Shine a Light

Year 12, Day 214 - 8/1/20 - Movie #3,620

BEFORE: Well, since this is the Summer Concert series, and since we still can't go see concerts in the real world, I'm going to get back to the virtual ones.  Plus I wanted to start off August with a bang, a concert from the "Bigger Bang" Stones tour, in fact.  I watched at least three Stones concert films two years ago on my last rockumentary go-round, and they were "Crossfire Hurricane" (which repeated the infamous Altamont footage from "Gimme Shelter"), "Olé, Olé, Olé - A Trip Across Latin America" and "Havana Moon".  Those last two concert films were from the same tour, and released in 2016.  For some reason, I skipped "Shine a Light", which was released in 2008, but recorded in December 2006, as a benefit concert for the Clinton Foundation.

I'm still five days behind where I'd planned to be, but delaying this film helped me line it up with some Rolling Stones anniversaries, according to "Today in Rock History".  On August 1, 1994, The Rolling Stones turned down an invitation from President Bill Clinton to play at the White House.  Well, I guess they made up for that in 2006 by letting Clinton introduce their show at the Beacon Theater. On August 1, 2013, the Stones charted their 50th LP on the Billboard 200 albums chart when "Hyde Park Live" debuted at #19.

Also, you won't see this in the history books, but the insiders will know this one - August 1, 2006 was the day that Keith Richards fell off the branch of a dead tree in Fiji, and suffered a head injury.  He died the next day, but his reanimated corpse continued to tour with the Stones and play guitar for...well, it's been 14 years now and counting.  So that's a sad story, but it kind of has a happy ending, right?

Dick Cavett carries over from "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" via archive footage.  I hate to make a connection like this, through archive footage alone, but it still counts.  I could have scheduled this one before based on appearances of Martin Scorsese, but I didn't want to break up the flow with Bob Dylan movies leading in to movies about The Band.  Anyway, Scorsese also directed "Rolling Thunder Revue" and "The Last Waltz", and I wanted to get one more rock doc from Marty in here before I get back to fiction films.

THE PLOT: A career-spanning documentary on The Rolling Stones, with concert footage from their "A Bigger Bang" tour.

AFTER: Perhaps the reason that I skipped this film two years ago, when I watched the other Stones concert films, was that it wasn't available - not for free, anyway.  It's still $3.99 to rent this one on AmazonPrime, and it's $3.99 on iTunes, too.  But I watched it today for FREE on www.documentaryarea.tv - and maybe you can, too, if you want to play along at home.  Sometimes I just don't understand the pricing structure on streaming platforms - does it make sense to charge money for a movie on one site and then give it away on another?  Why would anyone pay for something that they can get for free?  How would a store in the real world stay in business if the store down the street was giving away the same product it was selling?  And why do I have to Google search every movie online just to compare prices?  Why can't I just see the movie I want, when I want it, and know where to look for it?  One day somebody's going to organize the internet properly in a way that makes sense - this is long overdue.

Early in the film, during the set-up portion, there seems to be much debate over the set-list.  Which songs are the Stones going to play?  (Umm, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say probably "Start Me Up" and "Satisfaction", call me crazy.). But I guess the director, Scorsese, needed to know what song was going to be FIRST out of the gate, so he could start telling the camera operators what to do, whether to open on Keith's guitar solo or Mick coming out on stage like a model at a Paris runway show.  It's important, sure, but they just happened to have a camera RIGHT THERE when the director gets the final set-list, mere moments before the concert starts?  After watching "Rolling Thunder Revue" I now don't know whether to trust Scorsese when he's making a concert film, because this seems like a very set-up sort of moment to include.  Maybe he didn't get the set list early enough according to his arbitrary schedule, and he wanted to include a jab at Jagger for taking so damn long.

There also seemed to be a concern during set up about the lights that were needed for the IMAX shoot at the Beacon Theater.  Because we really needed every single wrinkle in Mick and Keith's faces to be well lit, I get that.  But the fear was, apparently, that too much light would somehow burn Jagger up, and he'd crumble to dust like a 3,000 year old mummy if you took away the mystical scarab that brought it back to life.  OK, this does sound a bit believable, I'll admit.  But let's get real, these men have hides like leather by now, and they're dressed like the outcasts from a "Mad Max" movie, all overcoats and scarves, so I think they're going to be OK under the harsh lighting - you just can't take these guys down, I think they could even go like a week without water if they needed to.

I'm not saying the Stones are old, but I think if you added up the ages of everyone who was in the audience at this Beacon Theater concert, would that total be greater than the combined ages of the four original Rolling Stones on the stage?  I mean, there were a LOT of people in this audience, but most of them seemed to be in their twenties, so it may be a wash.  And if you saw Charlie Watts at a senior living center, even if he was playing the drums at that senior center, outside of the context of a Rolling Stones concert, you'd probably just assume that he lived there, right?  And again, this was back in 2006, they've added another 14 years since then, and they're still going.  Jagger had some kind of heart valve surgery last year, then posted a video of him doing some signature moves, I guess to prove he was ready to go on tour again.  Did that happen before Covid-19 shut down all rock and roll touring, in addition to all movie production?  I'm not sure.  Maybe the Stones are really done this time, because even if concerts start up again, they're all in that high-risk age group.

But let's get back to the set list for a minute.  They went for some deep cuts here, some from "Exile on Main St." that I didn't know, like "Loving Cup" and "All Down the Line", and "Far Away Eyes" and "Some Girls" from the album, umm, "Some Girls".  Yes, I'm sort of outing myself as a casual Stones fan, again I have all their Greatest Hits albums, plus only "Steel Wheels" and "Stripped", the latter of which was their version of the "Unplugged" trend that was very popular in the late 90's and early 2000's. ("Stripped" contains their cover of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and I go back and forth over whether this was incredibly ironic, or extremely appropriate.  But the lesser-known Stones songs that I know are all on "Stripped", like "Slipping Away", "The Spider and the Fly" and "Sweet Virginia".).

I didn't know "You Got the Silver", either, but that one has Keith singing lead, so there's the explanation for that.  Jagger needed more breaks, I guess?  Did he get tired jumping around during "She's So Hot", which I think was a solo hit for Jagger, released during that break-up period known affectionately as World War III?  I guess those Jagger/Richards peace accords were successful after all, which is why solo material (though co-written by both parties) was included here.  There were nods to Muddy Waters ("Champagne & Reefer", with Buddy Guy as a guest) and The Temptations ("Just My Imagination").  I can't say that I enjoyed the weird harmonies that Christina Aguilera was generating on "Live With Me" - Jack White did a much better job getting in synch with Jagger on "Loving Cup".

All this kind of goes to explain why there was no room for "Gimme Shelter"?  That seems like a damn shame - after "Sympathy for the Devil" that's one of my favorites to hear in a Stones concert.  Plus it's been featured in nearly every Martin Scorsese movie, from "Goodfellas" to "The Departed", right?  It's really odd that it wasn't in this one.  Personally, I'd prefer "Gimme Shelter" over "Shattered", "Tumbing Dice" or any of those deeper cuts, but I guess you can't have everything.

Still, it's a killer concert captured in great detail.  As I mentioned, many people saw this in IMAX, and I remember all the jokes about whether or not we all needed to see the Stones that large, and in such detail.  I found it to be perfectly fine on the smaller screen - my computer - and maybe a little less scary that way.  Look, I'm glad the Stones were still going strong in their early 60's, and if I do the math Jagger was 73 at the time of "Havana Moon", but when are they going to pack it in?  Everyone else that old retired already, except for Paul McCartney and David Crosby.  It's not a competition, guys, although I guess on some level it sort of is.  Just give the longevity award to the Stones already and be done with it, I say.  I guess they just keep on going, because they all have child support payments to make - and Mick turned 77 just a few days ago!

OK, I'll admit I was kidding about the Keith Richards being dead, but for real, this was the concert where Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records and Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, fell down backstage and suffered a head injury on a concrete floor in the VIP area.  At first I didn't understand how you go on and do a show when something like that happens, but it turns out he died about six weeks later, in December 2016.  This accident happened on day 1 of the concert, but it turned out that the film only used musical performances from day 2, so maybe there was just a lot of bad mojo on October 29, right before Halloween - and the 2nd recording day was moved to November 1 because Mick Jagger had a sore throat.

Also starring Mick Jagger (last seen in "Filmworker"), Keith Richards (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Charlie Watts (ditto), Ronnie Wood (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Darryl Jones (last seen in "The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon"), Chuck Leavell (ditto), Bernard Fowler (ditto), Bobby Keys (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"), Lisa Fischer, Blondie Chaplin, Christina Aguilera (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Buddy Guy, Jack White, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Blood Diamond"), Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), and Martin Scorsese (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), with cameos from Bruce Willis (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Albert Maysles, and archive footage of Brian Jones (also last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Bill Wyman (ditto).

