Jagged

Year 14, Day 190 - 7/9/22 - Movie #4,195

BEFORE: This is the first of three documentaries in my Summer Rock & Doc Block that played at DocFest, but I wasn't able to watch because I was working the event, but all three got picked up by HBO for their "Music Box" series. I'm allowing docs in that are also part of PBS's "American Masters", even though that's another "series" on TV, however I know for a fact that these movies existed as MOVIES prior to airing on HBO or PBS, they played at film festivals, so the judges ruling tonight is that these are proper MOVIES, even though they're also part of known TV series. Makes sense? 

Taylor Hawkins carries over again from "Count Me In". This film and the two following will be focused on Canadian musicians, so a bit of a break from all this American rock & roll, this is a bit of a tribute to the Great White North, made possible by linking.  And this has also been something of a three-film tribute to Taylor Hawkins, who passed away in March, and for the record I had planned to use him as a link here before he died.  

THE PLOT: Documentary centers on the life and work of Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette while making her breakout album "Jagged Little Pill". 

AFTER: The reason that Taylor Hawkins was interviewed for this film is that before he was in the Foo Fighters, he was part of Alanis Morissette's touring band, just so we're clear.  And they were never involved romantically, that's also clear, because of some kind of agreement between her and their band, that the band members wouldn't get involved with each other, which sounds smart.  Bands like Fleetwood Mac and ABBA might have lasted longer if they'd had similar policies in place, but then again, maybe they wouldn't have produced such great music if the band members hadn't lived their lives passionately, it's tough to say.  Relationships are tricky and break-ups are terrible, but they've also provided fuel for some great music over the years, just look at, well, Alanis's song "You Oughtta Know". 

That's one of the few songs from her that I know, there's that one and "Ironic", and after that, I'm pretty much lost.  Maybe in the future I should stick to rock documentaries where I'm also a fan of the artist in question, I didn't know who half the drummers were in "Count Me In" - I knew the classic half, not the modern half - and that probably affected my enjoyment of the film.  Here I heard the early Alanis stuff and I just didn't care about it, I only know a couple tracks off of "Jagged Little Pill", an album that it's estimated was owned by 10% of Americans at a certain point in the mid-1990's. So for me this was really a sleeper film until it got to the point where she had her multi-platinum record.  

Alanis herself seems to have accepted that her career, like everyone else's, is going to have peaks and valleys, periods of intense publicity and then perhaps a few years of obscurity, and unlike those giant mega-star artists who feel compelled to make a new album every two years and then go out on tour to fuel the record company machine, she only released new music when she's ready and/or when she wants to.  That feels like a more healthy attitude to have, like if the new album is a hit, that's great, but if it doesn't land, well, that's just how it goes, maybe it will catch on later or maybe the next record will connect with more people.  

The more interesting part of the film may concern the singer's reluctance to talk about what may have happened to her as a teen pop star, someone touring the world to film music videos and perform in concerts, surrounded by older men with minimal oversight.  Clearly some things went down, as she suggests that inevitably any relationship when she was fifteen was bound to turn sexual, and that there are many active pedophiles out there, but for whatever reason she won't name names, and merely expresses support for all women who choose to come forward with their stories of abuse or sexual misconduct.  That's a really fine line to walk, perhaps, but if that's where she feels comfortable, more power to her, I guess.  Being a pop-star also gave her a life-long eating disorder to deal with, so that's another part of the trade-off, the dark side of fame for teens. 

Morissette has been quoted as calling this documentary "reductive" and "salacious", I guess because the director told her the film would be JUST about the making of the album "Jagged Little Pill" and then diverged into more, like those incidents referred to above.  But there's actually very little here about her personal life, her boyfriends over the years, or her husband and children, seen briefly only at the end.  And if she didn't want to talk about those incidents, she could have said, "Next question, please..." at any time.  Just saying. Her calling the documentary "salacious" when it only barely touches on her personal life is quite ironic. 

And that song "Ironic", which itself doesn't contain any ironic situations - that's probably the only thing about it that IS "Ironic", so we find ourselves with a real paradox here.  "A free ride when you've already paid" is not ironic, that's just a dumb situation.  "Rain on your wedding day" is not ironic, that's just weather, or bad luck.  Rain is not inherently BAD, nor is a wedding day inherently GOOD, they're both just events that happen, and their ultimate nature is subjective, to be determined later in both cases via other connected events or situations.  "Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife..." - when does that even happen?  What weird restaurant or home goods store are you in if you can't find a knife?  And who has ten thousand spoons?  It's just weird, but not ironic.  And so the only irony in the song exists in the fact that it's named "Ironic" and contains NO irony itself.  It's meta-ironic, but not regularly ironic.  Supposedly it's been said to contain "dramatic irony" rather than "situational irony" but that sounds to me like a bit of a cop-out. 

I just wonder if she agreed to the documentary to support her most recent albums, released in 2020 and 2022.  The most recent one is just an album of meditation music, that just can't be selling well. Or maybe she agreed because she had spare time, with her 25th anniversary tour for "Jagged Little Pill" scheduled for June of 2020 and then cancelled due to the pandemic.  This is perhaps why filmmakers tend to make documentaries about recently deceased comedians and musicians, as their subjects are less likely to complain about the result. 

Also starring Alanis Morissette, Lorraine Ali, Glen Ballard, Steve Baltin, Chris Chaney, Stephanie Gibson, Michele Laurita, Shirley Manson, Steve Margo, Guy Oseary, Jocelyn Rheaume, Kevin Smith (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Johanna Stein, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Lisa Worden, 

with archive footage of Tony Bennett (last seen in "Class Action Park"), Beyoncé (last seen in "The Accidental President"), David Bowie (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Gabriel Byrne (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Kurt Cobain (also carrying over from "Count Me In"), Dave Grohl (ditto), Courtney Love (ditto), Krist Novoselic (ditto), Diablo Cody, Billy Corgan, Chris Cornell, Burton Cummings, Rivers Cuomo (last seen in "Sound City"), Trent Reznor (ditto), Dr. Dre (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Leslie Howe, Nick Lashley, Geddy Lee (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), David Letterman (last seen in "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary"), Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, Madonna (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Dennis Miller (also last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Darius Rucker, Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Snitch"), Seal, Pat Smear (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Snoop Dogg (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Layne Staley (also last seen in "Class Action Park"), Gwen Stefani, Taylor Swift (last seen in "Cats"), Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas, Jesse Tobias, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Scott Weiland, Scot Welch, Thom Yorke, Neil Young (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James")

RATING: 4 out of 10 Juno awards

Count Me In

Year 14, Day 189 - 7/8/22 - Movie #4,194

BEFORE: Well, I expected the Beatles to rise up through the ranks on the list of who's had the most appearances this year, but none of them are close to beating Nicolas Cage for 2022.  But keep an eye on Mick Jagger, he seems to be leading the pack after 14 documentaries, and I'm only about 1/3 of the way through my list of docs.  Yesterday was Ringo Starr's birthday, so I want to send a very loud birthday SHOUT-out to him, or maybe we'll just dedicate a drum solo or two to him. 

