On tonight’s episode of Saturday Night Shut-In Mr. Moderator tries one more time to rally a few Townspeople to join him for a screening of the upcoming Rock of Ages. He also passes along a gauntlet regarding the new Saint Etienne album thrown down by our old friend The Great 48. Finally, he discusses the final scene in the American remake of Wings of Desire, whatever the hell that was called. Good tunes to boot, including Bob Welch’s finest moment!
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-81.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 81]
Before leaving for work this morning I watched about 45 minutes of some Scott Walker documentary, 30th Century Man. It took a lot of concentration to stick with it for as long as I did, but I was doing it for you, especially those of you who profess to like the solo recordings by Scott Walker. (You’re welcome.)
Then, help out BBC Films, Julien Temple et al, by casting the Kinks bio-pic for them. Obviously, Ray and Dave Davies are key, but don’t forget everybody else, including:
Pete Quaife
Mick Avory
Shel Talmy
Rasa Davies
John Dalton
John Gosling
Clive Davis
Chrissie Hynde
Jim Rodford
Damon Albarn
… and on and on…
Include as many supporting players as you see fit. The screenwriters will also be keeping close tabs on your choices.
Here’s a good challenge for us, thrown down by an offlist note and video from Townsman Diskojoe:
Go to 1:22 of this except from an old Dobie Gillis episode. I think this was probably the first time a record store was featured in a sitcom:
I know you folks know more than I will ever know about rock ‘n roll, but do you know more than Diskojoe? Can you find an earlier example of record store hipsters on TV?
I look forward to being dazzled by your knowledge.
Has anyone caught the Cameron Crowe-directed documentary on the Elton John–Leon Russell collaboration that premiered on HBO last week?
I am an unabashed big fan of Leon Russell. I think his early ‘70s albums were as good as it gets. (An early RTH thread on best string of albums probably didn’t mention Leon Russell, Shelter People, Asylum Choir II, and Carney but should have.)
I always liked Elton John’s early hits and had his first two albums. He’s also an artist that I have grown to like more and more as time passes. Back about a half-dozen years ago I bought all the early albums when they had the reissues cheap at the BMG club and was pleasantly surprised by just how much I liked them.
So, not unsurprisingly, I greatly looked forward to The Union, the Elton-Leon collaboration that came out in late 2010. And if it wasn’t as great as I wished it might have been, it was a lot better than I feared it might be – and that’s not as much damning with faint praise as it sounds.
I greatly enjoyed this documentary. It’s really Elton’s show but then so was the collaboration. The backstory, for those who need it, is that Russell was a great inspiration and hero for Elton way back when. They hadn’t been in contact for decades and somewhere along the way Elton became aware of Russell’s circumstances—Russell’s apparently pretty much broke, playing small clubs, health issues—and Elton wanted to get him the recognition he (John) feels he (Russell) deserves.
Over the weekend I took my boys out with a neighbor and his son to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. We all saw the first one together when that came out, last year or whenever. That night I left the theater thinking I’d be spared sitting through a sequel, that the movie was so inconsequential that not even the dream makers in Hollywood would think it necessitated sequel. I was wrong. Last night, good father that I try to be, I said, “Sure!” to our friend when he called at the last minute and asked if we wanted to join him and his son for the sequel. Personally, I had my reservations.
My wife was a little bummed that she wouldn’t be able to join us on such short notice. I told her that she probably wasn’t missing anything, that the first one, which she didn’t see, was no more satifsfying than eating a single marshmallow. “Yeah,” she said, “but Robert Downey Jr. is usually good.”
I looked her square in the eye and said with too-often-unchecked disdain, “I forget that you actually like that guy.”
My teenage son jumped to her defense, “He’s good! How can you not like Robert Downey Jr.?”
This got me thinking about Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely‘s Six-Pack or Shotgun theory on how we actually assess acting talent. To summarize, if you don’t have the time to go back and read the original thread, Gergely’s legendary late-night pronouncement on the topic should do:
“There’s no such thing as Acting Ability!” he said in typically definitive fashion, slamming his fist for emphasis. “When we watch any any actor in any movie it comes down to one thing: If that actor showed up unannounced at your back door, would you greet him or her with a six-pack or a shotgun?“
Today, let’s see if we can tackle the near-impossible task of applying this theory to related pairs of polarizing musicians. Sure, we’re loaded for bear when it comes to passionate, informed musical opinions, but let’s see if we can leave musical content out of it and investigate whether there is a deeper truth to our feelings on the following pairs of artists.
Your mission is to choose which artist in each pair gets the six-pack and which gets the shotgun. There’s no in-between, no ties, and especially none of this! The only risk you face in participating is the risk of revealing something deep about yourself.
A final reminder: If at all possible, leave your opinions on the artists’ music out of it. To aid in this I have attempted to kick things off with the selection of a few pairs of artists whose music most Townspeople have equal amounts of musical interest in.
When you’re done assigning the six-pack and the shotgun to each of the following sets of related polarizing artists feel free to add your own pair of related polarizing artists for us to ponder.