RATING: 7 out of 10 Friends of Bill

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Year 12, Day 213 - 7/31/20 - Movie #3,619

BEFORE: I'm past the halfway point of the big Summer Rock Music Concert (and Documentary) series - 8 films to go before I can get back on narrative movies, and we're near the end of July, with still no definite word that theaters are going to open up in August.  And even if they do, nobody's really sure if people will even want to go to the movies, not until there's a vaccine.  Hollywood is definitely feeling the pain, since theaters have been closed for four months, and I hear that there are some films becoming hits on the drive-in circuit, but they're little sleeper hits, not exactly the big-budget movies I want to see.  So while it feels like I've been using the pandemic to play a lot of catch-up, once theaters open up again then I think the whole industry is going to have to play catch-up on a larger level.  There will be a rush to complete the films that were only half-finished when the shutdown happened, plus there's a stockpile of films that have had their release dates pushed back several times.  Marvel's Phase IV is now set to be completed in the year 2035, I think.

But I can't change the release calendar myself, so I just have to be ready to adapt to whatever happens in the next month.  I'm going to make it to the end of Movie Year 12 no matter what, and as best as I can determine, it's going to be another Perfect Year, no matter what.  (Some people still seem unclear on the concept, it's a 300-long chain of movies, linked by actor or real person, that starts on New Year's and, with a bit of planning and luck, extends to Christmas).

Like with today's film, John Lennon (and several others, I assume) carries over from "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky".

I'm going to call this the final film of July, for reasons explained below, so that means I get to print the format round-up for July's 31 movies:

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Faster, In America, Blood Diamond, Seventh Son, Charlie's Angels (2019), Serenity (2019), Fool's Gold, The Gentlemen, The Lincoln Lawyer, Frailty, The Lookout, David Crosby: Remember My Name
2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Sphere, The U.S. vs. John Lennon
6 watched on Netflix: Dolemite Is My Name, The Laundromat, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Echo in the Canyon, John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky
2 watched on iTunes: Brick, The Last Waltz
5 watched on Amazon Prime: Supercon, 7500, Hot Rod, Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band & the Basement Tapes, Sound City
2 watched on Hulu: The Beach Bum, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
1 watched on Disney+: Lady and the Tramp (2019),
1 watched on Tubi: Time Lapse
31 TOTAL

THE PLOT: A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an anti-war activist.

AFTER: I've decided to count this film as my movie for July 31, meaning I skipped a day - I'm going to be skipping several more days in August, because I'm really ahead of the count, ahead of where I need to be for the year.  Some of this happened because of the pandemic, like many other people I've had more time on my hands over the last few months than I knew what to do with - so if it made sense to double up on movies to make my schedule align better with the calendar, or with current events, or just to put the right movie on a big hundred-movie mark, that's what I've done.  Well, now it's time to pay the piper.

There are some Beatles anniversaries to celebrate today, according to "Today in Rock History", so that's encouraging me to move this one forward on the calendar - plus this will be my 31st movie in the month of July, which has 31 days.  So this is just a little adjustment to get me back on track.  According to my latest count I've now got 45 (or maybe 47) movies to watch in August and September, and that's 61 days.  So I have to spread them out somehow, I can't watch a movie a day in August or I'll run out of slots.  I've either got to take a week off in each month, or space the films out some other way.  But that's a problem to solve down the road, as is how to spend my time on those nights off.

But for now, let's get to the rock anniversaries. On July 31, 1968, the Beatles laid down the tracks for "Hey Jude" on Day 1 of a two-day recording session. On the next day, a 36-piece orchestra was added. Also related to the documentaries watched recently - on July 31, 1980, John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas was arrested on drug charges, and sentenced to 8 years in prison, which was later reduced to 30 days, plus community service.  Coincidentally, on July 31, 1967, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger appealed their sentences on drug charges, having been arrested in the previous February,  Keith got his conviction overturned and Mick had his three-month sentence reduced to a conditional discharge.  That's funny, John Lennon talked in today's film about being arrested in the U.K. for drug possession, and I wonder if that happened at the same time as Mick and Keith.

And just last year, on July 31, 2019, Woodstock's 50th Annversary concert was officially cancelled, after the organizers couldn't pull the concert together, just two weeks before it was scheduled to begin.  I sort of remember this, first there were all sorts of companies trying to sign acts for some kind of anniversary show, this one lost funding and THAT one said that the other one had no right to use the name "Woodstock", and all parties involved just couldn't come together to mark the occasion - at one point they were talking to acts like Santana, John Fogerty, John Sebastian, Canned Heat, David Crosby and The Zombies, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  Peace and love go right out the window when there are several promoters competing to sign acts to host a concert to celebrate peace and love, I guess.

Speaking about all that, today's film is all about John Lennon transforming himself from a musician to an activist, and the fact that those two things aren't mutually exclusive.  How did the man who sang that "All You Need Is Love" come to get involved with protest marches, just a few years later?  Well, as he explained on one of the many talk shows he appeared on in the early 1970's, he was still a non-violent man, but he believed in peaceful protests, and felt that with the platform he'd been given, he simply had to speak out against the American involvement in Vietnam.  History ultimately proved Lennon correct, the U.S. had no business to risk its own citizens' lives for a war that had little purpose, no clear goals and even less direction.  Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but plenty of people were saying that back then, too, only the government chose not to listen to reason.  Sound familiar?

I can't help but wonder if it's more than coincidence that I'm watching films about protest marches, some for civil rights or against the administration, or both.  It's very much like 2020 is a reflection of those times - however, back then it was a different time, and when a President got caught doing something terribly wrong, something that flew in the face of decency and fair play among the two parties, Nixon at least had the common decency to resign before he could be removed from office.  God damn it, I never thought that in my lifetime I'd wish for a return to the politics of Nixon, but I'll champion his decision to step down and put the country before his own ego, his own individual needs.  Are you listening, Orange Julius?  Nixon knew his goose was cooked, that he was a dirty man who'd done a bad thing, and at least he was willing to admit it and give up the Presidency - so our current leader is either dumber than Nixon, or dirtier, or perhaps both.

But before I could move forward from yesterday's film on the production of "Imagine" in 1971, first I had to go back - this film starts with the Beatles on the top of the charts, only Lennon had made some comment in an interview about how the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, which may very well have been true, at least among the younger crowd.  But the older religious folks didn't care for the comment, because it sounded like bragging, or that Lennon was placing the Beatles somehow higher than Jesus in prominence, only that wasn't really what he meant.  Still, some people were burning their Beatles records, while others were still buying them, and possibly some people were buying the albums just to burn them, which was counter-productive.  (Sorry, old Rutles joke.)

Lennon issued a retraction and tried to explain his earlier comments, but in many ways, the damage was done.  Meanwhile rifts were forming between the various members of the Beatles, as discussed in yesterday's film, and all of the other Beatles were getting married for the first time, except for John, who was instead getting divorced from Cynthia, and had taken up with Yoko.  While it's great that John found a creative partner to make art with (gee, I can't see how that would have made Paul mad) it didn't help when he brought her into the recording studio to make nonsensical sound compositions like "Revolution No. 9".  Some fans started calling her the "Fifth Beatle", when we all know that the Fifth Beatle was really Eric Clapton.  No, wait, Stuart Sutcliffe.  Wait, George Martin.  Pete Best?  Wait, the walrus was Paul, according to "Glass Onion", even though John sang lead on "I Am the Walrus".  George had two songs on each album, carry the Ringo and... now even I'm confused.

But I don't think Yoko broke up the Beatles, I think the Beatles were headed that way anyway, she only maybe sped up the process.  I'm more upset that Yoko broke up John & Yoko years later, when John moved away to live with May Pang for a year, but this film, like yesterday's, also forgets to mention that little fact.  "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" skips ahead from 1973, when Lennon got his green card, to the birth of son Sean in 1975, and then it's right on to his assassination in 1980, never mentioning the year he lived away from Yoko Ono.  Sorry, did that not fit in with the narrative somebody wanted, where he was always a faithful husband and loving father?  From July 1973 to December 1974, Lennon split his time between Yoko in New York and May Pang in Los Angeles, and what's weird is that John stopped taking calls form Yoko in December 1974, then he met with her in January 1975, when she claimed she'd found a cure for smoking.  After an apparent hypnotherapy session, Lennon told May Pang that his separation from Yoko was over, and May said that he appeared brainwashed.  It's all a bit odd.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself.  This film really gets going after John & Yoko moved out of the Tittenhurst Park estate and into the Dakota in New York City, and Lennon started getting involved in activist causes, first was a concert/rally in Michigan for John Sinclair, a man who'd been incarcerated with a ten-year sentence for possession of two joints, and Lennon sang a song about his case - OK, that's really not on the same level as "Hurricane" Carter, but I guess it's a start.  Bobby Seale also spoke at that rally, and before long, Lennon was on TV talk shows saying what nice people some of those Black Panthers are. This, plus the release of the song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", along with the anti-war billboards that John and Yoko financed, put Lennon on the radar of the Nixon administration, and J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI started a file.  It also probably didn't help that right after the amendment was passed to lower the voting age to 18, Lennon began planning a series of concerts to try to reach all those new young voters.

