Old Dogs

Travolta and Williams star as Charlie and Dan, lifelong best friends who run a sports marketing firm. On the eve of landing their biggest client ever, the two bachelors learn that Dan’s brief marriage to Kelly Preston’s Vicki resulted in twin children! After six years, Vicki comes to Dan for help: she’s about to go to jail (for an environmental misdemeanor) and she has no one to look after the two tykes. Dan, who has been feeling a little empty lately, quickly agrees, much to the dismay of Charlie.

Do I need to spell out what happens next? Charlie and Dan decide they will take care of the kids, which means bringing them to their offices where mayhem ensures. Then Dan and the kids end up having to move into Charlie’s sterile bachelor pad, where mayhem ensures. Then Dan and Charlie take the kids to a summer camp, where mayhem ensues. And so on and so on. Green has a small role as their assistant; Matt Dillon and Justin Long have cameos as camp counselors; and the late Bernie Mac has a pathetic cameo as a children’s performer who has created an electronic human puppeteering machine. How sad that this was the comedian’s final role.

Old Dogs is pitiful. Travolta tries to liven up every scene he’s in, but the script is just so bad that he can’t do anything with it. Likewise, Williams is relegated to the same sort of sad sack character he’s done in almost every movie since Good Will Hunting. Just about the only thing redeeming about Old Dogs is the presence of Green. He manages to make even something so unfunny seem a little entertaining. Oh, and that scene with Green in the gorilla’s arms, the one that was milked for marketing purposes (and is featured on the DVD cover)? It only lasts a couple of minutes and doesn’t show up until the very end of the film.

HOWEVER, as I sat on our couch, nodding off between grimaces, my 11 year old and 8 year old were howling with laughter. That’s right, they loved this movie. In fact, they enjoyed it so much that three days later, when their cousins had a sleep over, the watched it again. They were bowled over with just as much enthusiasm, and their cousins were doubled over with the giggles, too. So, maybe I should clam up and let the kids have their laughs.

Disney is already doing fine with the Old Dogs DVD, so they probably aren’t worried about my bitching. But if your kids rope you in to watch it, you’ve been warned.

I will add that the Old Dogs 3 disc compo pack is a bargain, if you do end up buying it. I think that Disney has the right idea by packaging a Blu-ray DVD, a standard DVD and digital copy as one unit. Bonus features include running commentary by the director, Walt Becker, and the writers; bloopers, deleted scenes and music videos.

In recent weeks, the Faded Celebrity Death March has kicked into high gear, giving further credence to my former prof’s theory: even people we no longer care about in life can revive their “careers,” as it were, by dying tragically. First there was the suicide of Andrew Koenig, a second-generation celeb (his father played Chekov on Star Trek) who was best known for playing a character called “Boner” (that would never make it past Standards and Practices today) on Growing Pains. Then came news of the untimely but all-too-predictable death of Corey Haim, half of the once-powerful “Corey and Corey” movie duo. Considering how public Haim’s struggles with drugs have been, and how obscure Koenig became following his departure from the Seaver universe, the amount of press coverage both events received is somewhat surprising. Perhaps my perspective is skewed: I never really watched Growing Pains (I was a Family Ties fan myself), so the first I ever heard of Koenig was when he went missing, and though I have great affection for Haim as the title character in Lucas, I avoided most of the rest of his cinematic output – yes, even License to Drive. Was I boycotting the movies during the late 1980s? Hardly. I simply had a different movie celebrity on my mind. He was more serious, more mysterious, than either of the Coreys, and more magnetic than virtually any other actor of his age category. Of course, none of those characteristics prevented him from falling victim to Celebrity-itis; indeed, while Koenig and Haim held on nearly until middle age, River Phoenix never saw twenty-five.

I still remember how I found out about River’s death. I was lying in bed in my college dorm room, waking up slowly to my radio alarm. Suddenly I heard the DJ say his name, followed by the phrase “collapsed and died.” I sat bolt upright, listening to the account of how the young actor had passed out on the street outside of a Los Angeles club owned by fellow deep-thinking celeb Johnny Depp. Now I knew that famous people were not immortal – I remembered, of course, the murder of John Lennon, whose name and music I had known practically since birth – but the death of the smart Beatle, no matter how tragic, was that of a grown-up person, someone who had been famous before I was even born. By contrast, I had been there as River Phoenix transformed from a talented nobody with a strange name to a movie star to an Oscar nominee. His films helped turn me into the sort of person who would sit though the same movie twice in the theater (yeah, you used to be able to do that in NYC). His face had been on my bedroom wall throughout high school – so much so that when my mother read about his death in the paper, she cut out the attached photo and put it up in my bedroom at home for me. I still have that photo.

