The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

I honestly had no idea what film to submit this week.  A few days ago, the Criterion website delivered me a sucker punch by having a sale on their entire catalog.  (I've talked about the Criterion Collection in previous posts, so I won't go into it here.  If you're not familiar with it, you can look for those posts after you've read this.)  So I bought a couple of titles.  They literally just arrived less than an hour ago.  I realized that one of the titles I ordered, in spite of the fact that it's more than 60 years old, still holds up.  It's still a shocking film that still freaks the shit out of me every time I watch it--and now I get to watch it in high definition blu-ray!

Originally released in 1962, the movie focuses on Raymond Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey), a Korean War veteran who comes home after being held as a POW with the rest of his troop.  He's considered a hero for what happened.  Much to his disdain, his stepfather is a high profile senator, John Iselin (played by James Gregory), hell bent on rooting out Communism in the government.  However, Raymond's mother, Eleanor (the great Angela Lansbury in an Oscar-nominated performance) is really the person running the show, controlling what her husband says in front of the TV cameras and smearing the reputations of anyone who dares question him.

Some time after the return of Raymond and his men, certain members of his troop start having nightmarish flashbacks.  Major Bennett Marco (played by Frank Sinatra) begins to have doubts about what really happened and decides to investigate, only to find a terrifying truth.

At the time it came out, it was a shocking political thriller.  After the assassination of JFK, the film was rumoured--falsely--to have been pulled from circulation for over 20 years.  In 1987, to coincide with its 25th anniversary, the film was re-issued both in theaters and on home video.  It was even given a PG-13 rating which, at that time, was still a relatively recent thing.  And even nearly 40 years after that, themes like fundamental freedoms of speech and press and holding those in power to account still resonate today... sadly.  Perhaps the most shocking thing about it is that those themes are still eerily relevant.

I always recommend this film to people my own age and younger just because of Lansbury.  Having come of age during the 1980s, I essentially grew up on "Murder She Wrote" and Disney films like Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  I tell people that if that's all you remember her from, this performance will set your hair on end.

In 2004, director Jonathan Demme remade the film starring Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, and Liev Schreiber.  As much as I like Demme and his cast, I've never seen it.  As I understand, the plot was updated to make it more about corporate interference in government policy--although that is also a concern more than 20 years after that was made.  The original was so rooted in the Cold War that it was practically another character in the movie.  I've always felt that taking it out of that environment would ruin it--I don't care how good the cast and director are.

Co-starring Janet Leigh, based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon, and directed by John Frankenheimer, please enjoy the original (and, dare I say, better) version of The Manchurian Candidate.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

"Any band that doesn't play live is only half a band as far as I'm concerned."

 --Keith Richards

Most musicians will tell you that most of their money is made on the road, playing in front of a live audience--especially if you're albums aren't exactly Top 40 material.  As good, even great, as a studio album might be, the artist typically has to go out and promote it.  That usually means concerts and late night TV appearances.

Playing live allows for a certain amount of freedom.  In the pre-CD era, bands could take a song and turn it into a half hour jam session--for better or worse.  Obviously this wouldn't work in a studio when you only have roughly 20-25 minutes per side of an LP.  Admittedly this was done primarily by jazz musicians and The Grateful Dead.

Some artists, I think sound better live.  As much as I love Santana's first three albums--and I do--the live performances of those songs, especially from their first album, never cease to blow my mind.  Santana was one of the breakout performances at Woodstock in 1969, roughly two weeks before the release of their debut album.  According to legend, Carlos Santana thought the band was going on later in the day, so he dropped some acid figuring it would wear off before they performed.  Unfortunately, he seriously miscalculated when they were playing and so it kicked in as they were taking the stage.  He's said that he has no recollection of playing "Soul Sacrifice," he remembers wrestling with a snake.  But I contend it's still the best performance of that song ever recorded--certainly better than the trimmed down 6-minute version that closes the album.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing D.A. Pennebaker's concert film Monterey Pop.  Released in 1968, it documented the music festival organized by John Phillips and Lou Adler the previous year.  So many of the artists made a name for themselves at that festival because of those performances, which are now legendary.  Jimi Hendrix famously sacrificed his guitar at the end of his performance.  Otis Redding began connecting to audiences beyond soul and R&B listeners.  (He would have continued to do so had he not died in a plane crash six months later.)  And Janis Joplin... her performance of "Ball and Chain" with Big Brother and the Holding Company is a sight to behold.  I can't even begin to describe it.  And I don't have to--the look on Cass Elliott's face in the audience said everything.

