So Long, Ray Manzarek

I was never a massive Doors fan, but I do like a lot of their stuff, and I'd feel remiss not at least mentioning the passing of Ray Manzarek yesterday. So in brief tribute, here's my very favorite Doors song--and one of my favorite songs by anyone. Ray's piano work has a lot to do with why I love this one so much. 

Beatles 'Help!' coming to Blu-ray This Summer

Beatlemaniacs who long to see Ringo's nose hairs in high definition, rejoice! On June 25, the Fab's 1965 flick Help! will be coming to Blu-ray. According to The Beatles.com, this disc will pair "the digitally restored film and 5.1 soundtrack with an hour of extra features, including a 30-minute documentary about the making of the film, memories of the cast and crew, an in-depth look at the restoration process, an outtake scene, and original theatrical trailers and radio spots. An introduction by the film’s director, Richard Lester, and an appreciation by Martin Scorsese are included in the Blu-ray’s booklet."

Other features include:

• “The Beatles in Help!” – a 30-minute documentary about the making of the film with Richard Lester, the cast and crew, including exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of The Beatles on-set.
• “A Missing Scene” – a film outtake, featuring Wendy Richard
• “The Restoration ofHelp!” – an in-depth look at the restoration process
• “Memories of Help! ” – the cast and crew reminisce
• 1965 Theatrical Trailers – two original U.S. trailers and one original Spanish trailer
• 1965 U.S. Radio Spots (hidden in disc menus)

Review: The Rolling Stones in 'Crossfire Hurricane'

When Mick Jagger contacted Brett Morgen about making a fiftieth anniversary documentary on The Rolling Stones, the filmmaker rightfully believed Mick wanted a series not unlike the great Beatles Anthology. Not so. Mick was very emphatic about wanting a lean, under-two hours documentary. Why the hip shaker wanted to place such a ridiculous constriction on such a bountiful history is anyone’s guess. This left Morgen with the task of condensing five decades of dirty work and eighty hours of audio interviews down to 110 minutes. I don’t envy the dude, yet as a hardcore Stones freak I can’t be anything but disappointed with Crossfire Hurricane. 

No use crying over the miniscule running time. It’s how Morgen chose to fill it that I find inadequate. He condenses the band’s story down to a handful of overly familiar tales: Mick and Keith’s first songwriting efforts, the Redlands bust, Brian Jones’s death, Altamont, Keith’s heroin issues, the band’s self-imposed exile from England, Mick Taylor’s departure and Ronnie Wood’s arrival, etc. What salvages the narration is having the Stones do it themselves, and it’s particularly enlightening hearing Mick and Keith talk about being scared during the Altamont insanity and Mick discuss Brian (his shocked exclamation of “fuck” after Morgen informs him that Brian died just two weeks after being fired from the band is an unexpectedly poignant moment). 

The main problem of Crossfire Hurricane is that the guys’ chatter plays out over footage that makes “Satisfaction” seem like a long-lost outtake. Way too much of these 110 minutes are wasted with extended clips from readily available films such as Charlie Is My Darling, The T.A.M.I. Show, The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus, One Plus One, Gimme Shelter, and Let’s Spend the Night Together. Eagle Rock Entertainment somewhat makes up for this by supplementing its DVD with choice unreleased live and TV footage from 1964 and 1965. However, these bonus features just shine further light on how the film could have been comprised of more exotic footage. Some of Morgen’s other choices are kind of questionable too, such as overlaying orgasm noises over Keith’s statement that being in the band was like an orgy or dropping pig oinks over Mick’s discussion of the hedonistic seventies. Still, it was smart on the director’s part to spend the vast majority of the film’s running time in the sixties (the eighties and beyond barely sneak in before the closing credits).

So, if a UFO lands on Earth tomorrow, and the aliens slither down the ramp and ask, “What are these Rolling Stones?” the president would not be out of order to show them Crossfire Hurricane. However, to proclaim that this doc “is and will remain the definitive story of the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band,” as the liner notes of this DVD does, is ludicrous. At least, I hope it is, because I’m gonna hold out for a truly all-encompassing, anthology-style documentary on The Rolling Stones until I croak.

Get Crossfire Hurricane on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com here:

Psychobabble Has Joined Frankensteinia's Peter Cushing Centennial Blogathon

This coming May 26th marks the 100th birthday of one of cinema's most luminous stars, and to celebrate this event, the great Frankenstein blog Frankensteinia is hosting a blogathon in tribute to Peter Cushing. This will involve bloggers from across the blogoverse blogging blogs about Peter Cushing. Frankensteinia hosted a similar tribute to Boris Karloff back in 2010, and I participated then. I'm not sure if my involvement in the Peter Cushing Centennial Blogathon will be quite so prolific, but I do have one piece in the can and hope that inspiration will strike to get me writing more over the event's run from May 25 through May 31.