Taylor Hawkins (from the Foo Fighters) carries over from "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road". 

THE PLOT: Documentary that recounts the role that drummers play, particularly in rock bands. 

AFTER: It's an interesting idea for a documentary, sure, I'm fairly sure nobody's approached rock music films from this angle before - it creates kind of a niche market, sure, but everybody has a favorite drummer, or at least a favorite band WITH a drummer, so ideally, there should be something here for everyone, young and old.  But I guess that's rather subjective in the end.

But even if you're not up on your rock bands, classic or current, there's a sense that drumming is somewhat universal - what kid didn't enjoy hitting pots and lids with wooden spoons in the kitchen to annoy his or her parents?  Plus, this is primal, drumming goes back to caveman times, before there were hi-hats and drum machines, ancient tribes were beating animal skins with clubs to communicate and celebrate, right?  Or so we've been led to believe...

Which drummers, living or dead, deserve the most screen time here, becomes a debatable point.  So I wonder if there was a set agenda, or if they interviewed current top drummers like Chad Smith and the biggest "classic" ones they could get, like Stewart Copeland and Roger Taylor, and asked them all who were the most influential rock (and jazz) drummers.  Most likely the filmmakers had a list, and asked each interview subject their thoughts and anecdotes about each one. 

But the end result, unfortunately, is that the usual suspects get the most screen time - Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Keith Moon Charlie Watts and Dave Grohl.  (And that last one, well, it just makes me feel old to think that there's a whole generation of drummers for whom "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is considered both classic and inspirational. To me it's a pointless Nirvana song that never should have been responsible for a whole teen movement.  But Dave Grohl has SO much energy in that video, maybe I can see how he inspired so many people to get crazy and start drumming.  Meanwhile, Kurt Cobain's lethargy was inspiring other people to act sullen and blow their brains out, leaving their daughters without fathers...)

A more interesting prospect to me is noting which rock drummers are ABSENT - there's no mention of Neil Peart from Rush and his giant, much larger than necessary drum-kit, for example. And what about Rick Allen, the drummer from Def Leppard who lost his arm in a car accident in 1984, and somehow kept his job?  That story in this film could have been incredibly inspiring to all the differently-abled drummers out there, because I noticed that EVERY drummer in this film has two working arms, and that's not the limiting requirement that it once was, thanks to technology.  This was a huge missed opportunity, unless they're saving his story for "Count Me In 2".  Or what about Phil Collins, who was the drummer for Genesis who was forced into the frontman role when Peter Gabriel left the band, and he went on to have an enormous solo career as a singer?  

There's no love here for Mick Fleetwood, Larry Mullen from U2, Sheila E., Meg White from the White Stripes, Hal Blaine from the Wrecking Crew (so many songs!), Moe Tucker from Velvet Underground, Max Weinberg from the E Street Band, or Questlove from the Roots, and Tommy Lee is barely name-checked.  It's great that they dissected Keith Moon's ardent drumming on "Who Are You", but what about that awesome solo from Neil Peart on "Tom Sawyer"?  And where the FUCK is Alex Van Halen?  Levon Helm?  Mickey Hart and the other guy from the Grateful Dead? John Panozzo from Styx?  Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience?  Carl Palmer from ELP?  Peter Criss from KISS? Don Henley? Lars Ulrich? Hello?  Now they better make a sequel, it's only fair to include the drummers this film left out.

I think this film also seems a bit skewed because it did focus so much on the FAMOUS drummers, the top of their field, the ones who made a living out of being drummers - they can't all be successful, though, right?  I mean, this is just one side of the story and in any artistic field - drumming, acting, painting - there are going to be just a handful of successful people and also many people who struggle for years and try to break in, but can't seem to manage it. Some interviewed drummers here talked about being one of 100 people to audition for their current bands, well what happened to the other 99 people?  Do they file for unemployment benefits, or do they find another line of work?  It can't all be sunshine and death-metal rainbows for everybody who wants a shot, after all.  

Also starring Cindy Blackman Santana, Jess Bowen, Clem Burke (Blondie), Stewart Copeland (The Police, last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd, ditto), Roger Taylor (Queen, ditto), Emily Dolan Davies (The Darkness), Ross Garfield, Topper Headon (The Clash), Bob Henrit, Jim Keltner, Abe Laboriel Jr., Samantha Maloney (Hole), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden), Ian Paice (Deep Purple), Stephen Perkins (Jane's Addiction), Rat Scabies (The Damned), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Ben Thatcher, 

with archive footage of Ginger Baker (Cream, last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Art Blakey, John Bonham (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin, ditto), Keith Moon (The Who, ditto), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin, ditto), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin, ditto), Pete Townshend (The Who, ditto), Muddy Waters (ditto), Dave Brubeck, Kurt Cobain (last seen in "Sound City"), Roger Daltrey (The Who, last seen in "Under the Volcano"), John Deacon (Queen, ditto), George Harrison (ditto), Mick Jagger (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Annie Lennox (Eurhythmics, ditto), Brian May (Queen, ditto), Freddie Mercury (Queen, ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Dave Stewart (Eurhythmics, ditto), Sting (The Police, ditto), Andy Summers (The Police, ditto), Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones, ditto), John Entwistle (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Flea (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Dave Grohl (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Krist Novocelic (Nirvana, ditto), Lightnin Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Lil Ol' Band from Texas"), Elvin Jones, Anthony Kiedis, Lenny Kravitz, Gene Krupa, Tommy Lee (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Courtney Love (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Steve Martin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Paul McCartney (also carrying over from "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Joe Morello (Dave Brubeck Quintet), Vince Neil (Motley Crue), Philip Oakey (Human League, last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Joe Strummer (The Clash, ditto), Buddy Rich, Max Roach, Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue), Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day")

RATING: 5 out of 10 tom-toms

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

Year 14, Day 188 - 7/7/22 - Movie #4,193

BEFORE: This week I'm hitting the big Summer vibe in the Summer Rock & Doc Block - first there was the Summer of Love (Boston style), then a recording studio in the Caribbean, and now it's the Beach Boys, from sunny So Cal.  I'd drop in "Summer of Soul", but that's like my big blow-out finish this year, for linking reasons that film will be watched in August, not July. 