Thus began a four-year attempt to have Lennon deported, with the Nixon administration using the flimsy excuse of his prior drug charges in the U.K., but come on already, all rock stars smoked pot back then, you'd be hard-pressed to find one who didn't - even the squarest Beatle, Paul, got arrested for pot while on tour in Japan, right?  Plus the INS issues waivers all the time for artists and musicians who make great contributions to society, and if Lennon's music doesn't qualify him for that, then I don't know who would qualify. So it was a bunch of B.S., but it was B.S. that they had to fight in court, so John & Yoko hired a great immigration lawyer.  Most people get to call themselves New Yorkers just by showing up there, but Lennon was denied permanent residency until 1976, plus he was probably on all sorts of FBI watch-lists, labeled as a radical or an anarchist or a "peace-nik".  Well, they sort of got two out of three right, but Lennon's proposed Revolution was always meant to be a non-violent one, OK?

Despite everything that was wrong with Nixon, despite everyone knowing deep down that he was dirty and corrupt, he still won re-election in 1972.  (Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself too much.) Bad news for America, and bad news for Lennon, who was depressed and turned to drinking after George McGovern lost.  Hey, perhaps this had something to do with Lennon's 18-month "lost weekend" with May Pang...or maybe he was just tired of Yoko.  Either way, there was no good news on the immigration front until Nixon stepped down as President in August 1974.  You see, America, changing Presidents makes everything better!  It solved John Lennon's problems, and it can solve yours, too!

I wish the film had just stopped in 1975, with the birth of Lennon's second child - I mean, we all know what happened in 1980, there's no need to deal with that in an exploitative manner.  A simple graphic on the screen explaining Lennon's death would have been fine, playing the news of the day as reported by Walter Cronkite drives the point home, sure, but I think that's overkill, not necessary.  I'm all for not sugar-coating things, but why mention Lennon's death and not, say, his affair?  I guess a documentary is just as much about what's left out as it is about what's left in, but I think also a director can't have it both ways, if you're going to take the bad with the good you can't just include some of the bad parts.  But I guess the affair doesn't fit in with the intended narrative, which is to portray Lennon as only a victim?

OK, it's now been a couple days since my last big Summer Music Concert, so I promise to get back to that tomorrow.

Also starring Yoko Ono, Tariq Ali, Elliot Mintz, Dan Richter (all carrying over from "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky"), Stew Albert, Carl Bernstein, Chris Charlesworth, Noam Chomsky, Walter Cronkite (last heard in "The Irishman"), Mario Cuomo, Angela Davis, John Dean, Felix Dennis, David Fenton, Bob Gruen, Ron Kovic, Paul Krassner, G. Gordon Liddy, George McGovern, Geraldo Rivera, John C. Ryan, Bobby Seale, John Sinclair, Tom Smothers, M. Wesley Swearingen, Joe Treen, Gore Vidal, Jon Wiener, Leon Wildes

with archive footage of Dick Cavett, Mike Douglas, Gloria Emerson, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Richard Nixon, Ringo Starr (all carrying over from "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky"), John Chancellor, Betty Ford, Gerald Ford (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story"), H.R. Haldeman, Abbie Hoffman, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Sean Lennon, Martin Luther King (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), John Mitchell, Pat Nixon, Jerry Rubin, Bob Seger, Strom Thurmond, Stevie Wonder.

RATING: 5 out of 10 press conferences in bed

John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky

Year 12, Day 211 - 7/29/20 - Movie #3,618

BEFORE: Let's kick things off tonight with "This Day in Rock History", because there's a lot to get to.  First off, July 29 is the anniversary of Bob Dylan's (alleged) motorcycle accident in 1966 - however, as I've learned in several documentaries, and written about here already, this was probably just a ruse for Dylan to get away from the press for a while, and mentally recover from the booing received on his half-electric tour with The Band.  Plus, only a few months after breaking several vertebrae, he was making the basement tapes with The Band?  Gotta call B.S. on this injury.

But also on July 29, 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary released their cover of Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind", which got all the way to #2 on the U.S. singles chart.  And on July 29, 1968, Gram Parsons left The Byrds, just before a scheduled tour of South Africa, because he didn't want to play for segregated audiences.  Parsons had basically joined the Byrds in early 1968 to replace David Crosby, then left a few months later and formed the Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman.  And on July 29, 1974, Cass Elliot died after a heart attack, although false rumors would persist for many years that she died from choking while eating a ham sandwich.

But since today's film is about John Lennon, let's get to some Lennon-related anniversaries.  On July 29, 1965, the Beatles' second feature film, "Help!", premiered in England. Critics reviewed it as worse than "A Hard Day's Night", but I personally maintain that "Help!" has better songs.  There, I said it - but I'm more of a "Rubber Soul" fan, and "Help!" was their album right before "Rubber Soul", if I remember correctly.  And on July 29, 2005, John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for "All You Need Is Love" sold at a London auction to an anonymous bidder for $1 million.

Drummer Jim Keltner, who played on the "Jealous Guy" track of the "Imagine" album, carries over as an interview subject from "Sound City", but Lennon also carries over via archive footage.

THE PLOT: The untold story behind John Lennon's 1971 album "Imagine", exploring the creative collaboration between Lennon and Yoko Ono, featuring interviews and never-seen-before footage.

AFTER: Yesterday's film was all about the recording of famous albums, so that theme continues in today's film, which focuses on the recording sessions for the "Imagine" album, mostly at John & Yoko's estate in Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire, UK.  Much effort and expense went into converting one of the mansion's rooms into a sound studio, and then shortly after "Imagine" was recorded, John & Yoko moved to New York City.  So was that money well spent?  I guess that depends on who bought the estate next, it would be great if that person was in a band and needed to record an album.  (Ah, it turns out John sold it to Ringo, who lived there for the next 15 years...). For good measure, the non-story about releasing "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" in late 1971 is also included here.

I was only about 3 years old when "Imagine" came out, so I barely knew much of anything, let alone who the Beatles were or what they were doing in their solo careers - that came later for me, after I went through the obligatory Beatles phase in college. My roommate was a hardcore Beatles fan, more than me, and he had a lot of the solo albums, and he turned me on to "How Do You Sleep?", which is a track from the "Imagine" album that's a direct attack on McCartney.  Already this week I've seen the feuds that broke up The Birds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, but those guys had nothing on the rift between Lennon and McCartney in the early 1970's.  Hell, East Coast vs West Coast rappers had nothing on them.  To be fair, McCartney started things by poking fun at Lennon on his solo album "Ram", with the song "Too Many People", and having appeared in full-page advertisements with his wife Linda in which they wore clown costumes and were wrapped up in a bag.  (Yoko's thing was to sing while inside a bag, or be interviewed while inside a bag, or make an interviewer get inside a bag.  Yeah, the 1960's were weird, and Yoko was a big part of that.)

You can hear the references to "bagism" in three different Lennon/Beatles songs - obviously in "Give Peace a Chance", there's the line about how "everybody's talking about bagism, shagism, dragism, madism, ragism, tagism..." only really, nobody was talking about baptism except to say how stupid it was.  Later in "Come Together", there's the mysterious line about "He bag production, he got walrus gumboot..."  Bag Productions, Ltd. was the name of John & Yoko's company used for making films, books, and other media ventures.  And then in the Beatles song "The Ballad of John & Yoko", there's a line that goes "Made a lightning trip to Vienna / Eating chocolate cake in a bag".  All these years I've been picturing two people eating a piece of cake from a bag, and only now do I realize that both people were probably INSIDE the bag, eating cake.  Big difference.

