Film Review: ‘My Generation’

by Jay Weissberg, Variety.com: http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/my-generation-review-1202595221/

Director:

 

David Batty

Cast:

 

Michael Caine

85 minutes

Official Site: 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6264954/reference

There’s a tremendous amount of pleasure to be had in David Batty’s “My Generation,” a sloppy wet kiss to Michael Caine and British youth culture of the 1960s. Loaded with great footage from the era and accompanied by superbly cleaned-up music tracks from the Kinks, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others, this love letter-as-documentary offers 85 minutes of good old fun. What it doesn’t do is posit any genuine analysis or even make a head-nod to diversity. But this is Caine’s narrative about the unapologetic working class taking over popular culture, and the writers as well as music mogul Simon Fuller, acting as top producer, have no interest in countering their star’s gleefully empowering chronicle of his youth. Voiceover interviews with such key players of the era as Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull, Twiggy and Mary Quant add to the overall feast, making the film an attractive offering for all platforms.

Britain in the 1950s was dull, announces Caine, though doesn’t every generation say that about the era before their own gloriously self-satisfied arrival? What’s undeniable is the momentous shift toward youth culture beginning in the 1960s, as well as the opening up of opportunities for white working-class creative types who no longer submitted to makeovers designed to smooth out their roughness. In one of the more telling anecdotes, Caine talks about auditioning for “Zulu,” his breakthrough role, and accurately suggests that had the director, Cy Endfield, been British instead of American, Caine’s working class London accent would have eliminated any hope of being cast in the role of an upper-class officer. That’s an undeniable fact.

Far more shaky is the suggestion that the working class in the 1960s was the first generation in Britain to thumb its collective nose at convention. On-the-street interviews from the era with stuffed shirts bemoaning the appearance of long-haired men in flowery blouses expose middle-class attitudes, but the filmmakers choose to ignore the fact that the upper class has always played with transgression in ways designed to shock the bourgeoisie. What made the 1960s different was that the working class was playing the same game, and emulating “our betters” was no longer an acceptable form of behavior. Nor was emulating our elders: Freedom from convention was the hallmark of a social revolution that impacted everything from art, music and clothing to changing concepts of morality. Of course, every Englishman knows the class system remains the key determinant of opportunity, but in the art and entertainment world, coming from the wrong side of the tracks is actually now more desirable than a boarding school certificate, and that’s definitely due to the upheavals of the 1960s.

Batty divides the film into three parts, roughly corresponding to the awakening, the flourishing and the decline of 1960s pop culture. Alongside nods to expected historic markers like the Beatles performing at Liverpool’s Cavern Club are more unanticipated moments, such as Roger Daltry talking about the profound impact of seeing Elvis perform: “For the first time in my life, I saw someone who was free.” That’s about the only time in the film there’s a mention of transatlantic influences on the British scene.

From there, the documentary plunges headlong into the intoxicating psychedelic playpen of Pop Art, Vidal Sassoon haircuts, and Mary Quant micro-miniskirts, reminding audiences (or teaching them for the first time) that in the 1960s, color and pattern were transgressive and hip, unlike today’s tediously conformist black monochromaticity. Suddenly, thanks to the British Invasion, being young and British meant you were cool, stylish and glam, tuned into the best music, clothes and art movements. Models such as Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy set new standards for beauty, and groups like the Animals, the Kinks, the Stones and of course the Beatles set the tone, guiding a generation from the innocent charm of “Love Me Do” to the raucous hunger of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” By the end of the decade, hedonism took a darker turn. The Vietnam War acted as a political coming of age, and the destructive nature of so much heavy drug use began to take its toll, symbolized by the death of Brian Jones and Faithfull’s near-fatal drug overdose, both in 1969.

For Caine, “My Generation” is a chance to look back in nostalgic delight at his salad days, allowing him to gamely reminisce about his time as one of the “it” boys of London. He even gets to swan around in the original Aston Martin DB4 he drove in “The Italian Job.” None of the others interviewed are seen on screen — whether that’s because the producers wanted to maintain the aura of 1960s youth, or it was the only way to get these people to talk, remains open for speculation. It’s also likely that writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais allowed themselves to be guided by Caine’s insistence on working-class culture, ignoring the fact that some of those included, most especially Faithfull, are from posh backgrounds.