Today's documentary aired on the "American Masters" series on PBS, and I really should keep a better eye on their programming, they ran the Rita Moreno documentary that's also on Netflix, and I just picked up two more docs, one about Keith Haring (which I can't seem to work into this year's chain) and one about Sammy Davis Jr., which should go perfectly with my other docs about Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis.  I've got the whole Rat Pack coming up in two weeks, I hope it's not just the same doc four times in a row....  The problem is, that's a special search, once a film is part of the "American Masters" series, then it doesn't appear in my DVR's listings under its own name - so I'll have to remember to keep checking for that specific title, maybe twice a month going forward.  It could be worth it.  

Elton John carries over from "Under the Volcano". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds" (Movie #3,029), "The Wrecking Crew" (Movie #3,030)

THE PLOT: Documentary that looks at the career of musician Brian Wilson. 

AFTER: It's been a few years since I watched a doc about the Beach Boys, so I guess I was due to circle back, especially since this one played at the Tribeca Festival in June 2021 and then got a limited release in November.  But it's basically a puff piece, one that was produced by Brian Wilson's second wife (umm, she might be a bit biased) under her maiden name, of course, and so you would rightfully expect it to treat Brian Wilson as a genius and the main driving creative force behind the band.  Which he may be, but it would be better to hear that from somebody who didn't have a dog in that fight.  Notice that Mike Love's name did not appear ANYWHERE in the film's credits, or in the IMDB credits, despite all the archive footage of him. That's telling. 

Much of the film takes place in the car of Brian's friend, and Rolling Stone reporter, Jason Fine.  Jason drives Brian around to various locations in California, presumably over the course of a day, or several days, and after lunch they go to the beach locations where certain Beach Boys album covers were photographed, or Brian's first house in Beverly Hills, or his second house in Bel Air, but often Brian refused to get out of the car - it was all about his comfort level, it seems, and the fact that he doesn't like to be interviewed for more than 10 minutes, but he will drive around with a friend, listening to music and talking about old times.  I understand the limitations, but a camera shot of Brian Wilson in the passenger seat doesn't really tell us anything, and also isn't very cinematic, it's like those shots of Robert Downey's face inside the Iron Man helmet in the "Avengers" movies that add nothing to the story and drive me crazy.  

There are also scenes with music producer Don Was at the mixing board, pushing the various sound levels up and down on a mix of songs like "Good Vibrations" to highlight the various instruments, and each time coming to the conclusion that he has no idea how somebody would put a song like that together.  Well, of course not, you had to be there, and then even if you were, the whole song's already mixed in Brian Wilson's head, and it's just the job of everyone in the studio to try and let him re-create that.  This really helps out my chain, because it shows that Brian Wilson was really to the Beach Boys what George Martin was to the Beatles. 

However, anybody who has seen the documentary "The Wrecking Crew!", like I have, knows the real secret about the Beach Boys - they were great singers, but only semi-competent musicians, except for Brian on the piano.  Brian assembled the songs in the studio (or sometimes four different studios) with session musicians doing the difficult instrumental work, and then those songs had to be dumbed-down substantially so that the Beach Boys could play them on stage.  The versions played in concert in the 1960's were radically different from the records, though I suppose with so many screaming teenage girls, nobody really noticed or cared - but musically and ethically, it still feels like a swindle.  Talent-wise, 80% of the Beach Boys were just a step above the Monkees, who sang the work of other song-writers in addition to having session musicians record the albums.  

The film also needed to address the years Brian Wilson spent in isolation, occasionally under the control of shady doctor Eugene Landy.  Which it does, but it also kind of glosses over a lot of what went down. For whatever reason, Brian was out of control when it came to alcohol, drugs and over-eating - but several times he just kinds of waves it away, saying things like "I had a tent in my bedroom where I smoked grass" or "Hey, I used to eat two steaks and a slice of birthday cake for breakfast..." like it's an amusing anecdote, instead of self-destructive behavior.  Any young rich person might do this, but that doesn't make it entertaining, it's flat-out unhealthy.  

Interview footage from the mid-60's shows him as an awkward young guy, unsure of what to say to a woman interviewing him before a concert.  He really hasn't changed that much in 50+ plus years, he still sort of talks like an awkward teen, despite all the water under the bridge - I guess that's better than being an angry old coot like George Carlin was, but Wilson seems naive and out of touch, too far in the other direction, if that makes sense. 

I'm not going to parse through all the things that happened in Brian Wilson's life that affected him, you can read all of that on Wikipedia - but I still wonder why everything's such a struggle for him, why he's scared by certain normal, everyday things and why it takes him so long to get things done now.  He had all that energy and drive when he was mixing tracks and composing songs, but then I guess once drugs entered the picture, all bets were off.  This film mentions that he began having auditory hallucinations when he was 22, shortly after he started using psychedlics (gee, do you think there might be a connection there?) and then later medical diagnoses included everything from manic depression to paranoid schizophrenia.  Then there's debate over whether Eugene Landy's drug regimen saved Wilson's life or made his health worse. 

I can't even delve further into this subject by watching the 1995 documentary "Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times", because it doesn't link up with tomorrow's film, so that would mean breaking the chain...or tearing my list apart and re-assembling it.  Anyway, that film's 25 years out of date by now.

Also starring Brian Wilson (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Al Jardine (ditto), Jakob Dylan (ditto), Jason Fine, Bob Gaudio, Taylor Hawkins (last seen in "Sound City"), Jim James, Nick Jonas (last seen in "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Linda Perry (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Don Was, Carnie Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Probyn Gregory, Stephen Kalinick, Mark Linett, Steven Page, Andy Paley, Daian Sahanaja,

with archive footage of Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Spielberg"), John Belushi (ditto), Hal Blaine, Dick Clark (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Mike Douglas (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Larry King (ditto), Eugene Landy, Mike Love (also last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Linda McCartney (also carrying over from "Under the Volcano"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Marilyn Wilson, Melinda Wilson, Carl Wilson (also last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Dennis Wilson (ditto), 

RATING: 6 out of 10 unheard tracks from Dennis Wilson's album

Under the Volcano (2021)

Year 14, Day 187 - 7/6/22 - Movie #4,192

BEFORE: Paul McCartney carries over from "WBCN and the American Revolution", and suddenly I regret not taking the time over the long holiday weekend to watch the "Get Back" documentary.  I've avoided it so far because of its length, and the fact that I prefer to think of it as a mini-series rather than a movie, because that makes it easier to not include it, but this would have been a PERFECT place to drop it in, if I had that kind of time.  I still don't, though - I spent a good part of the weekend making a list of important things for me to do around the house and in my personal life, and I managed to check a couple of them off the list already, so that's a good thing.  Still, I'm going to be very pissed if I construct an almost perfect chain for the year but come up one film short...

