50

And It's Still Alright

Nathaniel Rateliff

It ain't alright, the hardness of my head

Now, close your eyes and spin around

Say, hard times you could find it

Ain't the way that you want

But it's still alright

Late at night, do you lay around wondering?

Counting all the lines, ain't so funny now

Say, times are hard, you get this far, but it

Ain't the way that you want

I'll be damned if this old man don't

Start to count on his losses

But it's still alright

They say you learn a lot out there

How to scorch and burn

Gonna have to bury your friends

Then you'll find it gets worse

Standing out on the ledge

With no way to get down

You start praying for wings to grow

Oh, baby, just let go

I ain't alright, you keep spinning out ahead

It was cold outside when I hit the ground

Said, I could sleep here, forget all the fear

It will take time to grow

Maybe I don't know

Hey, tonight if you think about it

Remembering all the times that you pointed out

Say, the glass is clear but all this fear

Starts a-leaving a mark

Your idle hands are all that stands

From your time in the dark

But it's still alright

Clem Burke Merges With The Infinite

Blondie's social media has alerted folks to the passing of Clem Burke.

Longtime readers will know Jamie and I are Blondie fans and have seen them a couple of times.  

I say this not lightly - Clem Burke was likely the best drummer I've ever seen live.  Some of that (a lot of that) was technical proficiency, but no small amount of it was that he was having a party behind his drum kit. The man always seemed to love what he was doing.

I confess to following him on social media and going down a COVID-era YouTube hole a night or three just watching him play across the years and sometimes with different bands.  

If you never paid particular attention to Clem, (1) shame on you, and (2) here's a bunch of Clem Burke across multiple bands, and (3) Gerry shared this so I'm sharing it.  

If you want to just listen to Clem Burke in context and songs that are NOT Dreaming (which may be my favorite) here's a favorite:

and another:

Maria:

ah, heck.  Here's Dreaming.

Musical Watch: Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

Watched:  04/01/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Robert Z. Leonard, Busby Berkeley

Increasingly lost to time is the impact Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. had on American culture of the 20th century.  A showman, theatrical empresario, producer, promoter and more, Ziegfeld is most famous for his Ziegfeld Follies, a series of extravagant Broadway shows that ran from around 1907 to his death in the 1930's.  Much of what we thought of as a stage full of beautiful young women that flooded musicals in the 1930's and 1940's and gave Busby Berkeley (credited here) a career was Hollywood tinkering with the shows Ziegfeld had staged, based on French revues.   He managed to employ folks like Irving Berlin, WC Fields, Will Rogers and many, many more.

Had Ziegfeld not passed when he did, it's likely he would have expanded into Hollywood in a more serious manner (he was already there and died in Hollywood in 1932), bringing his sensibilities to the big screen.

He was credited with creating "The Glorification of the American Girl", both featuring and populating shows with large choruses of female performers.  But he featured acts of all kinds, and shows to this day are based within the Ziegfeld Follies (see the currently running Funny Girl).  He was also not afraid to push into the risque, and folks knew what they were getting.  You can find all sorts of interesting photos online looking for Ziegfeld girls.

In what is a star-studded flick - the movie follows three girls/ women who enter into the Follies.  Like the Schwab's Pharmacy story, Ziegfeld - never seen in this movie!  And treated a bit like that Wizard Judy Garland had previously tangled with - would pluck girls out of their mundane lives by finding them behind perfume counters, working in elevators, etc...   A bit of instant wish-fulfillment if you caught the right guy's eye (which is kind of a nightmare, but in an era in which women's career options were limited, and many Ziegfeld girls married well, it's not nothing).

Musical Watch: It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

Watched:  03/27/2025

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Stanley Donen/ Gene Kelly

It's Always Fair Weather (1955) is a weird and wildly uneven movie.  It's either having an astounding number like the whole sequence in the boxing gym where Cyd Charisse seems like magic, or its three dudes boring me to tears with their individual issues.  And, yes, I'd seen it before.

I get that the movie is trying to replicate the trio of guys from On the Town, and, according to IMDB trivia, that was the original plan, but Sinatra was having his studio issues, and Munshin was on the outs with Hollywood.  

But I think if this movie had just been about Gene Kelly's character, it would have worked a heck of a lot better.  Or if it had been able to bring back all six of the characters - sure.  Instead, we get this weird "men in crisis" story that just kind of lacks charm and even feels depressing.  

Musical Watch: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Watched:  03/14/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Howard Hawks

It had been a minute since I'd watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), one of those movies they used to play more often on TCM and where I'd just stop and usually watch it from wherever I came in.  It's still a favorite.  