Maybe I’m biased, but I still believe that River Phoenix was special. Yes, now his brother Joaquin is a bona-fide, if eccentric, film star (poor thing, the hysterical 911 call he made may have gotten him pity auditions), but the younger’s talent is like rock and roll, while the elder’s was like jazz. Besides, River had the good fortune to appear in one of the best films about childhood and friendship ever made, Stand by Me. The cast of that movie works together like dancers in a ballet, but where did its other stars end up? Wil Wheaton became Wesley Crusher, Jerry O’Connell slid into Sliders, and Corey Feldman, bless him, joined forces with Corey Haim. On the strength of his performance, River Phoenix got roles in movies even adults wanted to see, like The Mosquito Coast, Running on Empty (his Oscar nom), and My Own Private Idaho. Sure, he went wrong from time to time: A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, much anticipated by my peer group, turned out to be a creepy disappointment, despite the presence of Ann Magnuson. But River made up for his career mistakes by being otherwise insanely cool – he dated Martha Plimpton, eschewed meat and dairy way before that was trendy, and had a band with his sister, Rain. I saw them play at the Palladium at a show called “Rock Against Fur,” which awakened my consciousness to the evil of wearing animals. I still eat them, I admit, but even if I was not willing to give up meat for my celebrity obsession, I thought very highly of him for his sensitivity and generally principled persona. And have I mentioned that he was beautiful?

It turns out that even very idealistic and righteous people can have big problems. River’s family life, which had been described in magazines like Bop as blissful and loving, had taken him and his many siblings to some dark places, including the Children of God cult, now well-known for preaching a gospel of child molestation. He may not have believed in putting animal products in his body, but he apparently had introduced numerous other substances, including heroin, coke and Valium. His parents gave him a name that marked him as unique, but ultimately, his talent, ethics, and individuality were no match for the pressures and temptations of being young, attractive, and wealthy. River had the greatest promise, but he is gone, and Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, and even Corey Feldman are still alive. For now. Celebrity is a cruel mistress, and also an unpredictable one; for every Jimi Hendrix, there is a Keith Richards, somehow avoiding her wrath and giving fellow fame-whores the false impression that the odds are in their favor. Can we break the cycle? Let’s hope so. Someone keep a close on eye on Dakota Fanning and Lady Gaga.

The rules are simple, each player can make three guesses between updates (“Update” is defined as “The time when I post a comment listing all of the covers that have been guessed correctly,” “Guess” is defined as “any attempt to identify a single cover”), so everyone will have a chance to contribute. And, just to spice things up, we have a puzzle cover this week, yay! One guess per player of the puzzle between updates, please.

There is an acrostic this week. The FIRST letter in the name of the artist or band will provide a clue as to the puzzle cover’s identity. Good luck!

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Lastly, the Puzzle Cover

I suggest subscribing to the comments on the post (click on “Track Comments”) to more easily follow the progress of the game. Remember, maximum of three guesses between updates of the list. Have fun!

I wanted to say no. Even though I know I can’t say no, I do have time constraints to consider, and listening to 200-plus Borscht Belt party records is a bit more than my schedule can bear at present. That said, there’s a goodly bit of “classic” Bell material available online, and I’m pretty sure I hit it all. And it hit back, like the remnants of a Taco Bell Bacon Cheesy Potato burrito.

Benny Bell, born Benjamin Zamberg in Manhattan in 1906, was a Jewish-American comedian and songwriter who gave up his pursuit of being a rabbi (more his parents’ wishes than his own) to try his hand in vaudeville. He turned his comedic aptitude to music, and in 1929 released his first record, “The Alimony Blues,” a humorous enough endeavor, about a chronic deadbeat ex-husband:

I don’t want to give my wife no dough
I don’t want to pay, pay, pay
No, there ain’t no fun to sit in jail
But I’d rather stay, stay, stay

Imagine what Ghostface Killah or Raekwon could do with that premise? Not even Ghost or Rae could make rotting in jail for not paying spousal support sound nearly as heroic as Bell, though.

Bell gained some renown with “Alimony,” and began releasing records on his own labels (Bell was indie before indie was indie). At first, most were straight-up ethnic comedy records—pieces intended for audiences young and old who enjoyed Jewish comedy. His most popular creations in this guise were his “Pincus the Peddler” records, the first of which told the sad tale of a hard-working street merchant who wuz done wrong by an ee-yee-vil woman. Pincus and his equally luckless father immigrate to the States, sneaking into Brooklyn, when he meets the object of his desire:

Oh but soon I met a woman,
A dirty rotten woman,
At first she made me happy then she made me blue,
Instead of gaining knowledge
By sending me to college
She sent me to the races and they cleaned me through.

Bitch sets him up, takes his money, cleans him out? Forget indie; Bell was a playa before playas were playas. But a man can only be expected to take so much, right? Bell noted, even then, there were occasions when a playa needs to take care of his business:

‘Twas at a game of rummy
She called me a dummy
I punched her in the mouth because that makes me mad,
She lifted her umbrella
So I kicked her down the cellar
And broke the nicest girdle that she ever had.

She went to Ellis Island
To send me back to my land
The things she told the people there was very bad,
I never thought they’d do it
And yet before I knew it
They packed my trunk and sent me back to Petrograd.