I'm skipping July 5 to catch up - and also to line up THIS film with a key date in Beatles history - actually TWO key dates in Beatles history (and really, I've been remiss so far this year in quoting anniversary dates of great moments in rock history...) July 6, 1957 was the infamous day that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met, in the garden party at St. Peter's Church where the Quarrymen were performing. That's 65 years ago TODAY, John + Paul would have been about 15 years old.  Also, July 6, 1964, or 58 years ago, was the premiere of the film "A Hard Day's Night" at the Pavillion Theatre in London. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Sound City" (Movie #3,617), "Muscle Shoals" (Movie #3,624)

THE PLOT: On a remote Caribbean island, under the shadow of an active volcano, the world's biggest recording artists made music and myth that defined an era.

AFTER: Be careful, there are TWO films out there with the same title, "Under the Volcano" - one is a drama from 1984 featuring Albert Finney and it's airing on HBO Max, and the other is this recent documentary, airing on Showtime.  The confusion almost prevented me from looking for this doc - I couldn't quite understand if Albert Finney played George Martin or what.

Well, if there's a common theme running through my documentaries this year, it's probably that everything, EVERYTHING, no matter how successful, has an expiration date. Whether that's a successful comedy career fueled by a drug habit, or a trendy and transformative radio station format, nothing lasts forever.  And this brings us to the story of George Martin's AIR (Associated Independent Recording) studios in the far-flung island of Montserrat, in the British West Indies. 

At a time when the Beatles' records were generating millions of pounds for EMI, George Martin, the most successful record producer ever, was receiving an annual salary of just 3,000 pounds, with no bonus.  But by 1965 he had enough leverage to leave EMI, and open his own recording studios, which was free to be hired out to other musical acts.  AIR Studios had three locations in the U.K., and was very successful - and George Martin got a share of royalties on any hits recorded in his studios, which made him a very rich man.  OK, richer.  After producing the theme for the Bond film "Live and Let Die" for his old pal Paul McCartney, and several hits for the band America (like "Sister Golden Hair"), Martin wanted to get out of London and take his studio on the road.  The first plan, since money was no object, was to put a studio on a giant ship, but he was told that the ship's diesel engines would create so much noise that it would interfere with the recording.  (I'm not sure if this was true, or some recording engineers were just afraid of drowning while working on an album...)

So, on to the next plan - Martin visited the Caribbean island of Montserrat in 1979, and fell in love with it - and bought property there without really thinking it through. Must be nice. Then a very expensive building (or perhaps re-design) of a mansion there, and another very expensive delivery and installation of recording and mixing equipment, and AIR Studios Montserrat was born. Nobody, nobody, gave a thought to the volcano on the island - which had been classified as "dormant" by vulcanologists, but that world means "sleeping", not the same as "inactive".  Anything that is sleeping has the potential to wake up one day...

But before that happened, there were ten very productive years of recording in the Caribbean, this is where McCartney recorded two albums, one shortly after John Lennon died, and one that produced the smash hit "Ebony and Ivory".  In the early 1980's, the Police recorded three albums there, and you can't argue with the success of "Ghost in the Machine" and "Synchronicity", and if you watch the music video for their hit "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic", it was filmed inside the studio control room at AIR Montserrat, with added exterior footage of the island's citizens.  And come on, "Every Breath You Take" was the biggest hit in the world in 1983.  

Another giant hit was "Money for Nothing", by Dire Straits, which was also recorded in AIR Montserrat - and Mark Knopfler, who had noticed the Police shilling for MTV in promos, really wanted to have Sting record that line "I Want My MTV" as part of the song - so, as luck would have it, the Police had recorded in Montserrat right before Dire Straits, and Sting had stuck around on the island after the sessions for some vacation time (Sting and the other members of the Police had all recently split with their wives, and I guess Sting needed some time alone...again, must be nice.). The whole "Brothers In Arms" album was recorded on the island, and I remember how amazing that album was, I listened to it often on cassette in 1986.

(NITPICK POINT: I don't know, the chronology here doesn't really add up - Sting was on vacation after recording, and just happened to be in Montserrat for the production of "Money for Nothing"?  The Police album "Synchronicity" was recorded from December 1982 to February 1983, and the Dire Straits album "Brothers in Arms" was recorded from October 1984 to February 1985 - I don't think Sting took a 20-month vacation on the island.  Perhaps Sting was there recording some solo projects, that might make more sense, that timeline might work out, only Wikipedia says his first album "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" wasn't recorded at AIR Studios - so the story doesn't really hold water.)

Anyway, during that ten-year period, AIR Studios also hosted such notable acts as Elton John, Earth Wind & Fire, Rush, Black Sabbath, Duran Duran, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, OMD and Sheena Easton, and when the Rolling Stones wanted to get back together after the Jagger/Richards separation, they recorded in Montserrat, because why not?  Who would pass up the chance to record on a beautiful tropical island, in the middle of nowhere, while living in a fantastic house, basically a working vacation among friendly locals.  Ironically, the Rolling Stones had quite a reputation for destroying both hotel rooms AND recording studios - but AIR Montserrat was so nice that they left it alone, more or less.  However, a few weeks later...

Hurricane Hugo hit the island - ha, a twist, I bet you thought the volcano was going to wipe out the studio, but no, it was a hurricane.  It turned out that recording technology was changing very quickly, and by 1989 most everything was being done digitally, which meant that albums could be recorded almost anywhere.  The industry was also changing from a financial perspective, after the CD-driven boom of the mid 1980's, everyone was looking to tighten their budgets, so less money was being devoted to recording sessions.  So there's no telling how long AIR Studios would have been financially viable before the hurricane hit.  

Boom, another twist, six years later in 1995, the volcano DID erupt - the studio never rebuilt after the hurricane, but now after the second disaster, it was clear that a recording studio really didn't belong on an island paradise.  (The Earth was fine, but it was the Wind and the Fire that did it in.). The abandoned studio was on the edge of the "exclusion zone", which meant that the area was uninhabitable and not safe for travel.  For ten years, AIR Studios was the place to be, but as stated above, everything has an expiration date - remember all those old "Behind the Music" specials on VH-1?  We used to tune in and wait for the inevitable line, "Then, it all came crashing down...".  George Martin lived another 27 years, and despite this disaster, he had a really good run.  The old recording studio is apparently a resort hotel now, so I guess there's that. 

