2024 Films-On-Music Series at The West Theatre

This coming weekend--April 19-25--the West Theater here in Duluth is hosting a mini film fest featuring films showcasing music. Here's the schedule, with film summaries below. Which ones will you go to see?

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It Might Get Loud

Davis Guggenheim USA 2008 Documentary -- 98 mins

“It Might Get Loud” is a 2008 American documentary film by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim. The film explores the careers and musical styles of three prominent rock guitarists: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of The White Stripes. It reveals how each developed his unique sound and style of playing favorite instruments, guitars both found and invented. The film revolves around a day when Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge first met and sat down together to share their stories, teach, and play.

Best viewed in the theater.

Velvet Goldmine 

Todd Haynes USA 1998 Drama -- 118 Mins

"Velvet Goldmine" is a 1998 musical drama film directed by Todd Haynes. Set in Britain during the glam rock days of the early 1970s, it tells the story of a fictional bisexual pop star named Brian Slade, who faked his own death. The film uses non-linear storytelling to achieve exposition while interweaving the vignettes of its various characters.

Best viewed in the theater.

Stop Making Sense

Jonathan Demme USA Documentary 1984 -- 88 mins

Considered by critics as the greatest concert film of all time, the live performance was shot over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December of 1983 and features Talking Heads' most memorable songs. Newly restored in 4K to coincide with its 40th anniversary, the 1984 film was directed by renowned filmmaker Jonathan Demme.

Best viewed in the theater.

Joan Baez: I Am A Noise

Directors Miri Navasky | Maeve O'Boyle | Karen O'Connor, USA 2023 -- 113 mins

At the end of a 60-year career, legendary singer and activist Joan Baez takes an honest look back and a deep look inward as she tries to make sense of her large, history-making life, and the personal struggles she's kept private.

Neither a conventional biopic nor a traditional concert film, JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE is a raw and intimate portrait of the legendary folk singer and activist that shifts back and forth through time as it follows Joan on her final tour and delves into her extraordinary archive, including newly discovered home movies, diaries, artwork, therapy tapes, and audio recordings. Baez is remarkably revealing about her life on and off stage - from her lifelong emotional struggles to her civil rights work with MLK and a heartbreaking romance with a young Bob Dylan. A searingly honest look at a living legend, this film is a compelling and deeply personal exploration of an iconic artist who has never told the full truth of her life, as she experienced it, until now.

Finding Her Beat

Directors: Dawn Mikkelson | Keri Pickett USA 2022 -- 89 minutes

For thousands of years women have been locked out of Taiko drumming. Not anymore. In the dead of a Minnesota winter, Asian drumming divas smash gender roles and redefine power on their own terms. FINDING HER BEAT dives into the rhythms and struggles that lead to an electrifying historic performance that changes everything.

Jay’s Longhorn

Director: Mark Engebretson USA 2019 -- 93 minutes

Before First Avenue there was Jay's Longhorn - the epicenter of the Minneapolis punk rock and indie rock scene in the late 1970s. At a time when the music scene was dominated by Top 40 cover bands, a group of punk rock visionaries - led by Andy Schwartz, former publisher of the New York Rocker -- scoured the city in search of a place that would welcome the New Wave. The Suicide Commandos, Flamingo, Curtiss A, the Suburbs, and NNB found a home at Jay's Longhorn -- which also served as the launching pad for Hüsker Dü and the Replacements and the preferred venue for touring acts like Elvis Costello, The B-52s, and The Police. 

Meeting Charlie Parr

Directors: Francois Xavier Dubois & Charles Dubois, France 2013 -- 70 Mins

Meeting Charlie Parr is a musical journey through the Midwest that meets one its most emblematic folk singers. In the Great Lakes forests, through the Minnesota plains, on stage or at home, we get to know Charlie Parr, an endearing and unique artist. Meeting after meeting, Charlie talks about his authentic blues music and what it says about America.

 

Big "Shout Out" to Bob Boone at The Reader and Richard Hansen of the DuSu Film Festival.

Throwback Thursday: Joe Cocker's Dylan Covers Continue To Reward Listeners

This week I was watching a DVD on Joe Cocker and it brought back to mind this blog post I assembled four years ago. It was impressive how much energy he generated. 

Bob Dylan earned the Nobel Prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." He not only consumed the music, he re-shaped it, gave it new luster, and shared it in new forms. It would be comparable to inventing new colors to add to the rainbow.

Now available to all, countless artists have inhaled the new "colors" Dylan gave us and proceeded to take them to new and remarkable places and spaces. One of these performer/interpreters was Joe Cocker, who passed from us in 2014 but has not been forgotten.

