Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back

Year 10, Day 243 - 8/31/18 - Movie #3,039

BEFORE: I saw some bits and pieces of this film about two years ago when it played on Showtime, usually late at night after I'd finished another movie - but I have not seen the whole thing, front to back, so that has to be done.

I've got just seven more rockumentaries after this one, every day I'm getting one step closer to finishing this chain.  But before the chain - and the summer - are over, I'm headed into Labor Day weekend ready to party, with a big superstar concert on Sunday, and a headlining act on Monday.

Dee Snider carries over from "We Are Twisted F--king Sister!" and you can't really talk about one band without talking about the other.  These two bands had the East Coast/West Coast rivalry going on well before any rappers did.

THE PLOT: The rise, fall and near-resurrection of an 80's metal band.

AFTER: I've heard over the years that many bands have claimed to be the inspiration for the fictional band "Spinal Tap", especially the ones that have gotten lost on their way to the stage from the dressing room in Cleveland.  But probably no band has a better claim than Quiet Riot for being the genesis of so many of that film's jokes about heavy metal music.  I'm thinking of the parts where the band keeps breaking up and coming back together, and when asked if he's going to miss his mate Nigel after a recent break-up, David St. Hubbins says, "37 people have been in this band over the years..."  A bunch of graphics in this film show that only 28 people have been in Quiet Riot, but many of them have quit and come back over and over again.

Plus, there's still time, they might still make it to 37 members.  But unlike Spinal Tap, whose drummers kept dying in unlikely accidents, Quiet Riot has had (mostly) only two drummers, and one is Frankie Banali, who's still keeping the group going.  As long as there's one original member left, or in Frankie's case, someone very close to being an original member, a band can continue.  There's money to be made out on the nostalgia circuit, playing state fairs and various theme venues.  And while they may not have a private chartered plane any more, or a convoy full of roadies, they're still doing "fly-ins" where the band members travel to a town with just their guitars and their stage outfits, performing with mostly rented gear.

Unlike last night's film, this one doesn't STOP telling the story of the band right before they have their biggest hit.  Instead we get to hear "Cum On Feel the Noize" (which is really a Slade song, not an original Quiet Riot song...) many times, performed by several people trying to measure up to the famous performance of Kevin DuBrow, who died of an overdose in 2007.  DuBrow did reconcile with Banali in 2004, when they put the band back together to hit the nostalgia tour - while the 1990's might not have been a very good time for heavy metal, by the early 2000's the children of the 80's had grown up and they wanted to see all the old bands again.  Hey, what comes around goes around, often several times.

Banali struggled with the decision over whether to continue after DuBrow's death, and the fans certainly weren't any help, urging him to leave things be and let the band die with its lead singer.  But if Journey can continue with a sound-alike singer, then why couldn't Quiet Riot?  So they held open auditions, and found Mark Huff, who seemed to have the vocal chops.  But after several months with the band, he still had trouble remembering the lines to their most famous song.  So he got fired and replaced with Scott Vokoun, who had the singing power, and a better memory.  But he only lasted a year or so himself, and at the very end of this film, the band announces HIS replacement.  The last I heard, they were using James Durbin, who came in fourth on "American Idol" a few years back, as their lead singer.  And so the cycle continues....

Also starring Frankie Banali, Alex Grossi, Mark Huff, Rudy Sarzo, Scott Vokoun, Chuck Wright, Glenn Hughes, Steven Adler, Matt Sorum, Carlos Cavazo, Kelly Garni, Bob Geldof, John 5, Martha Quinn, Eddie Trunk, Lark Williams, Erin Davis, Vince Wilburn Jr., Dana Strum, Warren Entner, Laura Mandell, Jodi Vigier, Chris Epting, Spencer Proffer, Dana Ross, Eric Baker, Kevin Boisvert, Mike Yamasaki, Kelle Rhoads, Kathy Rhoads D'Argenzio and archive footage of Kevin DuBrow, Randy Rhoads, Ozzy Osbourne (last seen in "Ghostbusters"), Jay Jay French (also carrying over from "We Are Twisted F--king Sister!"), Eddie Ojeda (ditto), Mark Mendoza (ditto), A.J. Pero (ditto), George Harrison (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Sebastian Bach, Jon Bon Jovi, David Coverdale, Rivers Cuomo, Lita Ford, Dave Grohl (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Debbie Harry (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Vince Neil, Gary Numan (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Sting (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Tom Bergeron, Bob Coburn, Stew Herrera, Howard Hesseman (last seen in "Heat"), Casey Kasem, Tawny Kitaen, Sherri Shepherd, Paul Shortino, Sally Steele,

RATING: 6 out of 10 fan meet-and-greets

We Are Twisted F--king Sister!

Year 10, Day 242 - 8/30/18 - Movie #3,038

BEFORE: Well, it seems I planned this rather well.  If Ziggy Stardust was the spiritual progenitor to Alice Cooper, then Alice Cooper is the fore-runner of Twisted Sister.  Yesterday's film even said so.
Dee Snider carries over from "Super Duper Alice Cooper".

THE PLOT: They were the Grand Funk of Glam and the NY Dolls of Metal.   Some considered Twisted Sister a joke, others called them the greatest bar band in the world.

