Category Archives: Music Review

Music Video of the Day: Your Love by The Outfield (1986, directed by John Jopson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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.

Music Video Of The Day: Shout By Tears For Fears (1984, directed by Nigel Dick)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Tears For Fears frontman Roland Orzabal and keyboardist Ian Stanley were both practitioners of primal scream therapy, in which people confronted their fears and insecurities by shouting.  This song was inspired by both the treatment and political protest.

The video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV and become one of the defining videos and songs of the 1980s, features Orazbal and Curt Smith letting it all out on the cliffside at Durdle Door in Dorset.  The video was one of the 300-something videos to have been directed by Nigel Dick, who has done videos for almost everyone.

Shout spend three weeks as the number one single in the US and has since become Tears for Fears signature song, along with Everybody Wants To Rule The World.

Music Video of the Day: Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House (1986, directed by Alex Proyas)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This video was directed by a familiar name.  Alex Proyas got his start directing music videos for groups like INXS and this one but he is today better-remembered for directing such influential films as The Crow and Dark City.

The music video was a hit, picking up the award for Best New Artist at the MTV Music Video awards.  Don’t Dream It’s Over has gone on to become one of those songs that epitomizes an era.

Enjoy!

Musical Documentary Review: Woodstock ’94 (dir by Bruce Gowers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Woodstock ’94 is the forgotten Woodstock.

Taking place in a field in Saugerties, New York, Woodstock ’94 opened on August 12 and it ended two days later.  Officially, it was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock and it was produced and promoted largely by the same people who were behind the original festival.  They were hoping to actually make some money this time but that plan failed when the fence surrounding the concert area was torn down by people who wanted to see the bands and hear the music without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for tickets.  In all, 164,000 tickets were sold for Woodstock ’94 but it’s estimated that 350,000 attended.  To be honest, that sounds like a good example of the Woodstock spirit to me.  The people in charge of the festival disagreed, which is what led to the disaster that was Woodstock ’99.

Woodstock ’94 tends to be overlooked, precisely because it was neither the spontaneous celebration of the first Woodstock nor the epic trainwreck of the third Woodstock.  Instead, the second Woodstock was a largely peaceful festival that featured a good mix of older and, at the time, newer acts.  The original Woodstock featured open love and the third Woodstock featured random acts of arson.  The second Woodstock, on the other hand, featured a lot of rain.  Apparently, Green Day got pelted with mud.  Maybe a time traveler went back to 1994 and told everyone about American Idiot before the band started playing.  It makes sense if you think about it.

The first Woodstock lives forever as an epic documentary.  The third Woodstock has inspired at least two docuseries, both of which examine the festival with the grim weariness of a true crime recreation.  Earlier today, I discovered that the second Woodstock actually was filmed as well, though apparently Bruce Gowers’s Woodstock ’94 was never released in theaters and instead went straight to video.  It’s a sign of how forgotten Woodstock ’94 is that the film has never even been released on DVD or Blu-ray.  That said, after I learned of the film’s existence, I really did want to see it.  (I’m a completist at heart.)  I discovered that, fortunately, it’s been uploaded to YouTube.

From the start, Woodstock ’94 sets out to duplicate the style of the first Woodstock.  There’s plenty of split screens.  We open with people working hard to get the festival grounds ready.  There are interviews with concert goers.  There’s an interview with a guy selling food.  We get a few random announcements from the stage.  There’s a hint of nudity, though nowhere near as much as in the first film.  Probably the funniest moment in the documentary is when we see a sign telling us that a certain area has been reserved for those wanting to watch the concert nude.  During the first Woodstock, the nudity was spontaneous.  For the second one, it was prepared for.  The main thing that I noticed was how pleasant everyone seemed to be.  There was none of the anger that defined Woodstock ’99.  There was none of the bad brown acid that inspired so many warnings at the first Woodstock.  Instead, everyone appeared to be having a good time.  Even with Green Day getting pelted with mud, the Woodstock ’94 audience appeared to be rather mild-mannered.  Most of them seemed like they probably play golf now.

The majority of the documentary is devoted to the music.  We see tightly edited performances from, amongst others, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Aerosmith, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, The Cranberries, Green Day (though we don’t really get to see the incident with the mud, which is a shame), and Primus.  The festival had a good lineup.  Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a bit on the dull side but Primus more than makes up for it.  My only real complaint is that we only get to hear one song from each featured group.

Woodstock ’94 was surprisingly pleasant.  It’s too bad that, five years later, the whole idea of Woodstock fell apart.

Musical Documentary Review: Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (dir by Jamie Crawford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In August of 2022, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary about Woodstock  ’99.

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 took a look at how the third Woodstock musical festival went from being the most highly anticipated event of the summer of 1999 to being a total disaster.  I started watching the documentary the week that it premiered.  I was halfway through the first episode when I realized that I needed to make sure that my car insurance had been renewed.  I stopped the program, hopped online, made sure that my payment had been received and then….

Well, I don’t exactly remember what I did but I do know that I did not return to Woodstock ’99.  Indeed, I kind of forgot about Woodstock ’99.  It wasn’t until last night, when Jeff and I were looking for something to watch on Netflix, that I saw Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 listed under “continue watching.”  I did the math.  I decided that, given that it had been nearly four years since I watched the opening 30 minutes of the first episode, it was perhaps to finally see what Woodstock ’99 was all about.

The three-part documentary features archival footage from the concert and also interviews with the people behind Woodstock ’99, a few people who attended, and some of the artists who performed.  To be honest, I wish that more of the performers had been interviewed.  Considering that one of the festival’s organizers literally blamed Fred Durst for the rioting, it’s a shame that Durst didn’t share his side of the story.  I’m not a huge fan of Fred Durst but the decision to blame him for the crowd getting out of control has always seem to be a bit too convenient to me.  As the documentary shows (sometimes unintentionally), people had reason to be angry long before Fred Durst stepped out on stage and told them to “break shit.”  As a once popular performer who has since come to be seen as a bit of a self-parody, Durst makes for an easy scapegoat.

For all the talk about what Woodstock has represented throughout the years, all three of the festivals were ultimately about making money for the organizers.  Michael Lang may have been a hippie who said the first Woodstock was about ending the war in Vietnam and that the third Woodstock was about promoting gun control but he was also a businessman.  The first Woodstock only made money because of the success of the famous documentary.  Woodstock ’94 lost money because the fence surrounding the festival was torn down and people were able to get in without buying tickets.  Woodstock ’99 was designed to be secure and impenetrable.  Instead of being held in a field, it was held on a deserted air force base where the asphalt made the summer heat unbearable and where the empty hangars helped to create a dystopian atmosphere.  Woodstock ’99 was designed to be village.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a village where bottled water eventually ended up costing $14.00 and the toilets ended up overflowing.  (One interviewee discusses waking up on the third day and discovering that she was suffering from something called “trench mouth.”  Even the name sounds terrifying.)

The documentary features a few people who rightly point out that the festival’s organizers created a situation where the third night’s riot was almost inevitable.  Michael Lang apparently had not listened to any new music since the 70s and, hence, didn’t understand that there was a world of difference between the mellow hippies of 1969 and the fans of Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock.  Amazingly, Lang thought it would be a good idea to hand out candles so that the festival could end with a candlelight vigil against gun violence.  The candles were instead used to start fires.  As the festival grounds burned, the fence was finally torn down, a sound tower was pulled to the ground, and eventually the national guard showed up.  The organizers of the Festival, including Lang, put the blame on almost everyone but themselves.

I’ve often said that movie and documentaries made between 2019 and 2024 often feel as if they are artifacts from a different age.  That’s how quickly the culture shifted after the election of 2024.  That’s the case with Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.  The final thirty minutes of the documentary are spent classifying Woodstock ’99 as being an example of white privilege  and it seems a little performative today but that was pretty much the prism through which everything was viewed and discussed in 2022.  The truth of the matter is that there were a lot of reasons why Woodstock ’99 was a disaster and almost all of them come down to the greed at the heart of the enterprise.  It was greed that led to festival being held in the worst possible location.  It was greed that led to cutting corners when it came to security and the hiring of the half-assed “Peace Patrol,” a group of amateur security guards who failed to protect the most vulnerable people at the festival.  (At least five rapes and numerous other sexual assaults occurred a the concert.)  And it was ultimately Michael Lang’s desire to pretend that the concert was about something other than greed that led to a bunch of angry, tired, and intoxicated people being handed candles.

This documentary shows why Woodstock ’99 was the final Woodstock.  (There was an attempt to put together a 50th anniversary festival in 2019 but, perhaps thankfully, it fell apart.)  It’s a shame that Woodstock ended the way it did.  It could have been a great American tradition.  Instead, the festival of peace and love ended with fire and destruction.

Music Video Of The Day: I Hate Kissing You Goodbye by Tuff (1991, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You have to feel bad for Tuff, an American glam metal band that was formed in 1985, featured in the seminal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, and who were signed by Atlantic Records in 1990.  They released their first studio album, What Comes Around Go Around, in 1991.  The video for I Hate Kissing You Goodbye received heavy rotation on MTV.  And then, just a few months later, a band named Nirvana came along and changed the entire musical landscape.

Despite the Grunge Revolution, Tuff is still together.  Lead singer Steve Rachelle has also had a solo career and has fronted a few other bands as well.  Tuff survived.

Enjoy!

Musical Film Review: Eagles: Hell Freezes Over (dir by Beth McCarthy-Miller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Thank God for Joe Walsh, I thought as I watched 1994’s Eagles: Hell Freezes Over.

The Eagles were one of my Dad’s favorite bands, along with Lynard Skynard and the Steve Miller Band.  I can still remember being little and sitting in the back of our van and hearing Hotel California playing as we actually drove through California.  It’s a nice memory.  When I went away to college, I heard the rumor that the band was named after the mascot of the University of North Texas.  It’s true that Don Henley attended UNT (or North Texas State University as it was known back then) but none of the other members of the band did.  For whatever reason, I doubt that the quintessential California band decided to pay homage to a Texas college when they were selecting their name.

The band was formed in 1971 and they had several hits through the 70s.  The members of the band were as famous for their fights as their music and the Eagles broke up in 1980.  The members of band spent 14 years pursuing solo careers and Don Henley famously said that “Hell will freeze over” before they ever all played on the same stage again.  In 1994, it appears that Hell did just that because the Eagles reunited.  They toured.  They released a live album.  Most importantly, they made some money.  MTV produced a special, Eagles: Hell Freezes Over, which featured the band performing in a Burbank film studio.

Earlier today, while sitting out on a deck overlooking Lake Texoma, I watched the special on YouTube.  Watching the members of the band perform with each other for the first time in 14 years, I could understand why they broke up.  Each member of the band was undeniably talented.  They sounded good.  But they didn’t have much onstage chemistry.  Everyone did their part and they did it professionally and they got through the show without cursing each other out but, at the same time, there was very little warmth to be found on the stage.  No one seemed particularly enthused about being on stage with his former and current bandmates.  They came across like a group of people who didn’t particularly like each other and who had mostly shown up for the paycheck.

The other thing that I noticed is that the music itself, when taken as a whole, was kind of boring.  I hate to say that because my dad loved this band.  And the songs certainly weren’t bad.  They were good songs but, when heard one after another, it was hard not to notice that the mellow California sounds got dull after a while.  Heard on its own, Desperado is a classic piece of Americana.  Unfortunately, if you hear it immediately after listening to New York Minute, In The City, and Get Over It, Desperado loses its edge.  Even the opening performance of Hotel California was a bit of a slog.  By the time this special was recorded, it was obvious that the members of the band had decided they were fine with nearly leaving the Hotel California.