Also starring Malcolm Atkin, Gerry Beckley (America), Jimmy Buffett, Justin Cassell, Ray Cooper, Stewart Copeland (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Andy Summers (ditto), Sting (last seen in New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Neil Dorfsman, Guy Fletcher (Dire Straits), Minetta Allen Francis, Roger Glover (Deep Purple), Dave Harries, Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Steve Jackson, Davey Johnstone, Chris Kimsey, Ian Little, Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Giles Martin, Judy Martin, George "Tappy" Morgan, Lloyd Oliver, Nigel Olsson, Desmond Riley, Nick Rhodes (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Yve Robinson, John Silcott, Michael Paul Stavrou, Danny Sweeney, Chris Thomas, Midge Ure (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Verdine White, Rose Willock, 

with archive footage of Barbara Bach, Philip Bailey (Earth, Wind & Fire), Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd), Jeff Beck (last seen in "Zappa"), Dewey Bunnell (America), Kate Bush, Eric Clapton (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac, ditto), Alan Clark (Dire Straits), Phil Collins, Roger Daltrey (also carrying over from "WBCN and the American Revolution"), George Harrison (ditto), Mick Jagger (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Freddie Mercury (ditto), Lou Reed (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), John Deacon (Queen, last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody), Roger Taylor (Queen, ditto), Sheena Easton, Geoff Emerick, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Boy George, Ian Gillan (Deep Purple), Mark Goodman (MTV, also last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Corey Hart, Elton John (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice), Keith Richards (ditto), Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran), Annie Lennox, George Martin, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Brian May (Queen, last seen in "Pavarotti"), Linda McCartney (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac, last seen in "Sound City"), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac, ditto), Carl Perkins (ditto), Dee Murray, Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Tina"), Phil Spector (ditto), Spike Milligan, Gerry Rafferty, Diana Ross (also last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Stevie Wonder (ditto) Siouxsie Sioux, Cat Stevens, Dave Stewart (Eurhythmics), James Taylor (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Luther Vandross, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones, last seen in "The Velvet Underground")), Ronnie Wood (Rolling Stones, last seen in "Shine a Light"), Richard Wright (Pink Floyd), Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones, also last seen in "Zappa")

RATING: 7 out of 10 gold records on the wall

WBCN and the American Revolution

Year 14, Day 185 - 7/4/22 - Movie #4,191

BEFORE: Well, I hope you had a great July 4, I tried to make sure my day was as American as possible.  I stayed up late playing video games, then I slept in, breakfast was some snack cakes from the deli, then my wife and I went grocery shopping, I watched three episodes of "The Great Food Truck Race" and last week's "America's Got Talent", then dinner and a movie - all while wearing a T-shirt that shows Elvis Presley shaking hands with Richard Nixon and posing for that famous picture. What could BE more American than all that?

I avoided watching any fireworks, but I sure HEARD a lot of them, my neighborhood always sounds like a war zone, and I don't feel safe leaving the house.  Too many amateurs with fireworks sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, and I just can't relax, the whole day long I feel like I'm living in the Ukraine, and once again, there's zero policing of amateur fireworks in NYC.  

Lou Reed and Andy Warhol carry over from "The Velvet Underground" via archive footage. 

THE PLOT: The incredible story of how a radio station, politics and rock and roll changed everything. 

AFTER: Here's something else that 's truly America - rock and mother-freakin' roll, right?  We made that, it's ours - I mean, so is jazz but who cares about jazz any more?  And rap's ours too, but I'm too damn old to appreciate it.  So it's classic rock for me, and I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, listening mostly to WBCN after I rejected Top 40 radio and gravitated more toward classic rock.  But WBCN was playing that music before it was classic, when it was just "rock". Actually, they played a lot of stuff, not all of it was rock but most of it was.  I remember they used to have "ABC" weekends, which meant they mostly played Aerosmith, Boston and The Cars, the three most famous bands to come out of the area. (Umm, sorry, J. Geils Band and Dropkick Murphys...)

This film is about the intersection of Boston's rock history with American political history, or at least the stuff that went down between 1968 and 1974 - very informative for me, because I was born in 1968 and I didn't pay much attention to the news during those years.  I think that's probably good for a 5 or 6 year old, to not watch too much news, and it was true then and it's just as true today.  This film shares some structure with last week's documentary "New Wave: Dare to Be Different", except it's set 10 to 15 years earlier, and thus during a vastly different music and political scene.  Plus, WLIW was in Long Island, and that's a very different crowd from Boston, a big college town - WBCN's listeners in the early 1970's were politically active students, who participated in protests and tried to change minds and the world, while the Long Islanders in the 1980's just wanted to put mousse in their hair and go drinking and dancing at the clubs. I'm generalizing here, but it sounds pretty accurate. 

In 1968, Ray Riepen, a man looking for a way out of his law career took over WBCN, which was a struggling classical music station in Boston (I remember the giant classical station in Boston was WCRB, and it took me too many decades to realize their call letters stood for "Classical Radio Boston", except that it didn't, it was owned by Charles River Broadcasting...) and decided that there was an opportunity to play something other than the same Top 40 songs over and over again. The Beatles had changed everything in the music world with the "Sgt. Pepper" album and radio stations weren't reflecting the way that people were listening to music in their own homes, which was more album-oriented.  Also, the "youngs" were collecting records by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and the Mothers of Invention, and those albums just weren't being played on high-falutin' Boston radio, so he saw an opportunity.  On March 15, 1968, the station switched to its "underground" progressive rock format by playing "I Feel Free" by Cream, and that's a bit like MTV launching with "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles, if you ask me. 

By June of 1968 the radio station had hired a full complement of disc jockeys, including Peter Wolf, who also fronted the J. Geils Band and worked the overnight hours for people working the graveyard shift, or any miscreants and insomniacs. (I remember the station playing comedy cuts at 5 pm and introducing them with a short quote from George Carlin, referring to the audience as "morons, psychopaths and mental defectives" - that was WBCN's audience, and probably also their DJs.).  When Peter Wolf left the station to focus on his music career, Charles Laquidara was hired to fill in on the 10 pm to 2 am shift, and he stayed with the station for 25 years and transitioned to mornings with his show "The Big Mattress".  (This led to a conflict years later when Howard Stern's show went nation-wide, and WBCN was one of the few stations that aired it on time delay, late at night.  Eventually the money or the legal issues between Stern and WBCN forced Laquidara over to WBCN's sister station WZLX in 1996.)

