Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in
Europe
$24.99
Purist-types love to argue about who “owns” a particular music. Take
jazz — some maintain it’s first and foremost an African-American
form, others a purely American form. It actually took many years
for European musicians to truly establish their own unique “identity”
within jazz, and Play Your Own Thing illustrates the
(continuing) history of European jazz and how scenes from different
parts of the globe impact each other. Aside from archival footage of
American icons Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and Don Cherry, you get UK
and Euro performers disparate as Jan Garbarek, Robert Wyatt, Martial
Solal, and Marilyn Mazur. (EuroArts)
The Dark Knight
$28.98
Iron Man
$34.99
It took awhile, but movies based on comic book characters got to be
helmed by people who really cared about the source material. (Go ahead
and role your eyes, film snobs — what are James Bond, Indiana
Jones, Neo, Sherlock Holmes, the Three Musketeers, and even Don
Quixote, if not “superheroes”?) The Dark Knight is almost
Citizen Kane-like in scope — at two-and-a-half hours it
“felt long” but never tedious — and Iron Man is the
classic-American-success-story-meets-the-rich-hotshot-discovers-he-has-a-soul
scenario — in the latter, Robert Downey Jr. gives one of the most
nuanced performances of the year. Both sets have plenty of cool extras,
but they’re the icing on the gravy — the main attractions are
the shit. (And you needn’t be a comic book fanboy/girl to
appreciate either movie.) (Warner Home Video; Paramount)
Johnny Cash’s America
$21.98
At Folsom Prison
$39.98
The former is a documentary on the Man in Black by Morgan Neville
& Robert Gordon, the aces behind Respect Yourself: The Stax
Records Story; the latter is a CD/DVD set documenting Johnny
Cash’s complete concert at Folsom Prison on January 13, 1968.
Both explore the world(s) of a true American icon, a popular country
singer who took a stand against the Vietnam War (and earned the wrath
of the Ku Klux Klan when he spoke up for Native Americans’ rights), a
pal of mega-evangelist Billy Graham who recorded a song by Glenn
Danzig, a performer that bridged generations at a time when America was
incredibly polarized (1969-1971) and beyond. Edifying and harrowing.
(Sony Legacy)
Joe Strummer: The Future Is
Unwritten
$19.98
As Joe Strummer of the Clash — at one time “the only band that
matters” — left us so early (at age fifty), this documentary is
mos def bittersweet. Using a (slightly contrived)
sitting-’round-the-fire motif, The Future Is Unwritten
presents a vivid portrait of a man who deeply cared about music and its
potential to affect peoples’ lives and of a point in time when rock ‘n’
roll seemed to begin to really matter again. (Even if Clash
songs are now used to sell automobiles.) (Sony Legacy)
Pierre Henry: The Art of Sounds
$28.98
Whether or not Pierre Henry “invented” musique concrete
— essentially music made with turntables, magnetic tape, filters,
a mixing board, and found sound — is beside the point. Along with
fellow traveler Pierre Schaeffer, Henry was a prime mover that put it
on the map, scoring films and ballets in the 1950s and ’60s,
influencing and inspiring everyone from Karlheinz Stockhausen to Frank
Zappa, Einstürzende Neubauten, Merzbow, and countless DJs. Art
of Sounds is a documetary about the man, and includes a film scored
by him and performance footage from ’53 and ’03. As of this writing,
he’s still alive and working, too. (Juxtapositions)
Heaven
$14.99
The directorial debut of Diane Keaton, Heaven was released in
theaters in 1987 and didn’t do terribly well (domestic gross was less
than $80,000). Today, it’d make a wonderful double-bill with Bill
Maher’s Religulous. Heaven is a surreally giddy,
irreverent, virtually stream-of-consciousness documentary about a wide
variety of folks’ beliefs re: heaven (the post-mortality kind), using
footage from lots of Hollywood classic (and unequivocally un-classic)
films. Listen for how an evangelical type declaims, “Are you afraid to
die?,” sounding like a cross between Jello Biafra and John Lydon, while
another asserts, “It’s God’s football.” (Image Entertainment)
Jazz Icons (series: Reelin’ in the Years
Productions/Naxos)
$119.99
The Jazz Icons hepcats have done it again — they’ve released
another eight-DVD box set of 1950s-1970s live performances by iconic
performers Nina Simone, Cannonball Adderley, Oscar Peterson, Rahsaan
Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Lionel Hampton, and Sonny Rollins, plus a
not-available-separately bonus disc. Can’t afford the whole damn thing?
Get the Bill Evans volume featuring four different bass/drums teams and
covers ’64 through ’75; the R.R. Kirk (’63 and ’67), and that fairly
smoking Cannonball Adderley, which features Yusef Lateef and a
young Josef Zawinul (later of Weather Report). (Naxos)
Los Straitjackets in Concert
$19.98
Generally speaking, our nation doesn’t know it (yet), but Los
Straitjackets are America’s greatest, coolest instrumental rock ‘n’
roll combo. Having learned their lessons from the best of their
forebears — the Ventures, Dick Dale, Link Wray, the Raybeats (of
which ‘jacket Danny Amis was a member), and the Mexican Wrestling
Federation — Los Straitjackets are as restorative as a glass of
strong iced tea on a summer day. They’re a scintillating live act as
well, as this concert DVD will attest. Though it’s not, alas, included
on In Concert, try to catch their Christmas Holiday show. (Yep
Roc)