Obviously, the main difference between a studio album and a live performance is the audience.  It's the ultimate way for an artist to know whether or not the material works.  Having chart success is one thing.  But playing your song and having thousands of people singing along is something else entirely.  Sometimes it's best to just let the audience have at it.  During a 1985 performance of "Breakdown" at L.A.'s Wiltern Theatre, Tom Petty let the audience sing the first verse and chorus while he and the Heartbreakers played.  He quipped, "You're gonna put me out of a job."

As an audience member, I'm just as guilty as anyone of getting into the performance and singing along more than I probably should.  When I was fifteen, I saw the Rolling Stones when they toured behind their album Steel Wheels.  It was my first concert.  I was super stoked when they played "You Can't Always Get What You Want," which has been my favourite song since I was twelve.  Mick just sang "You can't..." and 35,000 people sang back the rest of it.  It was the first time I ever felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself.  I still like to think I'm singing backup on the 1991 live album Flashpoint.  (I'm sure I'm not, but it's still fun to fantasize.)

That interaction between artist and audience is almost spiritual.  I saw Billy Joel in the spring of 1994 with a bunch of friends from Ball State, including the mother of one friend.  When he closed the show with his signature tune, "Piano Man," he just let the audience sing the chorus to him.  We not only sang along, we all had our arms around each other and were swaying back and forth.  I had my arm around my friend's mom--who I only just met that afternoon--singing to one of my favourite musicians.  During the last chorus, not a sound came from the stage.  Not one guitar riff, not one drum beat, not a single note from Billy's piano.  The only sound in Market Square Arena (don't look for it today, it's no longer there) was a singing audience.  It still makes me emotional today when I think about it.

Some artists connect with their audiences in almost mystical ways.  When listening to Bruce Springsteen's live recordings, especially with the E Street Band, you can tell he feeds off the energy of the crowd and gives it back to them.  His shows notoriously run over three hours--quite a feat for a guy now in his mid-70s.  Some songs, like "Badlands," require the audience to essentially sing backup.  During some of those songs, he goes into what I call "rock 'n' roll preacher mode."  He basically turns the concert into a religious revival.  And even though I've never seen him live, hearing those performances frequently makes me feel as though I'm there with him.

Live albums serve two important purposes.  Firstly, they showcase what a band can--or in some cases cannot--do on stage.  It's often fun to compare and contrast the live performances to the studio ones.  Secondly, they provide a nice souvenir for the audience who spent a lot of money (especially these days) to see the show.

Some live albums have become classic--even iconic--over the years.  When I hear some of them, I often wonder what it would have been like to be there in person.  This week's album is one of those.  Strangely, I've only just discovered it in the last month.  I found a used CD of it on Record Store Day and felt compelled to grab it immediately.  Glad I did--it's one of the best live albums I've ever heard.  It was originally released as a double album in 1971.  There was enough material that didn't go on the album that three performances were actually included on their next studio album.  In 2003, because of the ability to put more music on a CD than a vinyl LP, a special deluxe edition of the album was released featuring even more music than it originally had three decades earlier.  This week please enjoy that edition of The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill 

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

I've studied film for more than thirty years now, both in college and just for my own amusement.  I'm not what one would call a preeminent scholar on the subject by any means--my knowledge of foreign films is pretty limited, and I've only read a handful of books about cinema.  I just watch a lot of movies in a lot of different styles and genres.  I know what I like, I know what I don't.  Really, I'm more of a nerd than a scholar, but nerds and scholars tend to share the same passion.

