Few jazz artists are as likely to delight the staunchly skeptical rock and roll fanatic as Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Multiple horns sprouting from his mouth as if he were some mythological messenger-god from the Other Side, additional “weapons” hanging from his person like Christmas ornaments, drunk on racket and beautiful melody, Kirk was anything and everything but boring. Often, he was flat-out unbelievable: besides being clearer-sighted (and that adjective isn’t strictly metaphorical) than most sighted folks, his experiments would have daunted even the early Velvet Underground. Superimpose “Sentimental Journey” on Dvorak’s New World Symphony by playing each melody on two different horns at the same time? No problem. Honor Dr. King with a wildly extrapolated rollercoaster improv on Burt Bacharach’s “I Say a Little Prayer”? Well, why not! Play convincing deep blues on a flute, for Chrissakes, while not only vocalizing through it but using it as a percussion instrument as well? Hell, yeah! Impersonate a sax section all by your lonesome--and sound better than most? Shoot, t’ain’t nothin’at all, y’all. It’s a wonder we’ve had to wait so long for a biography on such a colorful musical legend, but the wait was worth it. John Kruth’s Bright Moments succeeds through the author’s own brave experiment: why not write a biography in the spirit of the man himself, and leave the theory and analysis for Gunther Schuller?

Rather than following Kirk’s life through strict chronology, Kruth, a musician himself and more importantly an avid fan, spins each segment of the book off thematic quotations, many from Rahsaan himself, and lets the man himself, family members, fellow musicians, and producers tell stories that get to the heart of the respective themes. The book is divided into roughly chronological chapters for coherency’s sake, but this never dictates the immediate direction of the narrative. Kruth’s aim is to reveal Kirk’s complex genius (what other kind is there?): blind man vs. visionary, deadly competitor vs. sympathetic advocate, lover of all musics vs. frighteningly discriminating cultural critic, fun-loving prankster vs. harsh taskmaster, multi-gimmicked showman vs. serious jazz innovator. It’s the last of those contradictions that the author examines most closely, and he succeeds in proving that Kirk deserves to be considered, with Coltrane, Mingus, and Coleman, as part of the last wave of jazz zeitgeist-busters.

Kruth writes with an unpretentious enthusiasm. He clearly believes he was lucky to be alive when a titan walked the earth, and his tone is one of wonder and amazement, as is that of the people in Kirk’s life who share their experiences. Not that there’s much hagiography at work; the subject could be an SOB, particularly when invited on stage to jam with other musicians, or when he chose to air his political views from the stage (often with good justification). He didn’t always make the most solid choices in musical direction or support personnel, particularly in the late Sixties, when, of course, his every whim was encouraged, and, amazingly, given his handicap, he seemed always ready to kick someone’s ass. But, as the reader soon realizes, Kirk did perform miracles. One was to take the idea of playing multiple instruments simultaneously (he was not the first, as Kruth takes pains to point out) and, through a serious interest in pure sound, make MUSIC out of it. Another was to navigate through a physical environment that was full of landmines for anyone who was not only black but blind as well as if he were king of all he surveyed, and to do the same with a critical environment in which cultural guardians like Leroi Jones accused him of minstrelsy. He survived a stint in Charles Mingus’ band, seemingly without serious wounds, despite being as bullheaded as its notoriously imperious leader. He managed to have one foot in the avant garde and the other in the mainstream without being ripped up the middle. He managed to integrate wildly disparate elements--showmanship and high art, politics and sheer entertainment, a fondness for both resuscitating tradition and destroying it, melody and noise--if not always into an aesthetically pleasing whole, at least into a distinctly individual musical vision. And, for his last act, when a stroke robbed him of the use of one arm, he taught himself to play multiple instruments with the other. No wonder Kruth chooses to (like Whitman) sing his subject’s feats rather than dryly present them.

As one might already be able to tell, the strength of Bright Moments is that it brilliantly dishes out what all readers of biographies at least secretly want: GREAT STORIES. You can literally open the book to any page and find one. They range from the musical (Kirk summoning birds with a Japanese instrument to which he’d just been introduced; Kirk playing fellow tenor man George Adams’ preceding solo back to him verbatim on the Carnegie Hall stage; his “collisions” with Frank Zappa and the Mothers, Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart and other rockers) to the extramusical (Kirk's skyjacking arrest(!); his powow with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters; his failed Ed Sullivan Show insurrection). But they all hew to one purpose: celebrating a man who never thought of himself as disabled, and whose mission on the planet was to forward the development (and the cause) of “black classical music.”