No doubt the movie's gender politics play badly for The Youth, but in context, this is a movie about two women on either side of the coin - asking whether one pursues money or not when it comes to matrimony and romance.  And, in 1953, we are very much still in an era where a marriage is going to make or break the vast majority of women.  We're only a handful of decades from women being able to vote, and they still can't have their own credit cards.  

The gag, of course, is do you play the men?  And, if so, how?  

Noir-adjacent Watch: Hangover Square (1945)

Watched:  11/25/2024

Format:  Kino BluRay

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  John Brahm

We previously watched this movie.

If I were going to program a series of movies and those movies were *about* (at least in part) music, I'd feel compelled to include Hangover Square (1945).  And I think I'd really manage to freak out the squares with this oddball character study/ thriller.  

Apparently the movie had a long road from book to screenplay to how it was finally shot and made.  It was also the final movie of Laird Cregar, one of the most promising actors of the 1940's, who died before this movie was released - a heart-attack brought on from a speed-fueled crash diet, intestinal issues from his attempts to lose weight, and other factors.  He was only 31.

Along the way, the book - which took place in modern London - was changed into a gaslight-era story about a composer, and almost nothing of the source material remained except the title.  Part of me is horrified for the original author, part of me knows this is basic studio mechanics, and part of me quite likes the final result.  So....

It's a bit of an odd movie because I'm not sure it has a "hero".  It has a protagonist you follow, but out of morbid curiosity.  After all, we know he is a killer in the first 30 seconds of the film - it's that no one else knows or wants to believe it.  So what happens when he's left free?  And gets cross-wise with a conniving songbird who is a walking red flag in the shape of Linda Darnell?

The score of the film is phenomenal, culminating in a diegetic performance of the concerto Cregar's character has been working on since before the film's start, The Concerto Macabre.  

The concerto is worked into the film throughout, as is the use of fire, pits, and other signs of Cregar's character's madness.  I really don't know how to talk about Bernard Hermann's work without gushing, or this one in particular.

And Cregar, himself is pretty terrific.  This may be his finest role in a very brief, very impressive slate before his untimely death.  He's sympathetic, even while you're screaming at the other characters to knock it off or stop him.  

I also think Darnell is at the height of her powers here.  Gorgeous, crafty, acting for the benefit of other characters while the audience knows what's up, and not making it cheesy...    And, ultimately, iron willed about what she wants and how to get it...  

oh no.  I've accidentally posted a pic of Linda Darnell.

Anyway - it's a dated portrait of mental illness that treats it a bit like a magical curse, but is pretty good nonetheless.  And manages two of the best scenes I've seen in a movie in recent years, with the Guy Fawkes sequence, and the finale, which I think is how real filmmakers should end a movie (more fire, you cowards).

At a tight 77 minutes, it's a complete story that rides like a roller coaster, ending in a huge twist and turnover at the end.  

I guess my pitch is this:  If the factors in a movie are imagery, sound and performances - they surely line up incredibly well in this movie.  That it stars two actors who died young and tragically, and that this likely got lost a bit in the shuffle as the war wrapped up may be why it's chattered about with a subset of film nerds, but not more in the conversation.  It was also not universally beloved when it came out - so maybe it just hits my sensibilities particularly well.

WTF Watch: Kissin' Cousins (1964)

Watched:  11/15/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gene Nelson

In this movie, Elvis comes down hard on the side of @#$%ing one's cousin(s). 

This is not me inferring something.  This is what happens in this movie from a few different angles. 

To be sure, one is hard pressed to find a more problematic movie than Kissin' Cousins (1964), the movie I watched last night.  And when people say they want to go back to a better America - I want to say "this America?  Cousin @#$%ing America?"  The contemporary reviews of this movie sure weren't great, but they also don't seem overly concerned with how this movie is about two things:  putting ICBM siloes on US soil and normalizing gettin' with yer kin.

It also features suggestions that the best way to win a woman is to pursue her relentlessly and a little bit violently, despite her express wishes.  It goes in hard for sexualizing the infantilization of women.  And probably a dozen other things, but those are some of the eye-poppers.

Like a lot of Elvis movies, it's not so much a musical as an excuse to roll out a new Elvis record.  There's some plot, but it's a framework to stop the eight minutes' worth of story for Elvis to sing a song.  In this way, it's not so much a musical - which uses songs to carry the story and have characters express themselves - as a series of music videos interspersed between goofily delivered plot points.

