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

In 1993, when I was a sophomore in college, I received one of the greatest Christmas gifts ever given to me.  Earlier in the year, my aunt Gayle and uncle Frantz had driven down to Indianapolis to visit my great aunt Dort.  Her husband, my great uncle Mac, had passed away in late 1992, and she had, as I understand it, asked them to come down and go through some of his personal effects.  Among them were diaries that his sister--my paternal grandmother--had kept during her youth.  She started writing them in 1928 at the age of 11 and continued through 1936 at the age of 20.  She wrote in them every single day during that nine-year span.  The discipline to do that, especially at that age, still astounds me.  Even at 51, I still don't have it.

Rather than immediately tell the rest of the family of their incredible find, Aunt Gayle and Uncle Frantz decided to transcribe them into an easily readable format (not an easy task).  One of them would translate my grandmother's handwriting and the other would type it up.  Occasionally, there were a few things they didn't quite understand--keep in mind, they couldn't just Google something at that time.  Fortunately, one of Grandma's oldest childhood friends, Marietta, was still alive at that point and was able to clarify certain elements.  (If one were to think of Grandma's diaries as a story, Marietta would have also been one of the characters in it.)  Once the transcription was finally complete, they were printed, bound, and presented to us as Christmas presents.

As moved as I was by this gesture, except for 1928, I didn't read them for about six years.  I felt kind of weird about it.  I know I wouldn't want someone reading a diary that I would have kept at that age.  Hell, I'm not even sure I would want to read that myself!  I almost felt like I was invading her privacy.  She was--and still is--one of my favourite people and I had a hard time doing that to her.

In the spring of 2000, I finally figured that enough time had passed since her death that it would be alright for me to read them.  If I thought receiving them as a gift was moving, that's nothing compared to what I felt reading them.  It was a little weird picturing my grandmother as a slightly boy crazy teenager.  I mean, after all, I only knew her as a grandmother.  But the story she told through her diaries was a riveting one.  If nothing else, it was a great document of the city of Goshen, Indiana, during the Great Depression.

I've often said that reading those diaries was like living through The Godfather Part II without the organized crime--I would live my daily life as the manager of the Barnes & Noble music department, and in the evening, after doing whatever I was doing at that age, I would go home and read about what had happened 70 years earlier to a family member from whom I descended.  She talked about her interactions with people I knew--namely Marietta and Uncle Mac--as well as people I had heard about, usually with the same last name as someone who went to school with my father or Aunt Gayle.  I also felt like it was a nice opportunity to get to know my great grandparents a little bit, as they died before I was even born.

Included with the diaries were genealogical charts and family histories and a few letters that Uncle Mac had written to Grandma when they were adults.  One letter, written in 1973, caught my attention.  In it, he made some references to the fact that she was about to become a grandmother for the first time.  I realized that, in a roundabout way, he was referring to me as I was born the following April.  I felt connected to the diaries and the events in them more than I had before.  Even though it was Grandma's story, it eventually led to my own.  If only Francis Ford Coppola had filmed it...

The one discovery I made about myself in all of this is that my love of film was even more hereditary than I thought.  I always assumed that it was something that had been passed on to me from my father.  In reading her diaries, I realized it went back another generation.  In them, she chronicled every movie she saw during that time.  I had to remind myself that when she would have written in them, film was still a relatively new art form.  "Talkies" had only been introduced the year before Grandma started writing these diaries.  No one thought that so many movies of that time would still be loved and watched nearly a century later.  I know Grandma was entranced with what we now call "Old Hollywood"--she always read movie magazines that talked about everyone's favourite stars and the films they were making.  As I understand it, Uncle Mac even went on to teach a film class at Butler University.  Today, I still have many wonderful, large "coffeee table books" about old movies ranging from westerns to musicals that belonged to both of them over the years.  I don't know why it never occurred to me before that that is where my love of the movies comes from.

In the intervening three decades, more diaries have been found--not always in chronological order, but found nonetheless.  My sister Heather has taken it upon herself to transcribe them.  As I understand it, Google has been very helpful with questionable references.  I've been surprised and delighted to go through the whole Godfather II thing multiple times over the last few years and getting caught up in my grandmother's life during the first years of our involvement in World War II.

For my birthday, Heather gave me the recently transcribed diary for 1938.  (According to her entry for 1 January, she did not write one for 1937.)  As always, I was most curious to see what (now) classic films she had seen when they were originally released in theaters.  I particularly enjoyed--even when I was 26--reading her thoughts about movies that I'm proud to say I've actually seen.  She saw this week's film in January, 1938.  For some reason--perhaps because I actually have two copies of it in my film library--I somehow felt closer to her.  She seemed to enjoy it as much as I always did.

In the film, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant play Lucy and Jerry Warriner, a high society New York couple on the verge of divorce.  Each suspects the other of things that never actually happened.  While waiting for their divorce to become final, we get to witness all kinds of relationship mayhem as she takes up with an Oklahoma oilman (the great Ralph Bellamy in an Oscar-nominated performance) and he with a wealthy socialite who is described as having "millions of dollars and no sense" (played by Molly Lamont).  Jerry also gets visitation rights to their dog, Mr. Smith (played by the great Asta of The Thin Man series, who would go on to work with Grant again in Bringing Up Baby the next year).

