Dig! : The Worst Movie Ever Made

O.K., maybe it's only the worst rock movie ever made. But the much-praised 2004 documentary about the rise of the Dandy Warhols and the fall of the Brian Jonestown Massacre represents everything I hate about rock and roll. Watching this movie is like being trapped for two hours with people for whom drugs, ignorance, and narcissism substitute for conversation, thought, and adult relationships. The movie congratulates itself on its breathless honesty, and for all I know, Courtney Taylor, the leader of the Dandy Warhols, really is as insufferably shallow as he appears in the film. The squalor that the film presents as thrilling decadence might be endurable if the music were good, but it's not. In the case of the Dandy Warhols what you get is slick mediocrity. With the Brian Jonestown Massacre what you get is consistently unrealized ambition. Furthermore, the film's depiction of the self-destruction of Anton Newcombe, the leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, isn't just painful -- it's prurient. Nothing is gained by watching a mentally ill man who cannot harness his rather slender talent inflict suffering on himself and others. Dig! is worse than a bad film. It's one that shouldn't have been made.

The Feelies in Prospect Park

In my grumpier moods I sometimes wonder if I even care abut rock and roll anymore. I certainly don't care about following the "scene"-- if a "scene" still exists, which -- given the splintering of rock music into thousands of mutually exclusive niches -- I tend to doubt. I do, however, care about the Feelies. On Saturday they played at the Prospect Park bandshell, and despite the more than ninety degree heat (which must have played havoc with the tunings and kept breaking Bill Million's guitar strings), they were great. They're always great, even though they sing many of the same songs and play pretty much the same guitar solos. Why shouldn't they? When the songs are that good, why screw them up? Anyway, there's enough variation to keep it interesting, and the passion and intensity -- well, that's why we're there, isn't it? A few weeks ago when they played at Maxwell's I kept bumping into Glen Mercer at the bar before the show. He wasn't drinking and neither was I. Boy, did he look serious! So did I, for that matter. We were about to embark on something profoundly moving -- a sublime rock and roll show. That takes some concentration, though Mercer had to work a little harder at it than I did. Not the least endearing thing about the Feelies is their utter indifference to show biz formalities. They just stand up there and play all those great songs. Besides, how can you not love a band who are their own roadies?

Keith Richard, auteur

Keith Richard's Life weighs in at 564 pp., with scarcely any padding. To read it or not to read it, that is the question. And the answer is, Yes, read it. This is the place to find out whether or not Keith really had a complete blood transfusion to clean out his junkie veins and whether or not Charlie Watts really punched out Mick Jagger. (The answers are no and yes, respectively.) No doubt the co-author James Fox had a lot to do with this, but somehow the book seems to capture Keith's voice, his insouciance and street smarts. Most of all it captures his passion for music. There's a lot about open guitar tunings and Charlie's drumming, as there out to be. This stuff isn't merely technical. If you're listening closely, as you should be, you get the musical details and the passion. The book give you both too. Keith says it best: "People say, 'Why don't you give it up?' I can't retire until I croak. I don't think they quite understand what I get out of this. I'm not doing it just for the money or for you. I'm doing it for me."

The Feelies at Maxwells

I briefly resurrect this moribund blog to report on last night's sighting (July 1, 2011) of the Feelies at Maxwells in Hoboken. Since their resurrection two years ago I've seen them three times, and by now it's pretty apparent that they never have a bad night. I'll be honest. At this stage of life, I don't much care about any rock and roll out there, but I'll go almost anywhere to see the Feelies. I wonder if I could become a groupie. Brenda Sauter (the bass player) and I are of a certain age -- hey, what do you think about a guy like me and a bass player like that? Anyway, they were great last night, and I was close enough to see Stanley Demeski's stick work (also to get my ears blown by the absurdly over-amped speakers). No wonder you can't easily tap your foot to a lot of their songs; the rhythms are going in different directions. He's got four limbs going at different times and he still looks your harmless, balding, slightly pudgy Uncle Stan. Also, Glen Mercer was a veritable torrent of warmth and effusiveness. He actually said, "You're a great audience. We love you." Glen Mercer speaks! I was stunned. I never heard the man utter a word before. Maybe one day he or Bill Million will actually smile. But I doubt it. Oh, by the way, their new album is superb. It ought to be. They're maybe the greatest rock and roll band in the world right now.