Oh, no, she didn’t! Sheee-yit! Benny Bell wasn’t a playa; Benny Bell was a gangsta.

Recognizing a hit when he heard one, Bell brought forth “Son of Pincus,” which extended the story and contained all the nasty things Pincus’ progeny intended to do to the woman who done his daddy wrong:

I’ll cut her hands to ribbons
And throw them to the dogs
I’ll grind her legs to chopped meat
And feed it to the hogs
But her ugly face I’ll keep home
Revenge is sweet, all right
I’ll slap it every morning
And pinch it every night

In the days before Wu-Tang or restraining orders, this was comedy gold, people. Bell followed “Son of Pincus” with “Pincus in the Mountains,” “Pincus Said Knock You Out,” and “Roxanne, Roxanne, Pincus, Pincus” before putting the violent saga to rest.

Musically, these records are pretty much what you’d think they’d be—lots of oompah-oompah and clarinet and muted trumpet, chunky piano, and ragtime rhythms. Vocally, there needn’t be much there, and there isn’t—just Bell’s Brooklyn accent, slipping occasionally into distinctive Yiddish or Hebrew cadences.

Somewhere along the way, Bell was informed there was money to be made in “party records”—discs of risqué material sold behind the counter at record stores and mom and pop shops of somewhat less than stellar repute. You could find otherwise clean artists “working blue” on these records, which were popular at bars and nightclubs and other locales where adults congregated. Bell went on to make tons of such discs, including the schnozz-as-penis double entendre classic “Noses Run in My Family,” which starts with a witty description of questionable protuberances:

My grandpa had a long one, it nearly touched his chin
My uncle has a small one, with hardly any skin
My daddy has a broad one, just like a rolling pin
But mine is big and round and fat
It looks more like a baseball bat
You never saw a nose like mine before.

Better yet was “I Used to Work in Chicago” (also known as “Jack of All Trades”), the sad tale of a man fired from several jobs for simply not understanding his customers. May I see an example, you ask? Soitenly:

I used to work in New Jersey, in a department store,
I used to work in New Jersey, I did but I don’t anymore.
A lady came in for a felt hat, we had them in the store,
Felt she wanted, felt she got
That’s why I’m not there anymore.

My favorite, though, is when he crosses the river back to the big city:

I used to work in Manhattan, in a department store,
I used to work in Manhattan, I did but I don’t anymore.
A lady came in for golf balls, we sold them in the store,
Balls she wanted, [slide whistle]
That’s why I’m not there anymore.

That’s right, the man who created a character who wished to dismember another character could not say “balls she got,” even when “working blue.”

Bell is best known for a 1946 party record called “Shaving Cream,” which centers on the avoidance of the word shit. Each verse contains a word meant to rhyme with shit, only to have Bell replace the word with the alliterative “Shhhhhaving cream.” It’s a concept familiar to most seven-year-olds, who can entertain one another for hours with playground rhymes like:

Miss Suzie had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Suzie went to heaven
The steamboat went to
Hello operator, give me number 9
If you disconnect me
I’ll kick your fat
Behind the ‘fridgerator …

Dee-dee-dee-dum-dee-dum, etc. If you’ve ever heard Bowser & Blue’s faux-Dylan laffer “Polka Dot Undies,” you get the joke. Bell’s take is, I admit, pretty funny—funny enough to rescue him from obscurity nearly 30 years after its first release, when Dr. Demento began spinning it regularly on his radio show.

Sound like fun? There are other choice cuts to check out. I suggest “Fancy Definitions” (amusing wordplay that still works as comedy, albeit in a Sunday paper/Parade magazine sort of way) and “Everybody Wants My Fanny” (Fanny as woman? Fanny as buttocks? The Bee Gees gratefully stayed away from such double entendre with “Fanny [Be Tender]“). There are also two major Bell archives online, one from our friends at the Internet Archive and one from the Judaica Sound Archives, which,  if not complete, is damn near close. A transcript of a Bell interview with Demento also rests comfortably on a server somewhere.

Many thanks to Reader Ray/Robust for the suggestion. Join me in a couple weeks, when I take a listen to some oddball covers of ’80s classics. And keep those suggestions comin’.

It certainly hasn’t seemed that way recently, but there was a time when hip-hop was an agent for much-needed social change. The children of the civil rights movement were empowered, they wanted what was theirs, and they were going to get it by any means necessary. This attitude spawned groups like the legendary rap crew Public Enemy, who delivered music that was as enlightening and powerful from a lyrical standpoint as it was from a musical standpoint.

A lot of people call 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back P.E’s magnum opus, but to me, 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet was the moment when their sound and message was at its’ most powerful. While Nation of Millions found the group expanding their sound and attempting to find their audience, Fear marked the moment P.E. realized how big that audience was, and unlike most musicians experiencing the first flush of success, they decided to push the envelope even further. By making their sound even more forceful — lyrically and musically — Public Enemy wound up creating a landmark record, not only within the genre of hip-hop, but in music period.