The film is one of the screwiest screwball comedies of the era--an apparent specialty of Grant's.  It was nominated for five other Academy Awards including Best Picture, Leading Actress (Dunne), Best Screenplay (Viña Delma), and Best Editing (Al Clark).  Leo McCarey won the film's sole award, taking home the Oscar for Best Director.  Based on a play by Arthur Richman, this week, in honour of my grandmother, I'm happy to recommend 1937's The Awful Truth.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

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

I saw a news article this past week that kind of saddened me a bit.  In hindsight, I'm kind of surprised that it saddened me at all... and I'm not easily surprised.  In fact, twenty years ago, the story probably wouldn't have fazed me at all.  I'm amazed how much I appreciate certain music now that I didn't then.  It's weird how, as I age, I seem to become more open-minded about certain things--I thought I was supposed to do just the opposite.  (Now if I could just apply this to every aspect of my life!)

I read that last Saturday, Ozzy Osbourne gave his final concert in his hometown of Birmingham, England.  As Alex Marshall of The New York Times reported, "This was not his first announcement of a retirement from touring or live performance, but this time he seems to have meant it."  At 76, Ozzy ("The Prince of Darkness") has had numerous health issues over the last few years and was even recently diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

The 10-hour affair at the Villa Park soccer stadium, dubbed "Back to the Beginning," seemed to be a chance for Ozzy to bid farewell to his fans who seemed to come from all over the world to show their appreciation.  Much of the day's festivities featured other artists who had been influenced by his music over the years paying tribute to their hero, including Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Gun 'N Roses, and Alice in Chains, among others.  There were even tributes from famous fans like Dolly Parton, Elton John, and Cyndi Lauper.

At 9pm local time, the main attraction/guest of honour rose from below the stage.  Unable to walk, he was seated on a black throne adorned with a bat on its top and a skull on each armrest.  In spite of his medical condition(s), he was still able to whip the crowd into a frenzy, even dousing the front rows with a water gun that was next to his throne.

But that whole spectacle was just a teaser for the real main attraction--around 10pm, Ozzy reunited with his former bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward.  For the first time in 20 years--and, apparently, for the last time--Black Sabbath performed together.  As you can imagine, this created quite a stir in the heavy metal community.

I was never a huge metal fan growing up.  It's only been in the last 15 to 20 years that I've grown to appreciate at least some of it.  Particularly in the last decade, I've grown quite fond of Black Sabbath, although I haven't really acquainted myself with Ozzy's solo work.  Along with Led Zeppelin (who I've loved since high school), the thing that really stood out to me with Sabbath is the obvious influence of the blues in their music, which was not uncommon in bands--especially British bands--that formed in the late 1960s.  Like a lot of artists, I would hear one or two songs on a "classic rock" station or in a movie and I would find myself liking the song enough to buy at least one of their albums.

This week's album, while a bit obvious, is arguably their masterpiece.  Released in 1970, mere months after their eponymous debut, it's still my favourite.  Please enjoy Black Sabbath with Paranoid.  As a side note, I also feel obliged to point out that in the opening track, "War Pigs/Luke's Wall," that they did, in fact, rhyme the word "masses" with... (wait for it)... "masses."  As I also discovered, you can sing it to the tune of "Deck the Halls" during the holidays.  All together now...

"Generals gathered in their masses, fa la la la la, la la la la.

Just like witches at black masses, fa la la la la, la la la la.

Evil minds that plot destruction, fa la la, la la la, la la la.

Sorcerers of death's construction, fa la la la, la la la la."

On that note, 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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

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

Last week, my friend Tara and I went to see a 30th anniversary screening of the movie Clueless starring Alicia Silverstone.  While I'm still trying to wrap my head around the notion that the film is that old, I also began pondering the belief that some writers' works are timeless.  And I'm not talking about the fact that we're still discussing Amy Heckerling's brilliant script 30 years later.  I'm talking about the fact that we're still discussing the original basis for that script more than 200 years after it was written.  Heckerling based her script on Jane Austen's 1816 novel Emma.  Some stories and themes are so universal that they still resonate across generations and even cultures.  It actually astounds me that one could take a story written in 18th century England and adapt and re-set in 1990s Los Angeles.  And it totally worked.

Over time, as copyrights expire and more and more cultural works enter the public domain, more and more "re-imaginings" pop up, usually retelling the original story from the perspective of another character.  In the last few years, we've seen new perspectives on The Great Gatsby (retold by the character Jordan Baker in Nghi Vo's novel The Chosen and the Beautiful) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (as told by the slave Jim in Percival Everett's novel James).  Even Winnie the Pooh has been completely reimagined as a horror character (the universally panned 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey--and no, I'm not making that up).

In most cases, the original is just re-adapted into another movie or television production using the same settings.  This is especially true of Austen.  Not to knock it, but how many adaptations of Pride and Prejudice do we really need out there?

Of course, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that nobody has been adapted and re-imagined quite like William Shakespeare.  Dig this--the man's been dead for more than 400 years and he had not one but two of his plays on Broadway this past season.  Romeo & Juliet even managed to snag a Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Play.  We have annual festivals throughout the world celebrating his works.  The man is responsible for so many idioms in the English language including "break the ice," "wild goose chase," "in a pickle," "brave new world," "heart of gold," "wear your heart on your sleeve," and "it's Greek to me," just to name a few.  Some years back, I even bought a set of six shot glasses each with a Shakespearean insult on it.  (I'm still waiting for that perfect moment to refer to someone as a Banbury cheese or a cankerblossom.)