The book has a few weaknesses. At times, one wishes for a clearer chronology. Also, ideas and even quotations and paragraphs are frequently repeated beyond their call. And Kruth's open enthusiasm sometimes enters the realm of goofiness (even then, the reader may find him quite charming). However, these are acceptable prices to pay in order to write a book that unfolds like a Rahsaan Roland Kirk performance. Bright Moments is a story told with love, spontaneity, and an attention to detail, qualities that will reward not just jazzbos but hardcore rock and rollers as well. If nothing else, Rah’s music is fun--and so is this book.

What follows is a strongly recommended disc/filmography for any readers who are ready to dive into Kirk’s works headfirst. You won’t bonk your head on the bottom--the shit’s too deep. Those who fear “throwing chairs off tables” music (as an old teacher buddy of mine used to call free jazz) need not worry; even when Rah was plunging into freedom, he was accessible and, more importantly, entertaining. The list proceeds in descending order according to my passion for each, but even the last is close to my heart. Note: Should you be so moved, check out half.com first in order to purchase any of these releases--you’ll save much-needed cash. Also, visit the official Rahsaan Roland Kirk website to learn more! And, finally, if you dig Rah, move on to one of his torch-bearers, James Carter.

We Free Kings (Mercury): That rarity of rarities--a perfect album. Kirk composed all but two of the nine songs, and they’re killers. “Three for the Festival” is one the most exciting three-minute records in jazz, and it showcases not only his multi-sax attack but his gutsy (yes, gutsy) flute. “The Haunted Melody” is exactly what its title advertises. “We Free Kings” synthesizes his comfort with any kind of song with his fierce racial pride. As for the covers, he runs Charlie Parker’s micromusical maze “Blues for Alice” as if he built it himself.

I Talk With the Spirits (Limelight) He does. Perhaps the greatest album of flute-playing ever recorded. Oddly, it’s the sole instrument--albeit in three incarnations--that Kirk plays on the record; on Does Your House Have Lions? he’s listed on 27, and that may be an underestimation. Even if you hate the flute, you’ll be intrigued, because Kirk transforms it in ways I’m sure its inventor never imagined. Again, off-the-wall originals (“Serenade to a Cuckoo,” complete with clock, is--for better or worse--responsible for Jethro Tull) vie with unthinkable covers (not only Streisand’s “People,” but “Trees”!) in a feverish competition to blow your ear’s mind.

Rip, Rig and Panic/Now Please Don’t You Cry, Beautiful Edith (Mercury). A bountiful twofer, also composed mostly by the artist. This’ll stretch the listener’s ear more than Kings, ‘cause Kirk ventures into freedom and musique concrete, but he’s in the company of Elvin Jones (fresh out of ‘Trane’s classic quintet), Richard Davis (the bassist on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), and Jaki Byard (like Kirk a walking encyclopedia of jazz styles and forms) on the former, where most of the fireworks lie. Searing ballads, driving workouts, jolting experiments, all tied together by Kirk’s brass balls and sense of humor.

Does Your House Have Lions? The Rahsaan Roland Kirk Anthology (Atlantic/Rhino): Two discs covering (for the most part) Kirk’s last decade. The 31 cuts compiled by Kirk producer and expert Joel Dorn show everything the man could do and be, and that was a lot. As such, it’s a neat companion piece to Kruth’s book. Features the aforementioned Dvorak/ ”Sentimental Journey” experiment (“Some say Dvorak was a black man,” Kirk jokingly explains in the intro, “I say I don’t give a damn!”), “I Say a Little Prayer,” a bewildering nose-flute expedition, a wild “Old Rugged Cross,” and a surprising pop foray into Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

Sound?? (Rhapsody Video) A 30-minute exploration of the title subject that is pure late-’60s. While John Cage drolly explains what the average yokel’s ear is missing (at one point while plummeting down a kiddie slide on a playground), Kirk happily demonstrates, with a blazing live version of “Three for the Festival,” a duet with a wolf at the London Zoo, and an audience participation number in which Rah distributes whistles and everyone joins in. A must!

