12 Music Documentaries

I can think of few better ways to pass a late evening after the wife and kids have called it a night than by pursuing the solitary but highly rewarding activity of watching a musical documentary. Hell, the wife and kids wouldn’t get it anyhow, so why not delve into a topic no one else in my family cares about, without interruption, and walk away with a new set of musical facts to share with my fellow musical geeks…er…aficionados? 

I’ve been watching a lot of these lately, mostly because I keep running into people saying, “You haven’t seen Movie X?  And you’re a musician?”  So I’ve been catching up, filling in the gaping holes in my musical knowledge, and enjoying the ride.  In no particular order – except for the first one – I’d like to recommend the following…

1. Searching for Sugar Man (2012):  Oscar winner for Best Documentary in 2012, this is an expertly executed movie, especially if you go into it with no knowledge of musician Rodriguez.  I didn’t, and the movie blew me away, and I’d rather not say anything more for fear of ruining the experience for someone else.  This is one of those examples of how real life is stranger than fiction.  Inspiring, unbelievable, and positively engrossing.

2. Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? (2010):  Whether or not you know who Harry Nilsson is, this movie is an entertaining romp about a bold, fearless, irreverent musician whose lifestyle led to his downfall.  A wonderfully candid film that doesn’t gloss over the obvious failings of one of best vocalists of the 20th Century.

3. Vinyl (2000): A film that exposes the underbelly of record-collecting, which for some people is less an enjoyable hobby than an addictive burden.  This would be a completely depressing movie were it not for the genuine humanity and likability of its filmmaker, Alan Zweig.

4. Muscle Shoals (2013): If you don’t know what the hell Muscle Shoals is, you’ve probably heard it mentioned hundreds of times in the Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song, “Sweet Home, Alabama.”  They sing:

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers 
And they've been known to pick a song or two 
Lord they get me off so much 
They pick me up when I'm feeling blue 
Now how about you?

So how about you?  If this lyric is nothing but gibberish to you, check out the movie that explains how Rick Hall and a band of musicians called The Swampers created a unique sound that changed music.  To me, this isn’t a brilliant film, but the interviews with Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Cliff, Steve Winwood and others make it a worthwhile view.

5. Jimi Hendrix: Here My Train A Comin’ (2013): Part of PBS’s American Masters series, this is an excellent retrospective about the guitar great with original footage and interviews, illustrating just how innovative and influential he was.  More than any other musician, Hendrix makes me wonder what might have been. 

6.  Sound City (2013): A film by Foo Figher David Grohl, this is another showcase of an influential studio that recorded some of the biggest hits of the 70s, took a nose-dive in the 80s, and returned with a vengeance in the 90s. Grohl’s love for the studio, the equipment and the music is infectious, and he takes it a step further by recording new material with the artists and equipment that made the original studio famous.  Interviews with Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Rick Springfield, Neil Young and others make this a must-see.

7. Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (2012): Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t deny Journey their amazing comeback to rock stardom and the remarkable ride of vocalist Arnel Pineda.  A truly inspiring film, all the more because you get the sense that Pineda is a guy who knows how lucky he is, and who’s trying like mad to remain grounded.

8. 20 Feet From Stardom (2013): Another Oscar winner, this is a must-see film about the largely unknown vocalists who made much of the music in our musical catalogue soar.  Watching Mick Jagger listen to the soloed track of Merry Clayton singing “Gimme Shelter” gets my vote for one of the best moments in cinematic history.  Chills.

9. History of The Eagles (2013) is a thorough retrospective of a band that only released six albums in its heyday, yet managed to comletely redefine rock music in the 70s.  The changing cast members and internal feuding only add to what would have already been an interesting film about a band that for me has overstayed it's welcome.

10. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco (2002): This beautifully made film captures the band recording its critically-renowned album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and documents an interesting period in the music industry when record studios were collapsing and musicians were often left caught in the middle.  Lucikly, Wilco managed to rise above it somehow.  The pretentiousness of Jeff Tweedy is staggering, and the film’s music doesn’t do much for me, but it’s still cool to see the band working on their craft – much of it in glorious black and white.