Mark Lewisohn Beginning Massive Beatles Trilogy This Autumn

Mark Lewisohn, the author of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, may be the best known authority on The Beatles. This October 29, he will begin publishing a huge biographical trilogy on the band called The Beatles- All These Years. The first volume of the series is called Tune In, which will cover the Fab's formative years before they became intergalactic superstars. And according to Amazon.com, it is 1,248 pages... let that sink in, 1248 pages about the guys before they even released "Love Me Do." Yow.

Tune In: The Beatles- All These Years and the latest edition of The Complete Beatles Recordings are now available to pre-order on Amazon.com here:

'The Monkees Present' Deluxe Box Set Coming This Summer

After a year-and-a-half delay, Rhino Records will be continuing its handmade deluxe series of Monkees reissues on (tentatively) July 30 with a three-disc box set featuring The Monkees Present. The Monkees' last LP to feature Mike Nesmith was originally intended to be a sort of Ummagumma with each band member controlling a side of a double LP. Peter Tork's departure in early 1969 put the kibosh on that concept. Instead, we got a single album with an even number of tracks sung by Mike, Micky and Davy interspersed throughout. Most of the album was a strong mesh of Jones's adult contemporary pop, Nesmith's country rock, and Dolenz's blues and loungy jazz.  However, like most of The Monkees albums after Chip Douglas lost the producer's seat, the assemblage was flawed, as it included a couple of old Davy Jones-sung tracks (one of which being the unbearable novelty "Ladies Aid Society") when newer, better material was available.

Along with the original album, Rhino's triple disc box will showcase that plethora of outtakes. Many of them have been released on the Missing Links collections and the expanded Monkees CDs from the '90s, but titles such as "Down the Highway," "How Can I Tell You," "Thank You My Friend," "Opening Night," "Lynn Harper," "A Bus That Never Comes," "Omega," "13 Is Not Our Lucky Number," "Little Tommy Blues," and "Till Then" have not been previously released (before you get too excited, though, most of these are just backing tracks).

The set is limited to 5,000 units and includes a bonus vinyl 7" of an alternate mix of "Good Clean Fun" backed with "Mommy and Daddy" in mono. Once again, Andrew Sandoval is the producer and annotator. 

You can pre-order The Monkees Present (deluxe) now at The Monkees Store here. Here's the complete track list:

Review: 'Yes Is the Answer and Other Prog Tales'

It is long-winded. It is humorless. It is unashamedly grand and robotically impersonal. It is prog, and until hair metal farted onto the scene in the mid-eighties, it was Rock & Roll’s biggest running joke. But time ameliorates shame, and 35 years after punk ostensibly cleared the pomp out of pop, the prog acolytes are finally crawling out of the carpet to reclaim their favorite genre. In a year when Rush has finally been inducted into the cluelessly snobbish Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, anything is possible, including a collection of essays that not only pay tribute to this long-chided form of music but do so in ways that completely contradict its stuffy rep. Long-winded? Humorless? Grand? Impersonal? These are not words anyone would use to describe Yes Is the Answer and Other Prog Tales. Editors Marc Weingarten and Tyson Cornell have gathered twenty writers who discuss how those mathematical soundtracks for D&D all-nighters impacted their lives with humbleness and wit.

In his introduction, Marc Weingarten maps out the modus operandi of the writers to follow: their defensiveness (“Who cares if the lyrics were terrible?”), awe (“…it’s like you’ve come face to face with some earthly God”), and team spirit (“Jazz fusion fans were douchebags”). The essays that follow are not the kind of analytical wanking one might expect from discussions of prog. These are the real stories of real fans, and there’s a lovely sense of time and place in many of these tales. You can sniff the pot-infused denim, see the wood paneled basements, and feel the suburban angst in these stories of garage bands, unrequited love, unsuccessful sex, and vinyl obsession. Matthew Spektor’s “Yes Is No Disgrace” pours forth in an overexcited, parentheses-peppered fit of fan-struck apology and ardor. Jim Greer’s “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” explains how the grandiose Genesis influenced Robert Pollard, the brilliant leader of Greer’s lo-fi former band Guided by Voices. Rodrigo Fresan draws parallels between prog and A Clockwork Orange in “A Clockwork Wall.” Tom Junod’s “Out, Angels Out,” flies in an unexpected and pretty scary direction, and Andrew Mellen offers an untapped perspective in the self-explanatory “Do Gay Guys Listen to Yes?” (his subheading: “At least one does”). Jeff Gordinier balances all the prog-love by explaining how he gave up on it while suffering through a Styx show in “Set an Open Course for the Virgin Sea.”

Only a couple of writers don’t quite enter into the spirit of the book. Jim DeRogatis’s “Ode to the Giant Hogweeds” is a pretty straight and impersonal bio and analysis of Genesis’ peak years. Prog only makes a cameo in the druggy “Satori Underground” by Christian Death’s John Albert and Charles Brock’s “In the Court of TheCrimsonKing02,” which is mostly about goofy posts on a hair metal message board in the early days of the Internet. A bit off topic, even these essays are still entertaining reading, and I was as pleased by the consistent quality of the writing throughout Yes Is the Answer as I was by the warmth and earthliness of its prog rock tales.