Jaki Byard: The Jaki Byard Experience (Prestige). Opens with Kirk adeptly simulating a “Parisian Thoroughfare” and never lets up. Like Kirk, Byard, as noted above, was a Mingus veteran and a walking encyclopedia of black classical music whose fingers were encoded with wisecracks and lore, and this is another pairing that should have lasted at least another record. Their witty jaunts through the gospel traditional “Shine On Me,” Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” and Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You” are pure alchemy: instead of preserving tradition (like you would a mummy), they grab it by the lapels and drag it kicking and screaming and very much alive into a modern musical banquet.

It's hard to believe, after reading this book, that any record biz figure ever worked harder than Leonard Chess, and not so hard to believe that, by that virtue, he ended up with damn near the whole enchilada--label, stable, studio, pressing plant, distributorship, even a radio station--despite knowing very little about music at the git-go. Though most rock and roll fans would probably pick this up anticipating juicy stories about Wolf, Waters, Williamson, Berry, and Bo (and she does share a few), Cohodas' intention is to shine a light on Chess' hard-nosed and untutored business acumen, the complex interaction of two sets of Chicago emigrants (the Chesses, from Poland, and Mississippi-born blacks come to the Windy City for a better life), and the turbulent changes experienced by the record industry between the end of World War II and the assassination of Dr. King. In doing so, Cohodas writes, thinks, and researches so skillfully such fans will forget to be disappointed.

The predominant images of Leonard Chess the reader's left with by the last page are the "CEO" (how things have changed) busting his hump, driving from city to city to push his records; expanding his operations just ahead of the curve at every crucial moment, mainly through utter involvement, vigilant awareness, native intelligence, and indefatigable drive; expertly rifling his biz contacts for the right man to lead him to success in unexplored areas (fear of the unknown was unknown to this guy, as exemplified by his purchase of radio station despite no experience at all in running one--he turned it into a major success, of course); profanely cajoling his artists into top performances in the studio; and stubbornly keeping things simple and personal. It's really only at the moment that Chess begins to remove himself from the record-making process and expand his operations beyond the capability of his direct control--late in the game, nearly 20 years after he got his feet wet--that the quality of the company's music begins to fade. Even so, with artists like Etta James, Little Milton, and Billy Stewart continuing to score hits, "fade" is a relative term. Bitterly telling is what happens to the Chess machine almost immediately after the brothers sell it, but I'll leave that to you to find out.

I would assume that any reader of this page has heard claims that the Chess brothers exploited their mostly undereducated artists, and Cohodas doesn't shy away from these. However, she shows that, though the label specialized in creative accounting (Alan Freed getting publishing on "Maybellene" is the most famous example: would it have become a hit otherwise, one wonders?), it also specialized in, shall we say, generously blind accounting: no records were kept of hospital bills, mortgage and car payments, and bail Chess routinely, willingly, and promptly paid out to keep his artists on their feet. Paternalistic? Yep; Cohodas says as much. But that generosity exceeded what artists at other labels could expect, and, among the many Chess hitmakers quoted in Spinning, only Bo Diddley appears adamant in his claims, and even he seems to be losing intensity. Cohodas also reveals Chess as being passionately committed to serving the needs of the black community. He never jumped on the teen idol bandwagon; in fact, the only white artist to make a rock-historic mark with the label was Bobby "See You Later, Alligator" Charles, and he didn't even have a hit with his most famous composition. And when he purchases his first radio station, it's strictly programmed by and for the Windy City's black community.

Particularly inspiring is Cohodas' account of how Chess' wisdom, vision, and elbow grease, in league with that of the Biharis at Modern, Wexler and the Erteguns at Atlantic, and Phillips at Sun, led to a postwar independent musical revolution that soundly kicked the collective asses of the product turned out by the big boys. Could we use a repeat performance today! More effectively than any of the other indie heads, Chess was able to diversify what his company had to offer. Though the label's most famous for its blues catalog, its doo-wop, rock and roll, and especially jazz output put it on the competitive map. You will also learn about the Chess brothers' skill at building relationships with influential dee-jays, and their inevitable run-in with the federal payola investigators. If you're like me, you'll develop a new appreciation for what payola was, and find it difficult avoid vomiting when you realize that--after a genius like Alan Freed had his career and life destroyed--the industry has simply streamlined the practice into the perfectly legal stealth operation it is today, with one big difference: instead of a little money and modest "services" being paid and rendered to advance the cause of great music, we now have looooooooooooong green and blandishments fit for a sheik being proffered to turn shit into hits. Even sadder is Cohodas' picture of how a long, successful, potentially prophetic story of interracial cooperation and creativity was suddenly shut down by our culture's (government's) need to kill its most visionary leaders. As is also heart-breakingly examined in Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music, thoroughly integrated studios like Chess, Stax, and Muscle Shoals found it impossible to continue in the usual catalytic manner after King's assassination. It isn't hard to see that things have never been the same, behind the studio glass or the doors of our own homes.

