Shine a Light

I finally went and saw the Stones/Marty Scorsese concert film "Shine a Light" last night.

The concert was filmed at the Beacon theater here in New York City in October of 2006 as part of former President Bill Clinton's 60th birthday celebration.

The start of the film shows Scorsese and the Stones planning the logistics of the concert. The movie goer also gets a glimpse into a Stones rehearsal for the show and Scorsese and his crew setting up lights and cameras in the Beacon theater. We also see the Stones being introduced to Hillary Clinton's mother Dorothy Rodham and Bill and Hillary's ten year old nephew, plus the thirty VIP's that the Clinton's brought to the show.

Out of those scenes, I really liked seeing the planning and the setting up for this show cause it reminded me of on a whole other level of course, of the planning and setting up of the MEANY Fest special guest shows. The scenes were the band is being introduced to Hillary's mother and nephew and the thirty VIP's felt a little pretentious to me. As did the crowd shots during the performance scenes, there seemed to be some very young beautiful people in the audience that night who looked as if they didn't know who the Stones were and were playing it up for the cameras and it made me wonder if they were actual fans or actors!

The performance scenes sans the crowd shots of the beautiful people are really fantastic, watching the Mick and the boys, makes you realize what a kick ass band the Stones still are after some forty five years and many personnel changes! Jack White of the White Stripes, Christina Aguileria and blues man Buddy Guy are the three special guests that come out and join the Stones for a song. My only other complaint about this film was they gave Christina Aguileria the wrong song to sing! She sings "Live With Me" from "Let It Bleed" and while I like Miss Xtina, I think her voice would have been better suited for "Gimme Shelter". When she sings her bits on "Live With Me" she does that annoying vocal vibrato acrobatics thing were she sings a word and has to sing every note with in that word, it kinda ruins that song and I totally hate that!! Plus she was trying to make her voice sound gritty and rock like and it just wasn't working! I will say Miss Xtina and Mick together on stage was pretty sexy! Buddy Guy, was really great, he sang "Champagne and Reefer" and Jack White did a bang up job on "The Loving Cup". Even though he looks like the undead... Jack White is so freakin' hot!!

One of the things I really loved about watching the performance footage was watching both Keith Richards and Charlie Watts on stage. They both are really great characters of rock and roll and just two of the greatest sidemen ever. The energy, musicianship and stage presence for all the Stones is just amazing to watch!!


"Shine A Light" is further proof that the Rolling Stones are the greatest rock and roll band and Keith Richards is the coolest guy ever! And the performance footage is worth seeing this film on a big screen!! Worth the $11.00 for sure don't wait for it to come on HBO!!

Arlene's show this weekend....

To all the souls who won't be heading off to the beach or the mountains this memorial day weekend and are staying in New York...come on out to Arlene's Grocery this Saturday night 5/24! It's a GNYC night on Saturday at Arlene's. The warm up to summer fun starts at 7:15pm.

On the bill are:

Dr. Mary
Mornings
Afterdawn
Bludik Von Kremdip
Westgate
Underwhelmed
The Cliffs

Arlene's Grocery is located at 95 Stanton Street between Ludlow and Orchard. The show is 21 and over and it's a ten dollar cover charge.

Go Ask Amy.....

Usually when I get bored at work what I will do is look something up on Wikipedia and click on all the links associated with that article. I just saw a film with Richard Gere called "The Hoax" which is a true story about Clifford Irving an author who claimed he was writing a biography on movie mogul Howard Hughes with Hughes full cooperation. Irving, got a one million dollar advance on the book and there was a lot of hype surrounding the publishing of this book, because at the time Howard Hughes was very reclusive and known to not give any interviews to anyone. As it turns out the whole story was a hoax and Clifford Irving faked the Howard Hughes interviews and was arrested for fraud and embezzlement.

Anyhow last week I was bored at work and I looked up Clifford Irving and clicked on all the links associated with his article on wikipedia. One of which was literary hoaxes. One of the articles linked under literary hoaxes was an article about a book that came out in the early 70's called "Go Ask Alice". The book is supposedly the diary of a teenage girl from a nice upper middle class family who got mixed up in the world of sex, drugs (namely weed and LSD) and rock and roll and died from a drug overdose. The book for many years was a pretty controversial book for kids (12 to 17 year olds were its target audience) to read and many schools across the US banned the book because of it's frank description of sex and drug use. And as it turns out the woman who "edited" the book was a devout Mormon and she is thought to have been the real author of the book.

Well the article about this book had me intrigued. And so this weekend as I was making my rounds I stoped off at the McNally bookstore on Prince Street and picked myself up a copy, when I asked the girl who worked behind the counter in what section of the store I could find a copy of the book; she looked at me with a straight face and said "you didn't read this book in secret when you were in the fifth grade...every kid did"!! And I looked at her with straight face and said no I just read the article about this book on wikipedia last week. Once I got home I dug right in and the book made me seriously laugh it read like a really bad after school special. You can tell a lot of urban legends about weed and LSD grew out of this book.

I just had a vision in my head as I read it of this story getting the John Waters treatment on film. I could see Britney Spears as "Alice", Patty Hearst and Tab Hunter playing the parents and Lindsay Lohan as the best friend "Chris". I'm surprised John Waters hasn't turned this book into a film already with Divine as "Alice" and Mink Stole as "Chris".

Very campy this book!!

Two GNYC shows at the Mean Fiddler and Arlene's this weekend. Details later this week.

I leave you with a clip of the Jefferson Airplane preforming "White Rabbit" at "Woodstock"...the lyric "Go Ask Alice" in "White Rabbit" is were the book gets its title from.