Capsule Reviews: Fremont, Rental Family and EPiC

In this era of big Marvel and DC superhero action films, it was nice to recently come across some films that were much smaller in scale and much quieter, yet nevertheless indelible in ways that only arthouse films can be.

Fremont (Prime)
From 2023, this quiet moving film about a young Afghan woman who has resettled in the Northern California city of Fremont (near San Francisco) after having served as a translator for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Though not many details of her previous life are offered, it’s clear she has suffered some trauma and feels isolated and adrift, as she tries to adjust to her new life. This is in spite the fact she lives in an Afghani community and holds a job at a fortune cookie factory. The one star in it was Jeremy Allen White. It’s in black and white. But there really isn’t much about Fremont itself lol, though that is where she lives. A very quiet film of small moments, but I liked it a lot.

Rental Family (Hulu)

Another quiet moving film about an American expatriate (Brendan Fraser), a struggling actor living in Japan who finds work at a family rental agency. I’m not sure how accurate the film is in terms of the kind of work these workers actually do (though I had vaguely heard about people paid to attend funerals), but it explores the sticky ethics of such work (especially when it involves deception), and whether it’s possible for the workers to keep their work and personal feelings and lives separate. Full of warmth and humor, Brendan Fraser anchors the film, joined by a dominantly Japanese cast.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert

When I heard about this film, I opted to see it in a theater to enjoy a full theatrical and sound experience. Part documentary and part concert film, it mostly strips away Elvis’s bigger-than-life image to focus on his music chops and performance, particularly his early in residence Vegas years. (Though you do see a bit of weight fluctuation in some of the footage, there’s little of the later “Fat Elvis” years—in fact, in the earlier footage, The King looks downright terrific and slim. Kind of a mini-version of the Beatles’ Get Back documentary, the film provides a brief bio of his early musical and movie career, then focuses on both studio rehearsals and concert performances. It was a treat to see Elvis in concert, he was truly electric, giving 110% in every performance. And to go back to the Get Back comparison, it was a blast seeing him perform three Beatles tunes: Yesterday, Something, and, live in concert, a terrific mashup of Little Sister with Get Back!

A Rockin' New Year Concert – MADJB!

In the year just past, I discovered the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band on YouTube, which mostly does covers of "dad rock" and other power pop songs. Formed during COVID, it's led by comedians Ed Marino and David Wain, members of The State comedy troupe. The band includes friends, musicians, and other actors and comedians, with guests frequently sitting in and singing in their videos and live shows. They obviously love the music and have pretty good music chops, but as the band's name suggests, and they being who they are, it's all about the fun and they don't take themselves too seriously.

So when they announced they were having a New Year's Eve concert, at a small second floor club called the Lodge Room in Highland Park, just north of downtown Los Angeles, we couldn't resist the opportunity to see them! 

They performed a diverse set list that ranged from covers of songs by Billy Joel (three!) the Doors, the Squeeze, Talking Heads, Tom Petty, Tommy Tutone, ABBA, Springsteen, the Who, Paul McCartney, the B-52s, Barry Manilow, and others—they also performed a full cover of Conjunction Junction!Among their guests were comedian/actors Kerri Kenney, Errin Hayes and Joe Truglio. There also were lots of laughs and comedy bits between songs. Their kids also took the stage at one point, performing covers of songs from Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo. At three hours (with a break), we certainly got our money's worth (tickets were surprisingly not expensive at all). It was a great way to ring in the new year.

At the end of the show, Marino mingled a little with the crowd, so I was able to thank him for a great show!

Let It Be Re-Release

Go-Go's in Concert

We saw the Go-Go's at Crypto.com Arena on March 30th—with things opening up, it was a thrill to see a live concert, particularly a band that broke through when I was at UCLA, so they were part of my college soundtrack. (For Christmas, I received drummer Gina Schock’s coffee table memoir of memories and photos, Made In Hollywood: All Access with the Go-Go's, where I learned the band played and hung out at places I haunted back in the day.) While I’ve always enjoyed their song catalog, Talk Show has always been one of my favorite albums.