"Everybody knows when you go to the show, you can't take the kids along.

You've gotta read the paper, and know the code of G, PG, and R, and X.

And you've gotta know what the movie's about before you even go.

Tex Ritter's gone and Disney's dead and the screen is filled with sex."

--The Statler Brothers, "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?", 1973

One thing that scholars and a humble nerd like myself do agree on is that cinema drastically changed in the 1970s.  While I've not seen actual documentation on this, my theory is that it had to do with the ratings system that was implemented in the late 1960s when the Hayes Code became effectively unenforceable.  Starting in the late 1960s, there was a movement, especially in independent films, to make things as "real" as possible.  In Bullitt (1968), Steve McQueen insisted on it, going so far as to shoot hospital scenes in an actual hospital and using real doctors and nurses instead of actors playing doctors and nurses--and, of course, he did all his own driving.  Movies suddenly no longer had to just refer to more unseemly topics like sex and drug use--they could actually show them.  Characters in movies could suddenly talk the way normal people talk--people curse in real life.  M*A*S*H (1970) is considered the first American film to drop the dreaded "F-Bomb."  (And, if I may say so, it's one of the funniest lines in the whole movie.)  If any content in someone's movie might be considered "taboo" in any way, shape, or form, you could just slap an R rating on it, say it's not appropriate for children, and we never looked back.

The violence became bloodier which made films, especially crime dramas, like Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Taxi Driver (1976) more visceral.  Science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Alien (1979), and especially Star Wars (1977), created new special effects technologies in order to visually tell stories that took place in environments we can only imagine.  Filmmakers were essentially free to tell the stories they wanted to tell without having to censor themselves.  (Of course, fights over the ratings of those films continue to this day.  For more on this you can read my blog post from 1 July, 2017.)

A couple of films of the 1970s are looked at today as having predicted certain elements of the media landscape that we have today.  The big one was Network (1976), which, while a satire that focused on corporate greed and the media's willingness to do anything for ratings, is considered by many today to be prescient for its time--maybe even too prescient.  Nothing in that film seems too outrageous today.  Frankly, I'm kind of surprised that some of the events in the film, particularly the ending, haven't actually happened... yet.

I only just recently saw this week's film for the first time.  The film was inspired by the PBS documentary series "An American Family" (1973), which followed the Loud family (that's their name, not necessarily a description of them) as they actually navigated their real day-to-day lives.  In this movie, Albert Brooks plays Albert Brooks, a filmmaker who decides he wants to film his own American family for a full year.  After an extensive amount of research and testing, he decides to film the Yeager family of Phoenix, Arizona.  He sends them on a vacation to Hawaii and, while they're gone, outfits their home with high tech hidden cameras and recording devices.  He even buys the house across the street, so he can be nearby monitoring the action at all times, aided by two social scientists.

From the moment he picks up the Yeagers at the airport, things go comically wrong.  Dr. Warren Yeager (Charles Grodin), a respected veterinarian, is clearly aware of the presence of cameras and tries to paint as rosy a picture as possible.  His wife Jeanette (Frances Lee McCain) begins having reservations almost immediately and even seems to try to undermine the whole project in order to spend just a little time by herself.

Today, the concept of "reality TV" is commonplace.  Over the last few decades, we've watched famous families like the Osbournes and the Kardashians open up their homes and not so famous people in competition to see who can rough it on some remote island.  But when this film was made it was pretty outlandish.  Even the technology used in the movie, which seems kind of clunky and science-fictional for its time, is nothing special by today's standards.