AFTER: Of course, one day after I declare that every band has exactly the same story, or something very close to it, along comes a film about a band that didn't follow the same pattern as everyone else.  Oh, sure, they had the mates from school forming a band thing, and practicing and gigging really hard, and then - well, not much of anything happened for YEARS, though it wasn't for lack of trying, if you let them tell the story, anyway.

The problem was that they were a gimmick band, and some people just didn't like, or didn't get, the gimmick.  Which sounds weird because as I've already seen, Bowie did it, Alice Cooper did it, why did people get turned off just because a metal band was dressing up all girly and glam?  If you ask me, the gimmick is only a gimmick, and you kind of need some hit songs to progress any further past the gimmick.  But that surely couldn't have been the problem for Twisted Sister, because all of their songs were amazing gems, right?  Again, this is THEM telling the story so I have a hunch that they're somewhat biased.  To hear Jay Jay French say that when he went to see Bowie in concert he was inspired by his look, but his music sucked - well, that tells you pretty much what you need to know.  Even though not every song in the "Ziggy Stardust" concert was amazing, I'd still listen to early Bowie a thousand times before choosing to listen to early Twisted Sister, so please, get over yourself.

What Twisted Sister was, instead of a hit-making machine, was a bar band - meaning that they knew how to work a crowd, perform on-stage antics like hosted drinking competitions that for sure would be illegal in today's litigious world, and yeah, dressing up in women's gear.  But unlike Bowie who could probably pass for female, Dee Snider was more in the Alice Cooper camp, where his masculinity still came through the clothing and the make-up.  And he would explain to people back then, "Hey, I'm not a fag..."  Umm, great, but you may want to stop telling the story that way, it's a much more sensitive world now.  Classy guy.

There's no doubt that this band had their share of bad luck - every time they got close to signing a record deal to make an album, something bad would happen.  A key member of the band would quit, another record company executive would veto the deal, or the executive that did want to sign them would suddenly die or his business partner would walk off with all the money.  So even though the band had a few hit singles released (again, I question their quality, because the film didn't really play them) it was YEARS before they were able to release an album.  And then when they finally did, it turned out that glam groups were passé, and it appeared that they had missed their shot at stardom.

They kept gigging, and touring, and got their name out there, and of course they did finally have a hit album and video - you know the one, "We're Not Gonna Take It" - only this documentary STOPS right before that happened, it ends with a 1982 appearance on the BBC's Channel 4 where they managed to win over a crowd with Dee wiping off his make-up.  (Umm KISS did it first, sorry, man... then of course the fans begged KISS to put the make-up back on...)  This makes no sense, this band had ONE big super hit, why not find a way to include it in this film?  There are titles at the end of the film that explain that the band was on top of the world for five years after that hit, but why spend over two hours focusing on the time that the band was mired in relative obscurity?

It can't be a rights issue, the BAND produced this film - do they just want to be perceived by their fans as lovable losers, like is that more sympathetic or something?  Why shy away from playing their most famous song?  Why not include any footage of the phenomenon the band became during their most popular years?  It seems that they're much more proud of their reputation for playing on the final night of some very famous clubs, when they prompted their fans to tear all the building's fixtures out, which if you think about it, is probably cheaper than hiring a professional demolition crew.  The band probably found their calling here, and I hope the club owners paid them for this service - an unruly mob of rock fans is unfortunately not licensed for this, but man, did they work efficiently. 

NITPICK POINT: Why did two people associated with the band have to be interviewed while they were driving their cars?  Were they so busy that they didn't have time to sit down in a studio, so they had to answer questions while doing errands?  This wasn't even visually interesting, it just seemed like poor planning on somebody's part.  Even worse, answering questions about the band's history seems like it would cause distracted driving at the very least - so really, this was not the proper way to conduct interviews.

Also starring Jay Jay French, Mark Mendoza, Ken Neill, Eddie Ojeda, A.J. Pero, Suzette Snider, Jason Flom, Joe Gerber, Martin Hooker, with archive footage of David Bowie (last seen in "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), David Johansen, Iggy Pop (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Lemmy, Mel "Starr" Anderson, Keith "Angel" Angelino, Kevin John Grace, Frank "Rick Prince" Karuba, Michael "Valentine" O'Neill, Tony Petri, Billy "Diamond" Stiger,

RATING: 4 out of 10 shades of lipstick

Super Duper Alice Cooper

Year 10, Day 241 - 8/29/18 - Movie #3,037

BEFORE: For three days we had a rather large spider living on our front porch - OK, so it wasn't tarantula-sized, maybe it was only about an inch or two in length, but it managed to build a web that was right beside our front door, that prevented us from using the majority of the porch, without knocking down the web - and really, the last thing I need is to have a spider mad at me for tearing down its food source.  What if it were a brown recluse or something?  Plus, my wife goes outside every day and sits on the front porch to smoke, and spiders creep her out even more than they creep me out.  We made all kinds of jokes about the spider to lessen the tension - he was a millennial hipster spider, he did freelance web-site design, he was crashing on our porch without paying rent - but nothing could alleviate the fact that he was THERE, and at night if you turned on the porch light, you could see him in the web, just hanging out.  To us he was as large and ominous as if he were an Alaskan King Crab out on the porch.