While a big part of Fear’s success came from the principals wanting to push the creative envelope, an equal amount of the piss and vinegar that went into making Fear what it was came from the media firestorm that P.E. (and specifically Chuck D., the group’s focal point and mouthpiece) found itself under in the year or so leading up to the album’s release.

Chuck D’s lyrical stance was considered extreme even in an era when most hip-hop had a strong sociopolitical flavor (with the exception of the poppy strain of rap popularized by the likes of Tone Loc or DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince). Educated and articulate (and a few years older than the average hip-hop fan), he pulled no punches-calling out mainstream media (who were quick to take P.E. lyrics out of context and label them as racist) and evils within the black community with equal amounts of venom. His forceful vocal delivery (somewhat comically inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert) made his words sting twice as hard. Despite P.E.‘s success with Nation of Millions, Chuck didn’t find himself facing serious media heat until P.E. member Professor Griff made anti-Semitic comments to a Washington Post reporter in the spring of 1989. The blowback from those comments caused Chuck to fire Griff, then re-hire him, then completely disband Public Enemy, then reform the group without Griff. This frustration undoubtedly fueled “Welcome to the Terrordome,” 5 ½ minutes of undiluted anger, musical claustrophobia and defiance that remains a stunningly powerful musical moment in the discography of a group that did not lack for powerful musical moments.

While “Terrordome” forms Fear’s musical and emotional center, the rest of Black Planet is no mellow stroll through the park. Chuck brought intensity to every other topic he explored on the album, railing against the entertainment industry’s treatment of black performers (“Who Stole the Soul?”), popping off against police brutality (“Anti-Nigger Machine”), and questioning the concept of “racial purity” on the album’s title track. Even when the intensity is wrongheaded (the unchecked homophobia of “Meet the G That Killed Me” is not easy to take) While Flav’s two solo shots provide a little more comic relief, “911 is a Joke” and “Can’t Do Nuttin’ for Ya Man” still managed to make pointed observations regarding emergency services’ lack of urgency in the black community and people looking for handouts, respectively. Flav’s spastic delivery was the equivalent of swallowing a bitter pill with a hearty teaspoon of sugar, but ultimately, his messages were just as important as those delivered by Chuck D.

Fear also contains “Burn Hollywood Burn,” a song that pairs Chuck with Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube (who was being produced by the Bomb Squad around the same time period), forming something of a hip-hop All-Star Team circa 1990, as well as featuring the first appearance of “Fight the Power” on a Public Enemy album. “Fight” was released the previous summer as the theme song from Spike Lee’s classic film Do the Right Thing, and it perfectly summarized (well, actually, it predicted) the anger that wound up galvanizing the Black community during a period of extreme racial unrest in New York City during the summer of 1989. This sweltering three-month period culminated in the death of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins at the hands of a bat-wielding mob of white youths in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst. “Fight the Power” became a rallying cry of sorts and has earned a rightful spot as one of the most (if not THE most) important hip-hop songs ever recorded. My only gripe with this version of the song is that Branford Marsalis’s batshit-insane solo isn’t included.

While the lyrical content of Fear is certainly important, it can be argued that the album would pack just as much of a punch as an instrumental work. Fear of a Black Planet was a landmark work in terms of the creative usage of sampling. Production crew The Bomb Squad (consisting of Chuck D., Gary G. Wiz, Eric Sadler and Hank & Keith Shocklee) were among the most forward-thinking beatmakers in hip-hop, inspiring future legends like Dr. Dre and DJ Muggs with their work. These days, when most sampling consists of lazily adding a drum machine beat or keyboard embellishments over a loop, the sonic collages that the Bomb Squad created come off as even more eye-popping than they did twenty years ago. This was “noise” in the most inspiring, creative sense of the word-musical deconstruction and reconstruction, using everything from police sirens to Vincent Price’s laughing at the end of “Thriller” to the guitar solo at the end of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” to create a sound that was undoubtedly funky, but still as aggressive as any rock band was during that time period.

Sometimes when I complain about hip-hop today, I sort of feel like the old man in Bermuda shorts screaming at the kids to “get off my lawn!” The unfortunate fact of the matter is, though, that hip-hop has become too much of a commodity to produce another work like Fear of a Black Planet. While a certain amount of modern-day hip-hop does indeed aspire to “drop science”, artists with positive messages are generally marginalized as “conscious rappers,” kicked aside in favor of marginally talented, lyrically vapid emcees like Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy — “artists” who promote the very things that Chuck D. and company were railing against. While modern-day rap music occasionally seems like a cross between Comedy Central and the Playboy Channel, albums like Fear of a Black Planet remind us of a time in the distant past when hip-hop (to paraphrase Chuck himself) was Black America’s CNN.

Boston Legal,

Since we Popdose people like to give things away to our loyal readers (in the case of our TV section — which has been lacking in material lately– really loyal readers), we are happy to give the opportunity to one lucky winner the following prize:

A $50.00 VISA CASH CARD and a COPY OF BOSTON LEGAL SEASON 5 on DVD.