Albert Brooks had already established himself as a groundbreaking comedian and director of short films, particularly for "Saturday Night Live."  This was the first feature film he directed, which he also co-wrote with Monica McGowan and the great Harry Shearer, who also plays Pete the cameraman.  From 1979, please enjoy Real Life.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

As I mentioned last week, Record Store Day (RSD)--my favourite holiday--was last month.  For those not familiar with it, the day is a celebration of independent record stores.  Big name artists like Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and The Rolling Stones put out special editions of earlier albums or even new material that (ideally) can only be purchased exclusively on RSD at your local record stores.  While a lot of people don't believe it, people form quite the line ahead of time in order to get titles that appeal to them.  For at least the third year in a row, I showed up two hours before my favourite record store opened, and the line already stretched around the block.  A few people even went to the trouble of showing up twelve hours early and camping outside the store's entrance--DURING SEVERE WEATHER THAT INCLUDED TORNADOES!!!!--in order to be first in line.

As usual, someone has to drive by (for some reason, they always seem to be in a pickup truck), to stop and ask why we're lined up before the break of dawn.  When we explain it to them, they typically drive away with looks on their faces that indicate a sense of both incomprehension and pity--and they probably stake out places like Target and Best Buy on Black Friday for similar reasons.  I've come to derisively refer to these people as "streamers."  Last year, I made a vow that this year I would be prepared for them.  When they drove by and asked why we were there, I said, "We're here for the demonstration.  The streaming services are apparently lobbying Congress to outlaw all forms of physical media.  We are fundamentally opposed to that and here to protest."  Then I thrust my fist in the air and shouted, "Keep Spotify out of our government!"  I wish I had had the time to make a sign--maybe next year.  My fellow record shoppers seemed amused.  Well... most of them, anyway.  Sorry/not sorry, Tara.

(For the record, as far as I know, to the best of my knowledge, no such lobbying is taking place.  But I've always wanted to start my own left-wing conspiracy theory that has no basis in reality and still, somehow, eventually gets a demented group of followers--like my own little "Pizza Gate," only less dangerous.  Feel free to take it upon yourselves to spread this rumour to the maximum extent possible.  If interested, I'm also happy to explain to you how the government wants you to use 5G technology, even though they can't actually track you with it.)

I went into RSD this year with one title that I wanted more than anything.  I had gotten an email stating that Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band were going to release a 5-LP set of their homecoming concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey, during the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in 2024.  As is typical of their concerts, the running time is over three hours.  Once I found that--and I did--everything else was gravy.  (If you're a fan of Bruce and didin't get to participate in RSD, a 3-CD version will be available on 29 May.)  And even though I went quite a bit over my budget--something I counted on and usually do anyway--I got quite a bit of tasty gravy from the likes of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Doors, Marc Bolan & T. Rex. and George Harrison.  The store also had some sales on past RSD releases (I got 40% off of a Stones release from 2022) as well as used vinyl and CDs, of which I picked up quite a few.  I still haven't had a chance to listen to all of it.  I do wish I had been able to afford to get more jazz, but that's always a goal for next year.

I've often said that pop culture, specifically music and film, is the closest I get to any kind of "organized" religion--hence, these weekly "sermons."  Stepping into a record store is a spiritual experience for me, like going to church.  And Record Store Day is a high holy day for people like me.  It's such an uplifting experience, sometimes it takes me at least a month to come down from it.  It only occurs twice a year (although I've never attended an RSD Black Friday event), so I always try to make the most of it.

This week's selection was originally released in 2000 but was re-issued in a special vinyl edition for RSD Black Friday last November, I presume to honour the artist who died last February.  I was quite pleased that I managed to snag a leftover copy.  As I pointed out when I memorialized him in this blog on 2 March of last year, I never realized until then how much David Johansen's music has affected me over the years.  I first became aware of him in the guise of a lounge singer known as Buster Poindexter.  Research on my own eventually led me to an influential glam-punk band called The New York Dolls that he fronted in the early 1970s--before terms like "glam" or "punk" really even existed.  Throughout the years, I even heard a few odd acoustic folk songs as well.  In 2022, Martin Scorsese directed a documentary/concert film titled Personality Crisis: One Night Only for Showtime.  It chronicled a concert he gave in January of 2020 at New York's legendary Café Carlyle.  In both the concert and in personal interviews, Johansen discusses his deep and eclectic love of music and how different styles influenced his performances over the decades.  That eclecticism was driven home even more in the booklet that was included in the record I bought.  In it, former bandmates described his encyclopedic knowledge of music in all forms and genres.  Reading it made me admire him even more than I already did.