Like Austen, Shakespeare is ripe fodder for recontextualizing.  In this week's film, Joe "Mac" McBeth (played by James LeGros) works in a fast-food joint in suburban Pennsylvania in the early 1970s.  His wife Pat (Maura Tierney), who works with him, is much smarter and more ambitious.  She becomes convinced that they could run the place better than their boss, Norm Duncan (the late, great James Rebhorn).  Pat concocts a plan for Mac to rob the place and kill Norm, assuming the police will follow the robbery angle and they can just take over the restaurant.  Unfortunately, Lieutenant McDuff, the vegetarian police detective assigned to the case (the always wonderful Christopher Walken), suspects something more sinister is afoot and continues to investigate the murder, all set against a killer '70s classic rock soundtrack (even if it is a little heavy on Bad Company tunes--R.I.P., Mick Ralphs).

If you know your Bard, you've already guessed that this is a contemporary re-working of Macbeth (and I'm not in a theater, so I can say the title).  While I'm not as obsessed with Shakespeare as I feel I probably should be, I do consider myself a fan and was more than a little impressed by this adaptation and how well it worked even in a contemporary (or, at the very least, 1970s) setting.  Written/adapted and directed by Billy Morrissette, the film made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001.  This week, please enjoy Scotland, PA.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

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

Over the last few years, I've noticed that when I find myself in the mood to listen to a specific artist, I often binge-listen to a whole bunch of albums by said artist.  I may not listen to everything that artist recorded--maybe a handful of albums, depending on the size of the artist's catalogue and what I have in my collection.  This week, I did--with the exception of a few odds and ends--listen to the entire catalogue of this week's artist.  I acquired a boxed set of all nine of his albums released between 1971 and 1985.  I don't know why I hadn't before--it's not like I wasn't already a fan of his work.  In fact, one of his songs, which we'll get to in a bit, is one of my Top 10 favourite songs. (FULL DISCLOSURE: due to a tie in the #6 slot, there are actually 11 songs in my Top 10 list.  Since I recently included a list of my Top 10 favourite albums, I'll include my Top 10 favourite songs at the end of this post.  I realize no one asked for this information, but I'm a compulsive listmaker.  And you can compare and contrast or submit your own lists.)

I've always considered this week's artist to be one of the greatest voices in pop music, especially in R&B/soul music and it's been great reacquainting myself with many songs I knew and acquainting myself with a large number of songs that I didn't.  Even as the overall sound of soul music evolved through the 1970s and the 1980s, his voice seemed to integrate seamlessly into that evolution.  As someone who has always rooted for the older guys, I was always impressed by the impact he had, especially given the fact that he didn't release his first album until he was almost 33 years old--late by entertainment industry standards.

William Harrison "Bill" Withers Jr. was born on 4 July, 1938, in West Virginia.  His parents divorced when he was three and he was raised largely by his mother and her family.  He joined the Navy at 17 and served for nine years.  It was during that time that he developed an interest in singing and songwriting.  When he got out of the Navy, he went to work as a mechanical assembler working for a number of companies including Ford, IBM, and Douglas Aircraft Corporation (later McDonnell Douglas), during which time he also began to write and perform his own songs.

After a 1967 single failed to gain any traction, his big break came in 1971, when he was introduced to legendary musician/producer/arranger Booker T. Jones.  Jones was impressed by what he heard and when he asked Withers if he had enough songs to fill an album, they sat down and made one.  The song "Harlem" was released as the album's first single, however disc jockeys seemed to prefer the B-side, a little ballad called "Ain't No Sunshine," which climbed to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the start of a whole new career for Withers.

His follow-up album, 1972's Still Bill yielded the R&B classics "Lean On Me" and "Use Me."  Over the next decade and a half, Withers would go on to win three Grammy Awards (along with six other nominations).  I hate to use euphemisms, but due to creative differences, he walked away from the music industry in 1985 after releasing his ninth album, Watching You, Watching Me.  Over the years he would continue to pop up from time to time.  A 2009 documentary, also titled Still Bill, explored his reasons for leaving.  He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.  The last I had heard from him was in 2004 when he appeared on Jimmy Buffett's album License to Chill.  Withers contributed two songs to the album, "Simply Complicated," which he co-wrote with Buffett, and "Playin' the Loser Again," which he wrote and sang as a duet.

Bill Withers died from heart complications on 20 March, 2020, at the age of 81.  His was one of those celebrity deaths that actually saddened me, just because I have such fond memories of his music.  I remember waking up on the morning of my 27th birthday with his 1977 hit "Lovely Day" stuck in my head.  I spent that day roaming the streets of London, England, constantly singing the chorus (my sister was gracious enough to sing backup).  When I had heard he died, I remember sitting at the top of my stairs, listening to that song, and crying.  And "Ain't No Sunshine" ranks at #7 on my list of Top 10 favourite songs.

Given the fact that I have been listening to so much of his music over the last week, and that yesterday would have been his 87th birthday, I thought I would commemorate him this week, wondering why I never did before.  To me, there is something almost mystical about that first album that he did with Booker T. Jones, who not only produced and arranged, but also played guitar and keyboards on the album.  Fellow MGs Donald "Duck" Dunn and Al Jackson Jr. played bass and drums respectively.  The great Stephen Stills (as Withers wrote, "THAT Stephen Stills") played guitar and legendary session drummer Jim Keltner also sat in.  Featuring almost hypnotic covers of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" and The Beatles' "Let It Be" (#2 on my Top 10) along with ten Withers originals, please enjoy 1971's Just As I Am.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill's Top 10 Favourite Songs:

1.  "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by The Rolling Stones (1969)

2.  "Let It Be" by The Beatles (1970)--preferably the LP version of the song and not the single version usually played on the radio

3.  "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" by The First Edition (1967)

4.  "Like To Get To Know You" by Spanky & Our Gang (1968)

5.  "Never Been To Spain" by Three Dog Night (1971)

6.  "Still Crazy After All These Years" by Paul Simon (1975) / "Watching the Wheels" by John Lennon (1980) (TIE)

7.  "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers (1971)

8.  "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum (1967)

9.  "Clap For the Wolfman" by The Guess Who (1974)

10.  "Rio" by Michael Nesmith (1977)

(Dates are based on the release of the album on which the song was featured.)