What I never new was that WBCN played an important role in providing non-mainstream news to the Boston area, and that's essentially what this documentary is about.  News is a daily thing, but if you string enough daily news together than what you've got is history - and WBCN was right in the middle of it all, with student protests led by Abbie Hoffman, updates on the traffic problems caused by the Woodstock Festival, the station's own news director getting accidentally indicted with the militant group The Weathermen, and then the next news director found himself in the middle of a federal agent raid on his own house, which was connected to food drops made to Wounded Knee Indian Reservation.  And then of course, the big story of Watergate played out over several years was a key focus for their news department. 

Again, I was a very small child then, so it's fascinating for me to learn that the rock station I listened to was front and center during what they called "The American Revolution" - OK, not the first one, but a revolution in music.  Station owner Riepen also ran The Tea Party, a prominent Boston concert venue where you could see The Who or Led Zeppelin play in 1968 for a ticket price of $3.50.  Then the Velvet Underground played their first public concert at the Tea Party, and for a while, after being kicked out of their upscale Newbury Street studio location, WBCN broadcast from a small room backstage at The Tea Party, which was inconvenient and noisy but allowed for very famous rock musicians to be interviewed for the station after their concerts.  But eventually WBCN got a bit more corporate and moved to better broadcasting digs at the top of the Prudential Tower, which at the time was the tallest building in Boston. 

I know this was the heyday of culture change, but it's a bit of a shame that this film only covers the station's history up through 1974. Sure, this was a turbulent time in American culture, and the station and its staff got involved in civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, and Native American rights, they had a show oriented toward prison inmates, health warnings about street drugs, and even ran an on-air service helping to reunite people with their lost pets.  But the station transitioned to a slightly more mainstream format in 1975, so maybe that's why the documentary ends where it does - eventually there was less freedom for the DJs and more structure for the music format.  They still had the most varied playlist in town, and helped promote bands like The Ramones, The Clash, The Police and local band 'Til Tuesday during the 70's and 80's. 

Nothing good lasts forever, I guess - once the radio station started making money, that clock was ticking, and ownership changed hands in 1979, with most long-time employees deemed "non-essential" and fired, leading to a protest where the entire staff walked out in solidarity.  The protest grew huge, was publicly supported by those ABC bands (Aerosmith, Boston and The Cars) and the owners bringing in substitute DJs during the protest happened to be illegal.  There's a whole other documentary to be made about that notable event, if you ask me.  More format changes came in 1994 and 1999, but then when Howard Stern left for satellite radio in 2006 (he'd finally won the Boston morning-time battle in 1996), WBCN's ratings went way down when Stern's listeners left. They held on a couple more years, but the station went belly-up in July of 2009.  

I miss the station dearly, I moved out of the Boston area in 1989, but I liked knowing that whenever I came back, I could tune in to 104.1 and hear the classic rock, and I enjoyed moving my mother's radio away from the classical station whenever I could. 

Also starring Michael Ansara, Richard Barna, Andy Beaubien, David Bieber, John Brodey, Bo Burlingham, Ron Della Chiesa, Noam Chomsky (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Charles Daniels, Tommy Hadges, Eric Jackson, Mitchell Kertzman, Sam Kopper, Charles Laquidara, Bill Lee, James Montgomery, Tim Montgomery, Steve Nelson, Al Perry, Ray Riepen, Joe Rogers, Rochelle Ruthchild, John Scagliotti, Danny Schechter, Barry Schneier, Steven Segal, Peter Simon, Bob Slavin, Martha Jean Steinberg, Debbie Ullman, Dinah Vaprin, Steven Wayne, Jerry Williams, Norm Winer, Bill Zimmerman, 

with archive footage of Duane Allman (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), John Bonham, David Bowie (also last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), Walter Cronkite (ditto), Mick Jagger (ditto), David Brinkley, Clarence Clemons, Roger Daltrey (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), George Harrison (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Michael Fremer, Jerry Garcia (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Bruce Springsteen (ditto), Abbie Hoffman (also last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), George McGovern (ditto), Hubert Humphrey (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Chet Huntley, J.J. Jackson (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), John Paul Jones, Robert Kennedy, B.B. King (last seen in "Tina"), Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Henry Kissinger, Alvin Lee, John Lennon (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Bette Midler (ditto), Richard Nixon (ditto), Freddie Mercury (also last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Keith Moon (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Randy Newman (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Muddy Waters (ditto), Jimmy Page, Joe Perry, Robert Plant, Patti Smith (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story"), Dick Smothers, Tom Smothers, Steven Tyler, Gov. John Volpe, Peter Wolf.

RATING: 7 out of 10 curse words from Patti Smith

The Velvet Underground

Year 14, Day 184 - 7/3/22 - Movie #4,190 - VIEWED ON 1/31/22.    

BEFORE: Yeah, so I cheated, I did NOT watch this film as part of my documentary chain, I watched it back in January, on the day I reviewed "Dune", which I had watched earlier - I had a free day because of that, so I looked into the future and I realized that this particular documentary could be needed to make my linking possible, without it I didn't have a full chain that circled back on itself, allowing entry from any one of hundreds of links.  I then devised about a dozen ways to get from Father's Day to July 4, hoping against hope that I could schedule "WBCN and the American Revolution" for July 4 itself.  So even though it's February 1 for me, I'm planning to post this review on July 5 - this is essentially a message from the past to the future.  Did the pandemic end?  How are things in July 2022, are we back to normal yet?  Did Russia invade Ukraine?  Did conservatives and doomsday preppers invade Washington?  Are any celebrities still alive?  I have no idea. 

Here's the things about the Velvet Underground documentary - it's an Apple TV exclusive, meaning that if I want to watch it, I either need to attend a screening in a live-audience movie theater (still not medically recommended) or sign up for Apple+ TV - but I pulled that scam last year to watch "On the Rocks" with Bill Murray. I joined the service, watched that one movie, and quit the service before they could charge me for a full month - I doubt that Apple will let me pull that trick again.  BUT, right now, in February 2022, it's still Oscar nomination season, and the film is available on the Academy streaming platform, because it's bucking for a Best Documentary nomination.  And my boss signs on all the time to watch the animated films that are qualified for nominations, so I could sign on after midnight, watch this doc from home, and sign out, nobody would know.  I'm not saying that's what I did, just that it was possible - because it's a bit wrong for me to watch the film that way.  However, I can't afford another monthly subscription to another service, not Paramount+ or Apple+, we already subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, AmazonPrime and Disney+, and I've got to draw the line somewhere.  Somebody really needs to bundle all these services together and create the cable TV of the future, but I don't see that happening, everybody's getting too rich right now on their own, I assume - except Peacock, which lost a few billion last year, and I don't see how that's possible.

