Saw the ‘rockumentary’ Beware of Mr. Baker last night. It tracks the story of Ginger Baker (most famous for being in Cream) from early music days through Cream, Blind Faith and beyond until the present day. Some reactions:

1) I had only really heard his playing in the context of Cream, which ultimately limited my impressions. While I don’t completely agree with either his (stated at least a couple times rather egotistically by him in the movie) or his bands perspective that they were the ‘cream’ of the rock talent at the time (So the Beatles and others like Jimmy Page and John Entwistle weren’t? There were others too) Cream were obviously in the top tier to be sure.

But the thing I liked about the movie was that you see a LOT more of his playing in far, far different contexts, and I definitely have a new view of his abilities as a result. I had not realized he was really a jazz drummer, he considered himself a jazz drummer, and ultimately at one or two points in the movie, he attains that lofty status amongst other top-tier jazz drummers – very impressive and he definitely more than holds his own – I have a much stronger respect for him now just seeing this footage alone. While I have to say that I’ve always preferred Keith Moon‘s drumming, and will still maintain that KM may be my preferred choice for a *rock* drummer – I now think GB is definitely a far more versatile and skilled drummer who obviously crosses many more types of music having seen this film.

2) Like other famous people (and arguably worse in many ways) – he was a disaster as a father, fairly loathsome as a family man and at many times, as even a human being. It’s one thing to be devoted to drums and music above all else – fine. But why have a family and treat them so horribly? Why not just stick with groupies and be done with it? Use a condom? The mind boggles – there’s simply no excuse. We’re all human, yes – but acting this way is simply beyond the pale.

3) He reminds me in many ways of Keith Richards from the ‘too onery to die’ standpoint – but I find it hard to believe that Keith Richards was near as irascible as GB was (and still is). The movie begins with GB literally wacking the poor filmmaker hard in the face with his cane because he was mad about the film having anyone else from his life in it! While to a certain degree (they include outtakes also as the credits roll at the end) this is funny and serves to make him even more of a curmudgeon – the word ‘beware’ is certainly applicable time and again as his story unfolds.

This is definitely a movie worth watching – may be a bit too ‘music nerd’ if you aren’t into drummers, rock stars acting like the immature freaks they often are, or musicians from the 60s – but definitely worth seeing all the same.

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I would namecheck 2001, however instead of TRON… candybowl

ISS Startrails – TRONized from Christoph Malin on Vimeo.

with a screaming goatherd! 🙂

The Von Trapps heard them coming from miles away…

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A very interesting look at the music industry and artist success/failure in decades past vs. now. Here’s the article that spawned this graphic, and the article on BoingBoing where I saw this debate in the first place….

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judge for yourself ….. candybowl

So watched the second Decline of Western Civilization movie – Part II, ‘the metal years’ Sat. afternoon.  Fairly mixed-to-negative reactions, however.

Unlike the first (punk) one, this one is about metal.  But also unlike the first one – most of it is completely LAME BANDS!  The saving grace of of this movie is Ozzy and arguably, Megadeth (last band you see perform, at the very end).  Ozzy is quite funny, pretty much the same type of interview as seen with the Germs guy in the first one – he’s at his house, making breakfast – not sure if it was staged or not but he can’t hit a glass with the orange juice to save his life – but he’s a complete realist about his lifestyle, and says it’s pretty hard work, in addition to thanking his wife (was Sharon his wife even back then?) for handling all the business stuff.

Most of the bands in this movie I (thankfully then or since) have never heard of, save for Poison, who were pretty much a flash in the pan – but far more than the rest of these lameass bands.   First, WHY did they devote at least half an hour to a stupid faux-striptease contest from some lame ‘rock club‘ on the hollywood strip?  That was even stupider than the lame bands?

Second, i’ve heard more than enough (to last several thousand lifetimes) of how much Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons get laid.  WFC?  I sure don’t.  I can’t *completely* slam them, based on Geddy Lee’s commentary from the Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage DVD I watched some months ago – but still – KISS are the cheesiest, most cynical and best-marketed band of all time – too bad about the music.

It’s interesting because by the end of the movie, on the one hand you’ve seen plenty of lame stuff (which hasn’t aged well at all, given the 30 years in between) but on the other hand, when they are asking all these different people what they want to do, whether they’ll make it, etc. – they all answer the same thing – this is what I want to do, I’m ‘going’ to make it, etc. – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing – maybe their motivations for doing so (chicks, money, etc.) you can slam, but the naive belief in their own abilities isn’t up for criticism – this is something to admire in its own way.  When they concentrated on that aspect, it was quite cool.

But to me, the movie implies that Megadeth are essentially the ‘purists’ (and to some degree, Lemmy from Motorhead, although his interview bits are extremely short clips and you wouldn’t really know who the heck he was if you didn’t know of him from outside the movie) – Megadeth seem to disavow all the stupid motivations of the earlier bands, and while they certainly have demons of their own, they seem to be the ‘purest’ type of band shown here.  Maybe the filmmakers were trying to show that not ALL metal bands are lame, cynical and complete cheese – not sure.

Finally – not sure whether it was a factor of other, bigger metal bands not actually living in Los Angeles or not, but where were some of the OTHER real bands of the era?  E.g. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest – heck even Van Halen (who *do* still live in L.A. to this day)?  Even the sequences with Ozzy were too short by comparison.  They could have done more with him and Lemmy and left out half the other crap – why they didn’t show performances from either of them?  Dunno.

In the end, this movie is *far* too much about ‘the 3 b’s‘ and not near enough about the music.  The punk one was much more about the music and far more real to me than this one.  On balance – watch the punk one, don’t bother with this.

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Paul Rudd. 🙂 More amusing ‘dance GIFs’ here.

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Saw Hanna last night on DVD. Not bad, definitely a thriller movie with few pauses in the ongoing chase/pursuit throughout. The movie itself was fairly different than what I expected (I expected a long-winded revenge movie – it’s definitely not that) but I guess my main beef is that the plot was somewhat predictable and they don’t really develop the characters enough. In some ways, the main character is a much-younger, female Jason Bourne but without the ability to steal cars, hack computers and thwart law enforcement at will – Hanna is a bit more vulnerable.

I liked the main two adult leads – Cate Blanchett is always good, here fairly different with red hair and an American accent (almost perfect but still slipped a couple times – talk to Colin Ferrell about faking an american accent, he’s got it down pretty much perfect). Eric Bana was also good as Hanna’s father – he totally reminds me of someone else in an older movie but I just can’t place it – doh! I also liked the Chemical Brothers soundtrack, although I didn’t completely recognize their influence until the credits. It must be an increasingly common thing now with techno bands getting soundtrack gigs – e.g. this one and Daft Punk getting the work in Tron:Legacy (with an excellent job there-done). The on-location stuff in Berlin was also cool – I recognized the ‘wind tunnel’ test facility from Aeon Flux during an early part of this movie too – cool stuff.

anyway, don’t expect an Oscar nod but definitely entertaining. Note that kerewin liked it on a level beyond me, so I may be completely out to lunch on this review :).

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