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

I have to open this "sermon" with a sincere apology to my sister, Heather.  She'll know why when she sees this.

This week's film choice is an unusual one--which is certainly one of the reasons I love it.  As the son of a librarian with an inherited love of literature, I was immediately drawn to the plot.  Like a number of films I've submitted in the year and change that I've been writing these missives, this one is another of those movies I've classified as a "mindfuck" (as always, pardon my French), which is one of the other reasons I love it.

I chose this week's film for a couple of reasons.  Most notably, I read this week that the author Susan Beth Pfeffer died at the age of 77.  When I was a kid, I was given an autographed copy of one of her books.  It was the first autographed anything I ever had.  It was a good book, although anyone who knows me would know that I can't really identify with a book called What Do You Do When Your Mouth Won't Open?  Sadly, I lost it when I moved to Cleveland 25 years ago.  So, primarily in honour of Ms. Pfeffer, I thought I'd share the most literary film I know that wasn't already based on a book.

In this particular movie, Will Ferrell plays I.R.S. agent Harold Crick.  One day, Harold wakes up to hear a voice in his head that seems to be narrating his life, "accurately and with a better vocabulary," as Harold notes.  Refusing to believe the psychiatrist who tells him he has schizophrenia, Harold seeks advice from a literature professor, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman).  While Hilbert and Harold try to figure out what kind of story he's in, Harold falls in love with a baker he's auditing (Maggie Gyllenhaal), which completely shakes up his otherwise non-literary life.  All the while (SPOILER ALERT!!!!), author Karen Eiffel (Dame Emma Thompson) is suffering from writer's block--she can't figure out how to kill her main character, Harold Crick.  (Insert dramatic music here.)

There are so many quirky little things about this movie that make me adore it.  All the little mathematic special effects that can sometimes get missed.  The fact that all the characters--major and minor, even the ones whose names are not mentioned in the film itself--are named after scientists, mathematicians, and architects.  The acting.  The directing.  The writing.  The score.  The city of Chicago.  The neat and orderly--almost monastic--atmosphere of Harold's apartment versus the very lived-in clutter of Professor Hilbert's office.  The fact that we don't hear the word "miscreant" often enough.  All of these things combine into a beautiful, even haunting, work of cinema that I've watched many times over the nearly twenty years since its release.

When I hear people say they don't like Will Ferrell (ususally people my parents' age), I always tell them they're not watching the right Will Ferrell films.  When you can get him away from his normal "SNL"-type schtick that he's so well known for and give him a great script, a talented director, and an amazing supporting cast, he's capable of great things--I feel the same is true of Adam Sandler.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of people want to see that schtick, so when actors like Ferrell and Sandler do something outside of that, those projects aren't usually as successful at the box office, which is a real shame.  Those films always amaze me, particularly this one.  In fact, it should be noted that Ferrell even got a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.

Released in 2006, the film co-stars Queen Latifah and Tony Hale with some lovely cameos by Tom Hulce, Linda Hunt, and Kristen Chenoweth.  Written by Zach Helm and directed by Marc Forster, please enjoy Stranger Than Fiction.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

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

When I first moved to northern Indiana I started writing a pop culture blog for The South Bend Tribune.  In it I would pick some aspect of popular culture that fascinated me, and I would write something about it and then include a list of what I thought were the five best examples of that subject.  Subjects included such things as best backup singing performances, cinematic death scenes, double albums, TV commercials, albums to drive to (preferably with a manual transmission), and primal screams in rock and roll.

As you may have guessed, I am a compulsive list-maker and this was the perfect indulgence for that side of my personality.  It's one of those things in which I take a lot of delight.  It creates a nice distraction when I'm pissed off at everyday life and kind of keeps me sane.  The problem is that, being me, I can never seem to make practical lists for anything.  I rarely can make a decent "To Do" list.  My grocery lists are spotty at best.  But if you ask me for a list of albums or songs to listen to after the sun has gone down, I'll present you with what I feel is the ultimate playlist--my specialty.

Since I started writing these weekly "sermons" almost six years ago, I've somehow managed to submit nine of my top ten favourite albums of all time.  This week, I wanted to be able to submit that last album (#4 on my list) just because I haven't so far and I think that's kind of sad.  (I'll even supply a recap if you missed some of them.)

I've been a fan of this album since at least college.  In 2018, I discovered that it was actually a much different album than I thought it was.  Weirdly, this didn't detract from my enjoyment of it--in fact, I think it made me like it more.

Big Brother & The Holding Company recorded their eponymous debut album in December of 1966 for Mainstream Records, which was primarily a jazz label.  Big Brother was a rock band from San Francisco that was part of the burgeoning psychedelic/acid rock/hippie movement.  The band and the label were not a good match.  The resulting album--released in August of 1967--does, in fact, sound like a rock album produced by jazz engineers.  The whole sound is clear and polished and, overall, just too... clean.  If you were to see the band play in a club at that time, they wouldn't sound anything like their record.  When they performed live, they had a much heavier, distorted, even experimental sound to them--a sound that recording engineers who were used to working with jazz musicians would not exactly understand how to record.  Vocalist/guitarist Sam Andrew was later quoted as saying, "We were quite disappointed at the time that we could not make the engineer understand what we wanted. He was afraid of the needle going into the red and that is where we wanted the needle to be all the time."