Pretty awesome, huh?

To win this great prize pack, all you need to do is send an e-mail to me (malchus) with the correct answer to the following question:

PLEASE DO NOT POST THE ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.

Name the actress who has appeared in a movie with William Shatner and James Spader (not the same movie). In addition to the name of this sexy (hint) actress, I also want the name of the movie she appeared in with Shatner and the name of the movie she appeared in with Spader.

The deadline for entries is Friday, March 19, at 5:00 p.m. PT. At that time I will choose a winner at random from all the correct entries. The winner will be notified by e-mail (sorry, the Shat isn’t available to make a personal call).

Once again, E-MAIL ME (malchus) and PLEASE DO NOT POST THE ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.

For more information about the show and its new home on TV Land, be sure to check out the TV Land “Boston Legal” page.

Good Luck!

By the same token, last year’s nominee from Austria, Revanche, had no chance against Japan’s tear-jerking Departures. But Revanche has had its revenge, being issued as a typically impressive Criterion Collection DVD (a two-disc set) and Blu-ray. Justice runs hot and cold in the movie, however.

Writer-director Götz Spielmann has been making films since 1984 (his award-winning student short, Foreign Land, is included on the second disc of supplements) but is pretty much an unknown quantity here. His control over his material is formidable, starting with the movie’s opening shot (and the disc’s cover), as the placid surface of a lake is disrupted by something thrown into the water. The ripples radiating outward from the disruption are signs of things to come, storywise. And we also get a sense of Spielmann’s technique. The film will be blunt, but there will also be beauty (two sex scenes are relevant, pointed, and unglamorous.) The take is long, as is the fade out from the scene, and there is no music, nor will there be any for the next two hours. In a disc interview the filmmaker mentions the “terror of silence” that seems to afflict our plugged-in, overcaffeinated society, and Revanche is determined to make silence as uneasy as possible.

Like Shutter Island, Revanche is a plot-heavy movie whose plot, while intricately worked out, is just a series of markers as Spielmann maps the human condition. That said it’s difficult to know how much to reveal. The first ripples are made by an ex-con, Alex (Johannes Krisch), who, while working for the mobsters who run the “Cinderella” brothel in a seedy section of Vienna, falls for one of the hookers, a Ukrainian illegal, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Smaller eddies, meanwhile, are generated by a rural policeman, Robert (Andreas Lust), whose marriage to Susanne (Ursula Strauss) is at an impasse, due to an earlier miscarriage and continuing fertility problems. (An empty baby’s room in their house is a particularly insinuating set.) While visiting his grandfather in the country, Alex decides to rob a bank—a crime that puts him squarely in Robert’s sights, with disastrous consequences for both men.

But Revanche is no Charles Bronson meat-grinder. (No branch of the Academy ever looked favorably on those.) There is much brooding, as Alex sulks on his grandfather’s farm and Robert collapses from guilt. Pensively shot in the woodlands, the film has a deeply spiritual quality that parallels the collision-course storyline. Alex will meet Robert, and, more unpredictably, Susanne, but none of these searchingly acted encounters are boilerplate. (Strauss excels in the trickiest part.) There is vengeance—and also wisdom, mercy, and clarity.

Spielmann considers himself an “essentially unintellectual” filmmaker, but he is a very smart one, and while drawn to the “borderline of chaos” he never allows Revanche to go over the top or over the edge. It occupies its own verge, and disc supplements including a making-of documentary take you there. (The film is handsomely presented in 1:85 anamorphic widescreen.) On his best behavior in the accompanying booklet, the often-flaky New York Press critic Armond White mentions that “revanche” is also German for “second chance”—and the Criterion disc gives an Oscar also-ran just that.

The cast of the new Kander-and-Ebb musical The Scottsboro Boys (photo: Carol Rosegg)

BOTTOM LINE: I haven’t been this moved by a piece of theatre in a very, very, very long time.

Oh, Kander and Ebb. You’re quite a team. Chicago and Cabaret are two of my all-time favorite musicals; I find both stories endearing, surprising, uplifting, and captivating, despite the commercially obvious nature they’ve acquired over the years. You are unquestionably two of the most gifted contributors to American musical theatre in the past century.

Your newest musical, The Scottsboro Boys, has just opened off-Broadway, and I have to admit that although I was excited to see it, I didn’t think you would outdo yourselves. But holy crap, have you ever. Not only is this new musical entertaining — it’s directed and choreographed by the brilliant Susan Stroman, with book by David Thompson — it’s intelligent, thoughtful, and incredibly important.

I’m not a big gusher anymore — it’s hard to be effusive when you’re always thinking analytically. The Scottsboro Boys, however, has rendered me unrestrained. I think everyone should see this show. The caveat here is that although it’s a new musical from a recognizable production team, it’s certainly not a feel-good experience — or, rather, it is, but in an uncomfortably ironic way.