Anyway, from a long list of about 32 films, this seems to be the one that will be the most trouble to watch - but if I watch it in February when it's slightly available to me, I'm in the clear. I think.  Jeez, just two years ago both of my bosses would probably have gotten a DVD of this in the mail, and I could have borrowed it from either one and returned it the next day - no harm, no foul.  The Academy's all about their streaming site right now, with good reason, so I have to break their rules in order to see this - it's not my fault.  Don't hate the player, hate the game, or something like that.  

Mary Woronov carries over from "Eating Raoul".

THE PLOT: This documentary explores the multiple threads that converged to bring together one of the most influential bands in rock and roll.

AFTER: Oh, yeah, I forgot, I don't even LIKE the Velvet Underground.  I probably should have thought this through a little more before proceeding, or found another way to get where I wanted to go.  But this seemed like a good idea at the time - that's probably what the band members say when they talk about their experiences in the 1960's and 1970's, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Nobody ever really thinks this through - "Hey, let's start a band!" is probably followed by, "Hey, how do you write a song?" and "Wait, we have to play HOW MANY gigs?" and "How do we get from Chicago to Detroit to Milwaukee in time?" and a thousand other problems, like "What happens if nobody shows up?" and "How do I get rid of these groupies?" and "Who's stealing my royalty checks?"

This documentary, to its credit, does NOT mention the famous quote about the Velvet Underground, which refers to their first album selling only 10,000 copies, but also the possibility that everyone who bought it then started a band.  Supposedly Brian Eno said this, but he was quoting Lou Reed, and sometimes they say 10,000 copies and sometimes they say 30,000, but either way, there's a point that got made. I can't tell you one early Velvet Underground song, which doesn't bode well - and now after watching this documentary, I understand why.  Early Velvet Underground music is, quite frankly, shitty music.  All of those 10,000 bands that their fans started were all probably shitty bands as well.  

Before watching this doc, I couldn't even tell you the difference between John Cage and John Cale - I think they were conflated in my brain somehow.  John CAGE was a composer born in 1912 who was a pioneer in avant-garde music and the non-standard use of instruments, he had one composition called 4'33", where a group of musicians played nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. John CALE was born in 1942, and was a founding member of the Velvet Underground, and was also noted for avant-garde music, especially the use of drone tones and other electronics.  Both men worked together on a performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations", an 18-hour performance where the same musical passage was played repeatedly, 840 times in all.  So you can see maybe where my brain started confusing these two men with similar names.

John Cale and Lou Reed were both part of the same scene, the downtown New York mixture of musicians, artists, filmmakers, stoners and other no-goodniks that all circulated around Andy Warhol and lived in terrible apartments in the Village and were interested in messing with the forms of art to create a counter-culture, which ultimately took over and became the culture, to some degree at least.  Cale seemed to fit right in with the sensibilities of Warhol, who made an 8-hour long film that was just footage of the Empire State Building, or other long static shots of people just staring at the camera without blinking.  On the topic of Warhol, I'm similarly torn when trying to decide if he was in fact a great artist or just a great scam artist. 

There are a few Velvet Underground compositions I do enjoy, but they're the later ones, like "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll", that may make me a dilettante, but I really don't care.  Now I know that maybe the band's sound got a little better when they kicked John Cale out of the group, makes sense.  But even the radio-friendly "Rock & Roll" isn't that great of a song, in the first verse Lou Reed rhymes "Nothin' happening at all" with "She don't believe what she heard at all" - you can't rhyme a word with itself, that's cheating!  Or just lazy.  Then these both are rhymed with "Rock and roll", and "all" doesn't rhyme with "roll".  I call foul - this isn't how songs are supposed to work.  

I can't help but think that this documentary contains some rather glaring omissions - they mention that Lou Reed was heavily into the gay scene of New York City.  OK, but what does that mean, exactly?  I'm not saying that the film should be all tawdry and give us a laundry list of his sexual partners, but come on, we want to know, were he and Andy Warhol a couple?  Wikipedia says that Lou Reed wrote some songs for Nico because they were lovers for a while, so wait, was Lou Reed gay, bisexual or what?  Not to put a fine point on it, but isn't this kind of important?  How are we ever going to advance as a culture and be more accepting about LGBTQ rights if we can't even talk openly about what went down?  David Bowie referred to himself as a "closeted heterosexual" during the glam-rock period, and that sounds very fascinating!  I want to know more about that.  Lou Reed similarly sounds like a very interesting chap, only if we're all going to dance around the logistics of it, we're never going to know exactly how interesting.  Right?  Nah, forget it, let's just sweep it all under the rug and not explore it, better to let sleeping dogs lie, right?  

I remember back when I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a film crew took over an old post office on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West for a film shoot, and turned it into a fake cigar shop, this was for the 1995 movie "Smoke", written by Paul Auster and directed by Ang Lee.  Every once in a while, rumors would go around the neighborhood that Madonna was over there doing a cameo, or Roseanne (they filmed another movie, "Blue in the Face" with most of the same cast, on the off-days) but only later, once the film was released, did I learn that Harvey Keitel and Lou Reed played the characters who worked in the cigar shop. Had I known that Lou Reed was hanging out a couple blocks from my condo, I might have strolled over once in a while, that's a missed opportunity.  Lou Reed is very good in the film, especially if his segments where he addressed the camera directly were improvised, check out "Smoke" if you get the chance.  

Later on, Lou Reed had some kind of personal relationship with Laurie Anderson, and again, I don't think a film should invade any celebrity's personal life to an in-depth degree, because what goes down between two people is intensely private, but they were married from 2008 to his death in 2013, and I find that very fascinating, some part of me just wants to know all the details. 

Anyway, back to the band, which hit some kind of stride when Warhol hooked them up with Nico, who was a singer who couldn't sing very well.  She was to singing what John Cale was to playing music, he was fascinated by droning notes and non-musical sounds, remember...  But with a little training apparently she could be taught to carry a tune, so people started to pay attention when their records started to sound a bit more like music, go figure. But then Nico quit the band, Lou Reed had a falling out with Andy Warhol, and then Reed asked John Cale to leave the band - this doesn't really sound like a recipe for success.  But Doug Yule joined the band to replace Cale, again driving the band's sound toward a more musical direction, and they had a couple productive years before the next round of departures, when Sterling Morrison decided to go back to school to find himself, and drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker left shortly after that.  At what point is a band not a band?  I guess after everybody quits - this was in 1971, were they just following the Beatles' lead at this point?  That's when it was trendy to quit a band and go solo.

