Posted: March 21st, 2023 | Filed under: Rock & Roll Rewind | No Comments »
I’m a Rock & Roll lifer. I’ve got stories, lots of stories. Here’s one.
By the summer of ’76, it was long past due.
Seeing Elvis live in concert, that is.
The King of Rock & Roll had been through town any number of times, both early on and in the years after the Colonel realized he could pay off his gambling debts quicker pushing his money maker hither and yon on tour after tour. But I’d never gotten around to paying my respects.
I missed Elvis in ’56, when he played the Armory. At age 11, my allowance wouldn’t have covered admission. Besides, I was not going to get keys to the car. My folks bought me Elvis’s first RCA album as consolation.
One other Elvis moment from my youth. Happened the night in November ’56 he was on Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. I could hardly eat Sunday dinner from excitement. My dad checked if I’d done my arithmetic homework?
I lied.
When I couldn’t explain multiplication and division of fractions, I was banned to my room, forced to do all the problems in the chapter during EP’s first song on the show. I was released from purgatory for the rest of his performance that night.
One week in July ’76 I was all rocker all the time. Yes, even more so than usual. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 19th, 2023 | Filed under: Film Reviews Podcast, TV | No Comments »
For some of us, Mel Brooks has been a national treasure.
(I actually had a conversation the other day with a friend, who has never found Brooks especially funny. Go figure. Well, to each his/her own, I suppose.)
Frankly, he should be heralded if only for the fact he stole Anne Bancroft’s heart at first blush. Mrs. Robinson. You go, dude.
Anyway, even though he’s 95, the fellow who got his start as a writer on the iconic Show of Shows from the early days of black & white TV in the 50s is back.
There’s an 8 part Hulu series, a sequel to an earlier Brooks work. It is “History of the World Part II.”
Here Brooks has help from 15 or so other writers with the sketch comedy.
Does it work?
Ah, for that, listen to my podcast below:
Posted: March 10th, 2023 | Filed under: Cinema, Film Reviews Podcast | No Comments »
On consecutive nights I viewed these two completely different movies.
Both worth considering if you haven’t seen them already.
“Tár” features award-nominated Cate Blanchett as the very intense conductor of the Berlin Symphony.
Over two and a half hours we get to watch her fall apart from her own flaws.
“Mrs Harris Goes to Paris” stars Lesley Manville in 50s Britain. She’s an eminently decent cleaning lady who dreams of heading to the fashion capitol of the world and purchasing a Dior gown.
The latter was for obvious reasons an easier and more enjoyable watch.
Though Blanchett who is always on her game is captivating, if her character is not very likeable.
For more, listen to my podcast below:
Posted: March 8th, 2023 | Filed under: Music, Rock & Roll Rewind | No Comments »
I’m a a Rock & Roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s one.
This is a fully corrected — hopefully — and somewhat expanded version of this recent remembrance.
Oft asked. Never answered.
Best concert I’ve ever been to?
Not going there.
That’s some dangerous quicksand masking a rabbit hole too long, deep and winding.
My favorite?
Too many. It would be easier to name the handful when I didn’t find something to enjoy.
Ah, but most memorable?
Easy Peasy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 27th, 2023 | Filed under: Rock & Roll Rewind | 1 Comment »
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got some stories, lots of stories. Here are some.
Rolling Stones.
Bruce Springsteen.
Bob Dylan.
Rock icons, they.
One of the blessings for Derbytown rock & rollers through the decades has been several appearances by big name acts. Including these Hall of Famers.
Their first times through town are “legendary” in one way or another. Especially when one is playing rock & roll smackdown, and can say “I was at that show.”
Which your inveterate historian cannot invoke of the Stones initial visit through town.
November 14, 1964. Memorial Auditorium.
I was away at college. Besides, we didn’t quite know at that early stage they’d become as many believe, “the best rock & roll band in the world.”
My pal, long time Elvis documentarian Alanna Nash was in the house. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 24th, 2023 | Filed under: Film Reviews Podcast, TV | No Comments »
How odd is this new Apple TV+ series featuring Billy Crudup?
Very.
Such that I spent a bit more time explaining or trying to explain it in the podcast below.
Crudup leads a band of traveling salespeople town to town in a marvelous to look at retro futuristic 50s.
What are they selling?
Places to purchase to live on the . . . moon.
Not a bad premise, but . . .
. . . after watching the first four episodes, I’m not sure what the point here really is.
It’s incredible to look at, worth a peek just for that.
As for the rest, uh, listen up.
Posted: February 12th, 2023 | Filed under: Cinema, Film Reviews Podcast | No Comments »
Knowing my affection for the Crescent City, and its music, as you regular readers do, you’re thinking for sure that I am obsessively inclined to love any documentary which examines New Orleans music.
Truth: Yes.
Truth: There are several however that have left me cold.