We actually had missed getting tickets for a Go-Go's concert in L.A. back in December, around the time the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because I dragged my feet on getting tickets…but that show and others ended up being cancelled due to someone on the tour getting COVID. So when an ad popped up for this show, we were sure to grab a pair right away (I later learned it was part of a busy current tour they’re on!)

The band did not disappoint and leaned heavily into the fast-driving punk surfer sound of their early years. The only small disappointment was that Schock, my favorite Go-Go (on whom I always had a crush), apparently was recovering from some recent surgery—fortunately, she was well enough to attend and came out onstage a couple times to rev up the audience and introduce the band. Filling in for Schock was Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who ably kept the band tight.

When we walked into the venue, I was surprised at how intimate the space felt—and how close we were to the stage. We were only one section up from the main floor. Although most of the show was sold out (the upper nose bleed seats were not in use), for some reason nearly our entire row was empty, so we had it to ourselves!

I actually have never been inside Crypto before (formerly the Staples Center), home to the Lakers, Clippers and Kings. Located in downtown L.A., the surrounding area (and, indeed, all downtown) has been undergoing transformation (and, yes, gentrification) in recent years—back in the day, downtown was home to offices and businesses, but otherwise a ghost town at night and on weekends. Outside the arena, directly across the street and throughout downtown, high rise buildings were in various stages of construction—we arrived a few hours in advance to grab dinner a few blocks away prior to the show and, on the way, walked across tracks of the relatively new L.A. Metro rail that the city has been building out. (I’ve taken the Metro from our Westside home to downtown L.A. in the past, a fairly jaunty 35-minute ride.) The Crypto.com arena has statues of Lakers (and Kings) greats outside and anchors an entertainment complex called L.A. Live that houses retail stores, restaurants, a performing arts venue called Microsoft Theater, and the Grammy Museum.

My biggest fear when attending concerts is getting stuck in parking lot traffic on the way out…which fortunately turned out to be a non-issue. I pre-paid for parking, strategically choosing a lot on the near side of our drive so that we wouldn’t have to drive into or through downtown…in fact, we live close enough that we decided to take local streets into downtown L.A. to avoid evening rush hour freeway traffic, almost literally a straight shot from our place and then a left turn, much of it running parallel with the above-mentioned Metro rail (my wife works in downtown L.A. so she is particularly familiar with the area).

We left the arena at the same time as everyone else but when we got to our car, people were still straggling into the parking lot, so we simply hopped in the car and exited the structure without any traffic or hindrance! In the street, there was a backup of cars to get to the freeway, but we simply turned right out of the garage into the opposite direction and took local streets until we were far enough out of the area and concert traffic to then hop on the freeway and drive home the last five or so miles home (we’re about 11 miles from downtown). Anyway, it was a terrific and memorable show!

Passing of Meat Loaf

REVIEW: Peter Jackson's Get Back

On top of reading and drawing comics, Monty Python, playing guns and some sports, building models and, of course, watching TV, the Beatles were among my topmost obsessions growing up.

I was born two years to the month before the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964—this appearance  was also my brother’s first birthday. I was crazy about the band at an early age, most likely due to the Beatles tv cartoon series. The first album I ever owned (aside from kiddie records) was "The Early Beatles"—we still own that album, which I’ve posted here in all its taped up glory. I recall seeing and hearing their first true American album, "Meet the Beatles" at the house of a family friend.