If you set aside analytical skills however, it’s easy to sit back and enjoy the wealth of archival clips accompanied by fantastic music tracks that seem to have been remastered for the occasion (lord knows how much all the music rights must have cost). Ben Hilton’s editing successfully crams in a great deal without a sense of whiplash.

Film Review: 'My Generation'

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 4, 2017. (Also in London Film Festival – Journey.)

PRODUCTION: (Documentary — U.K.) An XIX Entertainment presentation, in association with IM Global, of a Raymi Films production, in association with Ingenious Media. (International sales: IM Global, Los Angeles.)  Producers: Simon Fuller, Michael Caine, Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly. Executive producer: James Clayton. Co-producer: Ben Hilton. CREW: Director: David Batty. Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais. Camera (color): Ben Hodgson. Editor: Ben Hilton. Music supervisor: Tarquin Gotch.

WITH: Michael CaineVoices of David Bailey, Twiggy, Terry O’Neill, Roger Daltrey, Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney, Lulu, Joan Collins, Sandie Shaw, Penelope Tree, Dudley Edwards, Mary Quant, Mim Scala, David Putnam, Barbara Hulanicki.

VIDEOS: When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with Household Objects: Hear Two Surviving Tracks Made with Wine Glasses and Rubber Bands

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/when-pink-floyd-tried-to-make-an-album-with-household-objects.html

There are bands one casually encounters through greatest hits or breakthrough albums, on which they sound exactly like themselves and no one else. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Fleetwood Mac making Rumors or Tusk. Or anyone but Pink Floyd recording Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon. But just like Fleetwood Mac, when we look back before Floyd’s best-known work, we find, as Mark Blake writes at Team Rock, that “they were a very different proposition.”

And yet it wasn't that Pink Floyd radically shuffled the lineup—though they had, since their first album, lost founding singer and guitarist Syd Barrett to mental illness and taken on David Gilmour to replace him. It’s that the same four musicians who re-invented psych-rock in the early 70s with “Money,” “Time,” and “Great Gig in the Sky,” sounded nothing like that blues/funk/disco/prog hybrid in the late 60s. Some of the same elements were there—the sardonic sense of humor, love for sound effects and extended jam sessions—but they cohered in much more alien and experimental shapes.

The title track of 1968’s Saucerful of Secrets, for example, opens with four minutes of dissonant horror-movie organ drones, which give way to primal drumming around which piano chords and sci-fi noises fall haphazardly, then resolve in a closing wordless choral passage. Not a single, cynical lyric about the pains of modern life to be found. The following year’s Ummagumma continued to build the band’s experimental foundations, and in-between these projects, they recorded film soundtracks that, again, do not make one think of laser-lit arena rock shows.

But there is plenty of connective tissue between the various phases of Floyd, much of it, like the bulk of their 1970 soundtrack for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, officially unreleased. We can add to that list an attempted album called Household Objects, which they began in 1970 and abandoned in ’74. The project, drummer Nick Mason admitted, represents the then-largely-instrumental band “still looking for a coherent direction,” and in so doing, abandoning instruments altogether. On Household Objects, they made serendipitous discoveries using—as the title clearly stated—found sounds, in the vein of John Cage or the avant-garde composers of musique concrete.

In 1971, Abbey Road studios tape operator John Leckie, who went on to produce the heavily Floyd-influenced Muse, remembers the band “making chords up from the tapping of beer bottles, tearing newspapers for rhythm, and letting off aerosol cans to get a hi-hat sound.” Keyboardist Richard Wright recalls spending “days getting a pencil and a rubber band till it sounded like a bass.” The idea began two years earlier when the band performed a composition called Work that “involved,” writes Blake, “sawing wood and boiling kettles on stage.”

Household Objects recording sessions, writes Rolling Stone, “consisted of Pink Floyd playing songs on hand mixers, light bulbs, wood saws, hammers, brooms and other home appliances. Recording in this manner was excruciating.” Wright and Gilmour grew exasperated and the band moved on to other things, namely Wish You Were Here. All that seemingly remains of Household Objects are the two tracks here, “The Hard Way” (an instance where rubber bands sound like a bass) and “Wine Glasses,” the latter employing, you guessed it, wine glasses. But like so much of Floyd’s lesser-known or forgotten experimental work, these sessions created the backdrop for their more accessible hits. “Wine Glasses” survived in “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” In the video just above, you can see David Gilmour work out the glass arrangements for his performance of the song in the 2006 Royal Albert Hall concert film Remember That Night.