Two months before the album's release, Big Brother played the legendary Monterey Pop Festival.  It was one of the standout moments of the entire weekend.  If you watch D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of the festival (1968's Monterey Pop), the look on Cass Elliott's face as Janis Joplin belts out "Ball and Chain" says it all.  I think it's safe to say they blew the crowd away.  Consequently, Columbia Records signed them to a new contract and bought out their contract with Mainstream.  By the end of the year, the group also had a new manager in Albert Grossman who also managed Peter, Paul & Mary and Bob Dylan, among others.

Their next goal seemed to be to make a record that managed to approximate what they sounded like live.  The outcome, 1968's Cheap Thrills, went to #1 on Billboard's Top LPs chart and eventually went double platinum (more than 2 million copies sold).  I fell in love with the album about 25 years later.  I considered it one of the greatest (mostly) live albums I'd ever heard.  At the time I was taking a class in audio production.  Our instructor asked us to name an album that stood out to us just from a production level.  I cited Cheap Thrills because of that raw, imperfect sound.  It wasn't polished, it wasn't clean.  It was distorted and dirty.  I felt it lent a certain level of character to the album that made it stand out more than it might have otherwise.

Fast forward another 25 years.  In 2018, Columbia Records released a two-CD set of the session recordings from that album called Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills (which, as I understand it, was the original title of that 1968 album, but Columbia wouldn't allow it at that time).  In reading those liner notes and listening to those session recordings, I was surprised to discover that those live recordings on the record were not really live.  The applause and other crowd noises were actually added to the studio recordings in an effort to make it sound like a live performance.  In fact, the album's closing track, a blistering cover of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's "Ball and Chain," is the only song on the album that actually is a live performance, and I feel the best recording of that song.

In spite of that discovery, the album is still one of my all-time favourites--one of those albums that is just part of the soundtrack of my life that I feel it necessary to revisit on a semi-regular basis.  Featuring their hit single, "Piece of My Heart," and one of my favourite album covers by the great underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, please enjoy--to quote Bill Graham at the beginning of the record--"Four gentlemen and one great, great broad, Big Brother & The Holding Company," with their 1968 classic, Cheap Thrills.

GEEK NOTE:  The attached YouTube link features four bonus tracks that were included in the 1999 CD re-issue of the album--two studio outtakes ("Roadblock" and "Flower in the Sun") and two live performances ("Catch Me Daddy" and "Magic of Love") recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in March of 1968.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill's Top 10 Favourite Albums

1.  Abbey Road by The Beatles (1969)

2.  Abraxas by Santana (1970)

3.  Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones (1969)

4.  Cheap Thrills by Big Brother & The Holding Company (1968)

5.  Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen (1975)

6.  Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

7.  Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane (1967)

8.  In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly (1968)

9.  Bashin' by Jimmy Smith (1962)

10.  Mr. Lucky by John Lee Hooker (1991)

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

As I said in my album rant, I decided to take one more week off from writing these weekly missives.  But if you look forward to reading them each week, I didn't want to just leave you empty-handed, so I decided to share a couple of things I wrote that were originally just posted to Facebook--before they regularly deleted them for no apparent reason.  What follows was written on 9 March, 2024.  Enjoy! 

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

I have a confession to make--I don't like the sound of my own voice.  I don't mind it if I'm just conversing with someone (or myself), but when I hear a recording of it, I think to myself, "Wow!  That does not sound remotely good!"  I'm convinced that when I'm actually speaking, I'm hearing it from within myself and there's an acoustic difference between my body and whatever audio system is allowing me to hear a playback of my voice.  Regardless of the science behind it, people constantly tell me how much they like my voice.  Lots of people have told me I should be in radio--someone even once told me I should be a minister!  And while I may not like the sound of my voice, I've always seemed to like using it.  I've never particularly had a problem with public speaking.  In fact, a perverse part of me really enjoys doing it, even if I find the results highly questionable at best.  My logic is that so many people have complimented me on my voice that they must know something I don't.  And since I enjoy doing it anyway, why not just roll with it?

I started making periodic announcements over the PA system at Barnes & Noble some twenty-plus years ago to promote various things within the store--even though I'll never receive credit for it, I like to think I was the one who pioneered it within the company.  I worked hard to make my announcements as entertaining as they were informative--sometimes there was even poetry.  I especially had a lot of fun with the closing announcement(s).  Eventually I wound up helping out periodically at a local volunteer radio station (WFHB at 93.1 on the FM dial, if you happen to be in Bloomington).  When the station manager found out I worked for Barnes & Noble, he said, "Are you the person who does all the funny announcements?"  Apparently I had developed a reputation within the community.

So I've just kept doing it where and when I can.  A little over a decade ago, I offered my services as an announcer to the newly-formed roller derby team (GO, SOUTH BEND ROLLER GIRLS!).  They were very accepting of me and seemed to enjoy the personalized introductions I wrote for each of them.  One skater in particular once remarked to me that she really enjoyed hearing me announce when she was the lead jammer during the bouts.  Sadly, I haven't done that since before the pandemic, and every time they've asked me since, it was always at the last minute and I was already scheduled to work my "real job" that day.  Hopefully I can do that again soon.