At that young age, I was hardly a consumer of pop culture or entertainment news, so it was purely through their album covers that I learned of their transition from the mop tops next door to the voices of the psychedelic and hippie movements to which I was fairly oblivious given my suburban upbringing—after all, I was only 5 years old during the Summer of Love. I recall an uncle who was staying with us coming home one day with the Sgt. Pepper album as a gift—their new look puzzled me; later, I encountered the Abbey Road album and the Beatles in full "hippie" mode at an aunt’s apartment through her roommate; and I have a vivid memory of seeing the "Let It Be" album in a department store we frequented. If memory serves, "The Early Beatles," "Sgt. Pepper" and, later, "Let It Be," were the first Beatles albums I owned (shared with my brother of course) until the Red and Blue compilation albums came along when I was 11. By the time I was in my late teens (but after they already had broken up), we own most of their albums and I later bought replaced them all on CD when they were released. Catching the films A Hard Day's Night and Help! on tv was an obsession and when we first moved to California, my first trip to a revival theater was a double bill of the two films in Monterey. When A Hard Days' Night went through one of its first restorations and released theatrically when it was in college, I sat through two showings of it by myself in a theater in L.A. during the middle of the day.  

In addition, one of my favorite Christmas gifts of all time was receiving the 8-cassette VHS Beatles Anthology documentary series from my brother (later upgraded to DVD), which I’ve seen multiple times.

So I was very excited by the recent Peter Jackson documentary, culled from the nearly 60 hours of footage taken for what was eventually released as the "Let It Be" album, particularly since it offered a completely different narrative of the sessions that over time had been colored in a negative light by the film that was released just months after the Beatles’ breakup. Over time, even the Beatles themselves bought into the narrative that had been created by the film (which has not been available for quite some time).

Many people have offered their reactions and commentaries to the film so I won’t go into any further depth in the series, aside from come of my own observations and comments:

• Although they came into the studio at the outset with some songs ready to be completed, it nevertheless still seems kinda nuts that they went into the studio with the goal of writing and completing 10 or so new songs, booking a venue and performing them live in concert in the span of three or so weeks. There was no interest in resting on their laurels and performing any of their “classic” hits from their back catalog. 

• With the hindsight of age, they still looked like kids, being around 26-28 years old during filming! Even producer George Martin looks young, who was in his early 40s at the time (again, showing my age).

• Speaking of kids, it's clear that the amazing process we're witnessing as they (particularly Lennon and McCartney) throw out suggestions to each other in the form of lyrics, chords and music arrangement is the same they've been doing since they were teens—Lennon and McCartney first met when they were respectively 16 and 15 years old, and Harrison was even younger. 

It’s an easy rapport and collaborative process they've developed from more than 10 years of songwriting together, beginning as teens. This rapport also translates into the harmonies and vocals they easily slip into.

• 
  By the same token, for guys just a few years into adulthood and who up to then have only known live as a Beatle, you can understand why they were perhaps ready to move on. You particularly see this when Harrison mentions that he's considering releasing his own album since his usual 1 to 2 song allotment per album (which he seemingly accepts without question) is no longer enough to accommodate the backlog of songs he''s written. 

Along the same lines, you can understand McCartney's desire to front his own band—he seems to know exactly what he wants and, though he appears very conscious of coming off as "bossy" and acting as the "frontman," being in the Beatles requires a level of diplomacy and delicacy to achieve that. (His taking charge was partly out of necessity due to the leadership vacuum created by the death of manager Brian Epstein, which they explicitly acknowledge in the documentary, and Lennon's own disengagement.)

• The Beatles were hilarious—I genuinely howled at some bits. A favorite is the scene where they discuss what charity to donate the proceeds of their concert to—Harrison interjects, "Well they say charity starts at home, why don't we do it at Paul's place?"

• This silliness often extended into their music, such as Lennon and McCartney goofily singing "Two of Us" through clenched teeth. Though they obviously took their songwriting seriously, it's clear that they didn't consider either their songs or those of others as so precious or serious that they couldn't make fun of them. They were known (especially Lennon) for being goofy on stage and you can see them often channeling their inner lounge lizards when performing. (I don't believe it's included in the documentary, but a terrific and hilarious rendition of “Besame Mucho” exists from these sessions.) 

