Gordon Lightfoot in GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mindis a surprisingly interesting documentary about a now genial singer-songwriter that I hadn’t thought of for decades.
The biodoc emphasizes Lightfoot’s talent as a songwriter and his importance to Canadian music scene. Just when it starts getting too reverential, the more lively tidbits from his career and personal life start rolling out.
Notably, the inspiration for the lyrics of Sundown is revealed:
I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress
In a room where ya do what ya don’t confess
Sundown you better take care
If I find you been creepin’ ’round my back stairs
Amazingly, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was recorded not only on the first TAKE, but the on first time Lightfoot’s band had ever PLAYED the song.
Gordon Lightfoot in GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND
Physically unrecognizable from his hey day, the 81-year-old version of Lightfoot is pretty likeable. He is modest and irreverent about his own work (I hate that fuckin’ song). He is also grateful for his blessings, sober, open and regretful about the mistakes in his personal life.
Heck, I enjoyed spending an hour-and-a-half with the guy. Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind is available on Virtual Cinema; I watched it at the Laemmle.
The infectious We Got the Beat by the Go-Go’s is fun itself, distilled into a song. The documentary The Go-Go’s tells the story of the all-female band.
There is a familiar arc to every documentary about a rock band. Scrappy and hungry musicians perform the music they love in obscurity, before being suddenly thrust into worldwide fame and more cash than they could have imagined. Then the bubble is burst by some combination of drug abuse, internal jealousy, creative differences, personality conflicts and fights over money. Usually the survivors look back with pride in the music, nostalgia about the good times and regrets that they didn’t handle it all with more maturity.
The Go-Go’s fits in that framework, to be sure, but it’s about women. The Go-Go’s have been the only all-female band to write their own music and play their own instruments ever to have a number one Billboard record. They achieved that in 1982, and it hasn’t been duplicated since.
All five Go-Go’s thankfully have survived and each shares her experiences in The Go-Go’s. They are an open, engaging and likeable lot.
There’s a tidbit about the gentlemanly class shown by The Police. And we learn why none of the Go-Go’s is proud of their appearance on Saturday Night Live.
This is a modest film about a singular moment in popular music. The Go-Go’s is available on Showtime.
Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest movie music composers (and perhaps the most iconic) has died. Among his 519 composing credits, he is most known for his groundbreaking scores in the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
He won an Oscar for The Hateful 8 in 2015. Although his score was excellent, it referred to his earlier, entirely original work, and this was probably a well-deserved “career achievement” award.
Morricone’s work was ever aspirational, seemingly seeking to become iconic. It takes fearlessness to incorporate whistling, gunshots, chanting men’s choirs, the Jew’s Harp, and what the New York Times calls the “bizarre, wailing “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah,” played on a sweet potato-shaped wind instrument called an ocarina“. Morricone didn’t believe in understatement.
Leone earned his first credit in 1960 and wrote the startlingly original Fistful in 1964 at age 36. His music defined the genre of Spaghetti Western as much as did Sergio Leone’s grotesques and closeups. Along with Leone’s great The Man with No Name trilogy, Leona composed for Once Upon a Time in the West and 2 Mules for Sister Sara. His trademark music elevated well over ten Spaghetti Westerns, including the lesser Seven Guns for theMacGregors, Navajo Joe, The Great Silence, My Name Is Nobody, and Duck You Sucker (and I’ve seem ’em all).
Besides the spaghetti westerns, Morricone composed the scores of The Battle of Algiers, 1900 Once Upon a Time in America, La Cage aux Folles and Cinema Paradiso. He was still working in 2020 at age 91.
I particularly admire his score for the 1986 historical drama The Mission. In the video below, Morricone himself conducts a symphony orchestra playing the theme from The Mission. In the story, an 18th Century Jesuit (Robert DeNiro) tries to Christianize an indigenous tribe in Paraguay (and it doesn’t end well). At 3:15, a flute reflects the indigenous culture and, at 5:30, a massive choir brings in the gravitas.
James Brown and His Famous Flames in THE T.A.M.I. SHOW
The T.A.M.I. Show is probably the first concert film as we think of the genre today. An amazing confluence of talent gives us an unfiltered 1964 time capsule of British Invasion, Surf, Motown, Pop and early Soul (but there’s no Folk) music.