The Smithsonian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Photos on a Crowdsourced Web Site, and Now a New Book

Rock photography is an art form in itself, as demonstrated by books and exhibitions of some of its masters like Mick Rock, Jenny Lens, Pennie Smith, and so many others. But two years ago, the Smithsonian turned to the crowd, to the fan, to the amateur photographer, with a call to submit photos from over six decades of rock and roll that weren’t hanging on gallery walls, but sitting in a shoebox somewhere. From fans with instamatic cameras to amateurs covering concerts for their school paper, the Smithsonian wanted another angle on our cultural obsession.

Many of the contributions now live on a crowdsourced website. And a resulting book Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen collects the best of these in a chronological history of the genre, from post-war blues to the late 20th century. It will be officially released on October 24, though you can pre-order now.

Websites Mashable and Dangerous Minds present a selection of photos from the book, such as a shot of Sly Stone at the height of his powers (and belt buckle size), a pic of the Talking Heads on stage in Berkeley, 1977; a dark and mysterious glimpse of Bonnie Raitt, circa 1974; and a shot of Cream playing the Chicago Coliseum taken from the side of the stage, with Ginger Baker’s head a complete blur. Also find Joni Mitchell at Kleinhans Music Hall. And The Ramones in Tempe, Arizona, circa 1978.

Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre, by Barry Schneier/Smithsonian Books

It’s a reminder of how unpretentious these live shows could be, happening in a world with the simplest of lighting rigs and decades from the big screen projections even up-and-coming bands now indulge in. For the most part, this was an intimate contract between the artist and the audience, all crammed into small clubs with smoke, sweat, heat, and, most importantly, electricity in the air.

The new book also features tales from the people who took the photos, along with some more professional photos to “flesh out this overview of rock and roll,” according to the introduction by organizer Bill Bentley. He adds: "The results, spanning six decades, aim for neither encyclopedic authority nor comprehensive finality, but rather an index of supreme influence."

The Ramones in Tempe, Arizona, by Dorian Boese/Smithsonian Books

That supreme influence continues to be felt, for sure. Although the submission window is now closed, the Smithsonian's website allows you to look through the hundreds of submissions to the project.

VIDEO: Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash Sessions

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/the_1969_bob_dylan-johnny_cash_sessions_twelve_rare_recordings.html

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash had formed a mutual admiration society even before they met in the early 1960s.

"Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me," Dylan wrote shortly after Cash's death in 2003. "In '55 or '56, 'I Walk the Line' played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the Earth. It was so powerful and moving."

When the young Dylan arrived on the scene in 1962, Cash was impressed.

"I was deeply into folk music in the early 1960s," he wrote in Cash: The Autobiography, "both the authentic songs from various periods and areas of American life and the new 'folk revival' songs of the time, so I took note of Bob Dylan as soon as the Bob Dylan album came out in early '62 and listened almost constantly to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in '63. I had a portable record player I'd take along on the road, and I'd put on Freewheelin' backstage, then go out and do my show, then listen again as soon as I came off."

Cash wrote the young Dylan a fan letter, and they began corresponding. When they met at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Cash gave Dylan his guitar as a gesture of respect and admiration. Five years later, when Dylan was in Nashville recording his ninth studio album, Cash was recording in the studio next door. He decided to drop in. On February 17 and 18, 1969, Cash and Dylan recorded more than a dozen duets. Only one of them, a version of Dylan's "Girl From the North Country," made it onto the album, Nashville Skyline. The others were never officially released, but have long been circulating as bootlegs. In the video above, Dylan and Cash work on one of two versions they made of "One Too Many Mornings," a song originally recorded by Dylan in 1964 for The Times They Are a-Changin'.  The outtakes Dylan and Cash recorded together are all scattered around Youtube. One Youtuber posted a compilation back in 2013.

A few weeks after the release of Nashville Skyline, Dylan and Cash performed "Girl From the North Country" on The Johnny Cash Show. It was taped on May 1, 1969 at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. A rough video clip (around the 30 minute mark) captures the moment. Despite Dylan's reported nervousness, the performance was well-received. "I didn't feel anything about it," Cash said later. "But everybody said it was the most magnetic, powerful thing they ever heard in their life. They were just raving about electricity and magnetism. And all I did was just sit there hitting G chords."