• 
  So it’s a treat to see them spontaneously break out into numbers and covers of their own songs and others as diverse as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, turn of the century standards, and even the theme song to the film, The Third Man, reflecting a vast song catalog at their fingertips likely dating to their Hamburg days, when they were required to perform up to an incredible EIGHT HOURS or more a day! (When the Beatles returned from Hamburg, fans and rival bands in Liverpool apparently were shocked by how much they had improved as musicians.)

• Original Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has caught a lot of grief for coming off a bit intrusive, presumptuous and, yes, annoying. These included some of his ideas for the concert (at an ancient amphitheater in Libya after a long cruise or a children's hospital, but not where kids are like, "dying.") He also had an annoying habit of calling people by their initials (Ringo Starr= "R.S." and constantly smoking a cigar, perhaps trying to channel Orson Welles, who he suspected may be his biological father. That said, the footage that includes him was likely never meant for the final cut, as he just had cameras running full tilt through much of the sessions.

But I give Lindsay-Hogg full credit for the foresight of setting up 10 cameras for the concert, which included five on the rooftop, one on another rooftop across the street, three cameras at  street level, and a hidden camera in Apple’s main lobby to capture all the action and footage he did. And kudos to Jackson for maximizing the use of that footage by the use of split screens so that viewers could see what was happening simultaneously throughout the rooftop concert!

• Finally, watching the police bobbies and people on the street was sometimes like watching Monty Python characters come to life—their portrayals don't seem as much of an exaggeration as I thought! 

Anyway, it's an amazing documentary. Jackson deserves great credit for restoring the footage and putting them together, as does Lindsay-Hogg in recording the historic sessions.

Additional Reading:

• Let It Be Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Words of Wisdom on His Misunderstood Beatles Documentary
• The Beatles: Get Back (rogerebert.com)

REVIEW: OK Go in Concert

My family and I had the pleasure to see OK Go in concert on November 2.

The family-friendly show was a concert but also a bit of performance art —though they played live, their performances were often played in sync with the videos for which they are famous, many of which have gone viral.

And showcasing their creativity and playfulness, they invited the audience to download an app to their phones and play along with one of their numbers, with cues given onscreen on what notes to hit.

At various moments in the show, they also paused for some Q&A, displaying lots of humor and wit. And, of course, there was showmanship—in addition to the videos, at some points in the show, they had machines that blasted confetti onto the audience during a few numbers. For the encore, they invited kids to come on stage to dance as they performed a cover of Blur’s “Song 2,” as many in the audience joined them in their seats.

One of the highlights was their talking about how they stumbled across their niche, first playing the video clip below before they came on stage, from a local morning show in Chicago in 1998, when they were just starting out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwoD4pfvuC4, though no need to watch it.)

After the band came out to sing their first number, they told the story behind the clip. Apparently, the show didn't have the capability for bands to play live, so acts were asked to lip sync their performance. So they instead decided to choreograph a boy band dance with a fake rock band air-guitaring in the background.

The lead singer at the time was working as an engineer at the National Public Radio (NPR) station in Chicago and asked co-workers at the radio station to play in the fake band—two of the people in the band in the above clip (who they showed in close up stills on screen) were now-notable NPR radio personalities Ira Glass (This American Life) and Peter Sagal (host of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me).

Shortly after this appearance, when Glass was doing some live shows, he asked the band to open for him—and specifically asked whether they would perform the boy band dance from the above video. They did and it got such a positive response from the audience it ended up becoming part of their act/niche. This led to their other videos—many of the questions during the Q&A asked about their creative process.

It was an enjoyable evening.

Beatles Japanese Style

When my lovely wife and I honeymooned in Tokyo back in 2000, one of our most memorable evenings was spent at a Beatles' cover band club called The Cavern. (Skiing indoors in the middle of July and going to a baseball game were other highlights!) Thinking about it the other day led me to the website for the venue after a quick Google search.

The Cavern is a tiny intimate club that exclusively features Beatles tribute bands doing perfect covers of the Fab Four's catalog. Beatles tribute bands, of course, are a dime a dozen (we've frequently seen the Fab Four and Rain, two of the best known, and I saw Beatlemania in its original Broadway run back in the 1970s). But, of course, watching a Beatles cover band in Tokyo offers its own exotic twist.