In 1999, Johansen assembled a group of musicians for what was supposed to be a one-time only performance at The Bottom Line.  They enjoyed working together so much, that in November and December of that year, they gathered in St. Peter's Episcopal Church in New York City and recorded an album of folk, blues, and country songs from the 1920s and 1930s.  Johansen named his band The Harry Smiths, after musicologist Harry Smith who had curated many of those songs into his Anthology of American Folk Music, a three-record set released in 1952 that had had a tremendous impact on Johansen's appreciation and love of music.  This definitely, to my ears, comes through in his singing.  As the great Lucinda Williams pointed out, "If Buster Poindexter was done for fun with a wink in his eye, then the Harry Smiths was something that went far deeper.  That is confirmed by his song choices--they weren't the old common standards, they were songs that only someone with a real passion for this music would know.  Just listen.  The Harry Smiths were not just another persona done as a lark..  It was as real as anything he did."  From 2000, please enjoy David Johansen and the Harry Smiths.

SPECIAL NOTE:  Due to space constraints, two of the album's original tracks--"On the Wall" and Mississippi John Hurt's "Richland Woman"--had to be omitted from the vinyl release.  I suppose you'll only notice if you have the vinyl copy that was released last November.  Eh... I was going to buy the CD at some point anyway, just so I could listen to it in my car.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

I've noticed in recent years that younger generations than my own have become enamoured with more "old school" technology--the kind of thing I grew up with.  I've been reading a lot of articles, both in print and on television news broadcasts, about people my nephew's age who have started using flip-phones and landlines as a way of "disconnecting" from the online world.  Last summer, I even cited a New York Times article that described a recent interest in DVDs among younger people and why they might be superior to streaming. 

Look at the popularity of vinyl records over the last fifteen years.  This was a dead format at the turn of the century.  But younger generations seem to have embraced it, causing people my age to re-embrace it.  Even cassettes are trying to make a comeback.  Personally, I'm still waiting on the resurgence of 8-Tracks.  

From using cameras that require film, to knitting and crocheting, to making anything "artisanal," there's a fascination with doing things the old-fashioned way.  It takes time, effort, and not letting a computer or any kind of machine do all the work.  The more automated things become, the more "artistic" the old ways seem.  I know it sounds pretentious, but it's true.  I'll even be pretentious enough to say that there's an art to driving a car with a manual transmission.  Unfortunately, older methods of doing things only become artistic after newer, easier methods have become more popular.

I find this especially true in motion pictures.  I recently watched Wonder Woman 1984, which was largely panned by those who saw it.  (I have a theory that you can't truly appreciate the good films in a series--like Rocky or Dirty Harry--unless you can also appreciate the bad ones--like Rocky V or Sudden Impact.  But that's a "sermon" for another time.)  While I felt it ran long--it should have found a way to condense the exposition a bit--what was impressive about it was director Patty Jenkins's willingness to do as much of the action sequences practically and in-camera as possible.  This makes it look more realistic than just doing everything with CGI.  It's more time-intensive and costly, but the results, even in a "bad" movie, tend to speak for themselves.