Lennon managed to get both George Harrison and Ringo Starr to play on tracks on the "Imagine" album, it's almost like Mum and Dad were trying to win over the kids.  George and Ringo probably didn't care, as long as they got to play on both Paul and John's solo albums, that was probably like having two Christmases when your parents get divorced.  The album also famously contains the protest anthems "Gimme Some Truth" and "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier, Mama, I Don't Wanna Die", plus "Crippled Inside", "It's So Hard" and finally, "Jealous Guy", which had been written in 1968 and recorded during the "White Album" sessions, I think, only they had so much material back then that they couldn't even fit it all on a double album, and by then George and Ringo were fighting to get their songs included too, so as part of the negotiations, John got to keep "Yer Blues" and "Sexy Sadie" on the White Album, but had to give up on "Jealous Guy" in favor of some George Harrison song like "Long, Long, Long" or "Savoy Truffle".  Ringo only had written one song for the double album, but it was "Don't Pass Me By", and that's a keeper.  But why did John favor his songs "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" (terrible) and the co-Yoko production "Revolution No. 9" (even worse than terrible) when he had "Jealous Guy" ready to go?  Maybe it just wasn't the right album for "Jealous Guy".

But you all showed up tonight to learn about "Imagine", didn't you?  Surprised to find out that John didn't realize he had a hit on his hands?  He apparently played the track for all of his friends and employees to get their opinions on it - they're all interviewed here, and every single one of them says they knew it was a number one song as soon as they heard it - so why didn't JOHN know that?  Or were they all just blowing smoke up his arse?  Remember, he was paying all these people for various things - photographer, assistant, secretary, driver - why wouldn't they say they liked the boss's new song?

There's an awful lot of anti-Yoko sentiment among some Beatles fans - but while she's not credited as a co-writer on the song "Imagine", there's clear evidence here that she, essentially, wrote the song.  Yoko had released a book of poetry called "Grapefruit", and the poems mainly consisted of instructions or tips for living that made no sense, such as: "Hide and Seek: Hide until everyone goes home. Hide until everyone forgets about you.  Hide until everyone else dies."  Um, OK, sounds like fun.  But many of these little thinkpiece poems began with the word "Imagine" - like:

"Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in. Spring 1963."

or this one:

"Imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time. Let them shine for one hour.  Then, let them gradually melt into the sky.  Make one tuna fish sandwich and eat. 1964 Spring."

Well, it doesn't seem like a big leap from there to "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try."  Does it? I think John just took some of Yoko's poems and cleaned them up a bit, made them rhyme, and drew some illogical conclusions about the results, and there's your song.  Lennon later said that he really should have shared songwriting credit with Yoko, but hey, community property, so does it really matter in the end?

I say "Illogical conclusions" because I think the song "Imagine" represents a really naive, almost childlike view of how to fix the world.  And remember, this was a time in history where there were many protests going on against a never-ending war, marches for civil rights and calls for an evil President to be removed from office - but you kids today wouldn't know anything about all that, now, would you. (I'm being facetious, of course, but where are the good protest songs for 2020?  Where's the millennial Bob Dylan?  Where's the next John Lennon when we need one, desperately?)

So as you might expect, some people in the early 1970's had some issues with Lennon singing "Imagine there's no heaven" and naturally assumed he was anti-God.  He may have been, but didn't he have a right to be?  How come some people can accept any religion except the lack of religion?  Or respect a different God, but not the lack of God?  Same goes for "Imagine there's no country..." - did he just say that?  Is he Anti-American, Anti-Britain?  Damn, I love my country, where does this limey bastard get off, suggesting that we'd be better off without countries?

My issues begin with the fact that "Imagine" makes some leaps in logic that I don't think are valid.  Even if you could get everyone to "Imagine there's no heaven" that doesn't mean that everyone is immediately going to start living for today.  Hell, I'm not ready to pack it in, I've got to keep working for another 20 or 30 years if I'm going to plan for retirement!  Live for today?  Man, I've got work tomorrow, and the kids have a doctor's appointment, I can't stop and live for today.  And if we could "Imagine there's no country" does that mean that there will suddenly be "nothing to kill or die for"?  Have you seen the same people as I have?  Even if you take away countries and borders, they're still going to find something to kill each other over, you can count on that.

Then we come to "Imagine no possessions", does that mean that everyone will suddenly be sharing all the world?  Doubtful.  You're just never going to get everyone on board with this, everybody loves stuff. I love owning stuff, I have trouble parting with stuff, I want to own all the stuff.  Plus, there's a bit of hypocrisy involved when the man singing "Imagine no possessions" has an estate in Tittenhurst Park and his own recording studio.  OK, let's imagine giving up our possessions, only you go first, John Lennon.

It's clearly part of Yoko's childlike thinking - which shortly thereafter produced the famous lyric "War is Over / If you want it."  Really?  Is that all it takes to end a war, just wanting it?  A lot of people wanted the Vietnam War to be over, for many years, and it seems like wanting that didn't make it happen.  Oh, you meant eventually, or in theory?  Sure, you have to want something to happen before you can make it happen, but this still seems like a gross oversimplification of global politics.  Artists, man, they're so crazy.

There's even more hypocrisy, I think, evident in "Jealous Guy", which is all about Lennon loving Yoko so much that he felt jealous - umm, right? Actually, now that I research it a little, it seems that "Jealous Guy" was originally called "Child of Nature", and it was inspired by the same lecture from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that also inspired McCartney's song "Mother Nature's Son".  But as stated above, there were too many songs to fit on the White Album, so "Mother Nature's Son" was in and "Child of Nature" was out.  Lennon changed the lyrics during the "Get Back" sessions and the song became "Jealous Guy", and then it became about being apologetic over his failings as a husband.

But didn't Lennon sort of break up with Yoko in 1973, and have a year-long affair with May Pang?  How do we reconcile his jealousy and calls for forgiveness, when it was so easy for him later to fall in love with someone else and take time off from Yoko?  (It's possible that he could put up with Yoko's nonsense for longer than most people could, but come on, everyone has their limits.).  John and Yoko got back together in 1974, and we now look back on their relationship as one of the great love stories of that time, but somehow that's not the whole story.  Many of the documentaries seem to ignore stuff like this or sweep it all under the rug, but I'm trying to stay in touch with reality here.

The most chilling scene in "Above Us Only Sky", though, is a sequence in which a Vietnam veteran shows up at John and Yoko's estate, the man's name was Curt Claudio, and he'd been writing to Lennon for some time, because he felt that in some of Lennon's records, he was speaking directly to him through the radio, or turntable or whatever.  Then this guy came all the way to England and tracked down Lennon's address and just arrived one day, and Lennon met with him and had a conversation, trying to dispel the notion that any messages in the songs were directly addressing Curt, or giving him life lessons or secret instructions, or anything of that nature.  (A similar thing had happened in the late 1960's with Charles Manson and the song "Helter Skelter", and that didn't end well.). But Lennon met with the man, talked him down, and then invited him in for breakfast.  It's not too far of a mental leap from Curt Claudio to Mark David Chapman, but that's how Lennon apparently was when talking with his fans - and some of his fans were a little dazed and confused.

So there you go, we've learned a lot today - Paul McCartney and John Lennon feuded in the early 1970's, Yoko Ono actually wrote the lyrics to "Imagine", John Lennon had a year-long affair in 1973, and some of Lennon's fans were crazy and potentially dangerous, but he let them get too close.  Good work, everyone, I'll meet you back here tomorrow for our next exploration into revisionist rock and roll history.  Remember, Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident wasn't really that bad.

Also starring Yoko Ono (last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band & the Basement Tapes"), Julian Lennon (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me"), Tariq Ali, David Bailey, Ray Connolly (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today...Sgt. Pepper and Beyond"), Jack Douglas, John Dunbar, Douglas Ibold, Elliot Mintz, Kieron Murphy, Dan Richter, Allan Steckler, Eddie Veale, Klaus Voormann (last seen in "Concert for George"), Alan White,

with archive footage of John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr (all carrying over from "Sound City"), Phil Spector (last seen in "Private Life"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Eric Clapton (ditto), Curt Claudio, Mike Douglas (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Gloria Emerson, Mal Evans, David Frost, Nicky Hopkins, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story"), Jack Palance (last heard in "The Swan Princess"), David A. Ross, Andy Warhol (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind").

RATING: 6 out of 10 eggs on toast

Sound City

Year 12, Day 210 - 7/28/20 - Movie #3,617

BEFORE: Neil Young carries over from "David Crosby: Remember My Name", and so does one Beatle and one member of the Grateful Dead.  This is my 8th film in the big Summer Rock Concert (and Documentary) series, and so far Neil Young's in the lead for most appearances, tied with Ringo Starr.  This is Mr. Young's 6th appearance in a row, either being interviewed or seen in archive concert footage.  Some of those appearances have been uncredited, but I've been keeping track and submitting updates to the IMDB each day as I go along, which is just something I do to make my little corner of the universe a bit more organized.