Including the recent on about JazzFest. I mean, too much Pit Bull, for heaven’s sake.
But this one, this one, “Take Me to the River: New Orleans,” is a keeper.
Top shelf.
Well conceived.
Well executed.
One of the better docs about the musical creative process I’ve seen.
Now available to be streamed at Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
I explain in detail why in the podcast review below.
— c d kaplan
Posted: February 3rd, 2023 | Filed under: Rock & Roll Rewind | No Comments »
Rock & Roll lifer c d kaplan has some memories. Here are today’s:
No reason to bury the lede.
This is about the Greatest Teenage Dance Party ever.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Not the best concert ever aimed at teens. That would be the T.A.M.I. show, which happened in California.
Nor my favorite concert, when I was still a teen in the early 60s. Which would have been my first, I suppose. You always fondly remember the first time, right?
But to the task at hand.
Rock & Roll Radio — soon enough commercialized as Top 40, News, Weather & Sports — ascended on Louisville in the summer of ’58 when WAKY took over a stale has been at 790 AM The station announced its arrival by playing “The Purple People” in tape loop for, I dunno, a couple of days, a week.
Long enough to get our undivided attention.
Early in ’62 the station hired a noon-3:00 jock named Greg Mason.An entrepreneurial sort, he started producing Friday night concerts late that summer. I remember Del Shannon was one. The Marvelettes, or maybe it was Martha & the Vandellas, was another.
And, on the last Friday night of August before the start of school, the Greatest Teenage Dance Party ever. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 3rd, 2023 | Filed under: Cinema, Film Reviews Podcast | No Comments »
In one of the more absurd phenomena of this movie award season, the folks who run the Oscars launched an investigation into the nomination of Andrea Riseborough, the star of “To Leslie.”
Seriously?
This in a town where Big Hollywood has been wooing voters by various and sundry means for decades?
In their infinite wisdom and beneficence, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences backed off, apparently satisfied there was no chicanery afoot.
Wise move.
For Ms. Riseborough’s performance as a down and out alcoholic avoids just about all the clichés that have evolved with such roles over time.
It is absolutely an award worthy portrayal.
You can watch it on Amazon Prime.
For more on this movie, which would have otherwise go unnoticed, listen to my podcast below.
— c d kaplan
Posted: January 31st, 2023 | Filed under: Cinema | No Comments »
At 5:00 PM on a recent Sunday evening on Baxter Avenue near Highland, a man was shot and killed. The second such incident in that area recently.
One of Louisville’s finest eateries, Jack Fry’s is just a shout away.
This is Cherokee Triangle Territory. A “good” neighborhood. A “safe” neighborhood.
Not so much anymore apparently.
This is the kind of violence that is supposed to happen only on the other side of the tracks, at the other end of town where at a red light you don’t stop.
Call it violence creep. It is a very real thing.
This brutality is, for various reasons, becoming the new normal. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: January 25th, 2023 | Filed under: Cinema, Film Reviews Podcast | 1 Comment »
The setting is quiet, insulated and brooding.
An island off Ireland in the 1920s
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s characters have been drinking together in the same bar at the same time with the same faces at the other tables forever.
One day, out of the blue, without explanation, Gleeson tells Farrell he wants nothing to do with him anymore.
Farrell doesn’t understand.
Martin McDonough’s movie is about him trying to figure it out.
As an audience member, I could only partially get an understanding myself.
“Banshees of Inisherin” can be streamed at HBO Max and Amazon Prime.
For more details, and my take on the film, listen to my podcast below.
— c d kaplan
Posted: January 23rd, 2023 | Filed under: Rock & Roll Rewind | 1 Comment »
Today’s Rock & Roll Rewind:
The Byrds played Louisville in the Summer of ’65.
The group, which invented a whole new genre of music — Folk Rock — had the #1 song in the land, a jangly electric cover of Dylan’s Pete Seeger-ish toe-tapper, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
The Band featured Roger McGuinn, late of Bobby Darin’s group and the Chad Mitchell Trio, and David Crosby, late of a long forgotten folk group of no consequence.
The Byrds played Gypsy Village, an outdoor nightclub at Fontaine Ferry Park in Shawnee Park. Taking the same stage that such superstars as John Philip Sousa, Satchmo and Frankie Blue Eyes played before them.
Despite a vibrant dance party scene and a number of greal local groups, the rock culture hadn’t fully arrived in Derbytown . . . yet. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred or so of us there.
Other than the sparseness of the assembled, I remember little. Other than this. I specifically recall there were certain tunes I wouldn’t dance to. “You don’t dance to Dylan,” I declared to my date, “you listen to the words.”
Crosby’s later gigs in town with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, then top of the rock shelf, were significantly better attended.
So, yeah, David Crosby.
Another rock & roll icon down. Read the rest of this entry »
