I lost track of the Rascals with Freedom Suite. Which was big and political and didn’t end up on my shelf. But I listened to it last night while cooking and jeez. There is this:
Aretha Franklin died last year. A movie shot in 1972 with some tech problems and edited to everyone’s satisfaction but her’s in 2015, was shelved in 2015 for reasons never explained. The movie wasn’t released until she passed.
Now it’s out. I guess there could be questions about that, about Aretha’s preferences, she’s the star, but the fact is that the movie made from these oddly stranded film clips from 47 years ago, film shot on 16mm supposedly for network TV, is awesome.
Mainly because of Aretha’s performance, which is mind-boggling, but also because of the view our filmmakers got of life inside a Black church in LA in that moment when one of pop’s biggest stars went back to her origins. Sort of, but plenty enough.
The vibe is powerful. It counts for a lot. This supposed network special is anything but what you might expect. It is raw, real, awkward, and totally winning, thanks to the collective spirit of the choir, the church and especially Aretha, who seems unhappy every moment she isn’t singing, which then seems unimportant every moment she sings.
She was here at the Ogden Theater on Sunday night. I went to see her. It’s not an easy trip. Boulder to Denver is a snap, but Denver is a weird mix of elegant street scenes and aggressive street psychos. I come from NY, so I think I know my street people, but in NY I get them. Out here, I’m on uneven ground.
Liz played a greatest hits set in front of a terrific band that was both more rocking than the originals but just as airy in the arrangements. The terrific guitar player was understated, but on the few occasions he solo’ed he ripped the cover off.
Which brings us to the one new song of the night. I go to live shows because there are differences with the records, and on this night, in addition to having a better band than played on Exile in Guyville and Whip-smart, Phair played a new song that hasn’t been recorded, called God Loves Baseball.
Like most baseball songs it’s too sentimental and this doesn’t rock at all, but I agree. And I think I like god less than Liz and baseball more. Here’s a clip, though this was far from the high point of the show, even though it was kind of nice.
So Mötley Cruë made the movie of their story, and it’s on Netflix. It’s called The Dirt, and it is about the band’s life told through the voices of its members.
This is standard modern narrative. You have a narrator or narrators who know more than the characters, and who know where the story ends up, cracking wise while moving the story along quickly. And, if you like naked women, eye poppingly.
I spent all of watching The Dirt wishing I was sitting in my TV room with Steve Moyer, not because he admired the Cruë, but because he loved tales of rock ‘n’ roll life, and this is definitely that. I’m ambivalent. The scenes of debauchery are debauched, but are mostly offensive because the premise seems skewed. What is misogyny is played for the cutes. The naked ladies are jokes, at least until the lady leaves, at which point love is lost. Boo hoo, and boys are sad.
This isn’t a sophisticated look at the way the world works, but the movie feels like a somewhat accurate look at the adolescent rock life, and the way it changes with rehab and maturity. It way underplays the tunes, which you would think a movie produced by the band would try to promote. But they’re all sober now, and maybe better understand their weird moment in rock history.
Steve, how do you feel about this one? I watched the whole thing, even though Vince Neil looked like Wayne or Garth from Wayne’s World (I forget which one), which bothered me a lot. You may not have.
No link to a Cruë song. I never paid attention to them, but I did watch their movie. Weird.
So, I heard about this song by watching a long interview with a fairly obscure Georgia band called Let’s Active where they said they liked this one.
And it’s pretty good. Well worth a listen.
You can listen to Louis Jordan every day and discover amazing music. This was a hit, not obscure, obviously. Roots of rock and roll, roots of rhythm and blues. This is scratching the surface of what Jordan created. More to come.