See, the production is a minstrel show, a throwback to the stereotyped, racially insensitive form of entertainment popular in the very early 20th century. In The Scottsboro Boys, we see 11 triple-threat performers barrel onto the stage and get ready for a night of entertainment. They’re black, and their master of ceremonies is an older white gentleman (played by John Cullum), the only white actor on the stage. As they hunker down for a helluva show (a big opening dance number with tambourines starts things off), Cullum’s character announces that tonight the troupe will tell the story of the Scottsboro Boys.

The story is based on fact, on an important part of American history that doesn’t get enough prominence in history classes. What proceeds is the unfolding of a tale about wrongful imprisonment, civil liberties, truth and sticking up for your beliefs no matter the cost. The Scottsboro Boys were a group of black teenagers in the early 1930s. They were arrested for a crime they didn’t commit and spent the subsequent several years going through trial after trial (always found guilty) and appealing their case. Although they were in Alabama, a state that wasn’t known to look to kindly upon blacks, they had considerable support from the north, thus funding the several appeals and using the opportunity to fight for civil rights.

The subject matter is unquestionably uncomfortable, and that’s the point. The antics on stage are entertaining to be sure – but how couth is it to laugh at a minstrel show, something that is obviously and intentionally racist? And that’s the point. The Scottsboro Boys intends to expose the irony, and for that reason, the show is much deeper and more intellectual than similar productions. Chicago is about murderers and felons, but everyone is still endearing. Cabaret takes place in early Nazi Germany and there are certainly dark hints of the brewing oppression, but these political undertones aren’t the basis of the plot. The Scottsboro Boys brings this hateful time in American history to the forefront of the show’s message, and it does so in an incomparably consequential fashion.

For this reason, The Scottsboro Boys is a more provocative theatergoing experience. However, it’s still quite entertaining. The cast is supurb. Coleman Domingo, as Mr. Bones, and Forrest McClendon, as Mr. Tambor lead the minstrel show and then take on the roles of the white authority figures in the story. Their cheery, make ‘em smile disposition turns eerily sinister. The Scottsboro Boys themselves are a triple-threat bunch. Although the dance numbers don’t evoke the escapism that other musical theatre performances can, Stroman’s choreography is perfectly in tune with the nature of the show. One standout routine is a tap number performed around an electric chair as the youngest of the boys is taunted with his impending fate.

Production wise, the show is gorgeous. Some of Kander and Ebb’s previous productions have had a minimalist design aesthetic, and The Scottsboro Boys is similarly designed. The show opens with a sort of art installation made of a dozen or so silver chairs, all intertwined and stuck to each other in interesting ways – sort of in a clump upstage. Throughout the show, those chairs are moved and transformed to become a train, a jail, a courtroom and a bus. With the addition of two long planks, the set (by Beowulf Borritt) becomes a creative playground for creating these scenes. Gorgeous lighting design (by Kevin Adams) contributes to the basic yet incredibly transformative look of the show.

The brilliant way this story is brought to life, coupled with the substance of the narrative, make it a definite must-see. Plus, the music is catchy, the performances compelling, and the presentation completely engaging from the first note the orchestra plays. This show stuck with me long after I left the theatre. It is rare that a new musical resonates so deeply with its audience, but I could tell from the uproarious standing ovation that my fellow audience members felt the same. It’s an important story, and this show is produced with respect for its reality. The experience presents so much more than musicals are generally able to offer the audience. I seriously hope it gets a life after this short, off-Broadway run. It deserves to be seen.

(The Scottsboro Boys plays at The Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15^th Street, through April 18^th. Performances are Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday through Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 3pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm and 7pm. Tickets are $70 each. Based on availability, $20 rush tickets can be purchased at the box office 2 hours before the show. Rush tickets are cash only. For more show info or to buy tickets visit vineyardtheatre.org.)

This coming Tuesday, Bloodshot Records will release the latest Graham Parker album, Imaginary Television. My colleague Dw. Dunphy thinks it’s a pretty good effort. Read his review here. For many people however, Parker has yet to top his 1979 classic Squeezing Out Sparks.

Parker put the Rumour together in 1975 by enlisting veterans of three different British pub bands. The members were guitarists Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont, keyboard player Rich Andrews, drummer Steve Goulding, and bassist Andrew Bodnar. Their debut album, Howlin’ Wind was released in 1976, followed quickly by their second release, Heat Treatment. The band quickly gained a strong reputation for their intense live performances. Unfortunately, record sales did not live up to expectations, and by the time of their third album, 1977’s Stick To Me, Parker had clearly adopted a somewhat more commercial songwriting style.

Parker made it clear that in his opinion the blame for paltry sales in the U.S. lay squarely at the doorstep of his label, Mercury Records, and delivered the ultimate goodbye in the form of the lethal b-side of a 1979 single, “Mercury Poisoning.” He was quickly signed to Arista records, and enlisted legendary producer Jack Nitzsche to work on his debut for the label, Squeezing Out Sparks. The album would become one of the most acclaimed efforts in the history of rock and roll.