OK, I’m two years late on this book (though the paperback did just come out). Mama Coomers gave it to me for Christmas a while back and it got stuck under a pile, and I may have been slow getting to it for the same reason you may not have read it yourself: how many Elmore Leonard novels does the world need, and could he really write so many so fast if they were all that good? Well--as you may know if you’ve read much of the man’s stuff--I should have known the answers to those stupid questions: “As many as he wants to write, dummy!” and “Yes!” If you haven’t read much or any of Dutch’s writing, you’re missing out on one of our national treasures, because reading him is as easy as getting off on classic Stones records: he makes smart, entertaining storytelling seem as easy as Charlie, Bill, and Keith locking into that dirty, basic, but seemingly inimitable rhythm. And the great thing about Be Cool is that it’s actually a rock and roll novel.

Be Cool is the sequel to Get Shorty, in which crafty former shylock Chili Palmer, in Hollywood to track down a welcher, insinuated his way into the moviemaking business and wound up being crafty a brand new way. (If you didn’t read the book, you probably saw the film, which is damn near as good!). Palmer is a classic Leonard protagonist, a smart, steady, perceptive guy who dodges and feints his way around the world’s obstacles, usually presented by loud, stupid, and innately hilarious borderline (or fully-credentialed) criminals. One of best of the many jokes in these books is that despite Chili’s background (everyone thinks he’s mobbed up) he never packs a rod, or even needs to. What he intuits about his combatants’ character flaws is usually enough to manipulate them into inaction, even if they’ve come bound and determined to whack him.

In Be Cool, Palmer, disappointed by a watered-down sequel to his hit debut film and full of misgivings about the third in “the trilogy”, sidles/stumbles (via a contract hit he narrowly avoids being the victim of himself) into the world of music production and promotion. Soon, the reader becomes aware that the book’s a sequel about a making a sequel. The circumstances by which he’s introduced to record industry are so intriguing (in Leonard’s world, real life is always stranger than fiction) that he begins to plot the new movie according to the way the situation unfolds; in fact, he rather dangerously begins, by manipulating the other participants, to change the way the situation unfolds in order to plot a more interesting story! That alone would be enough to hook the general reader looking for some literary kicks.

But for our congregation, that’s only part of the fun. Along the way, Palmer meets a cast of rock and roll characters unmatched since Jim Dodge’s Not Fade Away. There’s Derek Stones of the Hollywood trash-metal band Roadkill, be-ringed and be-tatted, drinking and puking, throwing temper tantrums over pizza. There’s Linda Moon and her band Odessa, a principled, stripped-down unit from Texas that sounds like AC/DC backing Patsy Cline (hmmmmm...). There’s the quasi-criminal gangsta rappers Ropa-Dope, who start out ready to tear Chili’s throat out and within seconds become his lieutenants. There’s a panorama of industry types, from promoters talking eternal rivers of bullshit into their headsets to unscrupulous indie heads to persnickety sound men to secretaries 40 IQ points smarter than their bosses to know-nothing sleazeballs who stop at nothing to get a piece of the action. It’s a tribute to Leonard’s always-thorough research that the book serves as spot-on shorthand for Frederic Dannen’s Hit Men or Bruce Feiler’s Dreaming Out Loud, two of the best books ever written about the industry. Be Cool even features an argument about punk rock that knows whereof it speaks, as well as a very amusing cameo by Aerosmith.

Those readers (and filmgoers) who always fear the soft-focus and soft-headed ending will be glad to know that, though Chili, after “becoming” the manager for Odessa, is bound and determined to preserve the band’s rough edges and Texas soul, he finds that task more than a little difficult. Rock and roll reality abounds from Be Cool’s first page to its last; in fact, one of the most disturbing rock and roll realities of all is addressed directly. Nicky Carcatella, the head of Car-O-Sell records and owner of Odessa’s contract, points out to a frustrated Chili why the band’s first single has to be remixed:

The numbers in the first quoted paragraph is why this web page and others like it have a reason for being: of those 65-70%, lots are damn good and need to get recognized to keep real rock and roll alive. The realities of the third are a major part of what’s wrong with music today. And the pithiness and wit of the whole passage--which ain’t nothing compared to the rest of the book--are why you need to put this at the top of your reading stack.