So, he had to go.  I have no problem with swatting a mosquito or stepping on a cockroach, but when insects or arachnids get over a certain size, I can't bring myself to kill them.  So I put on a pair of work gloves, my wife emptied out a container of peanuts, and I set out to catch him.  The problem was, when he wasn't in his web, he was sitting up on the floodlights over our front door, which are triggered by a motion sensor.  When the lights were off, it was too dark to see the spider, and when the lights were on, they would shine right in my eyes, so I couldn't see the spider then either.  He picked the one spot on the whole porch where I couldn't look at him, and I reasoned it was only a matter of time before he figured out he could turn the lights on and off according to his own needs, just by walking across the sensor.

My wife stood inside and struck the floodlights with a broom handle, and I figured I'd catch the spider after he fell to the porch floor.  Only when he fell off, he never hit the floor -  he had already planned for the fall, and he had a web-line that enabled him to climb back up.  But while he climbed, he was vulnerable, so she knocked him off again, and I caught him in the jar on his third ascent back up to the floodlights.  I could have left him in the jar to run out of air, or thrown him away in the jar, but I would have felt guilty about that, so instead I walked four blocks away and opened the jar inside the fence of the cemetery down the street.  I figured he could make his webs between the tombstones, and if anything, that would enhance the scene there in time for Halloween.

Later I realized that he'd appeared on our porch right around the time I watched "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars", so maybe in a weird way, there was some connection there?  And Alice Cooper's band was once called the Spiders, for a brief time.  I don't know, make of that what you will.

Iggy Pop carries over from "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", and probably one or two other people do as well.

THE PLOT: The story of Vincent Furnier, a preacher's son, who struck fear into the hearts of parents as Alice Cooper, the ultimate rock star of the bizarre.

AFTER: I think I scheduled this one really well, even though I didn't know about Alice Cooper's connection to Frank Zappa, especially because Zappa wasn't listed in the IMDB (nor were about 40 other people) for making an appearance in this film.  (Yep, I fixed that listing too - why are documentary filmmakers so lazy about crediting people?)  But it also turns out there's only a very fine line that separates Ziggy Stardust from Alice Cooper.  Both were fictional personas created by performers, both designed to create maximum shock value and get the most attention possible - Bowie used androgyny and sexual identity, while Vincent Furnier used the androgyny of a woman's name and then the rest was horror-based theatrics.  But it feels to me that they were both using tricks from the same playbook almost, glam rock with their own twist, and then it's just that one was more successful than the other in the long run.

But the Alice Cooper story is really just like the story of any band (and Alice Cooper was the name of the BAND before it was the name of the band's front-man).  A bunch of mates get together in high-school, practice a lot and write a few songs, move to the big city, get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the rock scene, meet a manager, get a record producer and a record deal, and then if they're lucky enough to have a couple of hit songs, it's wealth, fame, attention, but then that leads to constant touring and pressure from their record company to make more hits, then it's the wild scene of alcohol and drugs that nearly takes them down, along with the in-fighting for dominance in the band, and the difficulties of trying to maintain relationships and family.  Then if they're lucky and they don't die at 27, if they can stay on the scene they may get regarded as sort of elder statesmen of music, get inducted into a Hall of Fame or two, then mount a comeback tour.  Trust me, I've seen it a few times by now - that's the Eagles' story, the Rolling Stones story, and it's probably the same story for a hundred bands, including Alice Cooper.

The footage of young Vincent Furnier is probably more jarring than his stage appearance now, because by now we're all used to the stage makeup and the long hair and the heavy metal costumes, so it's hard to believe that he was once a high-school student who looked like a cross between a young George Harrison and Jason Schwartzman's character in the film "Rushmore".  (I also never made the visual connection between Cooper and Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls in "This Is Spinal Tap", but now I can't help but see it.)  The path across the country from Detroit to Phoenix to Los Angeles is part of what shaped the band that became The Spiders, then Nazz, and finally Alice Cooper.  Then they left L.A. and were on the road for years, before settling back in Detroit, where the crowds were more receptive to their hard-edged music and over-the-top stage theatrics.  (Oh, that poor chicken...)  Certainly you can see how a hard-rock band, somewhere between glam rock and death metal (which didn't even exist yet) would have been out of place in California in the late 1960's, home of hippies and peace and love.

That documentary about the Grateful Dead, "Long Strange Trip", used a Frankenstein's monster metaphor to explain - well, I don't know what it was trying to explain, because it did a really poor job of it.  But this doc uses a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde analogy to explain the process of becoming Alice Cooper, having another name, creating another personality that would allow someone to do things he might not ordinarily do if he remained who he was before.  Unforunately that also extended to excessive drinking and drug use, in addition to doing scary stuff on stage with snakes and props.  Then it took a long time for Alice to get sober and clean, through rehab and some time spent in an asylum, so that happened.  But he seemed to come out the other end as a reasonably together guy, and we also know that since he's an actor, DJ and restaurant owner in addition to a husband and father, that the stage theatrics are really just for maximum shock value, as they've always been.