I did say that things might change very rapidly once I hit the documentaries - there's been a real bottleneck in the competition for most appearances this year, Robert De Niro, Maya Rudolph and Owen Wilson are tied with eight, and I expect Matthew McConaughey to join them - but keep your eye on Ringo Starr, I think.  The Beatles have their way of turning up in archive footage again and again, because it always comes back to the Beatles, doesn't it?  Right behind with 5 appearances are George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn and Joni Mitchell.  And tonight both Lennon and McCartney move up to 4, to tie David Crosby, Ronnie Hawkins and most of The Band. John and Paul will probably move up further in the rankings, based on what films are coming up next.

THE PLOT: A documentary on the fabled recording studio that was located in Van Nuys, California.

AFTER: There's a little something for everybody in this documentary about the Sound City recording studio, which of course speaks to the wide variety of artists who have recorded there over the years, despite the Yelp! reviews which have no doubt classified the place as "a dump, but one of the better dumps" - and even then, someone was perhaps being charitable.  If you like classic rock, that's the place where Neil Young recorded "After the Gold Rush" and Fleetwood Mac recorded their first album with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.  If you like your music on the softer side, Barry Manilow recorded one album there, and if you enjoy the harder stuff, let's talk about Black Sabbath and Dio, plus Ratt and the Pixies, then later Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer and Rage Against the Machine.

I'm just not a hardcore guy, my tastes range a bit to the softer side,  so for me personally it's a delight to see bands like Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon and Rick Springfield mentioned in the same documentary with those acts listed above.  The Speedwagon just doesn't get enough love - when my wife and I made a push in the early 2000's to go to rock concerts, to see all the bands we'd previously missed out on, like Styx and Jethro Tull and Meat Loaf, after we saw Boston live then REO was the band on the top of my list, and I've seen them live twice now, once with Styx and once with Chicago. Bucket list items crossed off, for sure.  Also, every year I make a Christmas Mix CD to mail out with my cards, and the last few years I've bounced back and forth between classic rock and alternative themes.  Last year's mix was arranged as a "Classic Rock Beach Party X-Mas", and I had tracks from Cheap Trick, REO, Jackson Browne, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Rick Springfield, Ringo Starr, and Bob Dylan, among others (Yes, Bob Dylan made a Christmas album, check it out if you don't believe me.  It's mostly terrible but I found his rendition of "Silver Bells" to be acceptable.).  But suddenly I'm realizing that this year's documentary chain has accidentally reunited those bands, or perhaps I've just gravitated back to a similar classic rock line-up.  Also, I'm reminded that I should probably start thinking about this year's Christmas mix, it's still July, but it's never too early to pick tracks.

Anyway, "Sound City".  Honestly, I would have been pleased if this documentary had just supplied a rundown of all the great albums that have been recorded there over the decades, like:

Grateful Dead - "Terrapin Station"
Fleetwood Mac - "Rumours"
REO Speedwagon - "You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish", "Good Trouble"
Foreigner - "Double Vision"
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Damn the Torpedoes", "Southern Accents", "Wildflowers"
Pat Benatar - "Precious Time"
Cheap Trick - "Heaven Tonight"
Rick Springfield - "Living in Oz", "Hard to Hold"
Ronnie James Dio - "Holy Diver"
RATT - "Out of the Cellar"
Nirvana - "Nevermind"
Blind Melon - "Blind Melon"
Rage Against the Machine - "Rage Against the Machine"
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "One Hot Red Minute"
The Black Crowes - "America"

The list goes on from there, but once they get into bands like Tool, Rancid, Slipknot, Wolfmother and Arctic Monkeys, I'm afraid I'm out of my element.  You crazy kids today, with the rock music, and the crowd-surfing and the tattoos and the piercings, I just don't know.  I swore I wouldn't grow up to sound like my grandparents, but then again, I don't think my grandparents even would know who Fleetwood Mac was, they'd probably think it was a sandwich from McDonald's.  That list of albums above was enough to impress me, but if you prefer more modern music, that's fine too, just turn it down or put on some headphones so I don't have to hear it.

What happened to Sound City was, the studio's fortunes seemed to rise and fall with the musical trends over the years, and for some reason they weren't content to just be a studio, they were signing acts like a record company would, hoping one would break big - but the only one that did was Rick Springfield, and even he left for new management after marrying the studio's receptionist.  The Laurel Canyon crowd rushed in to record in the same studio that Neil Young and the Grateful Dead used, and then things got quiet until the 1980's, when bands rushed in to record in the same studio that Tom Petty and Cheap Trick used.  Then things got really quiet, but when Nirvana's "Nevermind" hit, guess what happened?  Along came all the grunge and hard-rock acts, and that was enough to keep the studio going for another decade or so.

What finally killed the studio was the rise of personal computing, ProTools software on musicians' laptops could finally replicate all the effects of a giant sound-board (Sound City was particularly proud of their giant analog NEVE console, which is larger than the console of the Millennium Falcon, closer to all the ones on the Enterprise combined) but why would anyone pay to record in a big studio when they can futz around on their home computer?  This is like what happened to Kodak film and Technicolor Labs when everyone suddenly had a movie camera on their phone.  Progress is great, but it also sucks and causes collateral damage in unexpected places.  So there's some tragedy here after decades of success, Sound City finally called it a day in 2011.

The film, directed by Dave Grohl, then chooses to focus on Grohl's purchase of that giant analog console - why anyone would want to record on TAPE in this day and age is beyond me, and I'm also wondering why he didn't just buy Sound City altogether, just to keep it running.  But Dave already had his own personal studio, and he moved the console there - then he invited a bunch of recording artists from Sound City's history to come over and record something new on the old NEVE, and he made both an album and a movie out of that, so I guess that high-school dropout did make a solid investment after all.  Though I bet if Grohl just wanted to invite Stevie Nicks, Rick Springfield, Trent Reznor and Paul McCartney over to jam, they probably would have all said "YES" anyway, he's got that kind of clout.  But I can't help thinking that the movie shoot was all an elaborate cover story.

Or, since something similar happened with "Echo in the Canyon", where a straight documentary about music recording history took something of a left turn and became a concert instead.  Don't get me wrong, this is my Big Summer Concert chain, after all, so anything that shifts the focus from dry documentary to live performance should be appreciated, but both movies still feel like odd hybrids.  I suspect somebody, somewhere, gave some advice to these filmmakers along the lines of "Documentaries are dead, nobody watches them, so you've got to find a way to shake the format up, maybe throw in some new music or a live show to get more of the younger kids interested."  That's blatant pandering, of course, but it also makes some sense - the fans of Fleetwood Mac, CCR and The Beatles have been dying off at increasingly faster rates since even before the pandemic, and before long those original Nirvana fans are going to be setting up retirement plans and looking at senior living communities.  Maybe including material for fans of Weezer, Queens of the Stone Age and Slipknot was a shrewd business move that got a few more eyeballs on this doc.  (It's a rental on Amazon Prime, but it's also there for FREE via imdb.com if you're willing to endure a couple of ad breaks.)

Maybe it's fine that Dave Grohl got to make some new recordings with his personal heroes, I won't say that he hasn't earned that right.  But forcing an emotional reunion between these people and a soundboard is an odd direction to take, I think. The resulting songs with Stevie Nicks - "You Can't Fix This" and Rick Springfield - "The Man That Never Was" - sound fine, but the duet with Paul McCartney is somehow a non-starter.  Sure, it's a mind-trip for Grohl and Novoselic to jam with their idol, get that old Nirvana groove back and then look up and see an ex-Beatle in place of Kurt Cobain (!!), but why didn't this collaboration produce a better song?  Most people regard McCartney as a genuinely great songwriter, but it turns out that when you jam with him, you end up with something akin to "Helter Skelter" or "Why Don't We Do it in the Road", where the song really rocks, but the lyrics are pure shit.  Go listen to "Cut Me Some Slack" and tell me you see it differently.

For that matter, I have to point out that the sound mixing on this whole film is pretty horrible - sound mixing is one of those categories nobody understands when the Oscars are given out, except when you hear BAD sound mixing, that's easy to recognize.  Whenever people were talking in this film, I had to crank up the volume, then whenever the music kicked in, I had to quickly lower it again - don't they know my wife is trying to sleep upstairs?  Again, I watched this on Amazon Prime via IMDB.com, so maybe there's a better platform for sound or a better-mixed version out there, but since the whole film is essentially about the production, mixing and transmission of sounds, I really expected better on this front.