Doc Watch: Music By John Williams (2024)

Watched:  11/06/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Laurent Bouzerau

I don't have a special relationship with the music of John Williams - we *all* have that relationship.  

Music lays there in your mind somewhere next to the smells of your grandparents' basement that will come back to you when you smell something similar, or the taste of the food from your youth.  And John Williams' music was as important to us as pop, as Christmas music, as *anything* we heard growing up.

Of course there are other great movie composers... but probably the vast majority of them I'd put anywhere in the category of Williams are dead.  And none who seemed to hit with every score.

My earliest memories are of John Williams' music.  As a very small kid, post-Star Wars, we'd Imperial March around the house.  I remember the Christmas after Empire came out, my cousin Susan had purchased me the two-record soundtrack, and I lay on the floor listening to it over and over. 

Now, I get teary hearing Leia's theme - and have since Force Awakens reused it as Leia came off the ship. I still feel my pulse quicken to the Indiana Jones theme, or Superman.  I feel that pit in my stomach when I hear the Schindler's List score, or swell with wonder with Jurassic Park and Close Encounters.  Or ET.

We could probably rattle off his scores all day.  He's made plenty (I about gasped when I saw Home Alone for the first time since high school a couple of years ago and John Williams' name was on the film).  Honestly, it's staggering how prolific he's been, and that's part of what the doc tries to cover.  It's not just one Star War - it's 9.  It's not one Indy movie, it's 5.  

For reference, IMDB has him with the following telling stats for credits

• Music Department:  321
• Composer:  177
• Soundtrack:  517 (this is a mish-mash of work he did used on films - like "Superman Main Titles" being used on Superman IV)

I will be honest - I found out I knew absolutely nothing about John Williams while watching the doc.  My assumptions about who he was, his background, his education... all completely wrong.  I won't get into his background - that's in the doc.  But I will say that if I appreciated Williams before, I'm in absolute awe of him now, and don't just think he's a genius, he's a prodigy.

I was also unaware of his personal tragedy, or how he fell in with the biggest filmmakers of the past several decades.  

The doc trots out a who's-who of personalities, none of them a lightweight, to make their arguments for Williams, to talk about their experience working with him, and it's all a delight.  I am fine with the narrative that Williams' genius is innate, he's kind, etc...  the man is the greatest possible argument for the value of sound in movies, and maybe the last great orchestrator for film.

And, yes, I don't understand why - in this era of franchise pictures - we don't have more folks emulating Williams.

What I agree with - and looking at the listings for the Austin Symphony bares this out - is that film music is now as serious and important to symphonies as anything.  Sure, you still have the heavy hitters - some Mozart, Dvorak - but there's the show the whole family will dig.  John Williams.  

Anyway - watch the doc.  I found myself getting a bit emotional.  That music has a hold on you and taps into something pretty serious, and hearing all of it together is *a lot*.  But watch the doc and learn more about the man and the myth.

Quincy Jones Merges With The Infinite

Quincy Jones, maybe one of the single most important musical minds of the past 70 years, has passed.

Personally - Quincy Jones is how I learned what a producer was as a kid as the media dug into whatever they could discussing the shockingly popular Michael Jackson album, Thriller.  

Jones perpetually found himself in the middle of everything, from playing with Lionel Hampton and Tommy Dorsey as a young man, playing regularly on television, to finding himself the composer of a movie in 1961.  

We became involved in scoring movies while continuing to produce music and creating and arranging, this his collaboration with Michael Jackson.  In 1985, he was one of the key figures in the creation of USA for Africa's "We Are the World".

Jones also produced media, behind shows like Fresh Price of Bel-Air and several movies.  I cannot imagine how much money this guy had, but he did okay.

Jones is a true American success story.  A genius, a mover and shaker, a man who seemingly couldn't sit still...  he managed to have massive impact on the media landscape in music, in television creation, in movies...  

Do yourself a favor and look him up on Wikipedia today.  

Kris Kristofferson Has Merged With The Infinite

The great Kris Kristofferson - actor, musician, bad-ass - has passed at 88.  

Happy Birthday, Siouxsie Sioux

Today marks the birthday of Susan Janet Ballion, better known as Siouxsie Sioux of the bands Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Creatures.  And, recently, a solo performer.  

We've been fans of Siouxsie since the video for Peek-a-Boo hit MTV.  And we still think Peepshow is a killer album.

Sioux recently did some dates in Europe.  It's unclear if she's thinking of a longer tour or hitting the US.  If not, fair enough.  But it would be great to see her again.