In addition to appearing on stage with a large boa constrictor, Alice is known for chopping up plastic baby dolls with a cleaver on stage, and appearing in mock executions via hanging, electric chair, or guillotine.  Really, it's just a bit of stage magic, combined with the fact that audience members seated more than 20 rows from the stage can't distinguish a rubber human head from a real one, especially if the stage lighting isn't very bright.  And the story goes that one terrible night, his safety rope broke during the hanging scene, and he almost choked to death for real.

However, some of the stories told here have been discredited over the years, such as where the name Alice Cooper came from.  Depending on whom you ask, it either came from the name of a character on the Andy Griffith Show, or from a ouija board session where Vincent Furnier found out that was his name from a previous life, he was the reincarnated soul of a woman who'd been burned at the stake for witchcraft.  Since so many of the band's theatrics are horror-based or Halloween-themed, I'm guessing the ouija board story just tied in with all of that.

Just before their three-album deal with Zappa's record company ran out, the band got their first hit, "I'm Eighteen, and with this they were able to get a better deal at a major label.  Really, I only know three Alice Cooper songs, and that's one of them, along with "School's Out" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy".  And I think I first became aware of him just because he played a villain in the movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which featured the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton covering Beatles songs.  I love that film, but I don't recommend it to other people, unless they're really in the mood to watch a terrible movie.

When Alice took a few years off from touring, in order to get clean, by the time he came back to music it was 1985, MTV had been a thing for a few years, and suddenly there was Poison and Ratt and Motley Crue, and glam rock had evolved into heavy metal, and was more popular than ever.  It seems that things had progressed pretty will without him, and suddenly when he was ready for the world again, the world was also ready for him to return to it.  Then his reputation allowed him to do guest appearances on everything from Guns 'N Roses albums to movies like "Wayne's World" and one of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films.  And just this year, he appeared as King Herod in NBC's live broadcast of "Jesus Christ Superstar", and I think he just plain stole the show.

See, you survive long enough and you can become an elder statesman in your chosen field, even if that field is rock and roll.

Also starring Alice Cooper (last seen in "Drew: The Man Behind the Poster"), Elton John (also carrying over from "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), John Lydon (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Dee Snider (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Sheryl Cooper, Dennis Dunaway, Jack Curtis, Pamela Des Barres, Robert Ezrin, Ella Furnier, Shep Gordon, Wayne Kramer, Neal Smith, Bernie Taupin, with archive footage of Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, George Harrison (last seen in "Concert for George"), Paul McCartney (ditto), John Lennon (also carrying over from "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Andy Warhol (ditto), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Janis Joplin (ditto), Merv Griffin (ditto), Jim Morrison (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Keith Moon (last seen in "The Kids Are Alright"), Micky Dolenz (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Diana Ross (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Johnny Ramone (ditto), Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Tommy Ramone, Frank Zappa (last seen in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words"), Soupy Sales (ditto), Marty Balin, Jack Casady, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick, Spencer Dryden, The Chambers Brothers, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Arthur Lee,  Jack Benny, George Burns, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Salvador Dali, Wolfman Jack, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Vincent Price, Tom Snyder (last seen in "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir").

RATING: 5 out of 10 surrealist paintings

Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World

Year 10, Day 240 - 8/28/18 - Movie #3,036

BEFORE: Continuing my 3-day look at Bowie, David Bowie carries over from "The Last Five Years" and a few band members carry over as well. After this, I'll have just 10 films to go in the documentary chain, and they'll all be in that sort of hard rock/heavy metal vein.  So the end is finally in sight.

THE PLOT: Combining footage from interviews with the late great David Bowie and contributions from those who knew him personally, this documentary celebrates the illustrious life of one of the greatest artists to ever grace the stage.

AFTER: I don't know, I kind of expected a little more from this one, like maybe a by-the-numbers breakdown on Bowie's influence.  Or I would have accepted something that went by topic, like, #1. Fashion, here's how Bowie changed the world of fashion, by wearing THIS and THAT.  Then #2, sexual politics, here's how dressing like a woman shocked and changed the world, and then he shocked the world again when he revealed he was straight (mostly), and so on. 

This is just your standard doc, cobbled together from a bunch of archive footage, much of which I saw before in yesterday's film, because that one couldn't stay on a focused topic, either.  I guess when a rock star dies, everyone comes out of the woodwork to see what they can assemble from whatever's in the news archives, and if they can turn that into a 90-minute documentary, that's what they're gonna do. 

This film starts out by interviewing a number of Bowie's live-in girlfriends and romantic partners, and I honestly don't see how that relates to changing the world.  Did he set out to make love to the world, one woman at a time?  No, he did not.  (Well, maybe...)  You can't give a documentary a title like this and then just say, "Well, everybody enjoyed his music, so I guess he changed the world!"  Entertaining the world and changing it are not synonymous.  And celebrating his life doesn't go far toward making that point that you can't seem to make.  Same question for finally learning why Bowie had two differently-colored eyes - what does that have to do with changing the world?