11. No Direction Home (2005): A film of raw footage from Dylan’s rise to fame in the 1960s, it helps a skeptical fan like me understand what it was about Dylan that got people excited in the first place.  How can you not appreciate his response to hecklers in 1966 England, when he turns to his band and says, “Play it fuckin’ loud” before diving into “Like a Rolling Stone”?  Fantastic.

12. Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010): Can a film about a band with virtually no scandals and no internal feuding be interesting?  Well, if you’re a Rush fan it can be.  I’ve watched it twice, and I’ll watch it again.

There are loads more musical documentaries to check out - George Harrison: Living In the Material World is next on my list - but if you have a favorite you think I should watch, let me know!

New Song: A Life of Invention

Here's a new tune you can download, A Life of Invention, written for my son's bar mitzvah.  Enjoy!  And thanks to Tim Marin for his guitar and bass work, and Glen West for mastering the song.

A Life of Invention

Here he comes
The man with many questions
You can't begin to answer
He'll always leave you guessing
Here he comes

Here he comes
He won't wait 'til tomorrow
The only time is now
Oh, here he comes

He's taking his mark
at the starting line
And charting the course
Inside his mind

Xs and Ys
Ones and zeros
With eyes on the prize
Comes the conquering hero
He won’t stay here long
In the present dimension
He’s craking the code
To a life of invention

Here he comes
Whether wresting with religion
Or seeped in indecision
Or pulsing with precision

Here he comes
And not to be undone
He wields a rubric and a drum
Oh here he comes

He’s bound from the blocks
From the starting line
And running the race
In record time

Xs and Ys
Ones and zeros
With eyes on the prize
Comes the conquering hero
He won’t stay here long
In the present dimension
He’s craking the code
To a life of invention

Record Night Returns

Record Night returned with a vengeance last Friday at a new venue and with an addtional medium, as five of us met in Wauwatosa, where – in addition to music – a half an hour of Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion DVD made it into the mix, along with a turntable that jumped the groove if one stepped in the wrong location of hardwood flooring.   It was a minor hurdle to overcome in the name of Record Night.

The themes: Kevin’s was “Concerts I would have liked to have seen or that I would like to see again.”  Paul’s was “Stuff I’ve purchased in the past three or four months.”  JB, Pete and Frank had no theme and generally grabbed a selection from one of two boxes of LPs, though the miracle of wifi allowed us to tap into a few Youtube videos and mp3s.  In this sense, it was our first 21st Century Record Night.

And away we go… 

Paul       Hall and Oates, Bad Habits & Infections

Pete       Rickie Lee Jones, Weasel and the White Boys Cool

Kevin     Sly and the Family Stone, A Simple Song

Paul       The Shins, A Simple Song

Pete       Cheap Trick, Ooh La La La

(JB was busy getting the record player moved, a more technical task than one would think).

Kevin     Andy Gibb, Shadow Dancing

(Kevin’s first concert, 1978, Wisconsin State Fair)

Paul       Badfinger, Without You

Frank     Bad Company, Bad Company

(Interlude – white JB works on turntable, we watch Zeppelin’s DVD from their ’07 reunion concert.  Fantastic!  WAY better than I expected).

JB           Honeydrippers, Good Rockin’ At Midnight

Pete       Spinal Tap, Big Bottoms

Frank     The Firm, Satisfaction Guaranteed

Paul       XTC, Great Fire

Kevin     KC and the Sunshine Band, Who do you Love

(his second concert, 1979, Wisconsin State Fair)

(JB remarks, “I have no theme!”  It’s okay, man.)

JB           OMD, Forever Live and Die

Frank     The Kinks, Conservative

Pete       Joe Walsh, The Confessor/Rosewood Bitters

Paul       Big Country, Wonderland

JB          Paul Westerberg, Silver Naked Ladies

(Frank departed at this juncture.  Something about a job, kids, a life…blah, blah, blah).

