concert

SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED): concert with context

by
Sly Stone in SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

In Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Questlove recovers the never-before-seen film of the Harlem Cultural Festival over six weekends in 1969. The promoters had tried to market the footage as “the Black Woodstock”, but had no takers at the time (for the obvious reason).

This is a superb concert film, but that’s not all it is. 1969 was an important historical and cultural moment – especially for American Blacks, and Questlove supplies the context. A 2021 audience cannot miss the parallels between 1969’s Black Is Beautiful and Black Power and today’s Black Lives/Black Voices.

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is widely-known as drummer of The Roots and bandleader for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Creative and versatile, he is Emmy-nominated and Grammy-winning, he is going to win an Oscar for this, his directorial debut for a feature film. Summer of Soul proves that Questlove is such a gifted storyteller that I hope he takes on narrative fictional filmmaking, too.

The music in Summer of Soul is fantastic:

  • Sly and the Family Stone shattered expectations with their garb, racially integrated band and female musicians on trumpet and keyboards. Their psychedelic funk and super-charged ebullience blew away the audience. (BTW Vallejo native Sly Stone is now age 78.)
  • Stevie Wonder was only 19, 3 years before Superstition, and already taking his remarkable creativity and musicianship down new roads.
  • Gladys Knight and the Pips – watch the Pips and appreciate how those guys really worked it.
  • BB King at the height of his popular breakthrough, singing Why I Sing the Blues.
  • The Fifth Dimension were best sellers among the white mainstream – and here they were finally accepted by a Black audience. Billy Davis Jr. and Miriam McCoo get to relive the experience on camera in one of Summer of Soul’s most touching moments.

The musical high point is a rendition of Precious Lord, Take My Hand by Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples. Mahalia was then 58 and a legend, and this was her signature song. Mavis was already a showbiz veteran at 30 and at the top of her game. The Reverend Jesse Jackson introduces the song with a heartbreaking account of Martin Luther King asking for this, his favorite hymn, seconds before his murder. Mahalia was not feeling well, and asked Mavis to kick off the song. Mavis’ first verse is volcanic, then Mahalia takes over and the two finish together in an explosion of emotions. Epic.

Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson in SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

Something else happened that summer – the manifestation of JFK’s pledge to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. Questlove uses file footage of person-on-the-street interviews to contrast the reactions of Blacks and Whites. It’s a Rorschach test of privilege and alienation.

Gladys Knight recounts “it wasn’t just about the music”. BB King performed here just weeks after the release of The Thrill Is Gone, and he must have included Thrill in his set, but I’m sure that Questlove instead chose Why I’m Singing the Blues to focus on that song’s larger subtext for Black Americans.

And the need to show the militant commitment to self-determination must be why Questlove features so much of Nina Simone at her rawest. If she had ever worried about being too harsh, Simone was well past that point in 1969.

On a lighter note, ironic sombrero-wearing must have been a thing in Harlem that summer – check out the crowd shots (and drink a shot for every sombrero.)

Summer of Soul etc. etc. has also earned the #13 ranking on my list of Longest Movie Titles.

How good is Summer of Soul, which swept the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance? It’s hard to imagine it not winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and I’m guessing it will be that rare doc nominated for Best Picture. FWIW I’m putting it on my list of Best Movies of 2021 – So Far.

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is in theaters and streaming on Hulu. It’s worth watching for the music and worth it for the history, too; for the combination, it’s a Must See.

DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA: a most human vibe

by
DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA

David Byrne’s American Utopia is the concert film for David Byrne’s (currently paused) Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee. The songs are organized to explores themes of humanity and human behaviors and attitudes, and some are overly political. It’s a thoughtful and entertaining show.

To isolate the humanity on stage, Byrne has very intentionally pared away all the glitz. What remains is just Byrne and his band, which serves as a chorus – two dancers, two guitarists, a keyboard player and six percussionists. All are barefoot and clad in identical grey suits that are well-fitting descendants of Byrne’s Big Suit from Stop Making Sense.

Most, but not all, of the of the songs are Byrne’s or by the Talking Heads. The biggest show-stoppers are the Talking Heads’ vintage anthems Burning Down the House and Road to Nowhere and Janelle Monae’s Hell You Talmbout. This is no run-of-the-mill jukebox musical.

Stop Making Sense, of course, is one of the greatest of concert films, directed by Jonathan Demme. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that great directors make great concert films (e.g., Martin Scorsese and The Last Waltz; DA Pennebaker and Monterey Pop). Given the constraints of the contained set and material, Spike Lee does a great job of projecting the vibe of American Utopia.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is playing on HBO.

ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE: doc and playfully not

by
Scarlett Rivera and Bob Dylan in ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE

So you think you know what you’re going to get from a movie titled Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. Indeed, Scorsese documents Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder tour. But he also, in what critic Jason Gorber calls an “anti-documentary” adds some fictional flourish, as befits Dylan’s longtime trickster persona.