I'm honestly surprised that this film didn't come from the same director or the same production company as the other doc I watched with a similar title, "How the Beatles Changed the World".  It uses the exact same approach, which includes NOT featuring ANY of the original music tracks from the artist in question.  That's a huge omission, right?  Like, the biggest?  Admittedly there are a few clips here of Bowie singing, but it's just the vocal track, not the music, because I guess that they'd have to pay for, and this was obviously made on the cheap.  Like, the cheapest.  I don't know how somebody thought they could get away with talking about Bowie's music and not playing any of it. 

Instead, we learn here that Bowie's singing style borrowed quite liberally from Anthony Newley (when you play them back-to-back it's much easier to recognize), and that it was much easier for him to perform on stage when he was playing a character, hence the Ziggy Stardust and various other personas.  Even so, it was a very cheap trick for Bowie to announce his last performance DURING that performance, and then clarify later that it was only the last performance AS THAT CHARACTER.  I prefer to think that he really wanted to get off the big giant hamster wheel that is recording, touring and promotion, and just couldn't find a way to make a clean break.  Because honestly, I've been seeing a lot of that in these documentaries. 

NITPICK POINT: There's a clip of Bowie's old grade school, and the kids who are studying there today are shown learning who David Bowie is, only since he never did a podcast or had his own YouTube unboxing videos, they don't seem to care.  They even pronounce his name "BOUGH-ie", as if "BOUGH" rhymes with "COW", and not "BOW-ie", as if "BOW" rhymes with "LOW", as God intended.  Can't some teacher step in and correct these kids?  This is important, damn it.

Also starring Angie Bowie (last seen in "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"), Breege Collins, Mary Finnigan, Paul Gambaccini, Dana Gillespie, Bob Harris, Iman, Clive Langer, Laurence Myers, Paul Nicholas, Iggy Pop, Chris Sullivan, George Underwood, and the voice of David Wartnaby with archive footage of Sterling Campbell (also carrying over from "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Gail Ann Dorsey (ditto), Reeves Gabrels (ditto), Mike Garson (ditto), Catherine Russell (ditto), Earl Slick (ditto), Mick Ronson (also last seen in "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Mick Jagger (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Elton John (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), John Lennon (ditto), Annie Lennox (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Lady Gaga (last seen in "Gaga: Five Foot Two"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Lou Reed (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Marc Bolan, Russell Harty (last seen in "The Kids Are Alright"), Duncan Jones, Lindsay Kemp, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Anthony Newley, Johnnie Ray, Hunt Sales, Tony Sales.

RATING: 4 out of 10 acting roles

David Bowie: The Last Five Years

Year 10, Day 239 - 8/27/18 - Movie #3,035

BEFORE: I saw something trending on Twitter today, and I got my hopes up, thinking it was National Bowie Day - but then I looked at it a little closer and determined that it's really National BOWTIE Day.  My mistake.

David Bowie carries over from "Ziggy Stardust" and we move forward about 43 years. Jeez, that seems like a lot.

THE PLOT: A documentary about David Bowie's final two albums "The Next Day" and "Backstair" and his Broadway musical "Lazarus".

AFTER: This is another one of the original 13 films, which I used as the foundation for this Rock Music documentary list.  The other 39 films were added on as linking material, from what was active and available on Netflix, along with what I remembered as being released in the last few years on this topic, which I then had to track down on iTunes, or in one case, by purchasing a DVD on Amazon.  After this I've got 11 more films in the chain, two of them are part of the original 11 - one film about Black Sabbath and one film about Rush.  (The other 10 films I started with were "Eight Days a Week", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", the two Rolling Stones concert films set in Latin America, "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "George Michael: Freedom", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "This Is It", "The Beach Boys Making Pet Sounds" and "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words".)

Prior to watching this film, I wasn't aware that there was such a long gap in David Bowie's recording and performing career, starting with his last concert in 2004.  It turns out that Bowie went out on the longest set of tour dates in his whole career, over the course of 2003 and 2004, and then had a heart attack during a show in Oslo, Norway.  He thought it was a pinched nerve at first, so he finished the concert, then left by ambulance.  That does seem to demonstrate a large amount of devotion to his job.  But following the heart attack, the remaining 14 tour dates were cancelled, and he took a few years off, except for minor festival curation jobs.

It wasn't until his 66th birthday, in January 2013, that he even began talking about releasing a new album.  The musicians interviewed here all tell variations of the same story - "I got an e-mail from David Bowie, asking me if I would join a session to record some new music..."  So, if they all have the same story, why do we the audience need to hear it 11 or 12 times?  Over the course of a 2-year period, starting in 2011, Bowie met and recorded with these musicians that he trusted, working according to his own schedule, and getting all of the musicians to sign NDAs, most likely because he was thinking about his own health, and not overdoing it.  Then Bowie would take the results of the recording sessions with him, listen to them in private for a month or two, then call the band back together to make changes.  This is a fascinating process, because it managed to be both collaborative and intensely personal at the same time.

This movie, on the other hand, drove me a little crazy because it claimed to have a singular focus on Bowie's final five years of creation, but then it kept dipping back to show us clips from his past videos and concerts quite liberally.  This was done under the guise of illustrating certain points about his work, or to give the audience certain reference points, especially if Bowie was referencing his own work.  It might be helpful for non-experts to see these clips, but at the same time it manages to distract from what was SUPPOSED to be the focus of the film, which is his last two albums.  You can't have it both ways, you can't say "This is the subject of the film" and then keep showing clips that stray off of that subject and out of the time period covered.