Richard Sherman Merges With The Infinite

Songwriter and musician Richard Sherman has passed at the age of 95.

Sherman was one half of The Sherman Bros., who co-wrote some of the most familiar songs in the world, including "It's a Small World (After All)" for Walt Disney, and songs for Mary Poppins and Jungle Book.  They worked on stage musicals, screenplays, and wrote music for Disney parks, including "There's a Great Big, Beautiful Tomorrow" and, of course the music for the Tiki Room.

In recent years, Sherman was treated as a Disney emeritus, and would often consult on their re-makes of films he's worked on, like Jungle Book and for Mary Poppins Returns.  

Our pal NathanC, in his professional capacity at Texas Public Radio, interviewed Sherman a few years ago.  You can listen by clicking here.  Or read it here.

Doc Watch: Lolla - The Story of Lollapalooza (2024)

Watched:  05/24/2024

Format:  Paramount+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael John Warren

I just recently wound up writing about Lollapalooza and music festivals over on my more "personal journal" blog, League of Melbotis.  Originally the post was about ACL Fest and fading interest in festivals, but I was half-way through with the post when I saw an ad for Lolla (2024), a documentary tracking Lollapalooza from it's late-80's origins to today and into tomorrow.  I'd started the post talking about that festival as well as ACL Fest, so it's all of a piece.

This evening we went ahead and blasted through the three sections of the doc, each about 50 minutes, for our Friday night viewing.  

For a fuller picture, do check out that post at LoM.  But the key points include the fact I was a fresh-faced 16 year old when I attended the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991, and attended the first four years. 

To begin with: The doc has a lot of constraints.  It needs the involvement of the people who were there in the past, it needs the partnership of the people who currently work with and own Lollapalooza (Austin's own C3 Entertainment), and it's distributed by MTV parent company, Paramount, who lent a lot of material to the film.  For all those shackles, I think they *mostly* do a solid job of painting at least an interesting and accurate historical portrait.  It's just when you get to the modern era that I kind of side-eye the doc as propaganda.  

Happy Birthday, David Byrne

I very much remember the first time I heard or saw Talking Heads - because the two happened at the same time.  I would assume it was sometime in 1983 that the video dropped for Burning Down the House on MTV.  This would have made me about 9 years old, and it didn't take much to sell me on a video or song, but the band appearing in white tuxedos in what looked like a ballroom in a shoebox, and absolutely kicking ass - while also being replaced in some shots by folks who were *not them* in white tuxedos, did not need any literal translation.  It just made sense.

At the front of the band was a wild eyed man who looked like no other front-man in rock and roll.  He was thin, almost gaunt, with slicked dark hair and committed to the bit.  And in a landscape of Europop, American rock like Journey and Springsteen, and even the hints of punk that made its way to MTV, it was like seeing your awkward high school chemistry teacher strap on a guitar.

Radio play and MTV were enough for me.  I was into them, but I was also a kid happy with whatever form I was getting music.   I was aware from 4th grade that Talking Heads were not in step with the pop music scene, were not fitting neatly into any categories, but did their own thing.

J Lo Opus Watch: This Is Me... Now - A Love Story (2024)

Watched:  04/19/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dave Meyers

Selection:  K

One of the things they'll tell you in some creative writing classes is "write what you know", but they'll also tell you "don't write a story based on your life and just swap the names out, because now people reacting to a story are reacting to you".  JLo did not receive this advice.

So, what happens when a person who has been wildly successful for decades for things she got good at in her mid-20's, and who lives mostly surrounded by sycophants, decides they want to pen a not-at-all disguised analog of their autobiography as a sort of Moonwalker-esque extravaganza?  

There is *a lot* going on in This is Me... Now (2024), the sort-of-film/ musical video montage/ visual media spectacle which is 100% the creative product of Jennifer Lopez and everything that suggests.

Spoilers:  It will not make you walk away thinking "wow, she's a humble, grounded person" in any way.  And not even really in the fun way that you watch Mariah Carey passing through this plane.  But the thing is absolutely, mind-bogglingly engaging.  You simply cannot believe this thing exists, and with all the resources (her own money!) spent on it, that this is what JLo decided to do.

And I cannot recommend it enough.

Jamie's B-Day Watch: The Sound of Music (1965)

Watched:  03/25/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Wise

Selection:  Jamie's birthday choice!

I have no idea when I last watched The Sound of Music (1965).  I've documented most of the movie's I've seen since 2012 - with a break in 2013-2014.  So it's possible I watched it in that window, because it seems like I've seen it more recently than 2011.  Or I just forgot to write it up.  That happens.