The Cavern is located in the Roppongi district of Tokyo and though I'm sure it gets its share of tourists, it's primarily frequented by locals. (On the night we visited, I don't recall seeing any other "gaijin" other than ourselves). It was amazing and quite funny to hear the bands do their intros and "banter" in Japanese, then launch into a phonetic- and note-perfect version of a Beatles song.

A variety of these bands seem to make the rounds of these clubs, including those who dress the part à la Beatlemania. But on the night we visited it was a fairly straightforward band, though the guest performer who joined the band that night looked exactly like John Lennon from the Let it Be album—except he was Japanese! The band was taking requests (picked up by the hostesses), and our request was "And Your Bird Can Sing," one of my favorite Lennon-McCartney songs.

Our initial plan was to go club-hopping that night, but we were having so much fun, we stayed the whole night!

When Googling the Club, I ran across a blog link that mentioned that there actually are TWO such clubs in Tokyo, within a few hundred feet of each other, though I'm not sure whether that second club, Abbey Road, was there in 2000. Since there were some cool sample photos of Beatles cover bands at the blog link, I've provided a link to that here as well.

Photo credit: The photo above of the Silver Beats is reproduced from Stippy Friends.

Every Song Needs Words

It's been awhile since my last post—I was hoping by now to have new pages posted from Rob Hanes Adventures #12 which is currently in progress, but decided to hold off a bit longer until I have completed postproduction on a few more pages.

So in the interim, I thought I'd post the fun videos below....

It looks like they've been around awhile, but I stumbled across these while playing YouTube videos for my children on my iPhone. I haven't been able to find proper credits, but they are a series of videos featuring someone singing lyrics set to classic popcorn movie theme songs. Below are what I thought were the funniest and cleverest: Superman and Star Wars. If you click through to YouTube, you'll find many other video parody homages to Back to the Future, Batman, Jaws, and others.

Happy Birthday, David Naughton!

I'd be remiss if I were not to note that today is David Naughton's birthday, known for An American Werewolf in London, the Dr. Pepper commercials and, of course, the TV show, "Makin' It."

I Can Get Behind That

Let me say up front that I’m not a fan of Star Trek or Boston Legal (or, for that matter, T.J. Hooker). I make this disclosure to show I have no particular fanboy disposition for William Shatner. With this mind, one of my favorite albums of the past few years has been William Shatner’s “Has Been.” Produced by Ben Folds (whose extended "Whatever and Ever Amen" also is another favorite of mine), “Has Been” is a brilliant CD that’s by turn funny and moving. While it contains some of Shatner’s trademark “beat poetry” approach to song-writing and singing, it nevertheless blew me away and has become one of my all-time favorite CDs. In addition to Folds, Joe Jackson, Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins, Brad Paisley, and Adrian Belew lend their talents. Below is a live performance of the CD’s lead track, “Common People,” with Joe Jackson, from the Tonight Show.

A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular

Since the first music clip I posted was a Beatles tribute band from Japan, I thought I’d loosely go along the same lines with these videos of Pizzicato Five. P5 is a Japanese band that Wikipedia describes as being known for its “eclectic and energetic compositions that often sound like ‘new’ releases from the late 1960s hipster scene.”

I guess this is as good a description as any, but the bottom line is that I love the sound of ‘60s lounge/pop (Burt Bacharach probably is one of the leading proponents of that category), which explains why I got hooked on P5. (A compilation CD that was their third release in the U.S.—“The Sound of Music of Pizzicato Five”—is on heavy rotation on my CD player.) Their catchphrase, “A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular,” perfectly captures their sound and attitude.

P5 proved to be the entryway for me into the Japanese pop scene (J-pop), which I'm sure will be the subject of another blog entry in the future. Meanwhile, enjoy….

Welcome to my life's soundtracks....