While I'm at it, I have to make a confession today - I have zero idea how sound recording works, and I went to film school.  You'd think they would have covered something like this there - I know what a microphone is and how it works, sound goes in over there and then sound waves get transmitted into a machine, but then what?  Tape, digital, vinyl, whatever the format is, I don't get it.  Video, I've got no problem with - I know what a pixel is and I know that a beam of light is moved by magnets left to right and up & down over a screen, many times per second, to create an ever-changing image.  I know how light gets into a camera and chemically changes a piece of film so that after other chemicals are applied to it, lights and darks and colors happen and that image is, ideally, a representation of the light that came into the camera in the first place, but what is up with sound recording?

I don't want to sound stupid here, but what's the sound equivalent of a pixel?  A sound electron?  Going back to audio tape, I think that magnets somehow move electrons around on a piece of audio tape, but how do those electrons represent sound during playback?  And how do they imitate or represent the recorded sound in the first place?  If I go all the way back to vinyl recordings and wax cylinders, sound went into some kind of device and a needle scratched a line into a wax cylinder, but how did that line represent sound?  Then another needle scraped through that line and somehow reproduced the original sound via what, vibrations?  It all sounds so barbaric, did some caveman drag his bone knife through a piece of wax honeycomb, and if so, how did he figure out that would recreate a pleasant noise, or a word from his primitive language?  I've researched this before, and I just can't wrap my brain around it, it's alchemy or magic or something.  Then we get into digital and now a recorded sentence or a song gets turned into a bunch of ones and zeros, but again, HOW?  And how do those ones and zeros get turned back into that sentence or that song?  And now my brain hurts again, I guess some things people who aren't sound engineers were never meant to know.

OK, let me try this for the final time in my life - if I don't understand it now, then I give up.  To make a vinyl record, a microphone converts sound (vibrations) into an electrical signal.  This signal is converted into kinetic energy (vibrations) and cut onto a record's grooves.  During playback, the stylus of the turntable reads these vibrations (as the needle moves through the grooves) and the transducer of the turntable's cartridge converts this back to an electrical signal.  The signal then causes the diaphragm of the speaker to vibrate, producing sound waves that mimic the original sound.  I guess that answers it, except for a few lingering questions - how, how, how and HOW?  And this is the simple explanation? Forget it, this is sorcery or witchcraft at its finest. It's enough that sound engineers understand this, they're the true heroes here.

(EDIT: On This Day in Rock History, Paul McCartney returned to the Cavern Club on July 28, 2018, at the age of 76, to perform a two-hour concert in front of 270 fans.  Some Beatles classics as well as songs from his new album "Egypt Station".  Hey, that's not much of a tie-in, but it's something.)

Also starring Dave Grohl (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Vinny Appice, Frank Black, Lindsey Buckingham, Mike Campbell, Tim Commerford, Kevin Cronin, Rivers Cuomo, Warren DeMartini, Mick Fleetwood, John Fogerty, Neil Giraldo, Chris Goss, Taylor Hawkins, Josh Homme, Alain Johannes, Jim Keltner, Barry Manilow (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Paul McCartney (also last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Rupert Neve, Stevie Nicks, Rick Nielsen, Krist Novoselic, Keith Olsen, Stephen Pearcy, Tom Petty (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Nick Raskulnecz, Trent Reznor, Ross Robinson, Rick Rubin, Jim Scott, Pat Smear, Rick Springfield (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Corey Taylor, Benmont Tench, Lars Ulrich (last seen in "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster"), Butch Vig, Lee Ving, Brad Wilk, Robert Levon Been,

with archive footage of Tony Bennett (last seen in "Selma"), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes"), Kurt Cobain (last seen in "Hype!"), David Coverdale, John Denver, Ronnie James Dio, Jerry Garcia (also last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Jimmy Iovine, Tawny Kitaen, Christine McVie, John McVie, Leonard Nimoy (last seen in "Them!"), Carl Perkins, Michael Richards, Carlos Santana (last seen in "Quincy")

RATING: 5 out of 10 dirty couches

David Crosby: Remember My Name

Year 12, Day 209 - 7/27/20 - Movie #3,616

BEFORE: OK, so this one wasn't part of the original plan either, and I've decided that I have to stop adding documentaries at the last minute, but yet I'm still continuing to do so.  This one's running on Starz on Demand right now, so it's essentially FREE (umm, with my cable bill) and there's another one I'm thinking about adding, "Hitsville: The Making of Motown".

The problem here is, I still don't know when movie theaters are going to open up, or if they will at all during calendar year 2020.  So I was forced today to write out my whole plan for the rest of the year, just to make sure I'm not screwing it up by adding extra documentaries that are available and can be just worked into the chain.  As I said the other day, if I assume for a minute that "The New Mutants" will not get released in August, that actually frees up four slots for me, because I can eliminate the extra films I would have had to add to link to it - and if "Bill & Ted Face the Music" also doesn't get released in time, that will free up two slots, so where do I stand, now that I've added three rock docs already that weren't part of the plan, and I'm thinking about adding two more?

I think everything maybe still could be OK - if theaters open in August I can fit in "Bill & Ted" in August and "Black Widow" in November, but I'll have to drop the last two movies in December to make it work, and I can still end on a Christmas movie.  If theaters open up some time between August and November, I'll also be in good shape, and dropping "Bill & Ted" but keeping "Black Widow" will allow for TWO Christmas movies, assuming nothing else changes between now and then.  And if theaters stay closed past November and I can't see "Black Widow" either in 2020, then I'll have to drop "Hellboy" too, and chart a different course to the end of the year, but I think then I can work in THREE Christmas movies - so things are mostly set in stone, barring any last-minute surprises, and I can adjust the plan to fit the industry's recovery schedule, no matter what it is.

It's good to have a plan, sure, but these days I need to make sure it's a flexible one.  I had high hopes for seeing "The New Mutants" and "Wonder Woman 1984", but as best as I can tell, that's not going to happen for me in 2020, even if theaters open tomorrow - so I'm just trying to salvage what I can from my plans right now and finish the damn year as best as I can.  I thought for a few weeks that maybe I could move "Hellboy" to the start of October, but whatever link I thought I found before, I can't find it again.  And I also tried to re-organize October, but that was a bust, too.

David Crosby carries over from "Echo in the Canyon", and so do a few other Laurel Canyon residents and visitors - I'm at the point where all the movies seem to be drawing from the same group of rock icons via interviews and archive footage, and that could easily allow Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney to beat out all the actors with 8 appearances and win the year.  That could happen, especially if I keep adding rockumentaries.

THE PLOT: Meet David Crosby in this portrait of a man with everything but an easy retirement on his mind.

AFTER: David Crosby is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for his stints in The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash), who, as of 2019, can't get any of his old band-mates to talk to him any more.  Even the last time they played on stage with him, it was all done facing in a different direction, and very few words were exchanged before and after the show.  The explanation for this is quite simple, David Crosby is an asshole, which he freely admits in this documentary.  He's hurt or disappointed nearly everyone in his life, from Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman right on down to his current wife.  But he keeps on making music, because he's much better at music than he is at relationships, and these days he's a solo act out of necessity, because he's burned every bridge he ever crossed.  At one point the interviewer here asks him if he were magically offered joy in his life and home, but had to live his life without music, would he make that trade?  And the answer, of course, is no.  So there's apparently some solace in being talented at something, even if everything that came along with that talent, fame and drugs and money, kept him from forming solid friendship bonds that would stand the test of time.

Considering health problems both caused by and tangential to years of drug addiction, along with being 78 and one of the last surviving members of the rock generation that contained Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and almost every member of The Band, among so many others, he alternates between wondering how much time he has left and questioning how he made it so far in life when so many others didn't.  And it's a valid question, however with it comes a long line of non-productive thinking.  Why did Brian Jones die and how is Keith Richards still alive?  That's something like a Zen koan, there is no answer, other than that the question somehow contains its own answer.

His father was Floyd Crosby, a Hollywood cinematographer who won an Oscar in 1931 and a Golden Globe for his work on "High Noon". David bounced around through a few California high schools and then dropped out of college, like so many people did back then, to pursue a music career.  Like Bob Dylan, he was literally too cool for school.  He joined a couple bands in the Greenwich Village club scene before heading back to Chicago, where he met Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and Gene Clark to form the Jet Set, changing their name to The Byrds, probably around the time the Beatles became a thing. And as David Crosby has told me in THREE documentaries now, when The Byrds played their electric version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", they not only had a hit, this convinced Dylan to go electric.  So this now solves that little mystery behind the Newport Folk Festival incident.