There are certain performers whose distinctive qualities set them apart as one of a kind, and Cocker was one of them. He'd been around for many years before he exploded on the scene in 1969 with his first United States tour which included Woodstock. His re-interpretation of "With A Little Help From My Friends" established him as a seriously notable performer. (It didn't hurt that his friends included Jimmy Page, Leon Russell, drummer B.J. Wilson and Tommy Eyre on the organ.)

After three years with his Grease Band, he assembled Mad Dogs & Englishmen, continuing a life of recording and performing. Once Joe Cocker embraced a song and reconfigured it, it became his own.

Here are nine Dylan songs that Joe Cocker recorded. Most, like Dear Landlord, were already familiar by the time he gave them renewed electricity. Others were not released by Dylan himself till much later. (Even lifetime fans have been repeatedly surprised and impressed by the contents of what keeps coming out of the Dylan vault.) The five emotion-laden tunes embedded here are among my favorites.

Dear Landlord (Joe Cocker!, 1969)

Just Like A Woman  (With a Little Help from My Friends, 1969)  Amazing.

Watching the River Flow (Luxury You Can Afford, 1978) -- Joe Cocker and the gang ratchet things up with this live performance in Italy. Love it. But then, here he is belting it out in San Francisco. Mmmmm, yeah.

Dignity (Organic, 1996)  Another great selection.

Let's close it out with this wonderful version of Ring Them Bells (Hymn for My Soul, 2007) from Dylan's Oh Mercy.

Want more Joe Cocker interpretations of Dylan? These are also easy to find...

Seven Days (Sheffield Steel, 1982) was released by Dylan on his Bootleg Series: Rare & Unreleased in 1991.

I Shall Be Released (With a Little Help from My Friends, 1969)

Catfish (Stingray, 1976)

And a laid back Reggae version of The Man In Me (Stingray, 1976)

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Trivia: Tommy Eyre, who played the organ on Joe Cocker's With A Little Help From My Friends, married Scarlet Rivera in 1991, to whom he was wed till he died from cancer in the summer of 2001. Scarlet has become a "special friend of the Northland" with many fans here as a result of her performances on behalf of the Armory (among other things.) Bringing this blog post full circle, Scarlet's imaginative violin work contributed to the distinctive sound Dylan's Desire album. Being recruited to travel with the Rolling Thunder Revue helped ignite her own career as a performer.

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Acknowledgement: Source for the nine songs, the tribute to Joe Cocker at Positively Bob Dylan.

'Tis the Season for Openings: Stuff to See, Hear and Do

Our birthday boy.

For starters, Happy Birthday, Don. Duluth's Mayor Ness turned forty this morning. The word on the street (and on Facebook) is that he will be celebrating the occasion in The Lyric Room at Porter's downtown.

He's probably aware, though you may not be, that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame is also celebrating his birthday today. Born in 1944, Page today is 69. I remember well when Led Zeppelin exploded on the scene. I had friends who practiced as a band when we were in high school. We were in Scott Homan's basement and someone said, "I have something you will want to hear." It was that first album with the bluesy Good Times, Bad Times, and the soulful rendition of Babe, I'm Gonna Leave you.

Speaking of Lyrics... Today at the Lyric Center in Virginia, MN is the opening of the January Abstractions show featuring new work by Colin Wiita, Heidi Mae Niska, Daryn Lowman and Pam Skinner.

Tonight in downtown Duluth, Pizza Luce is hosting the opening of Adam Swanson's new show titled My Wicked Secret. Don't know what he intends to share but I do know the establishment is a popular family restaurant and whatever Adam is putting on the walls will not be too wicked. He's just too nice a guy. So it must be a clever title, and I am very much looking forward to seeing his colorful new show.

Tomorrow evening is Second Friday Art Crawl, and at least a couple places you'll want to visit are these: Cracked at Washington Galleries and Polarize at the Prove. The Cracked opening is from 6-9 and Polarize from 7-11. Music starts at 8.

If you're in the Twin Cities, you'll have the good fortune of being able to attend Anne Labovitz's opening at the Burnet Gallery on Hennepin. The show is titled Layers and you'll get a chance to meet the artist, who's charisma is as compelling as her work.

Maybe you're not in the Midwest today and you happen to be stuck in crosstown traffic, mid-town Manhattan. There are a few things to catch in the Big Apple while you're there. Neil Young is at Carnegie Hall tonight and tomorrow. Yep, he's still alive an well, having released 2 albums with Crazy Horse in 2012 and kickin' it out in concert. Young won many of our hearts when Everybody Knows this Is Nowhere, his first solo album with Crazy Horse, hit the scene. I'm still listening to that one.

Meantime, life goes on. Catch a show or make something happen. Jack Frost is backing off for a spell and the weather should be downright balmy. Have a good one.