Celebrity Death Text, #5

This one came today from my brother, Nate, as a response to my own. He definitely one-upped me regarding Harold Gould, the actor who played 'Kid Twist' in The Sting:



"Stung."

Nice work, Nate.

The RoboCop post, Pt. 1

Okay, let's get one thing straight: I love RoboCop.

It's true. I don't love RoboCop 2, and I've never seen RoboCop 3, so we're not talking about the franchise, here. We're talking about good old 1987-Peter Weller-Paul Verhoeven RoboCop.

Why, Carl, do you like this sci-fi/action B-movie so much, you might ask?

Well, a couple things:

1. It's set in Detroit. As some of you know, I'm originally from Flint, Michigan (a horrible little town that usually finds itself in the Top 5 "Most Dangerous Places To Live In America" list), and any time a film depicts the industrial settings of Michigan in an accurate way, I'm all for it. Even though the film was actually shot in Dallas (because Dallas is a real city, and it ended up looking more like what people would think Detroit should like in the future, since Detroit has no future), it still seemed to evoke the right mood for Detroit: desperation, greed, crime.


*Author's note: No matter where you go in Detroit, there is always crime scene tape blocking your view.

2. It was made in the Reagan-era satirizing everything that the Reagan-era stood for. Just watch those "newsbreaks" with Leeza Gibbons that are throughout the movie...everything from the military-industrial complex running rampant to star wars programs to the idea of global domination as an at-home board game just scream "Reagan". This was the 80s, so what better way to skewer it than with its own ideals?


With this guy in charge, what could possibly go wrong?

3. It is extremely violent, and the level of violence ends up satirizing itself. This movie was made by Paul Verhoeven. If you don't know Paul Verhoeven, he also made Showgirls and Starship Troopers. Now, if you don't think this guy has a sense of humor about Americans, you can go right back to watching straight-to-DVD American Pie sequels. All that aside, Verhoeven uses the ultra-violence to comment not only on American society and their fixation on violence, but also on the depiction of violence in American cinema. The violence gets so crazy throughout the movie, that it ends up being laughable...Verhoeven certainly made his point.


"This pole tastes like disappointment." - Elizabeth Berkley, reflecting on her career.


4. It is about our love/hate relationship with technology and perfecting the human race. This is probably better suited for a whole other post (or series of posts), but the man v. machine idea is prevalent throughout the history of literature and film (see Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Stanley Kubrick's 2001, and Short Circuit 1 and 2, among others).


Steve Guttenburg would have made a good Robocop.

5. It is about Jesus Christ.

What!? You must be crazy now, C-Murder, RoboCop is about a robot cop. "Thank you for your cooperation" and all that shit...it's not a messianic tale, and there's now way that JC is going to be shooting gangbangers and sticking the Dad from That 70's Show in the neck.

Oh but it is, dear reader. Oh but it is...

more on that in Pt. 2.

Finally! Music Ed. and Funky Soul gets its due!

This is amazing news:



There is a documentary coming out about the Kashmere Stage Band!

Who is the Kashmere Stage Band, you ask? This was the high school jazz band at Kashmere High in Houston, Texas that performed from the late 60s to 1978. The director, Conrad Johnson basically taught these kids how to be a funk band...and the results were incredible! Seriously, before I knew these kids were in high school, I figured they were pros.

As a result of their badassery, Johnson had them record a number of 7" singles and 12" albums.

Once these masters were rediscovered, it didn't take long for DJs and crate diggers (like DJ Shadow, in particular) to get in on the action.

Check out the following:



This is from 1973, and was famously sampled in "Holy Calamity" by Handsome Boy Modeling School. High school drummer on this = fantastic.



Their cover of Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio". More breakdown niceties (maybe a little loose on those sextuplets, this time, but the flute solo is a welcome surprise).



Their cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "Thank You". A little on the front of the beat, and the percussion break almost falls apart, but nice guitar work.



The Kashmere Stage Band as sampled by DJ Shadow and Dan the Automator.

So yeah, that's a high school band.

Don't know when the movie comes out, but check out a review over at http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44272

Celebrity Death Text, #3

from Nate Eppler:


"Over, Under. Under, Done."

This is fantastic news for me and you:

I was recently made aware that there is a soon-to-be-released documentary about Bill Withers.
For those of you that don't know who Bill Withers is, you'll probably find out that you do know who Bill Withers is. I have done what I can as one man to spread the gospel of Bill Withers (more than one person has recounted to me how turning them on to Bill has 'changed their life a little bit'), and I always thought someone should make a movie about him.

So who is Bill? He was a regular guy from West Virginia working on 747s installing toilets when he decided to take music more seriously, and when he did that at 32 years of age, he got a record deal. What followed? -

Ever heard, "Lean on Me"? Of course you have. In fact, you already know the words to it and don't even remember how you learned them.

Yeah, well, Bill Withers wrote that gem back in 1972. In addition to that, Withers penned "Ain't No Sunshine" (an oft-covered classic), "Use Me" (which you heard on the "American Beauty" soundtrack), and "Lovely Day" (which was used in that Gap commercial a while ago).

After Bill had all these hits (there were more that you should check out...a list is coming), he quit the music biz completely in 1985. Poof. Gone. Into reclusive-mode like Sly Stone and JD Salinger (RIP). From what I understand, he didn't like the way the music business worked (not too shocking of an indictment) and so he left it. Big balls on Bill Withers, it turns out.

So this documentary is a long time coming...to me this will hopefully be not only the story of a fantastic artist who is one of the best living songwriters, but it should also be a great way for people to learn about the greatness of Bill Withers, someone who really has languished in obscurity in my opinion. Plus, there aren't too many successful artists that will tell you how much they hate the biz.

Not sure when it will be released (website just says "Spring 2010"), but I look forward to it.