzy will be around for two more films after this one, too.

THE PLOT: Documentary showcasing what life was like for the music artists living in L.A. metal scene during the mid and late 1980's.

AFTER: I think I first became aware of this film series back in 1998, when I was attending the Sundance Film Festival for the first (of three) times, with an animated film I produced that was in the Dramatic Competition that year, if you can believe that.  Also playing at that festival that year was Vol. III of "The Decline of Western Civilization", so that first put this series on my radar.  Now, Vol. I was about the punk scene of the late 1970's and early 80's, and Vol. III was about the lifestyle of homeless teens in L.A., and I don't have much interest in either of those topics.  Ah, but Vol. II seems to be where it's at, with a star-studded line-up featuring everyone who was anyone in 80's metal, and back before I knew how many people appear uncredited in these rock docs, I figured that I needed this film to make my connections.

But, since Ozzy was in yesterday's film, I could have dropped this film from the line-up and the chain would still have continued, it would have just closed up neatly around the hole - now I'm sort of wishing that I had dropped this one, because it really didn't deliver all that it seemed to promise. Only a few bands perform here, and none of the really big names play any music - not Aerosmith, or Ozzy, or KISS.  Those guys get interviewed about the rock lifestyle, sure, but that's hardly the same thing.  The performances come from the bands Lizzie Borden, Faster Pussycat, Seduce, London, Odin and Megadeth.  I've only heard of TWO of those bands before, that's not a good sign - and I can't even name one song from either of those bands.

I'm not quite sure what was gained, if anything, by giving this film series a title that makes it sound like a high-school history class.  That couldn't have put many asses in the theater seats, not from the target market, anyway.  And why use such a negative word like "Decline" - isn't that the stereotype that parents always believe, that their kids' music is going to somehow lead to the end of society?  Don't we all realize now that the end of the world isn't going to come that way?  The world didn't end when Elvis shook his hips, or the Beatles grew their hair long, or when David Bowie put on a dress.  Sure, these things challenged society's preconceptions about what is proper behavior, but none of them led to civilization's downfall.  I'd worry more about conservatives using their imagined morals to impart their will on everyone and slowly erode our freedoms and civil rights before I'd blame rock and roll for an imagined slide into the abyss.

Unless the title is supposed to be ironic, but who can tell?  Still, when I listened to the interviews with a bunch of rock hopefuls and wannabes, most of whom are completely delusional about their own talents and chances for success, maybe the filmmakers here are on to something, after all.  The chances of becoming the next KISS or Aerosmith were literally one in a million for these twenty-somethings, but they kept on keeping on, blissfully unaware that (apart from appearing in this documentary) they were never going to be anything more than a tiny blip on rock and roll's radar.  How did things work out for bands like Seduce and Odin?  I'm guessing not very well.  And London seemed to be the training band for musicians who all left to be in Motley Crue, Guns 'N Roses and Cinderella.

Further evidence that this was the decade that marked the start of the dumbing-down of America is seen when there's a dancing (stripping) contest at an L.A. club called Gazzarri's, where the owner is over 60 and professes his love for having sex with 18-year old girls.  (As if!)  If that was some kind of pre-requisite for being in the contest, that was really wrong, but I bet he found a few girls back then who were willing to go along with it.  What really concerned me, however, was the interview with the previous year's winner, who after giving up her title as the contest winner, hoped to devote more time to both her dancing and her "actressing".  Yeah, good luck with that, honey.  Don't strain your brain too much trying to remember your lines.

For the interviews, it's hard for me to take these bands seriously, when they won't even give honest answers to the questions they were asked.  OK, the elder statesmen of rock do give some honest answers to questions about sex and drugs, and the younger kids are just delusional, but it's the mid-range bands like Poison and Faster Pussycat that can't even take themselves seriously for a second, and turn everything into some thinly veiled references about how great they all are in bed, and how much they're getting laid now that they're rock stars.  Ugh, we get it, all you want to do is joke about how you just got into rock for the pussy.  Why can't you all grow the hell up and be more like Lemmy and Ozzy, who talk very seriously about how they got just into rock for the pussy?

But then again, nothing here seems intended to be taken seriously - Gene Simmons chose to do his interview while shopping for lingerie (or perhaps for lingerie models) and Paul Stanley is filmed from above in a bed with four women.  Ozzy Osbourne's interview is conducted while he's cooking breakfast (and spilling juice to overplay a case of "the shakes") and the guy from Wasp is pretending to be drunk and fake binge-drinking while floating in his pool.  Two things about that - no alcoholic would waste that much vodka, and no pool owner would risk pouring vodka in the pool (after spending so much money on chlorine to get the pH level JUST right), so that's clearly water in those bottles.

