"You Kids, Get Off My Lawn!" How Woodstock Looks to Me Now

One thing I've learned about HDTV (and large screens) is just how telegenic most humans truly are. That is, not very. Facial pores at that size . . . well, "lunar baedeker" isn't just a poem to me anymore.
At least I feel better about the prominent, throbbing veins in my temple now that I've seen Steve Carell sporting a couple.

Recently, I watched the Woodstock film again, only the second time I'd seen it since the original theatrical run. (Even I was struck by the fact that virtually none of the tech I was using--a laptop, using a wireless router to access work files on a remote office computer; HDTV; satellite receiver--existed when the concert took place.) The Woodstock Experience CDs I've encountered (Sly, Janis, Airplane), which pair the artists' contemporary albums with their 'stock performances, take advantage of tech advances to offer better sound, and are presented in vastly superior packages than any previous releases.

Now that I've heard some of the music in enhanced editions, seeing the film again makes me wonder, why haven't they upgraded it?
As I said, I saw the movie on its first run (yeah, that pegs me as an antiquity) and, at the time, watching the vast numbers of music- and scene-lovers assemble, space out, groove to the tunes, and generally refuse to go Lord of the Flies, was a novelty. It could even be uplifting. In all the spectacle and "bad brown acid" announcements and "wow, man, that cat is wasted" (and prototype twirly dancing), the music is often treated as secondary.

While I'm not suggesting Woodstock is deficient as a documentary film, it sure ain't an exemplary concert film. Of its contemporaries, perhaps only Gimme Shelter* employs worse camera angles of the performers. (* That would be the film that features a performance by The Flying Burrito Brothers that manages to, not once, show more than a glimpse of Gram Parsons. From the back.)
It was maybe five minutes into looking up at Alvin Lee's rubber-lipped facial contortions that I wanted to ask the filmmakers, would it have killed you to, oh I don't know, put a camera on the same level as the band? I mean, if I want to look up a lead singer's nose, I'll buy festival seating tickets and risk my life in front of the stage at a live show. Why bother filming a view no better than the one from the mosh pit?
And why am I looking at Lee's face through maybe nine minutes out of ten during "I'm Going Home"*? It was a star-making performance not for facial expressions so grotesque they must have inspired the career of Jim Carrey. Why don't we get more than a few glimpses of how he's throwing off several thousand notes per minutes from that guitar?
* As a lifelong superfluous keyboard player, I had to laugh in sympathy at poor Chick Churchill, Ten Years After's fifth wheel on this performance, whose B-3 chording is audible only briefly, and appropriate in this song, not at all.

Concert presentation has made leaps as incredible as the one from VHS to Blu-Ray.
What Woodstock deserves is a new cut as a concert film. Lose everything but the performances, use performances that didn't make the cut, in favor of mud slide shots. There were some peak performances (Sly & the Family Stone were reportedly never better; Hendrix and Janis were debuting new bands; Santana introduced their fresh take on Latin-flavored rock and roll) by several of the defining performers of the past forty years. There has to be more, and better footage lying in the vault.

Maybe the quantity and quality of modern concert films, and hearing the remastered discs, have made the existing Woodstock film a frustrating viewing experience for me. Maybe the "oh, wow, man" hippietude" wafting over it like patchouli in a head shop brings out the fist-shaking old man in me now. Maybe I could never relate to most of the concertgoers, and can even less forty years on.

Whatever the reason, just about every second of Woodstock that isn't spent on the music is like an eternity in line for a Port-A-Potty for me.

[Just to show I'm not a total crank, I do think it's wonderful that the couple pictured on the cover of the original Woodstock OST were recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning, still together.]

How to Roll When It's "Hit Record Time"

Last post in January?! Well, I would hate for Blogger to assume this is an abandoned blog and delete it. And although posting here feels disturbingly like talking to myself, I'm going to put some stuff up here that has appeared, in different form and less rambly, on Blogcritics.

A couple of my favorite movies are American Grafitti and That Thing You Do. Both deal with a period for which I have what is likely an unhealthy level of longing. Both are about rock and roll and youth culture at a time when it was becoming a force for the grownups to reckon with. Now I have seen a film that belongs on my dream triple-bill with them, My Dinner With Jimi.

Among the fortunate few who saw director Bill Fishman’s My Dinner With Jimi on the big screen, at a film festival or in its limited theatrical release, this DVD has been eagerly anticipated. For the rest of us, who had only read praise for the film, the wait for this award-winning, low-budget quickie (shot in 12 days) has been agonizing. Now the DVD is here, and guess what? Entirely worth the agony.