This is not a new phenomenon.  From the beginning of motion picture history, improvements in technology are often met with disdain by those who recognize the artistry that was already being used before everyone else.  Take the 2011 movie The Artist.  It was a bold move to release a silent film in the twenty-first century--and in black and white to boot!  After all, sound had been around for almost 85 years at that point.  The film was about a silent film star who struggles to find his place in the new world of "talkies."  It was likely the first silent movie since... well, Mel Brooks's Silent Movie--which, strangely enough had one of the greatest lines of dialogue, uttered by, of all people, Marcel Marceau--in 1976.  Because of the artistic nature of doing things the way they had been done nearly a century earlier, The Artist went on to become only the second silent movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture.  (For those keeping track, 1927's Wings was the first.  It was also the first film to win that particular Oscar.)

But that "artistic" struggle actually happened.  The notion of sound in motion pictures changed everything.  In the century since, we can't imagine film without it.  It's created jobs to everyone from recording engineers to screenwriters who now have to write dialogue--hopefully good dialogue--for the characters.  But for many silent actors, it was a threat to their very livelihood--especially those who didn't have great voices.  (For more on this check out the classic 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain.)

It's probably safe to say that no one took this existential threat more seriously than Charlie Chaplin.  This week's film was his first film that he released after the advent of "talkies."  Although it is silent, it does have a pre-recorded score.  The film centers on his "Little Tramp" character falling in love with a blind flower girl who mistakes him for being wealthy.  Chaplin spent three years and a then-unheard sum of $1.5 million dollars to make this movie.  Of particular note was the scene in which the flower girl (played by Virginia Cherrill) thinks Chaplin's Tramp is someone he's not.  Chaplin shot the scene 342 times over several months because he could not figure out how to convey to the audience in a silent movie how the case of mistaken identity actually happened.

The film went on to be one of Chaplin's most financially successful films despite the lack of sound or dialogue.  To this day it's regarded by many as his masterpiece.  Chaplin--who eventually went on to use sound in his films--often said this was his favourite of all his movies.  As with his other films, he not only starred in it, he also produced, wrote, directed, and even performed his own stunts.  A work of art if ever there was one, from 1931, please enjoy City Lights.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

For those paying attention, this is my first proper "sermon" in almost two months.  To recap--I had my hip replaced... again.  Overall, I'm feeling good.  Still a little stiff, but good.  I return to work Monday morning.  I'm still using a cane when I go out, but only as a precaution.  I thought I knew what to expect, having been through the procedure on the other side twenty years ago.  And, by and large, I was right, but a lot has changed in twenty years--most notably my age.  For starters, I didn't spend any time in the hospital.  That's right--the whole thing was an outpatient procedure, of which I'm still suspect.  Of course, there was a catch to this.  I didn't spend a night or two in the hospital, but I did get prescribed eleven (ELEVEN!!!!) different medications that had to be taken at different times and in different dosages throughout my recovery.  And that's in addition to the three that I already take daily that had nothing to do with my surgery.

(A public thanks to my Aunt Gayle who not only put up with--I mean, put me up--for a month, but also acted as my pharmacist, chauffeur, and general caregiver.  I also want to thank my housemates and dear friends, Jon and Ellie, for taking care of the place while I was gone and pushing me harder than I tended to push myself in the recovery.  Finally, I need to thank my other dear friend Tara for driving me to Goshen for Record Store Day... in the rain... before the butt crack of dawn... to stand in line for two hours!  More on this in upcoming weeks.)

The best thing was that, unlike the last time, I didn't have to wait two weeks to have my staples taken out before I could take a real shower.  This time, I just had a bandage covering my (what I think is an excessively long) incision on the side of my ass.  After one week, I removed it and threw it away.  In the meantime, I could do just about anything with it, including showering, as long as I didn't soak or swim--not that I was going to do either of those things a week after surgery anyway.

The one thing that caught me off guard is that there was virtually no physical therapy.  I don't know why this caught me off guard.  When I think back twenty years, I don't recall having any then.  The closest I got was a series of exercises that I had to do three times a day.  That part didn't change.  I still had the exercises.  I'm still doing them.  The one thing that has changed is my age.  I turned 52 during my little sojourn, but my brain still seemed convinced that I was 31, which caused a few strained muscles and setbacks.  It only became a problem when it prevented me from doing the "straight leg lifts," which, out of all the exercises I have, is the worst.