Who says it's g-g-g-g-good to be alive? Same ones who keep it a perpetual jive (I think Lester Meyers said that): the world is run by clowns who can't wait for it to end (Too Much Joy, they said that), but somehow they manage to make it last (Joey Ramone, yep, he said that). Well, if you're damned fatigued from swimming upstream in this River of Shit that seemingly flows forever--please don't make me be specific, where would I start?--you need to hustle your ass down to the nearest hip video store and check out all three volumes of the British TV series Lipstick On Your Collar, the 1993 swan song of Dennis Potter, a man who understood that rock and roll was good medicine for worldsick souls. Too much monkey business makes us all dull boys and girls; the fantasies encoded in a fine rock and roll song, as Lipstick's protagonists so vibrantly illustrate, are sometimes enough to get us up and over, or at least through seconds, minutes, and hours that seem like years. I said that.

The series tracks the progress of three characters in London in 1956: Sylvia Berry (Louise Germaine, who looks like she coulda walked right off a Crypt album cover), a wildcat usherette with glam dreams who's married to and wet-blanketed by a major asshole; Private Francis Francis (Giles Thomas, separated at birth from Brad "Billy Bibbit" Dourif ), a Pushkin-worshipping nebbish whose cross-threaded romantic dreams leads him into a pursuit of Mrs. Berry, who just happens to be married to his immediate superior officer; and Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor), Francis' fellow soldier in the British War Office whose daydreams are definitively below the neck. They're all three surrounded by the walking dead: the soldiers by a bunch of older men devoted to a British Empire falling apart at the seams and a detailed routine of trivia that makes their denial easier to maintain, the usherette by the brutish lout and a creepy theatre organist she fucks for the money her husband won't give her.

But it's their rock and pop dreams that keep their souls alive. The soundtrack's coursing with great songs from the '50s, of course, but if you've never seen any of Potter's work (Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective I highly recommend), you've never heard these songs this way. They explode into the story, as characters interrupt soul-killing situations and launch into lip-synched fantasy production numbers that not only fascinatingly recontextualize the songs but articulate (and occasionally mock) the characters' dreams and desires. There's absolutely nothing in TV or film like these moments, and they leave Potter's previous experiments in the dust. What makes them more powerful than ever before is McGregor's total investment in each song he's involved in. Pardon my hyperbole, but no actor I've ever seen has nailed the "Gene Vincent 'Be-Bop-A-Lula'/'Woman Love' Drooling Rock and Roll Lust" look so squarely as McGregor does when each daydream dawns on his character's consciousness. And he acts out each song like he's hauling his first erection around. Ladies and gentlemen, this is rock and roll!

I could go on. The photography's vivid, the script is barbed and witty, the acting is terrific. But the reason you need to rent Lipstick On Your Collar is that soul-death is perhaps a more imminent danger than ever these days, and this series reminds us that a little ditty might just be a big enough weapon to hold it off until we catch ahold of our dreams and let 'em air-lift us out of this river. Even if the dream only exists in the little ditty; even if the dream's dreaming (or laughing at) us; even if the dream only provides a temporary blockade against the monkey business. A little bit is better than nada, the late great Sir Doug said that.

This documentary, in essence, captures a tragedy. Five Detroit kids, grappling with urban nothingness and decay, find each other, and sacred common ground: loud, aggressive, defiant music to level at the yawning abyss. They then realize a level of aural thunder and riffpower previously unknown to the rock and roll world; in the face of "Looking at You," "Ramblin' Rose," and "Kick Out the Jams," the Who might as well have been plugged-in skifflehacks, the Rolling Stones a troupe of scrawny, bald-faced minstrels, Bob Dylan and the Hawks a "happening" of haranguing artfags. The late '60s being what they were, the boys fall into hard drugs, mindless communal sex, half-baked politics, and chickenshit censorship, and find their raging momentum and considerable vision derailed. The end is a fizzle: a European tour with a fraction of the band sleepwalking through lame covers and fighting off H-nods.