My Dinner With Jimi is a factual account of a brief period in 1967 when the Turtles made the transition from opening act to stardom, however short-lived, with the number one hit, “Happy Together.” The first half of the film depicts the band’s struggle to achieve greater success than their modest hits to date, and to avoid the military draft. Their place in the L.A. rock and roll pantheon of the day is pointedly made when they are worthy of a 16 Magazine photo shoot, but get bumped from the cover in favor of the Monkees. The film’s second half plays out the Turtles’ first night in England, culminating in the title event, Kaylan’s early morning dining, drinking, and rap session with guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who was a personality on the hip London scene, but yet (prior to his first album’s release) unknown to America.

Unlike most Sixties rock and roll films, this one has the advantage of being told by the story’s central figure, Turtles’ singer Howard Kaylan, who wrote the screenplay and fully acknowledges the possibility of memory lapses, and the likely causes. The casual attitude about drug and alcohol abuse adds to the film’s feel of authenticity, and it’s to Kaylan’s credit that he didn’t attempt to downplay it. In fact, extreme drug and alcohol intake figure prominently into his and Mark Vollman’s draft aversion tactics, which also felt quite authentic, although that lengthy sequence bogs down an otherwise snappy 90 minutes.

My Dinner captures the brief, breathless time when the scenario played out in That Thing You Do (a film that shares the same buoyant, delirious prevailing mood)—of a bunch of kids putting together a neighborhood band, making a record, and having a number one hit—was not only feasible, it was happening all over the world. The immensely likable Turtles’ wide-eyed, star-struck naivety adds to the realism of the pivotal scenes in London’s exclusive Speakeasy Club. One of the film’s greatest strengths is in these scenes that show us the human dimensions of larger-than-life cultural figures like Hendrix, Brian Jones, and The Beatles.

With few exceptions (such as “Graham Nash’s” dodgy accent and some of the worst wigs and beards this side of my high school’s production of Gone With the Wind), the cast pulls off the difficult task of celebrity impersonation, compensating for marginal resemblance with spot-on voices and mannerisms. The most impressive is Royal Watkins as Jimi Hendrix, who convincingly plays the coolest cat in the place, even in the presence of John Lennon and Brian Jones. Even if Hendrix never suggested that Kaylan perform “all done up like John Steed of The Avengers,”*** Watkins is utterly convincing giving this advice. The film’s best line, and its best-delivered, may be when Hendrix tries to talk Kaylan out of getting married, saying, “Don’t do it. This is hit record time.”

While scenes like the one in Cantor’s Deli, featuring Jim Morrison and a pickle, stretch credulity, they are so charming and funny, you won’t care about the “higher degree of accuracy” that producer Harold Bronson claims this film has over most films “based on actual events.” Accurate or not, My Dinner With Jimi captures the look and feel of the Sixties at their swinging-est. It’s a gas!

Turtles completists, take note, the film includes a couple of mixes Bronson did just for it, "Outside Chance" (by Warren Zevon, who Kaylan speaks about on the commentary track) with the lead vocal higher in the mix, and "She'd Rather Be With Me" (at the end, in the Speakeasy club), minus the horns, for a more "live" sound.

Extras include Howard Kaylan’s commentary, with Harold Bronson; their anecdotes add considerably to the story. Among other contentious comments, Kaylan repeats the claim that, unlike the Beach Boys and most every other L.A.-area band, The Turtles never used studio musicians (like Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew), but played all the instruments on their records, presumably not including horns and strings. He's a little rough on Jim Tucker, who left the band in 1967, and he does some other interesting name-dropping. It truly enhances the film.

It would be wonderful to see more films like this, which attempt to depict actual events from rock and roll's golden era, realistically and with human dimensions. My Dinner With Jimi -- it's a treat.

*** Strangely, Kaylan and Bronson talk on the commentary track about the lengths they went to with the Smothers Brothers' "Happy Together" recreation, getting the set and costumes just as they were in the original. After finding the clip on YouTube, however, I found that the recreation is amazingly accurate . . . except for Kaylan. In the actual clip, he seems to be taking Hendrix' advice as to dressing like John Steed (albeit with top hat and cane, rather than derby and brolly); in the film, he's hat- and cane-less and wearing a grossly ill-fitting suit! Which I thought must've been true to the original until I saw it. Also strangely, in the Speakeasy club footage at the end, where the Turtles perform "She'd Rather Be With Me," Kaylan is wearing the John Steed look!

No matter . . . it's a great film, and after a dozen attempts, I think I've determined what "Paul" and "John" say to each other in that last scene. Something like:
Paul: This would make a great story. Wonder if someone will write it someday.
John: Yeah, it's great.
Paul: You better hope not. You come off as a prick.
There's no way Kaylan, performing onstage, could have heard that conversation if it took place, but (like Morrison and the pickle) it's funny enough, and in keeping with the film's tone, who cares.