For a start, Parker got rid of the horn section that had accompanied him on previous albums, stripping down his sound to the basics. It takes great songs to make a classic album, and Parker had a handful, including one of the first songs to ever take on the controversial topic of abortion. “You Can’t Be Too Strong” is a dagger to the heart delivered by a hand in a velvet glove. Elsewhere, the tempo was more upbeat, but the lyrics were equally scathing. “Passion Is No Ordinary Word,” “Protection,” and “Love Gets You Twisted” are almost savage in their lyrical intensity, and rock and roll fervor. I think it’s fair to say that you wouldn’t want to be the person that Parker wrote these songs about. Other songs such as “Discovering Japan,” and “Local Girls” bring Parker’s caustic wit and clever wordplay to the forefront.

For all of his proven abilities, Nitzsche was smart enough to mostly stay out of the way and let the Rumour do what they did best; play elemental rock and roll with barroom exuberance, and match Parker’s level of intensity note for note. Nitzsche and engineer Mark Howlett did manage to capture a timeless sound that even now does not sound dated in the least, more than 30 years later.

The album made it as far as #40 on the Billboard Pop Chart in 1979. The next year, Parker would release The Up Escalator. The album’s commercial success surely owed something to the presence of E Street Band members Danny Federici and Roy Bittan, and background vocals from Bruce Springsteen. By then, Bob Andrews had left the band, and was not replaced. The album cover credited only Parker, and not the Rumour, marking the end of one of the greatest bands that rock and roll has ever known.

Note: The last video below is not a song from the Squeezing Out Sparks, but “Hold Back the Night” has always been one of my favorite songs, and Parker & the Rumour do a very nice job with their cover.

I know my choice of A Chorus Line: The Movie (1985) will be a bit controversial, particularly for fans of the stage show, but I don’t care. I grew up watching this movie and, since this column is (mostly) not a democracy, I’m going to write about whatever I want.

I will start out by telling you that I’ve never actually seen A Chorus Line on stage — Broadway or otherwise. I know that’s  a bit ridiculous, since it was one of the longest running Broadway shows in history, which also had a touring production that probably made its way through my neck of the woods several times. I always wanted to see it, but it just never worked out for me.

I do, however, have the album of the original 1975 Broadway cast recording and I’ve listened to it many, many times. So while I can’t speak from first-hand experience about the differences between the movie and the stage show, I can at least speak about the differences in the songs.

I know I’ve told you several times that I have an unhealthy obsession with 1980s dance movies, and director Richard Attenborough’s film adaptation of the successful Broadway musical came out right at the height of my interest in this genre, so of course I was immediately obsessed with it. I watched it over and over on cable, even taping it onto a blank VHS tape, which I proceeded to wear out. I eventually bought the soundtrack on cassette with birthday money when I was 10 years old and played it to death on my boom box. I actually still have that cassette and, until recently, it was the only way I could listen to the now out-of-print soundtrack album. I finally got my hands on a CD of the album and now you get to benefit from my find (well, some of you might think you’re benefiting).

For those of you who have never seen the stage show (like me) or the movie, and have no idea what the premise is, A Chorus Line is about a group of dancers auditioning for the chorus of a Broadaway show. It features 19 main characters, most of whom are the dancers auditioning, and is set on the bare stage of a Broadway theatre. Based on taped conversations the show’s creator, Michael Bennet, had with a group of dancers he knew, the show provides an inside look at the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they talk about the events that have shaped their lives and why they decided to become dancers.

To give you a little taste of the stage show, here is a video of the original 1975 cast performing the opening number, “I Hope I Get It” during the 1976 Tonys telecast:

And here are a couple of trailers for the movie:

The Broadway show was a smash hit and won nine Tony awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score for Martin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban, Best Direction of a Musical for Michael Bennett, and several of the major musical acting awards. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976. It holds the record as the fourth longest running Broadway show ever, and the longest running Broadway musical originally produced in the United States.

Of course, when something on Broadway is as big of a hit as A Chorus Line was, Hollywood inevitably comes calling. But the production was rife with problems from the start. Michael Bennett walked away from the film when his proposal to present the movie as an audition to cast the movie version of the Broadway show was rejected (eventually, something like this vision would be made, in the excellent 2008 documentary Every Little Step, which explores the history of the show and documents the auditioning process for the 2006 Broadway revival).

Multiple directors turned down the project because they felt the musical would be too difficult to translate to the screen. Eventually, British director Attenborough signed on, with Arnold Schulman writing the screenplay based on the original show’s Tony award-winning book. Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban, who wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway show, also signed on, composing two new pieces and reworking some of the original songs. Michael Douglas was cast as Zach and would be the only major Hollywood star to appear in the film.