It's probably a fool's errand to talk about the movie at length.  It's a bonafide classic, one of the two great American musicals directed by Robert Wise, and the music has permeated culture far beyond the boundaries of the film.  A Few of My Favorite Things has somehow become a Christmas song, which, sure.  Why not?

From a personal standpoint, when I watch this movie, I am about 75% sure this is what my mom wanted out of having kids.  Matching outfits, adventures, happiness and singing.  And while she did an amazing job of mothering, she still wound up with two sarcastic, grumpy, gigantic boys who kind of moseyed through family adventures with a grunt and an eyeroll.  Sorry, Ma.

The Sound of Music is based (extremely loosely) on the real life Family Von Trapp, who were an Austrian family who left their homeland after Hitler invaded.  It was, in it's own way, as dramatic as anything, but also not the short, exciting escape depicted in the film.

It is worth going back and watching for a few reasons.  1)  If your memory of the films is essentially kids prancing around the hills with their governess, it means the last time you saw this movie you went to bed at Intermission.  2)  Putting those songs from the musical into the narrative context of the film is kind of a good idea.  It also tells you a lot about how a musical is supposed to work.  3)  The movie is just masterfully choreographed and shot - and edited.  The entire film looks phenomenal, and clearly no expense was spared for locations, camera placement, time on location, extras, etc...  But also the framing and use of visual language in this movie is kind of mind-boggling.  Check out the Do-Re-Me sequence.  It's phenomenally well done for everything it conveys and the way it's shot and edited.  4) It's not much fun to think about vis-a-vis parallels to current threats to democracy, but at least the Georg in this movie is deeply anti-Nazi and sees the tide rising while everyone else kind of rolls over.  5)  The Lonely Goatherd is an all-time banger.

Watching the film now, I'm always probably more sympathetic than the film wants me to be to the Baroness, who gets tossed aside for the virginal manic pixie dream-nun.  Also, God bless 'em, but they shouldn't have cast the late Charmain Carr as the naive, 16-year old Liesl.  She was probably 21 or 22, looks 24, and it's almost visually confusing seeing her with the actual children.  Meanwhile, a near-30-year-old Julie Andrews is playing a novice, so I'd guess she *should* about 18 or so.  And, btw, Christopher Plummer was about 13 years older than Carr and barely older than Andrews.*  And he's 7 years younger than Eleanor Parker, who plays the Baroness.**  Anyway, once you look at it again, the movie can feel a wee bit jarring and I don't know the in's and out's of why they cast who they did.  

Still, if you want to absolutely want to cock-punch a dude named Rolfe, this is the movie for you.  (man, Rolfe just sucks so fucking bad.  Liesl, NO.)

This is a Robert Wise movie, and I'm going to just keep saying "Robert Wise does not make bad movies".

Anyhoo, I *do* think we're hitting an interesting point as the Gen-Z kids haven't been part of the ritual of watching The Sound of Music on TV once a year or so, and generally people don't really talk about movies with their kids.  So while I'm sure a percentage will have seen this movie, it's no longer the cultural shorthand it was.  And actual Nazis probably seem a whole lot more like something out of a movie than actual people we'd been at war with 20 years prior to the release of this movie.

*apparently the real-life age gap between Georg and Maria was 25 years

**Parker had been in her career peek from the mid-1940's to the mid-50's, but was working consistently til about 1990.  She was the established star in the movie with Academy Awards and whatnot, and she just kills it in this film.  And is not funny looking.

Musical Watch: The Color Purple (2023)

Watched:  03/09/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Blitz Bazawule

You know, if the world doesn't need something, it's a white dude from the Texas 'burbs sliding in and commenting on The Color Purple (2023).  I mean, the novel is an American classic, the Whoopi Goldberg/ Oprah Winfrey/ Spielberg movie is a classic, the play has run forever...  I got nothing.  This is a great and important story at its core, or it wouldn't still be around.

I will say - the cast is mind-boggling, but that's going to happen.  And I couldn't believe the money clearly behind this thing.  Huge cast.  Period settings.  Choreography, etc...

Anyway.  I really, really liked it.  If your biggest problem is "Fantasia Barrino isn't funny looking enough for what people keep saying" (she isn't funny looking at all), that ain't bad.  Also - I now know why Domingo Coleman has been all over the place at awards shows.

I'm not sure it replaces the Spielberg movie in anyone's mind, and certainly not the novel, but it's great it exists.  It kinda got screwed at the Oscars, yeah?

