We're doing a free month of Amazon Prime, so let's catch up on our queue ...
BORN IN CHICAGO (B-minus) - This slim (77-minute) paean to white-boy blues pays its respect to Chicago's 1960s music scene, but it rarely rises above a paint-by-numbers history familiar to Boomers. It also suffers from a sappy script full of saccharine sentimentality, robotically narrated by Elwood Blues himself, Dan Ayckroyd.
The first 20 minutes troops through the dawn of Chicago blues on Chicago's South Side around the end of World War II, and it feels like a rushed, forced march, barely hitting highlights. While it's a kick to revisit clips of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and the rest, this is a perfunctory gloss that merely serves as a bridge to the white kids who crashed the scene by the '60s.
The focus is mostly on Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, who befriended Howlin' Wolf and cut their teeth in front of black audiences, which paved the way for the British R&B invasion (Rolling Stones, Clapton, Yardbirds, etal.) to not only swamp the genre but also help revive the careers of the original artists by the 1970s. Some of the original band members remain, including Nick Gravenites, who penned the song "Born in Chicago," and nice guys like Corky Siegel. Selective archival interviews bring in heavy hitters like B.B. King and Bob Dylan, along with money men like Bill Graham and Marshall Chess.
It's tough to get over the hump early on -- the simplistic scan of the pioneers and the cheesy transition to the young boomers, wherein everyone is depicted as wonderful, talented and racially harmonious in every way. But the music is good, and the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place.
JOY RIDE (B+) - Let's follow two emotionally damaged middle-age men as they drive themselves to their comedy gigs and perform in hipster clubs. Onetime wild man Bobcat Goldthwait and the former wunderkind Dana Gould have been pals for decades, and Goldthwait, now known as a skilled indie director, filmed them on the road and during their two-man shows.
Gould, known for his work on "The Simpsons," is awfully intense compared to Goldthwait's zen demeanor these days, and it is heartening to see them open up about their unpalatable upbringings and ways of coping with their respective mental challenges. This, of course, is yet another insider standup buddy wank (in which they gaze lovingly at the other's inspired genius on stage every night, a less vaudevillian Gen X version of the duo of Martin Short and Steve Martin), and it's ironic that they have the chutzpah to dis Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," as if they are not essentially doing the same thing. But there's also something charming about the men's relationship -- and they are really funny. Stick around (or skip ahead) to the 55-minute mark and Goldthwait's flawless rendition of a shaggy-dog tale about an airplane flight that had engine trouble and made an emergency landing. (He, too, sticks the landing.)
The clips are well curated -- the highlights include Goldthwait trashing Arsenio Hall's set, torching Jay Leno's guest chair, terrorizing Regis and Kathie Lee with a fire extinguisher, and performing in a leisure suit and heavy makeup. (And the clip of Gould cutting a promo with Bob Hope is worth the price of admission.) There certainly could be fewer "I was pals with Robin Williams" stories, although it's eerily fascinating to hear about Williams playing Call of Duty for hours at a stretch while Goldthwait just sat at his side. And the attempt to perpetuate the feud with Seinfeld mostly flops, which Seinfeld would just love. But these two guys are old pros, and at 78 minutes they don't wear out their welcome.
BONUS TRACKS
One cool nugget from "Born in Chicago" is the story of how the Rolling Stones insisted on having Howling Wolf join them on the bill for their 1965 appearance on ABC's hip show "Shindig":
Buddy Guy (reported to be updating his name, in order to appeal to younger listeners, to Dude Bro) shredding through our title track:
The Pixies with their out-of-control-locomotive performance of "Born in Chicago":
No comments:
Post a Comment