So how am I supposed to take a documentary seriously, when it won't take its own subject matter seriously, when it faked SO many shots for the sake of over-dramatizing its stars?  Which really leaves only Steven Tyler and Joe Perry as the unlikely voices of reason.  Now THAT'S weird.

Also starring Lemmy (also carrying over from "Lemmy"), Alice Cooper (ditto), C.C. DeVille (ditto), Dave Ellefson (ditto), Steven Tyler (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Joe Perry, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Bret Michaels, Bobby Dall, Rikki Rockett, Chris Holmes, Brent Muscat, Eric Stacy, Greg Steele, Mark Michals, Taime Downe, Randy O, Dave Mustaine, Chuck Behler, Jeff Young, Bill Gazzarri, Riki Rachtman, Nadir D'Priest, Lizzie Grey, Brian West, Gene Allen, Frankie Jones, Desi Benjamin, Janet Gardner, Jan Kuehnemund, Share Pedersen, Roxy Petrucci.

RATING: 4 out of 10 flash pots

Lemmy

Year 10, Day 244 - 9/1/18 - Movie #3,040

BEFORE: This is about as far off of the reservation as I get, because at least I knew the songs of Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister during the 1980's, but I've never listened to anything by Motorhead.  But I remember this movie getting pretty good reviews when it came out, and I don't have to buy a film tonight, because someone posted this on YouTube, so it's a freebie.

Dee Snider carries over again from "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back".

THE PLOT: A documentary on the life and career of revered heavy-metal musician Lemmy Kilmister.

AFTER: And I still don't know any Motorhead songs, even after watching the film.  Oh, they play a couple, but I didn't really pick up anything I could identify as a title, except maybe "Ace of Spades".  But this still works as a portrait of the man, who's alternatively referred to as both the nicest guy and the baddest mother-effer of rock.  How can he be both?  It's all about the lifestyle, and the connections this guy made over a lifetime of gigging, playing a hard-driving bass that's just plain louder than everything else.  Remember what I said about rockers growing older and becoming sort of elder statesmen?  This guy's like the grandfather of heavy metal, he's been around that long.

He started out in some band called the Rockin' Vicars, where the members dressed up in priest-like gear, then shared a flat with Noel Redding and worked as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix.  Then he spent some years during the 1970's as the bassist for Hawkwind, a sort of hippy-dippy space/prog rock band, and things didn't work out between him and the other band members, because they weren't taking the same sorts of drugs - the others favored psychedelics and he favored amphetamines.  I'm not sure I understand the difference, but they said in the end they just weren't on the same wavelength.  Plus Lemmy got arrested at the Canadian border for drug possession and missed a couple shows, and it seems the band moved on without him at that point.

After 15 years with Motorhead he moved to Los Angeles, and became a regular at the Rainbow Bar and Grill, where many younger rockers would come, half expecting to bump into him - it seems if he wasn't on tour, he was hanging out at the Rainbow, drinking and playing their trivia machine.  And there are plenty of bands that appear in this film to say how influential his music was, everyone from Anthrax to Metallica, Black Sabbath to Motley Crue.  He also had connections in the wrestling world, and made appearances in everything from Troma films to Guitar Hero video-games.

It's somewhat fascinating to hear the opinions of a nearly 70-year old rock guy, who's part son of a bitch and part cranky old man, but again, the music's not really my bag.  And I don't really see how dressing up in Nazi gear and riding in a tank makes someone feel cool, if that was his hobby I guess I've got no right to knock it, other than to question WHY that felt good to him, if he claims to not be a racist in any way, that's a funny way to demonstrate that.  But I guess nobody felt they were in a position to enlighten him on this point?  Like, maybe a better way to prove you're not racist is to NOT collect Nazi memorabilia?  Just saying.

Also starring Lemmy Kilmister (last seen in "We Are Twisted F--king Sister!"), Phil Campbell, Mikkey Dee, Alice Cooper (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Ozzy Osbourne (also carrying over from "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Dave Grohl (ditto), Matt Sorum (ditto), C.C. DeVille, Dave Ellefson, Lars Frederiksen, Kirk Hammett, Rev. Horton Heat, James Hetfield, Scott Ian, Ice-T (last seen in "Ricochet"), Mike Inez, Joan Jett, Mick Jones, Duff McKagan, Dave Navarro, Jason Newsted, Slim Jim Phantom, Marky Ramone, Henry Rollins, Nikki Sixx, Slash (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Robert Trujillo, Lars Ulrich (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Steve Vai, Captain Sensible, Dave Brock, Fast Eddie Clarke, Peter Hook, Tony James, Nik Turner, Pepper Keenan, David Vanian, Mike Catherwood, Jarvis Cocker, Jason Everman, Paul Inder, Paul "Triple H" Levesque, Adam Parsons, Geoff Rowley, Todd Singerman, Shel Talmy, Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Kat Von D.

RATING: 5 out of 10 slot machines