Anyone who glances at my musical interests will notice I have pretty broad tastes, ranging from the Beatles, the Rat Pack, jazz, j-pop, '60s lounge, rock, showtunes, and movie soundtracks. I've also got a pretty high tolerance for kitsch—I must admit I sometimes genuinely enjoy it for what it is, not necessarily because "it's so bad it's good." With that in mind, I decided to start mixing things up in this blog by interspersing my commentaries with some fun music clips for your listening enjoyment. Since the Beatles has always been my favorite band of all time (I discovered them when I was about 7 or 8), I thought it appropriate to kick things off with this clip of a Japanese Beatles tribute band. When my wife and I went to Tokyo for our honeymoon back in 2000, one of our most memorable nights was at a small club that specialized in Beatles tribute bands. It was a kick to listen to the bandmembers banter between songs in Japanese (which we don't understand), then launch into a note-and-phonetic-perfect performance of a Beatles song. (The audience was allowed to submit requests, and we requested one of my personal all-time favorite Beatles' songs, "And Your Bird Can Sing.") Anyhoo, without any further ado... "The BeaTrips!" (For the real thing and a bonus video, go to my MySpace page, under musical interests.)

All You Need is Love (and Cheap Trick)

Last weekend, I had the privilege to attend a concert at Los Angeles' famed Hollywood Bowl celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' seminal album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The show was headlined by Cheap Trick, who were joined by several special guests, including Amee Mann, Joan Osborn, Ian Ball, and Rob Laufer. Cheap Trick is one of my favorite rock bands from the '80s, and everyone was in fine form. In the second half of the show, the Sgt. Pepper album was performed straight through in its entirety, with orchestral support provided by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

"All You Need is Love" was performed for the encore and I must say it nearly brought me to tears: Thinking of all the crap going on in the world today and watching this '60s anthem to peace being performed live made me think about how simple it would be to solve so many problems if people embodied and personified the song's simple but heartfelt message. How sad for the world that so little has changed since the Summer of Love.

All You Need is Love

As I am a longtime, big Beatles fan, I thought this was worth sharing...

Cirque du Soleil recently opened a new show to good reviews in Las Vegas that features the music of the Beatles. However, rather than simply license the Fab Four's existing catalog, the Beatles gave permission for their long-time producer, Sir George Martin (working in collaboration with his son, Giles) to "re-imagine" and remix the songs to create a special soundtrack for the production.

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, the Beatles agreed to this since the project grew out of the late George Harrison's friendship with one of Cirque du Soleil's artistic directors; Harrison apparently wanted to see it happen as a last collaboration of the group, and the other members and their families wanted to honor Harrison's memory and dying wish. Though some purists were apprehensive about the Beatles' songs being adapted for a Vegas show, according to the Times, even many early critics have been pleasantly surprised and won over.

My brother recently purchased the re-mix and kindly agreed to share this review of the resulting product, the Beatles Love CD:

There are some interesting mixes here as producer (and son) Sir George Martin and Giles sample bits and pieces from the Beatles catalogue (like rap artists) and remix and amalgamate the songs with the chosen tracks for the Cirque du Soleil show.

Some of it is jarring and unexpected but one has to remember that this was background music for a visual show and just listening to it cold seems a little weird. The jarring part is the choice of songs which is interesting in itself because they don't follow the Beatles time-line or album release date periods like their other retrospect albums.

A couple of songs are left intact, some are shortened, and there are some added sound effects. However, it is real subtle to preserve the integrity of the songs. They even sample some of Beatles' conversations from the recording studio. One song is just run backwards: "Sun King" from Abbey Road's Sun King Medley (it's even listed backwards on the track listings as "Gnik Nus." On Hey Jude, during the "na na na na na na" fade-out of the song, the orchestral background part is turned off, and you just hear the naked voices of the Beatles chanting the words.

I thought the best song is the demo, acoustic version of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that was on the Beatles Anthology 3 CD. However, Martin has added and composed a string quartet score (as he did on "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby") to "Weeps," making it sound like a whole new Beatles' song.