A profound moment for me happened in 2008 when Wolfman Jack came to me in a dream and said he thought I did a good job with the overhead announcements at B&N.  I was quite touched by that statement as he's always been one of my idols.  I didn't even know he'd been in the store, let alone heard my blathering into the store's PA system.  It was only after I woke up that I remembered he had died in 1995... and I still have no idea why we were in my high school gym.  I've frequently said that my dream job is a radio DJ--I always thought it would be particularly fun to work late at night playing music for insomniacs and other people working the graveyard shift.  And if I were ever fortunate enough to have that job, I would probably try to be a more subdued version of the Wolfman.

Some of my favourite characters in films have been radio disc jockeys and I've frequently imagined myself doing their job.  From Robin Williams's Oscar-nominated portrayal of real-life Air Force DJ Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam to Clint Eastwood's performance as a local jazz DJ with a stalker problem in his directorial debut, Play Misty For Me--or even Howard Hesseman's Emmy-nominated performance as Dr. Johnny Fever in the beloved TV classic "WKRP in Cincinnati."  Even Wolfman Jack made a wonderful appearance as himself in American Graffiti in one of my favourite individual scenes from a movie.  I wanted to be those guys.  I'd watch their "on air" performances and think to myself how cool it would be to sit behind a turntable and share music with anyone in the area who could pick up the radio signal.  I got the impression that when I was behind a microphone, I could safely be my normal off-center, off-kilter self without fear of judgement. This week's film is a fictionalized account of actual events in British history and features a whole boat-load of these wacky characters with whom I've always felt a kind of kinship.

In the 1960s, the British Broadcasting Corporation, for one reason or another, did not play a lot of rock and roll music on its radio stations in spite of public demand for it.  Certain entrepreneurial-minded individuals began to set up unlicensed ("pirate") radio stations on boats anchored off the coast.  Since they were in international waters, they did not violate any laws and these pirate radio stations broadcasted pop and rock music to the denizens of the UK to fill the void created by the BBC.

In 2009, writer/director Richard Curtis--the man behind such beloved British films as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually, released a film about these stations.  Like most Curtis films, it features a wonderful cast of great British and Irish actors including Nick Frost, Chris O'Dowd, Kenneth Brannagh, Rhys Darby (who's actually from New Zealand), Gemma Arterton, and Jack Davenport, as well as past Curtis collaborators, Rhys Ifans (whose character, Gavin Cavanaugh, makes one of the greatest entrances in cinema history), Emma Thompson, and Bill Nighy, along with a token American--in this case the great Philip Seymour Hoffman as "The Count."  And even though some of the songs featured in the movie were recorded after the period depicted (a minor pet peeve of mine), it also features one of the greatest period soundtracks ever put together. (which is saying something since it's practically impossible, especially then, to license Beatles songs for this kind of thing).  It's stuck with me over the years because it's primarily a love letter to rock and roll.  The characters in the film are all non-conformist music lovers--something I have striven to be in my own life.

I saw it in a theater when it was first released (in America).  I discovered later that the film was edited differently in America than it was originally in England.  This is not uncommon, particularly with action films like 007 thrillers.  The English like to cut a lot of the violence out of their movies.  We Americans like to cut out the sex and nudity and leave the violence--what I refer to as a "make war, not love" mentality.  I've never seen the British version of this movie and I've always wanted to.  Since Curtis himself, as well as the bulk of the cast, is British, I presume that version hews closer to his original cinematic vision.  But even the American version causes me to run the full gamut of emotions while watching it.  I laugh, I cry, I sing along, I play air guitar.  It genuinely moves me.  Thank you, Richard Curtis.

So if you love boats and classic rock music, this week I recommend you check out The Boat That Rocked (or, as it was called in this country, Pirate Radio).

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember to "Take care.  Be good.  Listen to the music.  It's a good thing."

Yours in peace, love, and ROCK AND ROLL!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

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

Due to certain mitigating circumstances, I decided to take another week off from writing these "sermons."  But on the off chance you the reader look forward to them each week, I didn't want to leave you hanging.  So here's one I wrote three years ago that was originally posted to Facebook on 30 April, 2022.  It's always held a special place in my heart... especially while I'm driving.  Enjoy!

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

Two of the next three "sermons" (and I'm not sure which two just yet--I will say this is the first), are all about the transportative power of music.  Before anyone asks, I'm coining the word "transportative."  It's not recognized by Merriam-Webster, so I'm inventing it.  I'm defining it as the ability of something to move you from one time or place to another, even if it's just in your own mind.

The summer of 1993 was an important time for me.  I had just completed my freshman year of college.  I was very excited about my sophomore year as I had recently been hired by Ball State University to be a Resident Assistant in the fall.  I had also decided that at the ripe old age of nineteen, I should finally break down and get my drivers license.   I was given access to the former family car, a 1986 Ford P.O.S... I mean Tempo.  It was the car on which Dad taught me to drive.  It was not a reliable vehicle, which is why it was no longer the family car.  At the time, we went to church with a guy who forgot more about cars than I'll ever know and Dad had asked him to fix it up for us.  We picked it up the day I got my license.  That was my first drive by myself.  I spent that summer driving all over the back roads of Orange and Lawrence Counties in southern Indiana, usually going either to or from my summer job as a busboy in a local restaurant.  On the car stereo (such as it was), I discovered a station at 92.3 MHz on the FM band out of Bloomington (WTTS) that played a wider variety of music than the other stations.  They played a lot of newer stuff, but also a lot of older stuff... not just the hits, but also deep album cuts that other stations wouldn't touch (I've never heard Billy Joel's "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" on any other station).  On Sunday nights, I would drive aimlessly along back roads listening to Tom Roznowski play two hours of blues music telling stories about the Chauncey Rose Orphans' Home in Terre Haute and the great lost secret of the blues.