Kevin     X Cleavers, 18 (Unprotected)

(a band from Milwaukee!

JB           Tin Lizzy, Romeo and the Lonely Girl

JB           Ian McLagan, Mystifies Me

(in honor of the maestro who recently passed away)

Paul       Harry Nilsson, One

Kevin     ELO, Sweet is the Night

Pete       Shooting Star, Last Chance

JB           Neil Young/Stills, Long May You Run

Paul       David Bowie, Diamond Dogs

Kevin     Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Paul       Beck, Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime

Pete       Macklemore, Thrift Shop Feat

JB           Grateful Dead, Terrapin Station/Estimated Prophet

(The Dead - a first for record night!  Kevin is still not sold on this band.  Nor am I)

Paul       Geddy Lee, My Favorite Headache

(Pete was forced to stay for one last song before exiting)

Kevin     The Kinks, I took my Baby Home/Stop Your Sobbin’

(I still don’t get this band.  Always sounds like an out-of-tune garage band to me).

 JB           Beck, Paper Tiger

Paul       The Call, Let the Day Begin

(Another dead guy!)

At this point things are getting ugly, as Paul attempts to discredit The Who due to their meager output.  Several beers have made their way into our systems, and it seems like it’s a race to the finish – i.e. sleep – at this point.

Kevin     James Gang, The Bomber/Bolero

JB          The Who, The Seeker

(JB attempts to discredit Paul's discrediting of The Who.  Fairly successfully too, I might add.)

Paul       REM, Gardening at Night/Finest Work Song

Kevin     Bee Gees, Ordinary Lives

JB          Faces, Cindy Incidentally

Paul       Elton John, Honky Tonk Woman

Kevin     Duran Duran, New Religion

JB           Eddie Vedder, Hard Sun

Paul       The Alarm, Deeside

Kevin     Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Welcome to the Pleasuredome

John       The Jayhawks, Straight Face Can’t Hide 

And there you have it.  It’s true, JB managed to finish the evening without having played a Replacements’ song, but only succeeded on a technicality, as Paul Westerberg made the list. 

Next up?  We shall see, but I’m leaning toward a secret theme that attendees have to guess throughout the evening.

Musical Memories: B.J. Thomas

At quiet times, typically during the cognitive equivalent of brackish water, when I lie half awake and half asleep, my subconscious sometimes plays a mental jukebox from my youth, delving into snippets of music whose latent melodies bubble to the surface of recognition some forty years later, producing memories of transistor radios crackling with pop songs on 920 AM, WOKY Milwaukee.

My recollection begins around 1973 with “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure, Marvin Hamlisch’s version of Joplin’s “The Entertainer” from The Sting, Sweet’s “Little Willy” and – who could forget? – “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn.  How about “The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia” by Vicki Lawrence (of The Carol Burnett Show fame), “Killing Me Softly with His Song” by Roberta Flack, or the early hits by Olivia Newton-John, The Carpenters, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, Todd Rundgren and Harry Nilsson?

Oh yeah.  It’s all coming back to me now, Celine.

About a month ago, my memory set its needle on the groove of the following lyric: “Hey, won’t you play another somebody done somebody wrong song.”

Holy crap.  That’s some obscure shit.  I had no idea where it came from, but I needed to know who the heck sang it.  Lo and behold, it’s not a one-hit wonder at all, and while he may not be a household name to many these days, he’s still around and still singing: B.J. Thomas.

Remember him?  I didn’t.  For reasons unknown, his name doesn’t get tossed around as often as the aforementioned singers of the 70s, but you’ve undoubtedly heard him, most notably in the 1969 classic movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Towit:

Yeah, that’s the stuff.  It reached number one on the U.S., and it wasn’t Thomas’s first or last foray into the pop charts; he’d already scored a few hits with “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Hooked on a Feeling” (the original recording, not the 1974 cover by Blue Suede).  To date, he’s the recipient of eleven gold records, two platinum records and five Grammy Awards, and he’s sold more than 70 million albums.