Doc Watch: The Greatest Night in Pop (2024)

Watched:  02/14/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bao Nguyen

Selection:  Jamie

I was 9 years old (about to be 10) when "We Are the World" hit the airwaves.  And then played non-stop for what seemed to be about 6 months to a year.  I can't say when I first heard the song or saw the video, but I do remember unloading the car when my mom came home from shopping (that was one of our chores) and a copy of the vinyl record being in the back of the van.  

I also recall either that year or the next school year being brought into the cafetorium at Spicewood Elementary where we were shown a "making of" doc about the song and the famine in Ethiopia and nearby countries.  (This was the 1980's, VCRs were newish, and teachers were always finding some reason to show a film).  

We're almost 40 years out from the release of the record, so a lot has changed in that time.  And a lot of people have passed.*  And it's hard for me to imagine what this would look like now.  Do musicians even still do benefit work like this, or has streaming killed the potential for raising money?

But the doc, The Greatest Night in Pop (2024) - now on Netflix - is a neat exploration of what happened and why, how it came together and the bumps along the way.  

The film relies on first-hand accounts, pulling in top-tier talent that participated, from Bruce Sprinsteen to one of the masterminds, Lionel Richie.  And, because it was so star-studded, it also features a treasury of video shot from the event of the recording.  

Unfortunately, some of the key players either weren't available for a sit-down (Quincy Jones) or were very not available for a sit-down (Michael Jackson).  But you do get a very good picture of what it must have been like for the people who walked into the room, using interviews with Cindy Lauper, Smokey Robinson, Sheila E., to the camera crew and engineer.

Sometimes you watch a doc and they talk about the situation and the huge impact it had, and you know they're kind of playing it up.  After all, no one wants to watch a doc and at the end they're like "well, it didn't really work out that great."  But USA for Africa, at worst, raised awareness for how people could take action and not just be told that people were starving, and wasn't that too bad.  At best, it did get nutrional support to the people affected by the famine, as well as medicine and other aid.

From the point of view of the doc and the unique event that was USA for Africa, it's absolutely worth watching just to see all of these people in the same room, minus their support staffs and all the trappings of top-tier rock stardom in the 1980's.  It's not like "We Are the World" is still played on the radio, and it's been a minute since I didn't just say "oh, that's the song" and then mentally tune out again.  I'd forgotten you have Bob Dylan in the room, for example.  

But it's human without getting weird, and you're reminded - much as with the Beatles doc - these are people.  And in the 1980's, the media machine really wanted us to forget that pop stars were just good singers in funny clothes.  

When you're a kid, rock stars seem like a permanent fixture.  I didn't think of Huey Lewis as a *new* thing or that he might be star struck being in the room with these people.  But, really, aside from seeing each other at awards shows where they don't *really* interact all that much, when would this many people get together?  When do you get Ray Charles and Kenny Rogers sharing air? Or Dionne Warwick and Willie Nelson sharing a verse?

The doc has it's truly shining moments, and I won't spoil them.  It never does explain why Dan Aykroyd was there - and that someone specifically tried to get him is all the more baffling.  It also doesn't dwell on who wasn't there - beyond Prince.  But for every huge celeb, we're missing a Madonna.  But I also appreciate that they didn't talk about why people were left out.

Anyway, it's a fun one to watch.  

But, seriously, it's weird this didn't become an annual sort of thing. 

*we miss you, Tina  

Happy Birthday, David Bowie

Here's to the great David Bowie on his birthday.  

The picture above is from about 2004, which is around when Jamie and I saw him in concert for the second time.  

What struck me about that show was how different it was from when I'd seen him on the Outside tour, where he was doing a thing tied to the music, and was being a very serious rock god.  In 2004, he was playing new stuff and playing the hits and having fun bantering.  Which, in it's own way, was kind of weird as it so defied my expectations.  But, man, it was a fun show.  

Here's to the The Thin White Duke.  The world literally hasn't been the same since we lost him.

Merry Christmas Eve from The Signal Watch

Merry Christmas, pals.  

I don't think many of you are online on Christmas Eve, and that's a good thing.  But if you are online, Jamie and I wish you the very best.   May your night be merry and bright.

One exciting bit this Christmas has been the Apple+ special, Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas.  We're Waddingham fans, and hope you are, too.  Anyway, enjoy her belting out "O, Holy Night".

And as we wrap each Christmas Eve here at The Signal Watch, please give Ms. Darlene Love a listen - this year, with Cher!