To help with these exercises, it shouldn't be any surprise that I put together a playlist.  With the exception of Edwin Starr's "Twenty-Five Miles" (a song that really makes me want to get up and walk... even dance), all of the other songs came from the same source--the perfect inspiration to physically improve oneself.

In 1976, Bill Conti wrote one of the most inspiring scores to one of the most inspiring films of all time.  The film is generally considered to be the first to feature a "workout montage," which I felt like I was in every time I did my exercises.  Conti made such an impression, he went on to score four of the films five sequels over the next 30 years.  Featuring such classic pieces as the Oscar-nominated "Gonna Fly Now" and "Going the Distance," which always seems to push me to do just that, please enjoy the soundtrack to the Best Picture Oscar winner Rocky.  This album also features the doo-wop number "Take You Back" by Valentine, featuring Sylvester Stallone's brother Frank.  It's still one of my favourite scores.  After hearing it for the first time, I was finally able to forgive Bill Conti for what he did to For Your Eyes Only.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please, as always, remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, 'n' rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week! (One From the Vault!)

I wrote and posted what follows on Facebook on 18 November, 2019.  It was one of my earliest "Album of the Week" sermons.  Last week was Record Store Day--my favourite holiday.  The store I visited, in addition to all the exclusive releases, had a sale on all their used titles.  I found this particular title in the bin and felt compelled to buy it.  It was one my mother had--which is a long story and, in hindsight, kind of surprising.  She gave me her copy more than 25 years ago and it currently hangs framed on my bedroom wall.  Seeing it again brought back a lot of memories from my teenage years and prompted me to revisit what I wrote then.

 

 

As a teenager who, at the time, was not exactly enamored with the popular music of the time, I was constantly raiding my parents' record collection looking for new stuff to listen to.

 

One morning before school, I was flipping through the records when I picked out one that I had seen many times but had never actually played. The cover was a black and white photograph of a man standing in the rain under an umbrella outside the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum, presumably in New York. With a big smile on his face, he was placing another, presumably broken, umbrella in a trash bin. In the lower right corner, in red stenciled letters were the words, "includes the exciting jazz version of WALK ON THE WILD SIDE." I thought to myself, "Jazz? I like jazz. I remember hearing Benny Goodman some years back. That was pretty good."

 

Boy, was I ever about to have my mind blown. I put the record on the turntable and dropped the needle on the opening track (the aforementioned "Walk on the Wild Side" written by Elmer Bernstein and Mack David for the film of the same name released that year). The first thing I heard was what sounded like jingle bells. I immediately began to wonder if one of my parents had put the wrong album in the sleeve. Then this wonderful bass riff started followed a few bars later by reed instruments, then horns, and before long an entire big band led by the great Oliver Nelson began swinging like nobody's business. And we wouldn't even get to Jimmy Smith's Hammond organ solo for nearly two and a half minutes.

 

I found out later that this album was the first that Smith recorded for Verve records in 1962 and the first with a big band. Up to that point, he was known for primarily small trio and quartet work for Blue Note Records. In fact the second side of the record is just Smith with a trio (featuring guitarist Quentin Warren and drummer Donald Bailey), which gives that side a much bluesier feel, most notably on the track "Beggar for the Blues."

 

While this album is never seen on a list of the greatest albums of all time--or even Jimmy Smith's greatest albums, for that matter--this was the album that made me fall in love with jazz. In the nearly 30 years since I first played that album, I've discovered all kinds of great jazz works from the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Dave Brubeck, and Art Blakey (among others). But this album is still my favourite of that genre.

 

From 1962, please enjoy "The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith," as he's credited on the album cover, with his Verve debut, Bashin'.

 

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please, as always, remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

 

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill