Director Jeremy Saulnier’s latest film, Hold The Dark, will come to Netflix on September 28th and it looks like it will be another tough and uncompromising film from the director of Blue Ruin and Green Room.
In Ben Is Back, Lucas Hedges plays Ben, who returns home on Christmas Eve and brings trouble with him. Julia Roberts plays his mother. This film is set for a December 7th release.
Every great Shakespearean actor eventually gets to play King Lear. Anthony Hopkins did so in this BBC production. This version transports Shakespeare’s tragedy to an alternative version of modern-day London and it will premiere on Amazon Prime on September 28th.
In I Think We’re Alone Now, Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning might be the last two people on Earth. Find out on September 14th.
Today’s video is Keep Good Time by Tommy Tucker and the Supernaturals.
Like the two previous music videos of the day, this video was filmed in Baltimore’s red light district, the infamous Block. As Tommy dances down the street, be sure to keep an eye open for The Hustler Club. The Larry Flynt-owned establishment is often credited with revitalizing the Block.
For me, the best part of this video is the nonchalant reaction that the people on the streets have to Tommy’s dancing.
Like yesterday’s selection, today’s music video of the day was filmed on the Block, Baltimore’s notorious red light district.
Neal Coty, who hails from Thurmont, Maryland, makes good use of The Block in this video for his song, Tainted. Among the clubs highlighted are two mainstays of the Block, the Circus Bar and the 2 O’Clock Club.
Back in the day, both establishments were considered to be upscale gentlemen’s clubs. Blaze Starr got her starts dancing at the 2 O’Clock Club. Meanwhile, in 1961, the Circus Bar was featured in an episode of Route 66. Though both clubs have gone through several changes in management over the past few years, both the Circus and 2 O’Clock remain open to this day.
As for Neal Coty, he’s also still active. Along with performing his own music, Coty has also co-written songs for Mark Chesnutt , James Wesley, Craig Morgan, Blake Shelton, Flynnville Train, and Heartland.
They may be largely forgotten today but Baltimore’s own Bootcamp was one of the first bands to appear on MTV. Their video for Hold On To The Night was the 42nd video to ever be shown on MTV and appropriately it was filmed in Baltimore’s version of 42nd Street, The Block.
As you can see in this video, The Block was Baltimore’s red light district. In the 1940s, it was famous for its burlesque houses and, during World War II, many a soldier spent his last night before shipping out visiting the Block. It was here that Blaze Starr got her start. By the 1950s, The Block’s burlesque houses had been replaced by sex shops and strip clubs. The fact that Baltimore’s Police Headquarters sat at the east end of The Block didn’t keep it from becoming notorious as a center of prostitution, drug dealing, and general seediness. The story was that the police, realizing they could never stop either the drug or the sex trade, instead just tried to contain them to one section of the city. While that may or may not have been true, I always wondered if the Hamsterdam storyline in the 3rd season of The Wire was inspired by The Block.
Over the years, the Block has shrunk. Now, it’s only two blocks long and it’s best known for being home to a few strip clubs. The Gayety Theater, which is heavily featured in this video, burned down in 2010. Arson is suspected.
As for Bootcamp, they were briefly popular in the early 80s, playing with bands like The Tubes, Squeeze, The B-52’s and Split Enz, before breaking up in 1984.
This is a song that I will always associate with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Your Love is on the Flash FM playlist. It’s not a great song to listen to when you’re in the middle of a police chase but it is nice when you’re just stealing cars on a rainy night.
The video was shot, over the course of a day, on a soundstage in Astoria. While the band is playing, an artist played by JoAnne Willette finger paints the cover of The Outfield’s first album, Play Deep. Willette would later co-star on the Growing Pains spin-off, Just The Ten Of Us. She also appeared in episodes of The Facts of Life, T. J. Hooker, Santa Barbara, Growing Pains, Melrose Place, Chicago Hope, Becker, ER, The Young and the Restless, My Sister Sam, Private Practice, and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Among her film credits are small roles in both Welcome to 18 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.
Even though The Outfield was a British band, they never found much success in the UK. Their popularity was almost solely centered in the U.S., where Your Love reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 1986.
In 2014, Alfonso Cuaron made history win he became the first Mexican filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director, for his work on Gravity. This year, Cuaron is back with Roma, a 135-minute film about a middle class family living in Mexico City in the 1970s. Roma will be released on December 14th and its trailer leads off this week’s trailer round-up.
Directed by Peter Farrelly, Green Book, is based on the true story of Jamaican pianist Don Shirley’s tour of the deep south. Serving as his chauffeur and bodyguard was a New York bouncer named Tony Lip. Shirley is played by Mahershala Ali while Viggo Mortensen play the role of Lip. (The real Tony Lip later became an actor and played Carmine Lupertazzi in The Sopranos). Green Book will be released on November 21st.
Judging from the trailer, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn appears to be a typical heist comedy, enlivened by the presence of Aubrey Plaza. Prepare to spend an evening with Beverly when this film is released on October 19th.
Based on a BBC miniseries and featuring a killer cast, Steve McQueen’s Widows is one of the most anticipated movies of the fall. Widows will be in theaters on November 16th.
Finally, Killer Kate will be released on October 26th, just in time for Halloween.
I’ve recently been reading Noel Monk’s memoir about managing Van Halen during the early years of their career, Runnin’ with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen.
Among the many revealing stories in the book is one about an incident that happened when Van Halen was touring with Journey. Monk went backstage and discovered that David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen had gotten into a food fight. Eddie threw a bowl of peanuts at Dave. Dave threw guacamole at Eddie but he missed his target and, instead, ended up hitting the lead singer of Journey, Steve Perry. Monk says that he found Perry in his dressing room, softly crying and trying to get the guacamole off of his leather jacket. Monk compared Dave and Eddie to “heartless mean children,” picking on the smart kid in the middle school cafeteria.
Today’s music video, Journey’s party anthem Any Way You Want It, was selected in honor of Steve Perry.
Ever since I first saw Caddyshack (not to mention the episode of The Simpsons were Rodney Dangerfield played Mr. Burns’ son), Any Way You Want It has always been my favorite Journey song. The video is also Journey at its best, simple, without pretension, and rocking!
“At first I didn’t even want to play it for the guys. I thought that Metallica could only be the four of us. These are songs about destroying things, head banging, bleeding for the crowd, whatever it is, as long as it wasn’t about chicks and fast cars, even though that’s what we liked. The song was about a girlfriend at the time. It turned out to be a pretty big song.”
— James Hetfield, on Nothing Else Matters
Eventually, Hetfield did play it for the guys and Nothing Else Matters went on to become one of Metallica’s signature songs. The song may have been inspired by Hetfield’s feelings about being away from his girlfriend while he was on the road but, as Hetfield explained it to Mojo Magazine, “It’s about being on the road, missing someone at home, but it was written in such a way, it connected with so many people, that it wasn’t just about two people, it was about a connection with your higher power, lots of different things.”
The video was directed by Adam Dubin and edited by Sean Fullan and is made up of clips from the 1992 Metallica documentary, A Year And A Half. Along with the song, the video is best remembered for a scene where Lars Ulrich throws darts at a poster of Kip Winger. Do you blame him?
For his part, Kip Winger has said about Metallica’s hatred of him, “That is why it’s the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy’s shirt on Beavis & Butt-head, because Metallica couldn’t play what we play, they couldn’t do it, they literally — technically — couldn’t do it. And I’ll challenge those chumps to that any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back. And so, I was a little teed off about that, but in the end, none of that shit matters…”
If you say so, Kipster.
26 years after the release of Nothing Else Matters, Metallica is still selling out stadiums worldwide. And Winger? Look for them at the closest county fair.
Let’s give the final words to James Hetfield:
“I remember going to the Hells Angels Clubhouse in New York, and they showed me a film that they’d put together of one of the fallen brothers, and they were playing ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ Wow. This means a lot more than me missing my chick, right? This is brotherhood. The army could use this song. It’s pretty powerful.”
“I didn’t know Benjamin Franklin was on the hundred-dollar bill!”
“Who did you think was on it?”
“Aretha Franklin!”
Of course, Aretha Franklin was never on the hundred-dollar bill but maybe she should have been. The singer, who earned the title Queen of Soul, was one of the most influential artists of her time. When she died yesterday at the age of 76, tributes flowed in from other musicians who were proud to say that she was one of the people who had first inspired them to sing. Aretha Franklin paved the road that so many other artists have followed.
One of her biggest hits was Freeway of Love, which is also today’s music video of the day. Appropriately, the video was filmed almost entirely in Detroit, the home of Motown. Portions of the video were also filmed at Doug’s Body Shop in Ferndale, Michigan.
Keep an eye out for Clarence Clemons and his saxophone.
Rest in peace and respect to Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul passed away today at the age of 76, after a career that included 18 Grammy Awards and 75 million albums sold worldwide. She may be gone but her music will live forever.
Here’s Aretha performing Think with The Blue Brothers:
Through the Shattered Lens