Before the last founding member quit the band, the Velvet Underground had a 9-week residency at Max's Kansas City in NYC, and unfortunately this documentary just kind of waves this off, it doesn't go into any detail about this set of concerts - there's no footage, no sound playback, they just sort of act like any fan of the band knows what went down there, probably because a live album of the concerts was released in 1972.  OK, but not everybody watching this film owns that album, so how about a little help here?  Were those concerts, you know, GOOD? Did the band members finally realize how much work it is to play for an audience, is that why they all quit shortly after that?  WTF?

Lou Reed went on to have a fascinating life, a busy career (off and on) and a drug habit of course (also off and on) but this film doesn't really cover that, because it's about the BAND and not any one member.  John Cale and Moe Tucker are still around, and they were both interviewed, but they're senior citizens now, that's about where any rock legend who's still around finds themself these days. All rock stars are now something of an endangered species, what with just two Beatles and two members of the Who still with us, Charlie Watts passed away and so did Meat Loaf, Ronnie Spector and Michael Lang, producer of the 1969 Woodstock concert, in the first month of 2022 alone. They're dropping like flies, but maybe it's always been that way, and we only pay attention when they come in clusters.  

Also starring John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Doug Yule, Jackson Browne (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Shelly Corwin, Danny Fields, Henry Flynt, Joseph Freeman, Allan Hyman, Richard Mishkin, Martha Morrison, Terry Philips, Jonathan Richman, Amy Taubin, John Waters (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Merrill Reed Weiner, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela

with archive footage of Laurie Anderson, Chuck Berry (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Mick Jagger (ditto), David Bowie (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Bo Diddley (ditto), John Cage, Tony Conrad, Walter Cronkite (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Denny Doherty (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), John Phillips (ditto), Michelle Phillips (ditto), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Anita Ekberg (last seen in "Way...Way Out"), Cass Elliot (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Bill Graham (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Allen Ginsberg (last seen in "Howl"), Brian Jones (last seen in "Zappa"), Angus MacLise, Gerard Malanga, Jonas Mekas (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Sterling Morrison, Billy Name, Nico, Peter Orlovsky, Lou Reed (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Barbara Rubin, Ed Sanders, Delmore Schwartz, Jack Smith, Barbara Walters (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Andy Warhol (last seen in Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Charlie Watts (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Frank Zappa (also last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice")

RATING: 6 out of 10 recording sessions at Max's Kansas City

Eating Raoul

Year 14, Day 184 - 7/3/22 - Movie #4,189

BEFORE: I know, I know, this film is neither a documentary nor a concert-based film, so it doesn't fit into the chain thematically - but it's another "cult classic" from 1982, and reaching that far back into the annals of cinematic history, it's tough for me to link there, and it's probably even tougher to link back to the present.  So if I don't watch this one now, neatly sandwiched between two films with Mary Woronov, then I may never watch it, and it will just sit on my DVR, taking up space, for months, maybe years.  So let's cross it off - both Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel carry over from "Rock 'n' Roll High School". 

I'm 10 films in to the Summer Rock & Doc Block, with 32 or 33 films to go - so plenty of documentaries still in my future, I can take a break from the format for one day.  

THE PLOT: A relatively boring Los Angeles couple discovers a bizarre, murderous way to get funding for opening a restaurant. 

AFTER: This is quite a ridiculous movie, over-the-top in terms of black comedy, but it's maybe funnier because the actors all play it so straight.  In temperament, that is, not sexual orientation.  The actor Paul Bartel, who was openly gay, played the married Paul Bland.  Yes, the lead couple was "bland" in name and affect, surrounded by wild and crazy characters much more interesting than them, but that was the point. 

Coming out of the "swinging 70's", post sexual revolution, there's a whole underground sex scene in the Los Angeles area, but this couple just wants to raise enough money to move out of the city and open their own restaurant in the Valley.  She works as a nurse and he works in a wine store, but when he gets fired and their rent gets raised, what are they supposed to do?  That dream is fading fast, and even after Paul agrees to sell off some bottles from his treasured wine collection, the buyer says he has to cash some travelers checks, but instead he takes off with the wine and leaves Paul with the dinner check.  

So when one of Mary's patients mixes her up with a dominatrix, and offers her money to tie him up and whip him, AND a man from a swingers party in their apartment complex tries to have sex with Mary (forcing Paul to kill him with a frying pan) they put two and two together, and realize they can lure horny rich men to their apartment with the promise of bondage or sex, kill those perverts and take their money, with each kill bringing them closer to the down payment they need for the restaurant.  

Raoul is the enterprising locksmith who tries to rob them, but when he learns of their scheme, he wants in, and he just happens to know a way to dispose of bodies, which really helps out the Blands, because they're starting to run out of trash bags.  It's funny - I re-booted the old PS2 this weekend to run through "Grand Theft Auto III" for old time's sake, and there's a set of side missions set at the Bitchin' Dog Food Factory which seems very similar to this part of the plot.  

Yep, this is a snapshot of 1982, that's for sure.  I didn't know that while I was spending my summer afternoons at the arcade, somewhere there were adults whose biggest problem was all of the swingers who'd moved into their building, and that the simplest solution to their problems was to put an ad in sex magazine to lure horny perverts to their deaths, while paying another man to grind up the bodies.  Yeah, that seems about right. 

Further complications arise, though, when Raoul seduces Mary with the help of some Thai stick (umm, it's just really good weed, is that all it took?).  This tracks, too, because if she was married to a closeted gay man that relationship probably wasn't sexual at all - note that they sleep in separate beds, in the same room.  Hey, whatever gets you through the night, it's all right - but clearly there was something missing in Mary's life, and Raoul took advantage of that.  But marriage and platonic friendship wins the day, and it's all worth it if the restaurant's a success, right? 

Watch for cameos here of Edie McClurg as a swinger - talking VERY dirty and against type - and also John Paragon, famous for playing the genie Jambi in "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", as the manager of a sex shop, he practically steals the movie.  Most of the other acting is terrible, not quite as bad as in "Rock 'n' Roll High School", but in the same ballpark.  At least this one's more fun, and the Ramones are nowhere to be seen. 

Also starring Robert Beltran (last seen in "Nixon"), Susan Saiger, Richard Paul, John Shearin, Darcy Pulliam, Ben Haller, Garry Goodrow, Richard Blackburn, Hamilton Camp, Buck Henry (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Hanns Manship, Dan Barrows, Allan Rich (last seen in "Wish I was Here"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Get Over It"), Billy Curtis, Ralph Brannon, John Paragon (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Don Steele (also carrying over from "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), Edie McClurg, with cameos from Joe Dante (also carrying over from "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), John Landis (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman")

RATING: 5 out of 10 unsold cases of Chateau Lafite Rothschild