Here are the performers:
The Rolling Stones
James Brown
The Beach Boys
Chuck Berry
The Supremes
Marvin Gaye
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Lesley Gore
The Blossoms (backing Gaye)
Gerry and the Pacemakers
Jan and Dean
The Barbarians
Billy D. Kramer and the Dakotas
Eight The T.A.M.I. Show performers are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Berry, the Stones, the Beach Boys, James Brown and the Famous Flames, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and The Blossoms singer Darlene Love, who was inducted as a solo act. Future actress Teri Garr and choreographer/pop artist Toni Basil were two of the Go Go Girls. Members of the famed Wrecking Crew session musicians constituted the house band, including guitarist Glen Campbell, pianist Leon Russell and drummer Hal Blaine, along with the jazz great, bassist Jimmy Bond. The house band is rarely glimpsed, but you can see them to the right during The Supremes’ set and at the finale.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in THE T.A.M.I. SHOW
The T.A.M.I. Show was filmed in two performances at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Tickets were free for LA teenagers. (Future film director John Landis and future teen heartthrob David Cassidy went as seventh grade classmates.) The event was emceed by by Jan and Dean. T.A.M.I. stands for either Teen Age Music International or Teenage Music Awards International (although there were no awards).
James Brown absolutely killed. His was a performance for the ages, and the crowd went nuts. To their everlasting regret, the Rolling Stones had to follow him to close the show.
In this performance, the Stones were hippy Brits singing Blues music (that, oddly, White American teens were only now discovering though these White guys from the UK). It’s most notable for Mick Jagger’s groundbreaking definition of a Front Man. As I write this in 2020, I just heard a Stones song on the radio that I didn’t recognize and learned that it was released this year – 56 years after the T.A.M.I. Show.
The Beach Boys in THE T.A.M.I. SHOW
The Beach Boys came on immediately after a Jan and Dean song, which does not favor Jan and Dean today in comparison. Brian Wilson’s genius and the band’s fun energy were many rungs above what Jan and Dean had to offer as musicians. It’s poignant to watch the the young, 1964 Beach Boys today, knowing that everything about them hung precariously on Brian Wilson’s traumatized mental health.
Billy J. Kramer fronting the Dakotas in THE T.A.M.I. SHOW
There are two very odd “What are those guys doing here?” sets. One is the slick-haired Brit popster Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, an act managed by Brian Epstein and produced by George Martin at the same time as the Beatles; Kramer got to perform FOUR songs!
The second is one of the first shaggy haired American rock bands, The Barbarians. They perform Hey Little Bird, which preceded their one novelty hit Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?
The Barbarians, for some reason, performing in THE T.A.M.I. SHOW
When I watch these 1964 performances, I can’t help but think about what these artists still had ahead of them. James Brown had just recorded I Got You (I Feel Good), but it wouldn’t be widely released until 1965. The Stones still hadn’t created EARLY Stones songs like Satisfaction, Paint It Black, Sympathy for the Devil and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Marvin Gaye hadn’t yet sung I Heard It Through the Grapevine or What’s Goin’ On. Ahead for the Supremes were Love Child and a flock of other number one hits. And this was before The Beach Boys did California Girls and Good Vibrations, not to mention the Pet Sounds album.
The T.A.M.I. Show is on the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. It probably would have been more influential, except that hardly anybody saw it for years. It’s somewhat of a Lost Film, having fallen off the radar after its 1964 release. I recall seeing it on late night TV sometime in the late 1970s or early 80s. It was resurrected in VHS bootleg form in the 80s (but without the Beach Boys set).
It’s still not available to rent a stream, but The T.A.M.I. Show is available on Netflix DVD. It’s very easy to find the full one hour 52 minute version for free on YouTube, along with clips of each of the acts.
The documentaryTheremin Magicexplores that most weirdly unworldly of musical instruments, the Theremin. Documentarian Cressandra Thibodeaux took advantage of a global Theremin festival (who knew?) to film the world’s top five Theremin players.
The five are a diverse lot, and their mastery of the instrument is astonishing. Because the instrument is played by waving one’s fingers in the air next to it, the performances are visually somewhere between conducting an orchestra and dancing ballet. At the very end there’s a scene with an entire classroom full of Theremin players.
If you are interested in music and haven’t dived deeply into the Theremin, this is all interesting. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Theremin Magic.
The title character in the documentary The Quiet One is the Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman. Wyman is an anti-flamboyant person at the very core of a circus of hedonistic excess and self-promotion.
Wyman is also an obsessive collector of memorabilia, and, at age 83, he now burrows into his irreplaceable archive of home movies and concert posters. What’s especially interesting in The Quiet One is the history of the Rolling Stones from his sober and humble perspective.
One famous associate says, “Bill never started acting like he’s famous”. Wyman himself says, “I suppose if you looked at my bookshelves you would understand me better.” What we do see is an astonishingly down-to-earth person, seemingly barely changed by stardom. He is honest about two marriage mistakes, one of them fairly appalling.