One day, while enjoying my newly found freedom behind the wheel, I heard what sounded like my blues idol, John Lee Hooker, performing the Van Morrison song "Gloria" that had been a hit for Morrison's band Them back in 1964.  As the song progressed, I discovered that it was actually a duet between Hooker and Morrison that was on Morrison's most recent album.  When I finally got around to buying the album--a full year later!--it's hard to say what entranced me the most.  It could have been the music, it could have been the lyrics, it could have been the sax solos provided by Candy Dulfer, Katie St. Johns, and Van the Man himself (I didn't even know he played the instrument).  It might have been Georgie Fame's Hammond organ which seemed to permeate the album and envelop it in a fog of melancholy jazz (if it is, in fact, possible to permeate and envelop something at the same time).  It could have been the mix of not only original songs, but covers of works by Sonny Boy Williamson, Brook Benton, and Doc Pomus.  Hell, it might have even been the cover art which, nearly thirty years later, is still one of my favourite album covers.  I would love to have the album on vinyl just to put it up on my wall.

Perhaps it was a combination of all of those elements.  I honestly don't know anymore and I'm not sure I ever did.  All I do know for certain is that it created a mood and transported me to a place that I still don't know how to describe.  I don't know where it is on any map, let alone how to get there.  For all I know, it doesn't exist at all, at least not on this plane of existence.  Maybe, like Brigadoon, it only becomes visible for a little while, straddling that mythical line where tonight and tomorrow are, in the words of Janis Joplin, "all the same fucking day, man!"  And every so often I find myself wanting to go there and I know this album will get me there.

So from 1993, please enjoy the one and only Van Morrison with Too Long in Exile.

A few postscripts...

The album clearly had some kind of hold on me over the years.  In 2001, I spent my twenty-seventh birthday roaming the streets of London, England, with my sister and another friend of ours.  I found myself enthralled with an alley... or what looked like an alley to me.  Upon further examination it's really just a sidewalk surrounded by buildings on both sides.  I felt compelled to take a picture of it just because it reminded me of the cover art to this week's album.  It's not a great picture (I was still using film at the time and had to wait a couple weeks to have it developed to see how it came out), but I've included it in the comments section.

Tom Roznowski can still be heard on WFIU radio (103.7 FM) in Bloomington which produces his hour-long public radio show "PorchLight w/ Tom Roznowski" which can be heard and streamed live Saturdays at 6:00 pm Eastern Time.  More information is available at tomroznowski.net.

I still have the ignition key to that '86 Tempo as a souvenir of those days.  This was back in the day when cars came with two keys--one to the ignition and one to the doors and trunk.  I'm sad to say I don't have the other key.  Maybe I'll stumble upon it sometime while listening to this week's album.

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

London, UK, 19 April, 2001

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

I originally posted the following on Facebook on 4 June, 2022.  I stumbled upon it and thought now would be a good time to revisit it.  (And I still don't like the words "cisgender" or "woke.")

 

 

I've been thinking a lot about the fact that this is Pride Month. Full disclosure--I am the following: a) middle aged, b) cisgender (a word I will never get used to using), and c) heterosexual. I've never questioned my sexuality--either my orientation or my gender identity. I've always known who and what I am in that department. However, I am totally sympathetic to those who have had to question it and those who still are--even though it's not something I can ever fully understand. In this politically correct, "woke" (another word I will never get used to using) age in which we live, I do worry that someone may take offense to some element of what follows. And no offense or malice is intended in any way, shape, or form--certainly not toward anyone who celebrates Pride Month.

 

Growing up in a small, rural town in southern Indiana during the 1980s, the concept of "pride" was never anything that was discussed. Just being gay was considered not only disgusting, but also a sin against God. I'm sure there are many in my home town who still feel that way. Growing up in my town, I kind of got the impression that if you weren't straight, white, Christian, and super conservative Republican, you were "different" and that was bad. I often joked that vegetarians were looked at as an ethnic minority. Now I realize this is a gross overgeneralization and in the thirty years that I've been away a lot's changed. But, as someone who doesn't conform easily (even being straight and white), I never felt like I belonged there. I always felt different. It was bad enough being a fat nerd--I can't imagine actually being gay, trans, Jewish, Muslim, let alone having any kind of pigment in my skin at that point in time.

 

I remember the first time a friend came out to me. While I was glad he felt like he could tell me, I also didn't care. That may sound cold and harsh, but the truth is it doesn't matter to me. Nor should it. If I'm bothered by someone else's sexuality or if I feel that it somehow challenges or affects my own, then I have a serious problem. The only time someone else's orientation and/or identity should be of any consequence to me is if it's that of someone to whom I'm attracted. And even then, I still have no say or influence on how that person identifies and I would never fault that person for being themselves. I'm sure I'd get over any initial disappointments. I have always felt that as long as you're not hurting anyone, you have the right to live whatever kind of life makes you happy and I will support that right to my dying day.