I mean, I get that his proposed Broadway musical "Lazarus" is supposed to feature the character he played in "The Man Who Fell to Earth", so I guess you kind of have to show clips from that film, but that should have been a one-off, and instead the filmmakers took every possible opportunity to work in clips from his back catalogue.  That ended up feeling like a bunch of documentary shortcuts, or an admission that they didn't have enough recent clips.  While I have to admit that I don't own any Bowie music that was released after 1984, and I like a Greatest Hits package as much as the next person, that's not why I came here today - I tuned in specifically for the new stuff.

On the upside, we are presented with a man who worked very hard to put himself out there, even if that public persona was always changing - he'd just craft another costume, another personality, and put that one out there next.  In an interview quote, he admits to having been very shy on stage at first, and that certainly helps to explain why he crafted the Ziggy Stardust persona in the first place, because it was easier to go out on stage and pretend to be someone else.  And Bowie sort of imagined that he'd be dead by the age of 30, which explains all the references to death and suicide on his first few albums.  At least he was conscious of the desire to be a star while still hating being famous - he found that being famous was great for getting concert tickets and restaurant reservations, but other than that, it was a pain in the ass. In some clips he enjoyed walking anonymously around Berlin or having fun at a rest stop in Montana, and that may be our only chance to see him just being funny, enjoying life, and letting his guard down.

But that's life for a rock star, just as it is for normal non-famous people - you do what you do, then you wake up the next day and you do it again, and you keep doing it until you can't do it any more.  As haunting and introspective as that last album and those last few videos were, Bowie returned to his home planet on January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday.  Now, what I need to get is some kind of Greatest Hits Vol. 2 CD, something that will allow me to collect the hits from the second part of his career, without re-buying all of the songs I already have.  I'm not sure that even exists, though.

Also starring Mike Garson (also carrying over from "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"), Geoff MacCormack (ditto), Earl Slick, Gail Ann Dorsey, Gerry Leonard, Catherine Russel, Sterling Campbell, Tony Visconti, Zachary Alford, David Torn, Ava Cherry, Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, Floria Sigismondi, Maria Schneider, Donny McCaslin, Mark Guiliana, Tony Oursler, Michael C. Hall (last seen in "Paycheck"), Toni Basil, Jonathan Barnbrook, Johan Renck, Ivo van Hove.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Tin Machine cassettes

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Year 10, Day 238 - 8/26/18 - Movie #3,034

BEFORE: My Summer Rock Music Concert series moves on, with this concert from the early days of Bowie, and then tomorrow I'll examine Bowie's later years, for a nice contrast.  This is the last major rock star in my countdown who's passed away, I'll try to end with (mostly) living people in the final stretch, though I know there will be at least two exceptions. 

Ringo Starr carries over again from "Concert for George", apparently he visits David Bowie backstage during the concert. 

THE PLOT: The 1973 historic concert that was David Bowie's last appearance with the Ziggy persona and the Spiders from Mars.

AFTER: Oh, I have so many questions about David Bowie.  So much has been written and said about him over the years, it's hard to know what was real and what was just a stage gimmick.  He was probably the first rock star I ever saw in concert - my uncle took me to a Bowie concert when I was in high school, and I repaid the favor when I was in college by inviting him to a Letterman Anniversary special, where he finally got to see Bob Dylan perform.  But I saw Bowie in the post-"Labyrinth" years, which must have been the Glass Spider tour in 1987.  Obviously there were a lot of "Changes" between 1973 and 1987 - for starters, by the time I saw him, he was wearing men's clothing.

That's obviously where a lot of my questions come in to play - was this all just a gimmick, being a transvestite just because it got him some attention?  Or was this the real Bowie?  Was there ever a real Bowie in the first place?  Well, no, because his name was really David Jones, and he had to change it to avoid confusion with Davy Jones from the Monkees.  So was there ever really any THERE there?  Fans in 1973 obviously thought he was gay, because many people back then didn't make a distinction between dressing like a lady and sleeping with men, it might have been assumed that the two went hand-in-hand (so to speak...).  But Bowie had a wife, and he mentioned his son in that Christmas special where he sang with Bing Crosby, so that probably blew people's minds a little more.

Bowie later claimed that he was gay only for a short time, or perhaps he was a closeted heterosexual who got caught up in the customs of the day.  Well, the 1970's were pretty wild, so I can kind of see that.  But then we have Angie's Bowie's assertion that she found Bowie and Mick Jagger in bed together, and when Bowie covers the Stones song "Let's Spend the Night Together" in this concert, and dedicates it to Mick, well, that takes on a whole new meaning, right?  He wants to spend the night together with Jagger.  Then years later they made that music video for "Dancing in the Streets" and you had to wonder if they were also dancing in the sheets.  Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Bowie does the first act of the "Ziggy Stardust" concert in a very short silver satin kimono, with thigh-high boots and hose, and I don't know whether to applaud him for using androgyny to get attention, or chastise him for appropriating the attire of real transvestites, especially if this was just a gimmick, and not really his thing.  There's a guitar solo that goes on way too long, but this was obviously included so that Bowie could change outfits - the first time he does this, the film cuts to the dressing room, but after that, it focuses on the guitar solos while he changes into what can only be called a multi-colored "onesie".  (Unitard?)