In the sweetest scene, we get to see today’s Wyman as a devoted fan, choking up while recalling an encounter with Ray Charles.
The Quiet One is a low key movie about a low key guy, and I recommend it to those interested in rock and roll history. The Quiet One is available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The documentary Echo in the Canyon explores a moment in music history – the beginnings of folk rock in LA’s Laurel Canyon in the mid-1960s. Think the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, all influenced by the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
There are some, but not a zillion, nuggets in the interviews with Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Michelle Phillips, Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Brian Wilson.
Jakob Dylan leads a band with Regina Spektor, Beck, Fiona Apple and Cat Power that plays some of the hits from the era. This is an excuse for a soundtrack album, but hardly a significant value add. The exception is singer Jade Castrinos, who seems born to sing the Mamas and Papas songbook, both the Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty parts.
Echo in the Canyon is moderately interesting to fans of 1960s rock and roll and is available to stream on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
From L:R – Subjects Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee in a still from SATAN & ADAM. Photo courtesy JFI
In the engaging documentary Satan & Adam, Adam, a young white Ivy Leaguer, takes a stroll through Harlem and encounters an older African-American street guitarist, who calls himself Mr. Satan. Adam, a talented amateur blues harmonica player sits in, and soon the odd couple are a busking team, a popular attraction at their regular sidewalk venue in Harlem.
“Mr. Satan” is an alias for an artist of note. Mr. Satan’s talent and the odd couple novelty allows the act to soar to totally unexpected heights. But Satan has emotional and medical issues, and Adam might be a better fit for a career in academia, so this is a story with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. Let’s just say that, over the past 23 years, there have been some significant detours on this journey.
The core of the film is about this unusual relationship and the peculiarities of these two guys, but it also traces the evolving race relations in NYC.
Satan & Adam is told primarily from Adam’s point of view, which is understandable because of Mr. Satan’s periodic unavailability and, when we see him unfiltered, his oft puzzling inscrutability.
I saw Satan & Adam at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), a fest noted or its especially rich documentaries. It has finally been released in at least one Bay Area theater.
In the sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War, Wiktor (Tomasa Kot) is a talented musician/arranger in post-War Poland and an archivist of folk music. He becomes the musical director of a communist state-sponsored folk music revue, and falls for the ensemble’s comely and spirited lead Zula (Joanna Kulig), despite her being a bit of a brat. This being the Cold War, the question is whether the couple can flee Poland to freedom, artistic and otherwise. Zula is so unreliable that this is not cut and dried. Instead, the story spans a decade and four European countries as writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski explores the depths of sacrifice that humans will make for love.
The story in Cold War is inspired by that of Pawlikowski‘s own parents. Cold War is not as compelling as his recent masterpiece Ida. Virtually every shot in Ida could be hung in a gallery, which is not the case in Cold War although there are many beautifully filmed sequences. Both Ida and Cold War are shot in exquisite black-and-white and in a boxy aspect.
Joanna Kulig’s appearance changes dramatically depending on her makeup – to an unusual extent. The Wife suggested that this reflected a chameleon-like aspect to the character of Zula.
I enjoyed the character of the slime ball toadie Kaczmerak (Boris Szyc), the administrative manager of the folk music group. Kaczermak is so accepting of the corruption in Cold War communist society, that he greets every development with tranquil aplomb.
Fans of Ida will recognize Agata Kulesza, who played Ida’s aunt, as Wiktor’s musical partner Irena.
I saw Cold War at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October. It releases in theaters on December 21 and, having been financed by Amazon Studios, will be streamable from Amazon.
Let’s start with the subject of the biodoc Quincy, the musician, music producer and musical impresario Quincy Jones. Jones is a giant of 20th Century music, one of the most important and prolific musicians ever. This is an individual who has composed 51 screen scores and over 1000 original compositions. He was the musical partner of Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson during their most creative periods. Jones produced the best selling album of all time (Thriller) and the best selling single (We Are the World). Along the way, he picked up 79 Grammy noms and 27 Grammys, and is one of only 18 EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).
Quincy Jones amassed that legacy though multiple decades and musical genres and broke color barriers throughout his life. That makes wonderful fodder for this biodoc, co-written and co-directed by his daughter Rashida Jones.
Besides the archival footage and talking heads, Rashida Jones is able to share Quincy Jones himself in moments of unusual intimacy, where he contemplates his relationships with his ex-wives, his kids and his vodka, not to mention his schizophrenic mother and workaholic father.
The popular actress Rashida Jones is an accomplished filmmaker. This is the fifth film she has directed, and she co-wrote the unusually intelligent romcom Celeste and Jess Forever.