Clearly, he’s a guy whose name should be known.  Forgive me, B.J.  I have officially righted a wrong.

But it’s Thomas’s 1975 number-one hit, “Hey, Won’t You Play, Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” that still echoes within my interior walls with recollections of rides in the Plymouth Gold Duster, my Mom taking me to Sentry where we’d exchange our 8-pack of empty Coke bottles for a new set, and upon our return home, she’d fix me a bowl of graham crackers in milk (yeah, that was my snack of choice, along with apple sauce and cottage cheese with a dash of cinnamon).  Later, I’d get out the sprinkler and place it on the uneven patio blocks – uneven because I would often pry them up to peer at the ant colonies underneath – and I’d run through the water while my sister hung upside down on the swingset.

And from inside the patio doors, the sounds of B.J. Thomas would crackle: "…and make me feel at home, while I miss my baby…while I miss my baby.”

James Taylor in Milwaukee

At sixty-six, James Taylor has no doubt uttered the same song introductions and comebacks to yelling fans hundreds of times, but on Tuesday night at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Taylor made it sound  as if he was bantering with the audience for the first time, using the same easygoing delivery that he employs with his music: endearing, charming, playful and never over the top.  When one fan yelled out, “I love you!” Taylor paused, looked out and said dryly, “I’m beginning to have feelings for you too.  This is all so sudden.”  After two sets totaling almost two and a half hours, one got the sense that fans were wowed as much by Taylor’s remarks between songs as they were by his music and all-star cast.

Taylor's easy-going nature led a friend of mine to ask during intermission: "Does he ever rock out?”

Um…no.  Like the Jackson Browne concert I saw last month in Chicago, Taylor’s version of rock is something more subdued, the kind of rock one might prefer on a rainy Sunday morning.  But whereas Browne’s lyrics are laced in sorrowful, melancholy tones, Taylor’s ooze with optimism, from the heartfelt expressions of love in his beautiful new song, “You and I Again,” to the overly saccharin (for my tastes) “Only One” and “Shower the People.”  Where Taylor really shines is in songs that offer just a hint of reverence or longing.   Taylor playfully described “Country Road” and “Carolina in My Mind” – mainstays in his touring repertoire – as "hippy, tree-hugger bullshit," but these songs are nothing if not an ode to nature filtered through the eyes of Taylor’s childhood in North Carolina where the landscape colored his world.  It’s not just a celebration of nature; there’s a tinge of something beautiful lost along the way.

Taylor offered a few surprises, including three new songs as well as deeper cuts such as “Lo and Behold” from 1970’s Sweet Baby James, “Millworker” from the failed Broadway musical Working, and “One More Go Round,” a tune from 1991’s New Moon Shine that he introduced by stressing that while the groove is good, the lyrics are somewhat subpar.  As with most of Taylor’s concerts, too much of his set list remains constant year after year.  He played the usual four songs from his debut album (plus one extra), plus another four or five mainstays, and it would have been nice had he performed a few more songs from lesser-known albums.

Like Jackson Browne and Paul Simon, Taylor consistently assembles a fantastic band.  Even the simplest of tunes can appear interesting and complex when watching drummer Steve Gadd, guitarist Michael Landau and bassist Jimmy Johnson execute their craft.  The sound was also excellent, though at the booming Bradley Center, I could hear another James Taylor Band playing half a second after the real live band on stage as the sound bounced off the back of the arena.  Since only the first level of the arena was used, it would have made more sense to play at the underutilized Milwaukee Theater.

For the final two songs, Taylor sported a personalized Brewers jersey that a fan had offered him during his first encore.  It was a nice touch, as was Taylor's thank you to the audience for allowing him to continue to play music for all these year.  He’s clearly a man who’s still in love with performing, and luckily his voice has remained strong.  Judging from last evening’s concert, I imagine there will be many more tours in Taylor before he decides to call it a day.