And that’s why I’m thankful for Joe Walsh, the guitarist and not the self-important jackass former congressman.  Because Walsh, almost alone amongst the group, still seemed to be having fun on stage.  The performance of Life In The Fast Lane is one of the rare moments when this special really comes to life and it’s almost entirely due to Joe Walsh and his guitar.  Life In The Fast Lane was also my Dad’s favorite Eagles song so, on his behalf, I’ll just say, “Thank you, Joe Walsh.”

Music Video of the Day: I Won’t Forget You by Poison (1987, directed by John Jopson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s the sensitive side of Poison.

I’ve been reading Nothin’ But A Good Time, an oral history of the 80s “hair metal” scene.  Poison emerges as unlikely heroes in the narrative, a band that worked hard to put on a good show and managed to avoid a lot of the excesses that plagued other bands of the era.  Before he landed his spot with Guns ‘N’ Roses, Slash reluctantly auditioned out for Poison.  Bret Michaels wanted to hire him but the rest of the band preferred CC Deville.  It turned out to be the right choice for both the band and Slash.

This video was directed by John Jopson, who also directed videos for The Hooters, Icehouse, and everyone’s favorite, Air Supply.

Musical Film Review: Freebird…. The Movie (dir by Jeff G. Waxman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

My Dad was a huge Skynard fan.

When I was little, I didn’t really know that there was any controversy about the lyrics of Sweet Home Alabama or the fact that Lynard Skynard’s stage show usually featured a Confederate flag.  I didn’t know what Tuesday’s Gone was about.  I didn’t know that Free Bird was considered to be a classic by anyone other than my father.  I didn’t even know about the tragic 1977 airplane crash.  I just knew that when my Dad was driving he liked the Eagles, he enjoyed the Steve Miller Band, and he loved Lynard Skynard.  Even today, whenever I hear Sweet Home Alabama, I imagine my Dad driving his big rig across this beautiful country of ours.  The song may have been about Alabama and it may have been an answer song to a very specific song written by a Canadian (of all people) but it was still a song that could be listened to and enjoyed anywhere.  It was a song about Alabama but it was also a song that uniquely American.

At least, that’s what I always thought.  When I was in college, my friend Jen absolutely hated Sweet Home, Alabama (both the song and, believe it or  not, the film) and she would always start going, “No, don’t do it!” whenever she saw that I was about to play it.  That just made me play it louder.

By that time, of course, I knew that there was some controversy about both the song and the band.  Because Lynard Skynard was proudly and defiantly Southern, there were quite a few people who interpreted Sweet Home, Alabama as being a defense of everything that was going on in Alabama during the early 70s.  Of course, that’s not the case of all.  The song was defending a group of people against other people who, like Mr. Young, looked down on Alabama while ignoring or excusing the very similar things that were happening in their own backyard.  Massachusetts, for instance, was the scene of a good deal of violent racial strife throughout the 70s but Neil Young was never tempted to write Boston Man.  While Alabama was finally starting to move away from Jim Crow, people in Boston were rioting about busing.  The appeal of Lynard Skynard, at least as far as the original 70s version, was that they were tough, they were loud, and they didn’t apologize for being who they were. They weren’t going to apologize for being from the South and speaking with Southern accents.  They were defiant in a way that brought together both hippies and rednecks.

1996’s Freebird…. The Movie was one of the last films that my Dad watched before he died.  The film is a mix of archival concert footage and interviews with the members of Lynard Skynard, all of whom are rather worshipful of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.  Van Zant emerges as such a charismatic performer and frontman that it’s easy to see why the members of the band and the audience would follow him just about anywhere.  Of course, the main appeal of the film is the music.  Sweet Home Alabama is performed with a blast of pure energetic Southern rock that stands in contrast to some of the band’s more mellow songs.  Freebird is performed beautifully and Billy Powell’s piano solo remains amazing.  As always, it probably helps to already be a fan of the band when watching a film like this.  All I can say is that, on July 31st, 2024, my Dad smiled as he watched it and I cried as I watched it with him.