 

And while I will admit that sometimes I find it exhausting keeping up with new vocabulary terms (like "cisgender" and "woke") and there are some elements of this whole debate I may never understand (again, mostly centered around vocabulary--like, when did "queer" stop being an anti-gay slur? And, as a straight person, am I even allowed to use it?), I will call anyone whatever name or use any pronoun I'm asked to use just out of respect for that individual. And ultimately I feel that's what the whole thing is about--respect for others. Which is why I don't care how a person identifies. Not only does it not affect me, but I will still respect that person regardless. If we all did that, Pride Month would be unnecessary. I don't have a problem with celebrating it--after all, I enjoy a good parade just as much as anyone. I just feel that if we as a society had been more accepting of each others' differences from the beginning, we could just take pride in being human and there wouldn't be any history of discrimination toward others just because some people didn't fit our definition of what humans should be.

 

Today, the LGBTQ+SorryIfILeftOutAnyLetters community has a lot of public figures to look up to, particularly in the arts--Lady Gaga, Elton John, Billy Porter, Brandi Carlile, Cher, just to name a few. I feel that the artist behind this week's album is often left out. For the record, he may not be--I just may interpret it that way because he's been dead for almost nine years and the examples I mentioned above are very much currently in the public eye. The late, great Lewis Allan Reed spent his career singing about all those elements of humanity that we've spent centuries trying to repress--cross-dressing, depression and other mental illnesses, "deviant" sexual behavior, even drug use and abuse--he seemed to celebrate it all as part of who we are as a species. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, many consider this week's album to be his masterpiece. It features not just my favourite of his songs ("Satellite of Love"), but also the only one of his songs I've ever heard on the radio, the classic "Walk on the Wild Side" which "The New York Times" described after Reed's death as a "ballad of misfits and oddballs." The song is even more of an oddball today because I'm not sure it could still be played on the radio. However, I will say it has one of the greatest bass riffs in music history. Please enjoy the one and only Lou Reed with his 1972 album, "Transformer."

 

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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

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

Because I'm taking the next two weeks off from writing these, I thought I'd give you all a bonus film "sermon" this week.  This film is so incredibly wrong on so many levels--to be fair, it is a dark comedy, so it's kind of supposed to be.  It's raunchy and heavily R-rated, but I think it taps into our desire for payback for slights committed against us during our youths, real or merely perceived.  It seemed especially fitting this particular week to revisit this particular movie.

This week, as you've no doubt heard, Faizan Zaki won the Scripps National Spelling Bee (he was the runner-up in last year's Bee).  His winning word was éclaircissement, a fancy word that most of us--myself included--had never heard of that simply means, according to The New York Times, "a clearing up of something obscure."

(FUN FACT:  100 years ago, 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, Kentucky, was crowned the first National Spelling Bee winner.  His winning word was "gladiolus."  Clearly, the words have gotten harder over the last century.)

When I was in junior high school, my goal was to compete in the National Spelling Bee.  After some rather disappointing turns in the sixth and seventh grades, I finally came in first in my school in the eighth grade.  One afternoon, my principal drove me to the school in our county seat to compete against the winners from the other schools in Orange County, Indiana.  Whoever won that competition would go on to the regional competition.

I ended up pulling what I call a "Reverse Dan Quayle."  Many of you may be old enough to remember when, as Vice President of the United States, Quayle visited a classroom in Trenton, New Jersey, and observed an elementary school spelling bee in 1992.  When William Figueroa correctly wrote the word "potato" on the blackboard, V.P. Quayle gently "corrected" him by picking up the chalk and adding an "e" to the end of it.  Sadly, for Quayle, he was still trying to live down the infamous "Murphy Brown" incident (you can look that one up) and this latest gaffe certainly didn't help.

Similarly, in my situation, I was given the word "potatoes," and I spelled it without the "e," which I could have sworn was an acceptable variation in my spelling text book the year before.  However, the Spelling Bee officials didn't agree and I had to hear the dreaded bell of elimination.  Actually, now that I think about it, I committed my error in 1988.  Therefore, I didn't pull a "Reverse Dan Quayle."  He pulled a "Reverse William Allen."  I suppose either way, there's a joke in there about the Indiana public school system, but I'm not going to make it.

Anyway, when I returned to seventh period Study Hall and my fellow students heard that I had lost, I was given a lot of grief for losing to a girl (it was the 1980s when that kind of behaviour was still mildly acceptable).  The truth is, I wasn't upset about losing to a girl at all.  Aside from the fact that my seventh grade spelling text book had apparently lied to me, what really pissed me off was the fact that I lost to a fifth grader.  It was my understanding that fifth graders weren't allowed to compete.  At least in my school it was only open to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.  I was denied another year of competition for no apparent reason, certainly not a good one, as far as I could tell.  As you may have guessed, I never made it to the national level.  Eh... life goes on.

It's with that bit of personal history and this week's momentous events in our nation's capital that I recommend this week's bonus movie.

In this film, Jason Bateman stars as Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old proofreader who has discovered a loophole in the rules that would allow him to compete in the Quill National Spelling Bee in Los Angeles.  While he comes across as... well, frankly an asshole, especially to his juvenile competitors, he does have his reasons for sabotaging the Bee which, coincidentally, is being nationally televised for the first time.  Even though he goes out of his way to win at all costs, his real target for public humiliation are the adults running the show.  In spite of the fact that this movie is, to quote my late father, "crude, rude, lewd, and socially unacceptable," it does have some rather sweet moments, particularly at the end.

Written by Andrew Dodge, and directed by Bateman (his first theatrical feature as director), the movie debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2013 and was released in America the following March, a week after being shown at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, Texas.  Co-starring Kathryn Hahn, Allison Janney, Ben Falcone, Rohan Chand, and the great Philip Baker Hall, please enjoy Bad Words.

Until I return, 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 and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill