The Go-Go’s have released their first new song in almost two decades and “Club Zero” will likely make you realize how much you missed them. If you weren’t around in the Eighties, when they helped to define the sound of that decade, it may introduce you to this band whose […]
Film
37 posts
Last Friday I had the opportunity to guest host Rita Houston’s Whole Wide World free form radio show on WFUV. As is my habit when I fill in on the WWW, I cooked up a theme that would be enjoyable to explore. Last fall, it was my pleasure to interview […]
Bang! The Bert Berns Story is now available on iTunes and Apple Music. It is one of the best music documentaries I’ve ever seen and I watch an absurd amount of music documentaries! The film, narrated by Steven Zan Vandt is the vision of Bert’s son Brett Berns who I spoke […]
New Documentary Film & Book On H.R. Of Bad Brains – Event at Saint Vitus Bar on January 24, 2017 One of the Bad Brains CDs in my collection has a sticker on it with two well chosen quotes about the band: “If you want to hear real excitement, real […]
New Morphine Documentary, Vapors Of Morphine Shows in Brooklyn This Saturday 10-15-16 Oh the joy Morphine has given me! One of the bands I have played the most in various living rooms of apartments I’ve lived in. Always there to create a very cool vibe. As he said near the […]
Steve Aoki Talks Hardcore Roots, New Documentary I met the great character that is Steve Aoki at The Roxy Hotel in Tribeca on August 22nd, 2016. He was in New York to do a handful of interviews about the new documentary film, Steve Aoki: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, that […]
New Documentary Film: Miss Sharon Jones – playing this week in NYC “Her spirit is driven by music, and this was always her source of inspiration to continue onwards, despite the odds. Sharon makes you believe in anything.” – Barbara Kopple As a lover of her music as well as […]
“Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music. Music is the best.” – Frank Zappa (From Packard Goose off Joe’s Garage, Act III) Few artists are as worthy of a documentary film as Frank […]
Miles Davis Biopic & Albums Coming Soon With the New York Film Festival 2015 and the Sundance Film Festival 2016 in the rearview mirror, Miles Ahead – written by Steven Baigelman and Don Cheadle – will get a pair of screenings at the South by Southwest music festival this week. Don, […]
Music has the power to free the soul so authoritarian regimes across history have often attempted to suppress it. Such was the case in Pakistan beginning in the 1970’s under a military dictatorship and exacerbated by The Taliban’s influence from the mid 1990’s. The country’s traditional music made primarily with […]
Early 1970’s Leon Russell is certainly worthy of a documentary and this one, A Poem Is a Naked Person, has style. Filmmaker Les Blank was a character in his own right and somewhere along the filming fell out of favor with the artist. The film ended up on the shelf […]
A powerful film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten is opening in Greenwich Village today for a one week run at the Film Forum about how the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia targeted artists among so many others and how their music has ultimately survived. I spoke with director John Pirozzi…
We lost R&B legend Percy Sledge this week at the age of 74. It was an honor to chat with him in the fall of 2013 when he was doing some interviews surrounding a documentary about Muscle Shoals. Here’s the story of truly one of the greatest songs of all […]
As part of the Winter Jazzfest (all over town and now in its 11th year) Robert Glasper played a gig at Le Poisson Rouge in the west village with Vicente Archer on bass and Damion Reid on drums. Those guys go way back including the Grammy winning artist‘s first couple […]
2014 holiday season gift ideas include plenty of memoirs & biographies to read and documentaries & performances to watch…
Neil Diamond played Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn for a surprise homecoming show – his first ever in the borough. I got turned on to Neil Diamond via my dad through albums like the Robbie Robertson produced Beautiful Noise and the one I really loved Hot August Night. Neil […]
Fela Kuti was a tremendous musical and political force. Finding Fela is the new documentary from Alex Gibney about him…
Miles Davis Way is named in Manhattan, The Bootleg Series has unearthed some great performances from the jazz legend, and a biopic is scheduled to start production next month.
Ice T speaks about his boyhood, the history of hip hop and his film The Art of Rap, Papoose, and Body Count in this extended interview.
Hear My Train a Comin’ is a must for Jimi fans… I can talk Jimi all day and so can director Bob Smeaton whose directed a handful of documentaries about the man. Here Bob talks more about him as well as Paul McCartney, Chas Chandler, and Ringo Starr.
Most of the video is from the outstanding American Masters documentary directed and produced by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in 1998: Rock and Roll Heart: Lou Reed.
The little town in Alabama where countless classic songs were recorded – Muscle Shoals – gets immortalized in film.
Metallica celebrated a Sirius/XM station that plays only their music plus the release of a new flick.