The MC5: A True Testimonial, shot mostly in lo-fi handheld style, uses the survivors (vocalist Rob Tyner and Fred "Sonic" Smith are long dead) to piece together a human story that parallels the virtual collapse of the city of Detroit. Though guitarist Wayne Kramer, still a significant artist, frames most of the narrative, the most affecting talking heads are drummer Dennis Thompson, embittered, manic, and challenging, and bassist Mike Davis, seemingly cut off from society on an isolated ranch. Their memories are in sharp contrast with their present, and, opposed to calculations like VH1's Bands Reunited series, they reveal the after-life of millions of former musicians who were within the orbit of legendhood, but were spat out to scrape out an existence in anonymity. One hears of a summer MC5 reunion, but will that just result in deeper future loneliness?

Another interesting aspect of the film is how it investigates the culpability of guru/svengali John Sinclair in the group's demise. Thomas cannily just lets Sinclair talk; before long, his self-promoting bullshit blather (though, to be fair, he does recognize the error of his ways to some degree) confirms what many fans have long suspected: that he did more harm than good to band's career. If the viewer doesn't get the point, Lemmy Kilmeister is there in "Testimonials" bonus feature to hilariously pund the point home. Back in the U.S.A. producer Jon Landau (skewered memorably in Fred Goodman's record industry book Mansion on the Hill) also fares poorly, coming off smug, self-deluded, and still uncomprehending as he recalls his attempt to commercialize the Five's sound. On the other hand, former Elektra exec Danny Fields, who signed both the MC5 and the Stooges in one fell swoop (what a fucking stroke!) and is one of the heroes of Legs McNeil's punk memoir Please Kill Me, is in fine form as he sardonically recalls his ultimately disastrous experience with band.

Fans may be frustrated that, in the midst of all of the dope, guns, and fucking in the street, little time was devoted to properly capturing the live MC5 for posterity. Most of the video footage of the band is just that--video. The soundtrack team has done a very admirable job of synching this footage to studio tracks, but this viewer was left hungry for performance footage. However, "Black to Comm," the legendary free-rock freakout often perpetrated by the group in concert, is caught in cacophonous glory in a Detroit television studio; after having been disappointed by the several audio-only versions I'd heard, I felt my short hairs stiffen actually watching it. The great free-jazz/rock and roll fusion still beckons, and this group shone a light. Another highlight of the live footage is the revelation that Wayne Kramer was the proto-Nugent, pioneering guitar-cock stances and promising primo cunnilingus with his hyperactive tongue. Also, is that Wayne who is having very public sex in a photo that passes uncommented upon in the background?

This film was worth the half-decade wait, but viewers need to be prepared to be satisfied by information rather than performance. The DVD version (not yet available in stores) contains some very entertaining additional material: two live performances (one of them early and painful, however), some funny and telling outtakes, and the aforementioned "Testimonials" segment, where, besides Lemmy, Cheap Trick, The Hellacopters, and the Dictators (with Ross the Boss thrillingly replicating Kramer's "Looking at You" solo) all comment on the band's legacy. Plus...when's the last time you heard Iggy called a "faggot"?

Speaking of Iggy, he's anything but a "faggot" in this record of two 2003 performances, one before a ravenous home turf crowd, the other at a New York City record store. Still sporting a stray cat physique at 56 and putting out more energy than front men a third his age, he's a true wonder of nature, particularly if you consider he shouldn't have survived past '75. Backing him up are original Stooges Ron and Scott Asheton, Funhouse saxophonist Steve Mackay (whose aleatory playing graces several non-Funhouse tracks as well), and ever-ready Mike Watt on bass.

Truth to tell, the great thing about this concert situation is that, other than "Skull Ring" (from Ig's most recent album), all the material's from the 1st two Stooges records. That spares you post-1980 Iggy, which has been mostly dismal. It would've been cool to hear some songs from Raw Power (Ron's probably still sore about the James Williamson situation; my buddy Kenny says Ron couldn't match James' haywire leads, but I'm not so sure), if not a few adaptable gems from Lust for Life, The Idiot, New Values, and Soldier (maybe even Wild America and Repo Man), but, hey, that's not the gig. As anyone who is conceivably interested in buying this DVD would hope for, the band plays with exceptional brutality at the Detroit show, though one can't help wondering, when you set the standards for stripped-down rock and roll 33 years previously, how much more stripped-down can you get? The decision to include Mackay was very smart, but the band tends to blare out at times, and the audience has changed: in '70, the Stooges offended audiences by daring to strip naked musically; in '03, stripping naked is de riguer. Though it feels like sacrilege, I must register a few other caveats.Viewers who've seen the legendary "Cincinnati Pop Festival" footage from 1970 (during which Ig rides the crowd and smears peanut butter on his chest) should be advised that the shooting scheme for the video is pretty unimaginative. Iggy also shows signs of Lou Reed Syndrome, that is, betraying a jaded distance from his former glories. Many of his screams, bellows, and other animal utterances sound like he's learned them off his own records, which is different than when they are compelled from your gut.