There are some pretty major differences between the film version and the stage version, which made the film a disappointment to fans of the show and cursed the film at the box office. Some notable changes:

• The duet between Al and Kristine, called “Sing!” is completely omitted.
• Cassie’s number, “The Music and the Mirror” is replaced with the less-effective “Let Me Dance for You,” which was written especially for the film and does contain some of the original instrumental sections from the song it replaced.
• The new song “Surprise, Surprise!” replaces the montage that includes “Hello 12, Hello 13, Hello Love” and “Gimme The Ball”, although one verse the former is heard in the film. The monologues of Mark, Connie, Judy, and Greg which are part of this number are delivered as straight dialogue in other sections of the film. Interestingly, “Surprise, Surprise!” which is performed by Gregg Burge as Richie, is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1986.
• In the film, Cassie is not at the audition from the start, but rather arrives halfway through and doesn’t even begin performing until her solo for “Let Me Dance for You.” We instead see a lot of new scenes with her wondering around backstage, remembering the heydey of her dancing career and her time with Zach.
• “What I Did for Love” was originally performed by Diana, backed by the cast, as a love song about dancing. In the film, it is performed by Cassie as a love song to Zach.
• Zach does not dance at all and, instead, remains in his makeshift director’s booth for the majority of the film.
• Bebe is cast in the fictional show instead of Judy.

Of the film’s cast, Gregg Burge (Richie), Matt West (Bobby), Vickie Frederick (Sheila), Pam Klinger (Maggie) and Justin Ross (Greg) had also appeared in the Broadway production of A Chorus Line, most reprising their roles, with the exception of Vicki Frederick, who had actually played Cassie and Lois in the stage version. Gregg Burge also acted as assistant choreographer on the film.

Some fun facts about other members of the film’s cast:

• Nicole Fosse (Kristine) is the daughter of the legendary choreographer Bob Fosse and legendary dancer/actress Gwen Verdon.
• Michelle Johnston is a talented choreographer and dancer who assisted A Chorus Line’s choreographer, Jeff Hornaday, as well as playing Bebe. She worked with Hornaday again as his assistant choreographer on Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” tour, on Michael Jackson’s Captain EO, and on Dick Tracy, a film in which she also danced. She has since moved on to choreographing on her own, working on film and television projects such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mad Men and Chicago, while continuing to act in various roles, sometimes in the same films or television shows she’s choreographing. For those of you who have seen Showgirls, you’ll remember her as one of the choreographers, Gay Carpenter.
• Janet Jones (Judy), is probably best known these days as Mrs. Wayne Gretzky.
• Audrey Landers (Val) is probably best known for her role as Afton Cooper on Dallas. While she could sing, she had very little dancing experience, so you either see her from the waist up in dance shots or she’s offstage. Why they bothered casting her in this is beyond me — allegedly an actress who had played Val on Broadway auditioned for the role in the film and was turned down. The producers later asked her to be Landers’s dance double, which she rightly refused to do.
• Terrence Mann (Larry) is a prominent Broadway actor and dancer. He is probably best known for his roles as Rum Tum Tugger in Cats, Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, and the Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beeast. The latter two roles both earned him Tony award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
• Tony Fields (Al) was once a Solid Gold dancer. He also appeared in the video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as one of the dancing zombies.

The film was a major flop. Fans of the Broadway show were extremely disappointed in the changes that had been to their beloved musical, not only in the songs, but in the overall tone — many reviews I’ve read have said that the film takes away the rawness of the stage production and replaces it with a slicker, decidedly ’80s production. According to Wikipedia, Kelly Bishop, the original Sheila on Broadway (film and television fans might know her best as Baby’s mother in Dirty Dancing and Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls), said once in an interview that, “it was appalling when director Richard Attenborough went on a talk show and said ‘this is a story about kids trying to break into show business.’ I almost tossed my TV out the window; I mean what an IDIOT! It’s about veteran dancers looking for one last job before it’s too late for them to dance anymore. No wonder the film sucked!”

I’m sure if I’d have seen the original Broadway production, I would have more issues with the film than I do. I’ve never really looked at it as a replacement for the Broadway show, but kind of as its own animal. Even though I know I’m missing out on a lot of what made the stage show great by watching the film, I still can’t help but love the movie. My feelings about the film jive pretty well with Roger Ebert’s review, in which he said, “The result may not please purists who want a film record of what they saw on stage, but this is one of the most intelligent and compelling movie musicals in a long time…”

Below is the entire out-of-print soundtrack for the film. Even if you prefer the stage version, this is still pretty good stuff and worth a listen.

Company – I Hope I Get It
Cameron English (as Paul) – Who Am I Anyway?
Charles McGowan (as Mike) – I Can Do That
Vicki Frederick, Michele Johnston, Pam Klinger (as Sheila, Bebe, Maggie) – At The Ballet
Gregg Burge (as Richie) – Surprise, Surprise
Yamil Borges (as Diana) – Nothing
Alyson Reed (as Cassie) – Let Me Dance for You
Audrey Landers (as Val) – Dance: Ten; Looks: Three
Company – One (Rehearsal)
Alyson Reed (as Cassie) – What I Did for Love
Ensemble – One (Finale)