Bowie declared at the end that this would be his "last performance", but now we all know that it wasn't, it was just his last performance as "Ziggy Stardust", and later he became Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke or the New Romantic Bowie.  Was he a product of his times, or did the times change to allow him to be something else as needed?  Discuss.

I've really got two problems with this concert film, the first is that the camera work is just terrible, most of the time the camera's either too closely centered on Bowie, like a face close-up, or else it's zoomed too far out, to include the whole stage.  There's just no in-between, like how about a two-shot of Bowie and his guitarist?  Or maybe a semi-close-up, where you can see maybe Bowie's head and half of his body?  You can see this all the time these days on "America's Got Talent", their camera-work is similarly horrible, they're always either zoomed in too far, or zoomed out so you can't see what's taking place on stage.  Find the middle ground, guys!  The stage lighting isn't much better here, there just wasn't enough light in this concert to make a decent image on the film.

My other problem is that looking back on this concert now, there just aren't enough hits, or even songs that I'm familiar with.  "The Width of a Circle"?  What is this, geometry class?  "My Death"?  Sounds pretty gruesome - I read that the record company wanted to censor all of Bowie's songs during this concert that mentioned death or suicide, because come on, it was a bit much.  People go to a rock concert because they want to have a good time!   "Moonage Daydream"? What the hell does that even mean?  Same goes for "Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud"...

I mean, of course I know "Space Oddity", "Changes", "Ziggy Stardust", "Suffragette City" and "All the Young Dudes".  Those songs are on the greatest hits CD, and you hear them all the time on classic rock stations.  Maybe it's my fault, because I don't know all the Bowie deep cuts from his first and second album.  True Bowie fans probably all know "Cracked Actor" and "Oh! You Pretty Things" so maybe I'm just revealing here that I'm not as big a fan as you might think.  Well, at least I've got two more films about Bowie to watch, so I can at least try to make up for lost time.

Also starring David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Mick Woodmansey, Ken Fordham, Geoffrey MacCormack, John Hutchinson, Mike Garson, with cameos from Angie Bowie, Maureen Starkey.

RATING: 4 out of 10 feather boas

Concert for George

Year 10, Day 237 - 8/25/18 - Movie #3,033

BEFORE: I spotted this one airing on PBS a few months ago, while I was putting this chain together. I was fairly sure that I owned the concert on DVD, but I didn't think I'd ever watched it.  I know that I've listened to it several times, it's in my iTunes library so I must have bought the CD at some point.  The trouble was that I couldn't put my hand on the DVD at the time, I figured it was either down in my basement media room with the CD, or perhaps it was still in a bag of unpacked Christmas gifts from two years ago, because I thought I remembered getting this as a gift.  Nope, no luck, so I recorded the PBS airing on my DVR, just to be on the safe side - in fact, I recorded it twice, because there was one airing that was an hour and a half, and another that was two and a half hours.  OK, maybe the longer one was with pledge breaks included, but again, just to be on the safe side...

It turned out that the 90 minute recording was missing the first hour, so whoever programmed the grid for PBS that week made a huge error - therefore I was glad that I recorded it twice.  Ringo Starr carries over again from "The Kids Are Alright", and it seems that I've sort of come full circle with this chain, since I started this over a month ago with the Beatles and Eric Clapton.  I've been second-guessing my scheduling ever since I started this Summer Music Concert Series, in the first film about Jimi Hendrix I saw Pete Townshend make an appearance, and I thought that maybe the film about The Who needed to be up at the start of the chain.  But no, I figured I'd circle back around to films with Ringo in them, and I could use it later in the chain as a connector.  (Plus, The Who's not a top priority band for me, though if other people think of them as top-level, I won't argue, they're just not a personal favorite of mine.)

A big reason to watch this one now is to squeeze in another appearance from Tom Petty, you may recall I dedicated this 10th Movie Year to him, and maybe that influenced my decision to do a rock music chain in the first place.  But so far I've only heard him on one soundtrack ("Appaloosa") and being interviewed in that documentary about Elvis Presley. (For a while I had that film linking to this one, but then I moved things around.)  At least he'll perform on camera in today's film.

But the other reason for not watching this one with the other Beatles films back in July was that I hadn't worked out my path to the end of 2018 yet, so I didn't know for sure if I had a space for this one.  Now I have a plan that should get me to the end of the year, and I worked that out in a way that held a slot open for this tribute concert.  So now I can proceed.

THE PLOT: George Harrison's friends, family and bandmates unite for a tribute concert in 2002 on the one-year anniversary of his death.