This film has a couple of animated segments, to show us things that happened when there were no cameras present, like McGuinn and Hillman kicking Crosby out of The Byrds.  What happened was, at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Crosby went into a rant about the JFK assassination conspiracy, and the other Byrds didn't think there should be so much politics in a political performance.  Perhaps showing the crowd a graphic presentation of the Zapruder film was a little too much, David.  Then Crosby went to substitute for Neil Young when Buffalo Springfield took the stage, and by that summer the band members were fighting over song selections for the new album, and whether they should record only original materials or keep doing covers.  Either way, Crosby was out.

But as was so well detailed in both "Laurel Canyon" and "History of the Eagles", the 60's music scene was a volatile one - if you took one member of the Byrds, one (later two) from Buffalo Springfield and one from the Hollies, you could form a super-group, and that was Crosby, Stills & Nash.  Neil Young from B.S. later came and left the band, then came and left again, so every once in a while they were CSNY instead of CS&N.  Meanwhile other members of The Byrds formed The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Desert Rose Band, and other members of Buffalo Springfield formed bands like Manassas, Poco and half of Loggins and Messina.  Finally, by the end of the decade, the Eagles came together with two members of Linda Ronstadt's band, one from the Flying Burrito Brothers, two from Poco and then later one from the James Gang.  And somehow, at one time or another, all of them probably slept with or in love with Joni Mitchell, it was just that kind of a decade.

Everybody tended to find their new band at parties at Cass Elliot's house, for some reason.  I think Cass just like throwing parties, as seen in the Tarantino film "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood".  Maybe it was for the food.  David Crosby mentions her in this film, reminding us that she was a sweet person, someone who needed love, and a "fat girl".  Gee, thanks, David.  Is that code for "I wouldn't sleep with her as long as Joni Mitchell was available?"  You've been known to rock a potbelly yourself from time to time, David, so I'd maybe watch it with the "fat girl" comments - we all know this about her, but we just don't SAY IT to pigeonhole her like that.  Oh, and that brings me to the next installment of "This Day in Rock History", because on July 27, 1968, Cass Elliot released her first solo single, "Dream a Little Dream of Me", after the break-up of The Mamas and the Papas. It may have been an old standard song, but she brought it to #12 on the singles charts.  Way to go, Cass, have a sandwich.

Anyway, Graham Nash's high harmony was just the thing to go over Crosby's and Stills' vocals, and they discovered this during a 40-second jam session that for some reason, didn't happen at Cass Elliot's house.  And that's all it took in March 1968, and their second live performance was at a small gig in Woodstock, NY with only 400,000 people in attendance.  Some documentaries will tell you that Neil Young was there, but refused to appear on film, so he stayed in the dark on the stage so the cameras couldn't see him.  I'm having trouble getting confirmation on this, because the stage announcer in this documentary clearly said "Crosby, Stills and Nash".  No Young.  Ah, a little research tells me that he joined them on stage halfway through their acoustic set - so he wouldn't have been announced, because he wasn't on stage yet.  Then he didn't want to be filmed, so he was there for half of the set, but nobody saw him.  OK.  He was jamming off to the side with Bigfoot, I guess.

What appears to have happened with CSNY was that four alpha males came together to make this group happen, and as long as they were making music, they were fine.  But offstage you just can't have four Alphas working together for very long, because they're all going to be fighting for dominance, it's pack mentality and you can't have four leaders.  The Beatles got by with two leaders, Lennon and McCartney, but when George and Ringo wanted more control, then they were heading for the same situation, four Alphas.  The Rolling Stones have played together for 87 years now because I think there are only two Alphas, Jagger and Richards.  And they didn't talk at all for a long period that they called "World War 3" - but they eventually came back together, and all of the other musicians, from Bill Wyman to Charlie Watts to Ronnie Wood, are clearly not alphas.

So the four alphas in CSNY could come together and work for brief periods, play on stage for the length of a tour, then invariably couldn't stand each other and had to walk away for a few years.  Then they'd patch things up, realize how low the bank accounts were getting, get back together, write some more songs and go out on the road again - repeat as necessary.  But now they're all in their 70's, what are they going to do, go entertain at nursing homes?  And they can't even do that these days because of Covid-19.  Their most recent tour was in 2006.

Crosby's probably been the busiest solo member, during the group's down times, because after he served time in prison, he's put out solo albums fairly consistently, constantly being inspired by his sailing trips.  Oh, the prison thing?  Yeah, I tried to slip that by but I figured you'd probably catch it.  Crosby served nine months in a Texas state prison in 1985 after numerous drugs and weapons charges.  But first (as another animated segment in this doc tells us) he hired a drug-smuggling pilot to fly him down to Florida, where he re-located his boat and intended to sail away from the U.S. as a fugitive, rather than face both criminal charges and drug rehab.  But the boat was in disrepair, so he walked into the Miami office of the F.B.I. and turned himself in - used the time in prison to get himself clean, I really doubt that took, but still I think these days he limits himself to just weed, which is legal now, especially when you have health problems, like he does.  Diabetes, heart problems, and in 1994 he got a liver transplant after a long run of hepatitis.

Look, I don't understand it either, why this guy's still around and other people aren't.  Luck of the draw, good genes, or maybe there's some order to the universe that we can't understand, and his work just isn't finished.  Maybe some people are just too tough or ornery to give up.  Still, if the news broke tomorrow that Crosby kicked the bucket, it wouldn't be that surprising at all. The other day I went back through my old photos from San Diego Comic-Con 2006 and 2007, and I realized that nearly every celebrity I met during those years is now gone - Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew and Ray Harryhausen.  Somebody check on Lou Ferrigno for me, would you?  Thanks.

Also starring Jackson Browne, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn (all three carrying over from "Echo in the Canyon"), Jan Crosby, Cameron Crowe, Henry Diltz, Glenn Frey (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Stephen Barncard, Enrico Merlin,

with archive footage of Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Cass Elliott, Eric Clapton, Gene Clark, Mike Clarke (all 11 carrying over from "Echo in the Canyon"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Joni Mitchell (ditto), Jerry Garcia (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), James Taylor, Don Everly, Phil Everly, Gary Cooper (last seen in "Sergeant York"), Lloyd Bridges (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Peter Fonda (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "River's Edge"), Barack Obama (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Michelle Obama (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Joe Scarborough (ditto), Mika Brzezinksi (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Paul Shaffer (ditto), Christine Hinton.

RATING: 6 out of 10 terrible hats

Echo in the Canyon

Year 12, Day 208 - 7/26/20 - Movie #3,615

BEFORE: I'm looking for the name of something, it's the feeling that you've heard a song before, only you can't quite remember where or the surrounding circumstances. It's not deja vu, because that means "seen before" or "seen already", and this relates to music.  The best I can find on the web is "deja entendu", which I think means "already heard". This is important to me because I've had this experience twice in the last couple of weeks.

One was after hearing "Chest Fever" performed by The Band.  It starts with an organ solo (one that calls to mind Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor") and then hits you with a heavy beat, but after that the documentaries I was watching all cut away, I had to go to YouTube and listen to the whole song, which is NOT on their Greatest Hits album, with good reason. The lyrics are horrible, but it was the instrumental opening that my mind kept replaying.  Eventually I realized that it was frequently played by Paul Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band (later, the "CBS Orchestra") on David Letterman's show.  Perfect for his keyboards, and by the time the song got to the lyrics (there are lyrics?) the director would have rightfully cut to a commercial break.

The other time this happened was two weekends ago, we were in the car coming back from Long Island (where restaurants are open for indoor dining, unlike NYC) and the satellite radio played a song called "Gimme That Ding", a novelty song performed by The Pipkins, and I got that same "deja entendu" feeling - I know this song, but HOW?  Again, the lyrics are horrible, almost nightmarish, basically it's this:

Gimme Dat, Gimme Dat 
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme Dat 
Gimme Dat Ding, Gimme Dat 
Gimme, Gimme Dat, Gimme Dat Ding
Gimme Dat, Gimme, Gimme Dat,
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Dat Ding 

I'm sorry - once you get this song in your head, it's really hard to get rid of - an "ear worm" if you will.   But how the HELL did I know this song?  It drove me crazy for a while, it sounded a bit like a song that was used at the climax of the last animated feature I worked on, but that wasn't it.  Still, it gave me a clue because the song I was confusing it with was heard as the backing track for a raucous secret sex-tape, and when I stopped thinking about it for a few minutes, my brain put it all together.  The answer was "Benny Hill".  If you remember, Benny Hill was a British comedian whose show often featured sped-up footage of people acting crazy, getting into sexual shenanigans (without actual nudity) or real slapsticky stuff with people either chasing half-dressed women, or being chased by policemen, or both (chasing/being chased by half-dressed policewomen).