Still, buy this. Obviously, my expectations were very high. The NYC in-store actually surpasses the Detroit concert, for a couple of reasons. The setting's more intimate, which cuts down on the blare and encourages the garage in Ron's guitar. Also, Watt and Mackay are absent--so it's REALLY stripped down. Finally, Iggy hews to the VH1 "Storytellers" format and tells some heretofore unknown stories about the songs' origins. And--talk about bottom line--the DVD is budget-priced, which fits the music. One thing is for sure: you are not gonna find another concert DVD that shows so glaringly what so many rock and roll shows are missing, and it's a damn shame that a 56-year-old has to be our Dutch uncle.

Like me, you may have sworn off Motown after The Big Chill sullied its achievement with its grubby liberal-white-guy- zeitgeist paws. Like me, you may have felt very justified in having done so by Robert Townsend's whatchamacalit (oh yeah--The Five Heartbleats) and the Temptations TV-movie and Michael Jackson's public disintegration and multiple literary indictments of Berry "Massa" Gordy. Like me, when you heard Ben Harper and Joan Osborne were involved in this documentary, you probably instantly regarded that as the kiss of death. Hey, we didn't fall off the peach truck yesterday.

Well, for a change, we were wrong. This film is simply moving. It will make you return to those overplayed hits and hear them differently--what better praise is there? To put it very succinctly, it puts faces on and stories behind those drum beats, bass lines, piano chordings, and conga patterns, and I'll lay down good money on the probability you'll race back to the original recordings after you get to know Eddie "Bongo" Brown, Richard "Pistol" Allen, Jack Ashford (the man behind those vibes that show up more often than you remember), Earl Van Dyke, Benny Benjamin, and the dead man who casts a shadow over the whole affair, bass genius James Jamerson. The reality that these men played on more Top Ten hits than the Beatles and Elvis combined, on recordings made in a tiny basement "studio" called The Snake Pit, underpaid and spied upon, and uncredited until Marvin Gaye had an epiphany in '71, ought to be enough to make you seek this out if only to hear the story of--perhaps--the greatest American band (regardless of its revolving personnel) of all-time. One critic has called Standing in the Shadows an American Buena Vista Social Club, and that nails it: the pride, joy, and sadness these men convey as they recall their friendships, their collective creations, the rise and fall of Gordy's empire, and the passing of many in their ranks (drummer Benjamin and Jamerson in particular) will bring a tear to your eye.

Effectively enriching the history lesson, the performances are far better than you'd expect with no former Motown stars onstage. Joan Osborne, given the unenviable task of having to compete with Martha Reeves on "Heat Wave" and David Ruffin on "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted," sings (as opposed to oversings) her tail off, with what can only be called soulful ache and luster, and shows respect--REAL respect, not just the photo-op variety. Believe me: I've never been a fan, and now I am. Meshell Ndegeocello, another singer who's never moved me, is also on hand, putting over a wittily shy and smoldering "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and a powerful "Cloud Nine." Eddie Levert makes a damned fine Levi Stubbs. Ben Harper cannot touch the hem of Gaye's coke-sprinkled garment, but, on the other hand, he is not a disgrace. And Bootsy Collins purt-near steals the show! Bassless, garbed in his trademark pimp-peacock duds, he puts an audaciously absurd spin on both "Cool Jerk" (cut by the Funk Brothers on the sly while backing the Capitols) and "Do You Love Me?", and both his vocals and shimmying are lie-down hip. It's almost enough to restore your faith in mankind.

Members of our congregation are no strangers to the magical musical journey, and two current movies, one new to video, the other to screens, dramatize that much-sought-after archetype. Contrary to popular belief about each, one fucking sucks, and the other fucking rules. Here at the First Church, we usually don’t waste our time on dogs (the Rev subscribes to the John Waters Rule of Reverse Acclaim, which is that the best way to bury dogshit is to totally ignore it), but the former has generated so much positive buzz that it compels comment, and the latter stands to have its virtues highlighted in contrast. Both Almost Famous and O Brother, Where Art Thou? set out to be, among other things, revelatory musical picaresques; one fails because it’s false, and the other succeeds gloriously because it is right on the money.

Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (yet another cloying production by the Dreamjerks organization) is a sappy, mawkish tale based on the director/writer’s early years as a teen journalist. Though the film gets off to a decent start, as the protagonist is pried from a proto-politically correct mama’s orbit by his big sis’s record collection (the Older Sibling has been a saint in many a rawker’s dreams), it quickly becomes mucked up by the following lies:

The kid is a goody-goody little twerp. This should be repellent to any sentient rock and roller, mainly because the author has based the character on himself! I shouldn’t be surprised, as a plethora of self-congratulatory music-bizzers have risen to wide-spread worship--Steve Milk-mess, anyone? Solo album right around the corner!--but when we will get our fill of these mavens of self-regard? Also, he seems drawn to rock-lite: the band he’s assigned to cover and “learns to love,” Stillwater (becomes stagnant, right?), reminds me of the endless state-name bands that made the ‘70s a quasi-castrato/pomp-boogie hell (Missouri?!! Does anyone remember laughter?). And even though he consults “Lester Bangs” (quotes explained later), he’s too much of a damfool to act on his advice.

The “rock hero” who becomes the focus of the lil’ butt-weave’s attention seems to be a cross between Burton “These Eyes” Cummings and Mickey “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” Thomas, with a pinch of America (“In the desert/You can’t remember your name”) thrown in. Yum. Satire, you say? Well, I’m sorry, but if I understand my Horace and Juvenal, either you find something at the subject’s core to admire (only human, y’know) or you watch the subject viciously and hilariously destroyed. After dicking around band, wimmen, and teen critic, this dork gets all mooshy and interrupts the tyke’s post-tour nap in his own little rock-postered bedroom, but only after acknowledging to his mommy that she was right in telling him to “get real.” Don’t know about you, but my question is, “Where’s The Rawk?”

The groupies who mother the boy genius are beautiful, disease-free, and straight out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They are also wise, and commit group statutory rape upon his person (I told you Crowe’s hubris was outta control). Goldie Hawn’s daughter, who plays the pixie-dust flake of a female lead, is even more annoying than her mother, a poor woman’s Heather Graham who’s nothing but a face and oughtta be run out of movies on a rail.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs: how could that miss? Well, that question is what led me (and I’ll bet thousands of others) to even dare sampling this tripe. The answer is: it misses by turning him into Yoda. In Crowe/Hoffman’s interpretation, he’s cuddly, he’s sober (???), he’s a font of wisdom-sans-bullshit (an important distinction), and he doesn’t bitch-slap the child into reality. The closest Crowe comes to Lester Bangs without quotation marks is to run the MC5 behind one of Hoffman’s scenes: soundtrack as band-aid, soundtrack as substitute for hard-fuggin’-work.

This film has garnered nothing but positive reviews (just like High Fidelity, which also grated on my nerves), but even so, every one of ‘em I’ve read has used the adjective “rosy-colored” as if it were a compliment. Buddy Holly, even early Dylan and Beatles if you stretch it, could do “winsome” and come out alive. But they were smart, and “rosy-colored” and “winsome” aren’t even synonyms, anyhow. Anti-rock and roll disguised as the real thing, just like modern politics, just like Marsalis and Crouch yanking Ken Burns’ puppet strings--in other words, a must to avoid.

The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, on the other hand, is an indubitable masterpiece. More than just an ironic tour of the pre-WWII South (with cagey allegorical referents to USA 2001), more than a (post-) modern adaptation The Odyssey, it’s a tour de force about the power of music that shows up Almost Famous, which purports to deal with the same subject, for the diseased chaff it is. Three fucked-up souls break away from a prison road gang, and in their flight experience the sound of America in its multiple manifestations:

And that ain’t the half. The film’s great for many other reasons--for one, it’s a visual feast--but few others in history have so truly captured the holy force of American music (I challenge anyone who’s seen Almost Famous to recall one scene where the music actually sets the story aflame).And it’s one helluva good time to remind people, too, of that power...if they manage to see it, and receive the message. Don’t believe the bemused reviews--the Coens’ movies (with the exception of Fargo and maybe Blood Simple) always take time to be absorbed--just get your ass in the seats. And buy the soundtrack after you leave.