Stephen Stills, Genius

Perhaps because he embodied the narcissistic, self-indulgent, cocaine-addled rock star typos more fully than just about any of his peers, Stephen Stills has been largely confined to the dustbin of rock history. It is, admittedly, a little hard to listen to his inane, semi-musical political rantings on CSNY's Four Way Street without cringing. But in addition to having the coolest sideburns in rock and roll, he happened to be a genius, and I'd like to say a few words about his greatest moment, the 1972 album Manassas. Actually, Manassas was the name of the band as well as the album. His name went above the title, naturally, but he got lots of help from ex-byrd Chris Hillman, Latin percussionist Joe Lala, steel guitarist Joe Perkins, and the other guys in the band. But Stills wrote most of the songs, sang most of the vocals, and played most of the guitar solos, and Manassas showcased his talents better than any other of his projects. To take just one example, the suite beginning with "Rock & Roll Crazies" starts off as a tough, mid-tempo rocker (with Stills apparently ignoring his own lyrics about the follies of stardom), and segues variously into a hot salsa (with Stills co-singing the lyrics in Spanish), a bone-crunching blues ("Jet Set"), a tough but bouncy pop tune ("Anyway"), and a beautiful ballad partly sung by Hillman ("Both of Us") before concluding with a coda of what the label rightly calls "Cuban bluegrass." The rest of the album is equally eclectic without making a fuss about it -- this was long before rock musicians started congratulating themselves on their discovery of "world music."

There's a poignant story in Jimmy McDonough's Shakey: Neil Young's Biography (2003) about a mid-air melt-down Stills had during a disastrous 1974 CSNY tour that required a co-pilot to wrestle him to the ground. Stills scribbled an abject apology to the pilot and signed it, "Stephen Stills, U.S. Marine Corps." How's that for tormented genius? (Stills did in fact have a military upbringing.) Though he has always been in the shadow of his loved and hated bandmate Neil Young, justice should be paid to Stephen Stills. A deeply soulful singer, an innovative composer, and a thrilling guitarist (yes, I know, he tended to go on too long), for a few years in the sixties and seventies he managed to do it all.

Green Day on Broadway

Most of my friends and even my beloved son disdain me for liking Green Day, the mega punk-pop band that they consider way too pop and not nearly enough punk. Nevertheless, last weekend I finally went to see the hit Broadway production of Green Day's American Idiot. I couldn't get anyone to go with me. I loved it. The story is fleshed out a bit from the album, but it's still pretty incoherent. Three bored, stoner friends from Suburbia, USA, try to negotiate the hazards of adult life only to fall prey to heroin addiction, military enlistment, accidental fatherhood, and all the attendant horrors thereof. It's sort of like a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musical, but with sex, drugs, and bad language. I mean that as high praise. Like Judy and Mickey, the performers have unbelievable levels of energy and commitment. They may look like punks, but they're really old-fashioned Broadway troopers underneath. And in the spirit of Judy and Mickey's "Let's put on a show!" there's an infectious exuberance about the whole production, despite the downbeat themes. It even has a tentatively happy ending. After all their travails, the friends come back together, more or less, and the main character realizes that the chief American Idiot has been himself. And the music? It's fabulous -- ferocious rock and roll with Broadway tunefulness. Who would have guessed it? Billie Joe Armstrong saves the Broadway musical!

What's in a Name?

I was thrilled to discover in the listings in yesterday's New York Times that Titus Andronicus will be playing at the Ridgewood Masonic Temple in Brooklyn on New Years Eve. I won't be going to see them. It's enough for me to know that a band named after Shakespeare's worst play exists. Ah, the names! Isn't one of the glories of rock and roll the absurd, obscene, clever, pretentious, and mystifying names of so many great, near-great, and truly terrible bands? Such poetry! Herewith a brief roll call: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lothar and the Hand People, Uriah Heep, the Slits, Hole, Ultimate Spinach, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Toad the Wet Sprocket, America, Japan, the The, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Anthrax, Flying Saucer Attack, Einsturzende Neubauten, the Cramps, Napalm Death, the Subhumans, the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, My Bloody Valentine, Sneaker Pimps, Them, Was (Not Was), Bikini Kill, the Bastard Cupcakes, the Hape Tenagrs. I swear, I didn't make any of them up, except for the last one (the Happy Teenagers), which should be the name of a band and was actually the title my son gave to a drawing of his when he was about eight. Also, the Bastard Cupcakes is cheating a bit, since they consisted of some high school kids in my hometown whose only known gig was a Battle of the Bands for the ninth graders. When I can't sleep, instead of counting sheep, I invent names for rock and roll bands. I'll spare you that list -- for now.