Well, the most common music used in the background during these sped-up slapstick adventures was, of course, "Yakety Sax" performed by Boots Randolph.  But they didn't ALWAYS use "Yakety Sax", though that became sort of Benny Hill's trademark song over time.  When they didn't use "Yakety Sax", they used another novelty song, which was "Mah Na Mah Na".  But on the rare times when they didn't use either "Yakety Sax" or "Mah Na Mah Na", they played an instrumental version of "Gimme That Ding", played on saxophone to sound a LOT like "Yakety Sax".  Who knows, maybe someone forgot to pay the licensing fee for "Yakety Sax" one year and they had to find a subsitute.  Anyway, my wife knew the song from several "Ally McBeal" episodes, but my brain couldn't rest until it had figured out the Benny Hill connection.

I bring all this up tonight because there are two recent releases that appear to be on the same topic.  In addition to today's film on Netflix, there's a limited series (2 episodes) on Epix called "Laurel Canyon", and I think they both cover the same material.  I already caught bits of "Laurel Canyon" late at night while I was flipping channels or scanning the programming guide for future movies.  I saw the bit about the formation of The Eagles and parts about how Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came together.  Since I already covered "The History of the Eagles" back in 2018 (Movie 3,021) I'm expecting a fair amount of both deja vu AND deja entendu tonight.

Unfortunately "Laurel Canyon" doesn't fit my parameters as a MOVIE, because it's a 2-episode TV series.  I know, "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" consisted of two episodes of "American Masters", and that counted as a film, so why not "Laurel Canyon"?  Well, "No Direction Home" had the two episodes edited together, and was promoted on Netflix as one solid piece, though it was over three hours long - and it had a POSTER, that's a movie.  "Laurel Canyon" fits the definition of a TV series, even though it's on a "movie" channel.  I'm sorry, but I've checked with the judges and they made their ruling, they've already issued one waiver this month so it's a no-go.  But if "Echo in the Canyon" is short enough, then I'm going to try to squeeze in a re-watch of both episodes of "Laurel Canyon", because I think that will be very informative.  Anyway, I'm watching my slot count for the end of the year, so counting "Laurel Canyon" as a film would be detrimental.  Still, there's nothing preventing me from TALKING about it here, judges be damned.

Eric Clapton carries over from "The Last Waltz", and so does a Beatle and I'm guessing at least one other musician.

THE PLOT: A look at the roots of the historic music scene in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon, featuring the music of iconic groups such as The Birds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas.

AFTER: Yeah, it's a really big case of deja vu, for sure.  In addition to that Eagles documentary I mentioned, I was reminded of watching "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds" (Movie #3,029) and the "Laurel Canyon" series also covered the same ground as "The Doors: When You're Strange" (Movie #3,010), "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words" (Movie #3,031) and "Super Duper Alice Cooper" (Movie #3,037).  And I realize now I've made a huge, critical error in watching both "Echo in the Canyon" and "Laurel Canyon" on the same night - my mind is filled with information about the lives of the people who lived in that area of Los Angeles between 1964 and 1971, only I can't remember which film the information came from!

Since the "Echo in the Canyon" film is primarily concerned with the music, and a concert arranged by Bob Dylan's son to re-record and resurrect some of those great songs, maybe get a little bit of backstory about them from the performers who are still lucky enough to be alive.  "Laurel Canyon" took the more traditional documentary approach, which was to combine interviews and archive footage to try to re-assemble a timeline of events, making notable references to the historic events of the day - the Manson killings, the Woodstock Festival, and that time Glenn Frey and Don Henley had that really big fight onstage.

Both films mention how collaborative the Laurel Canyon scene was - musicians would walk over to each other's houses and play each other really cool riffs they'd discovered, or read song lyrics they'd just written to get an opinion, but probably it was just to see if they could borrow a cup of marijuana or find somebody new to have sex with.  I mean, come on, let's be honest, it was the 1960's.  If I can sort of piece things together here, the residents of Laurel Canyon included (along with members of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Mamas & The Papas): Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork of The Monkees, Jim Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, future members of The Eagles, the band Little Feat, several prominent photographers, and also Joni Mitchell.  "Echo in the Canyon" makes no mention of Joni Mitchell or her music, so that's an extra point from me there, but she did co-habitate with Graham Nash for over a year, so I'll admit that her omission is a bit glaring.

The modern musicians re-examining the songs of the 1960's produces admittedly mixed results - the female musicians all seem a bit spacey. "Hey guys, do you think that some of these songs, are like, about time or something?  I don't know."  Look, honey, I think you're making things a bit too complicated - these were 60's rockers, every song was about getting stoned, getting laid, or trying to get stoned or laid.  But I think it takes balls to be Bob Dylan's son, use that connection to score interviews with David Crosby, Tom Petty and Brian Wilson, then put on a concert featuring the songs of the 1960's and NOT INCLUDE any Bob Dylan songs.  This would appear to be a cry for Daddy's attention more than anything else, I think. (Bob, for God's sake, give Jakob a call...).

But I will say that I love cover songs, so that's another point for this one.  I wish they'd been able to play complete versions of them here, however.  It felt more like they'd start the modern cover of "Monday, Monday" on stage, and then halfway through transition to the original Mamas & Papas version, which is also good, but since you filmed the modern version, and got everybody together on stage and in the audience, why not let that play out?   I'd like to see where that goes - or are you hoping that I'll buy the soundtrack to your film, too?  That ain't gonna happen.

In place of that, someone chose to include clips from a film called "Model Shop" that was released in 1969, in order to capture the feel of Laurel Canyon back in the day - it's OK to set the mood, I guess, but it's not very informative overall.  And if that actor looks at all familiar, it's probably because Gary Lockwood played the OTHER astronaut in "2001: A Space Odyssey", the one that wasn't Dave Bowman.  (I looked it up - you're welcome.)

To their credit, the selection committee didn't pick the most obvious songs to perform to represent the bands in question, but that turns out to be a double-edged sword.  Certainly anyone could have thrown a dart at a songlist and landed on something great, and perhaps we've all heard "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "For What It's Worth" too many times - so points for stretching everyone's musical knowledge just a bit with "Never My Love" from The Association, "It Won't Be Wrong" from The Byrds, and "Expecting to Fly" from Buffalo Springfield.  But the downside is that not everyone will have very strong connections to those songs, especially if they've never heard them before.  And with apologies to Brian Wilson, I don't think "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" is a very upbeat song, even "In My Room" feels more cheerful, and that song's about spending all one's time alone.

What background information there is here for each song is helpful, like Michelle Phillips talks about her affair with bandmate Denny Doherty and how that really got in the way of the group working well together, plus it inspired John Phillips to write "Go Where You Wanna Go". Well, sure, that makes sense.  And the Byrds version of Pete Seeger's "The Bells of Rhymney" is connected musically to George Harrison's "If I Needed Someone" (in the same manner that The Hollies song "Bus Stop" is connected to the Beatles' "Things We Said Today") and that's explained here by the fact that the Byrds and the Beatles hung out together, both in the U.K. and in California.  It's all part of one band inspiring another, and having a rising tide lifting all boats.  "Pet Sounds" inspired "Sgt. Pepper", and "Sgt. Pepper" then inspired, well, everything else.

But if it's pure information that you're after in documentary form, you might be better off watching "Laurel Canyon" on Epix - the two episodes basically equal one movie, but again I can't include that here without breaking my own rules.  Now I've got to go and count my slots again, to see how many more music docs I can squeeze in here before I fill up the 2020 schedule.

Also starring Fiona Apple, Beck (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Justine Bennett, Jade Castrinos, Jakob Dylan, Norah Jones, Fernando Perdomo, Cat Power, Regina Spektor, Matt Tecu, Lou Adler (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Jackson Browne, David Crosby (last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes"), Roger McGuinn (ditto), Graham Nash, Tom Petty, Michelle Phillips, John Sebastian, Ringo Starr (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Stephen Stills, Brian Wilson (last seen in "The Clapper"), Neil Young (also last seen in "The Last Waltz")

with archive footage of The Beach Boys (Mike Love, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson (all last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!")), The Byrds (Gene Clark, Michael Clarke, Chris Hillman), Buffalo Springfield (Dewey Martin, Richie Furay), The Mamas and the Papas (Cass Elliott, John Phillips, Denny Doherty), Hal Blaine (also last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Dick Clark (ditto), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), George Harrison (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), John Lennon (last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Gary Lockwood, Ed McMahon (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Pete Seeger (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Andrew Slater, Frank Zappa (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper").

RATING: 5 out of 10 12-string Rickenbacker guitars