Now for the documentary, which gives us a look at a mid-career Dylan (on the downside of his superstardom). The talking heads are great: lots of Bob Dylan himself, his sidemen, performers Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Ronnie Hawkins and Ronee Blakley, and even the subject of a Dylan song, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. There’s a hilarious encounter between ex-lovers Baez and Dylan, as they mull over who left who.

There are explosive concert performances of Hurricane, Isis and A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (but also a disappointing version of the tour’s signature song, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door).

Baez aside, the real co-star of the Rolling Thunder Revue was violinist Scarlett Rivera, whose violin licks elevated almost every song, especially Hurricane. My favorite Dylan performance – One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) from the live album – is really more Rivera’s song than Dylan’s. In Rolling Thunder Revue, we get to hear from Rivera – and about her and her spirited personal life.

And now for the playful part – Scorsese has dotted this “documentary” with stuff that is not true. The performance artist Martin von Haselberg claims to have shot the concert footage for a pretentious art film that was never made, which Dylan credits to Stefan van Dorp. Hasleberg didn’t shoot it and van Dorp doesn’t even exist. The guy identified as the tour promoter is actually a movie exec. And Sharon Stone was too young to have been on this tour, although she spins a ROFLMAO faux anecdote about Just Like a Woman.

Michael Murphy, who starred in Robert Altman’s political mockumentary Tanner, is shown as a real Congressman Tanner. And did Scarlett Rivera really have a sword collection? Was Allen Ginsberg really a good dancer?

The critical praise for Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese has been rapturous, with one respected critic pegging it as the best doc of year. This reeks to me of Scorsese worship. I’m not sure I would recommend Rolling Thunder Revue to a general (non-Baby Boomer) audience. It does do a great job of taking us backstage for the inside morsels – and it is creatively sly.

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is now streaming on Netflix.

BTW I highly recommend Peter Sobczynski’s comprehensive essay on the Cinema of Bob Dylan in rogerebert.com. It’s kind of spectacular.

AMAZING GRACE: pure, sanctified Aretha

by

Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.

At the height of her popular success in 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded a live album of gospel music. She brought her producer Jerry Wexler and her band to New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, a large but modest church with a cheesy mural of Jesus emerging from the waters after his baptism by John the Baptist. Accompanied by James Cleveland and the Los Angeles Community Gospel Choir, she performed for two nights, and the recordings became Amazing Grace, the top-selling gospel album of all time.

The whole thing was filmed by director Sydney Pollack and his crew with five cameras. Having made his bones in live television, Pollack would seem to be a great choice, but he made a critical mistake – he neglected to use clappers, the equipment that allowed for synchronizing the filmed images with the recorded sound. Frustratingly worthless, the film sat in canisters until decades later when technology allowed the music to be synced to the 16mm film. Aretha, however, was notoriously prickly in business affairs, and the rights could not be secured until after her death. Alan Eliot is responsible for finding and assembling Pollack’s footage and turning it into a feature film that could be released for the rest of us to see; appropriately, Eliot’s credit is “Realized and produced by Alan Eliot”.

What brought Aretha get to this moment in 1972? Aretha had grown up in the Detroit church led by her formidable father, C.L. Franklin, immersed in gospel music until she launched a pop music career at age 18. When she was 25, she began working with Wexler, who “got” her, and she became a soul and crossover superstar with Respect, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, Baby I Love You, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, Chain of Fools, Ain’t No Way, Think, I Say a Little Prayer and Rock Steady.  At 30, Aretha commanded the field of R&B and looked to return to her gospel roots.

When Aretha enters the church, the atmosphere is electric, and Aretha is ready from her very first note of Wholy Holy. The church audience knows their gospel music, appreciates what they are witnessing and is, to a person, thrilled. The audience becomes more and more emotionally involved.

Aretha’s version of What a Friend We Have in Jesus is unrecognizable (in the very best way). On Precious Memories, Aretha’s humming is internally intense, and then her voice soars. Completely committed, Aretha produces a prodigious amount of sweat.

The high point of the film is Aretha’s closing song on the first night, Amazing Grace. It’s a very long version of the song, and the choir doesn’t sing until the very end. As Aretha’s instrument wrings every drop of emotion from that most familiar song, we watch the choir members’ reactions, which range from admiration to inspiration, many moved to tears. The moment is one of genius for Aretha and one of epiphany for the choir and for the film audience.

One of the great pleasures of Amazing Grace is watching the choir leader, Alexander Hamilton, lead his choir with an expressiveness that is both elegant and funky. If there is a co-star in Amazing Grace, it’s Alexander Hamilton.

There are pauses for technical issues, which bring out the authenticity of the moment and reinforce that this was a live event. It’s easy to spot Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the crowd on the second night.

Where does Amazing Grace fit in the concert film canon along with Monterey Pop, The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, Woodstock and The T.A.M.I. Show? It’s in the conversation.