AFTER: It's funny, right after watching the concert recorded from PBS, I found my original DVD of the full concert, which would have run nearly 2 1/2 hours.  I was debating whether to delete the program from my DVR or save it, and possibly try to dub it to DVD, when I decided to take one last look for the DVD I was fairly sure I already owned.  I found it in the DVD cabinet, of all places - hey, things are always in the last place you look, but that's mainly because you stop looking once you find them. The version I recorded off PBS was also 2 1/2 hours long, but that included pledge breaks, so they must have cut something out - I looked up the set list on Wikipedia and yep, they edited out the first 20 or 30 minutes of the concert, which was mostly sitar music played by Ravi Shankar.  Whew, I dodged that bullet - if I had to sit through 20 minutes of sitar playing, I would have enjoyed this film a lot less, and probably given it a lower score.

There were also TWO songs performed in concert by the Monty Python ensemble, but they only aired one -  I guess you can't broadcast the song "Sit on My Face" on PBS, not if you want the channel to keep getting government funding, anyway.  Normally I'd protest any censorship of the Pythons, but was it really appropriate in the first place to sing such a vulgar song at a tribute to a deceased Beatle?  OK, maybe it was George Harrison's favorite Python song or something, but I'd ask to see the paperwork on that before approving it. I'm sure he had a good sense of humor and all, but still, this should have been a more solemn event than that.  As it is, even "The Lumberjack Song" might have been pushing things a bit.

Especially when so many of George Harrison's songs were about religion or peace or just being contemplative about one's place in the world or the transitory nature of things.  Many of the songs performed here seemed especially appropriate, like "All Things Must Pass" - what a great message for a tribute concert!  Even if we're missing George and regretting his demise, we have to remind ourselves that all things are temporary, including our lives, but also our grief and sadness.  "My Sweet Lord", that one also fits in very well, as does "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)", "Isn't It a Pity", and then even Beatles songs like "I Need You", "If I Needed Someone" and "I Want to Tell You" seemed to have a deeper meaning than was originally intended if you imagine them being sung to a fellow comrade who's no longer present.

Ringo Starr also performed "Photograph", and made reference to how he wrote the song with George, and it meant one thing, and now when he sings it, it means something else.  Probably it used to be about a lover who walked out and isn't coming back, and now maybe it's about his bandmates who died and aren't coming back.  That's a great song, if it can have a meaning that changes over time, or is so open to interpretation that it can serve a dual purpose.  But then, of course, Ringo ruined things by singing "Honey Don't", which is just a silly Carl Perkins number that had no relevance at all.  Again, this is a tribute concert, it's not a place for lines like ""Sometimes I love you on a Saturday night, Sunday morning you don't look right".  That seemed inappropriate.  It felt like Ringo just treated this event like it was one of his All-Starr concerts, and with Billy Preston and Gary Brooker in this band, you can see how maybe he just got confused.

But this 2002 concert was the first time that Paul and Ringo had played on stage together since the Beatles broke up.  Maybe they'd gotten together and jammed in private, but 23 years without playing on stage together?  There must have been some bad blood there.  (Wait, I know Ringo was in Paul's movie "Give My Regards to Broad Street" in 1984, so who knows?  Maybe they have been friends, and they just never found a concert to play together in during all that time.)

The grouping of musicians on stage made for some other odd situations - when I saw Dhani Harrison interacting with Eric Clapton, I wondered if it felt strange for him to play guitar with the man who once stole his father's girlfriend - but then, I guess if Clapton hadn't done that, then George wouldn't have gone on to marry Olivia and Dhani wouldn't have been born.  Do other people even think about these things, or is it just me?  Also, was it weird for Paul McCartney to play on George's song "Wah-Wah"?  Like, does he know that George wrote that song about his frustration in working with the other Beatles?

Anyway, the last couple films had a bunch of songs in them that I didn't even know - I only knew a few Frank Zappa songs, and there were a few Who songs that I wasn't familiar with - but thankfully I knew almost every song today (except maybe "Horse to the Water").  The real highlights for me began when Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers took the stage, they killed it on "Taxman" and "I Need You", then Jeff Lynne joined in for "Handle With Care" and it was almost a Wilburys reunion (except for Bob Dylan and the deceased Roy Orbison, of course.)

It's a little sad that this concert's only 16 years old, and we've lost both Tom Petty and Billy Preston since then. (umm, and Jim Capaldi from Traffic...and Ravi Shankar, but he was 92.) Heck, the whole film's a little sad, this whole last month of films has been a little sad, when you get right down to it.  Well, at least now we have the answer to that puzzling lyric from "A Day in the Life" about knowing how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall - it turns out that it just takes one big George Harrison-shaped one.

Also starring Eric Clapton (last seen in "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Tom Petty (last heard in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Billy Preston (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Joe Brown, Jools Holland, Sam Brown, Gary Brooker, Jim Capaldi, Dhani Harrison, Michael Kamen, Jim Keltner, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Voorman, Ron Blair, Mike Campbell, Steve Ferrone, Benmont Tench, Scott Thurston, Eric Idle (last heard in "Ella Enchanted"), Michael Palin (last heard in "A Liar's Autobiography"), Terry Gilliam (ditto), Terry Jones (ditto), Carol Cleveland (ditto), Neil Innes, a cameo from Tom Hanks (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), and archive footage of George Harrison (also last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom").

RATING: 6 out of 10 Royal Canadian Mounties