Retracing the longstanding career of avant-garde drummer Sunny Murray, one of the most influential figures of the Free jazz revolution. Through a series of interviews with key time witnesses as well as historic and contemporary concert footage, it reassesses the relationship between the libertarian music movement and the political events of the 1960s, whose social claims it so intimately reflected. By doing so, it also recounts how the most radical forms of musical expression were excluded from the major production and distribution networks as the libertarian ideal went out of fashion. Beyond its historical approach, the film follows Sunny Murray on current gigs, showing his daily struggle to perpetuate a musical genre which is still widely ignored by the general public. In doing so, Sunny's time now also dwells on the near-clandestine community of aficionados who continue to worship the gods of their musical coming of age, and whose unfaltering support has permitted free ...
A classic early live show from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits, performed in Germany in 1979. This release captures the original band in their first brush of international success - Mark and Dave Knopfler on lead and rhythm guitars, John Illsley on bass, Pick Withers on drums. For all its newfound success, Dire Straits here puts on a carefully polished, musically serious show, full of the nuance and intelligence that characterized the band s memorable career in Rock. A very young Mark Knopfler is of course front and center, with his trademark Dylan-influenced vocals, seductive guitar playing, and dark and thoughtful songs. Those songs include beloved numbers from their breakout self-titled debut album ('Sultans Of Swing', Down To The Waterline, Six Blade Knife and others) as well as a batch of tracks from their forthcoming sophomore album including Lady Writer and Once Upon A Time In The West. 16 tracks. Immortal.
13-year-old Felix Xaba dreams of becoming a saxophonist like his late father, but his mother Lindiwe thinks jazz is the devil's music. When Felix leaves his township friends to take up a scholarship for grade eight at an elitist private school, he defies his mother and turns to two aging members of his father's old band to help him prepare for the school jazz concert.
Traveling with Doc Parker's medicine show, Gene finds his old friend Harry Brooks wounded and the Sheriff after him for murdering his father. Gene also sees that Craven and his gang are looking for Brooks. Finding clues that Craven was behind the murder, Gene has a plan utilizing the medicine show wagon that will trap the gang.
In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now. The film explores Erroll's childhood in Pittsburgh; his meteoric rise in popularity while playing on 52nd street, New York's famed jazz epicenter; the origins of his most famous album (Concert By The Sea) and his most famous composition (Misty); his singular, virtuosic piano style; and his dynamic personality, both on and off the stage.
Krishna Das is on a journey to India to discover legendary spiritual teacher Neem Karoli Baba, through drug addiction and depression, to his eventual emergence as a world-famous Kirtan singer.
"Born In Chicago" is a soulful documentary film that chronicles a uniquely musical passing of the torch. It’s the story of first generation blues performers who had made their way to Chicago from the Mississippi Delta and their ardent and unexpected followers – young white, middle class kids who followed this evocative music to smoky clubs deep in Chicago’s ghettos. There, against all odds, they were encouraged by the greats who had became their musical mentors and learned the art of the blues at the feet the masters, going on to make the music their own.
Based on and built around the west coast radio program, "The Hollywood Barn Dance", although no members of the 1947 cast of the program are in the film, but the better-known (on a national scale) Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadors, Jack Guthrie and Jimmy and Leon Short more than make up for that. The slight plot, around 18 songs, begins with Tubb and his band searching for $2000 needed to rebuild their town chuch after it burned down while they were rehearsing in it. Hollywood, here they come!
In this world of wonders there are still places that have not been smoothed over with the shallow surfaces of Western commercialism. This film is a personal Valentine to a life filled with amazing, exotic, beautiful and fearsome places for the world. The amazing thing is not just the visual demonstration of how fleeting life is, but a meditation on how the decisions that seem momentous on our time scale are flickering snapshots of life on this planet, too small to be observed by most. Somehow the music combined with technology becomes a personal experience that makes the earth and its inhabitants seem touchingly fragile and full of wonder...
This is the ultimate critical review of Metallica featuring rare live footage including the legendary performance at Woodstock 1994. Also featured are rare archive interviews with James Hetfield and Jason Newstead and the views of a leading team of music critics, working musicians and Metallica insiders.
AC/DC has long reigned as a titanic force in the world of hard rock, and never more so than when they were anchored by their original singer and resident wildman, Bon Scott. AC/DC - The Bon Scott Years movie This program offers a critical review of the band's Bon Scott years--from his first appearance in the early 1970s to his death in 1980--through rare archival material, interviews with rock critics and musicologists, and previously unreleased live performances of classics like "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "Let There Be Rock."
The hardest working man in show business is back--and some say better than ever--in this live concert filmed in 1985 at Georgia's famed Chastain Park. Performances include 1. Give It Up Or Turn It Loose 2. It's Too Funky In Here 3. Try Me 4. Get On The Good Foot 5. Prisoner Of Love 6. Get Up Offa That Thing 7. Georgia On My Mind 8. It's A Man's Man's Man's World 9. Cold Sweat 10. I Can't Stand Myself 11. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag 12. I Got You (I Feel Good) 13. Please, Please, Please 14. Jam
Saxophonist Art Pepper (1925-1982) lived the kind of jazz life only found in Hollywood movies. His prodigious talent led him to top gigs as a teenager, but drugs and attendant criminal activity knocked him out of commission for virtually all of the 1960s and early 1970s. This documentary, shot shortly after his searing memoir, {-Straight Life}, was published in 1979, shows Pepper in the full flower of a remarkable comeback. His third wife, Laurie, is featured prominently; they met in the drug treatment facility Synanon in 1969 and were married in 1974. She took over his business affairs and helped him write {-Straight Life}. Pepper tells his own story here, but the emphasis is on an evening's performance at a club in Malibu, with the musician in fine form, backed by a terrific trio. (Tom Wiener, Rovi)
The long-familiar Heidi tale is given a contemporary (and musical) setting as the young heroine leaves her familiar Swiss mountain for the bright lights of Manhattan.
Famed for her extraordinary vocal range and uncanny ability to reach the emotional core of a song, We Will Always Love You pays tribute to that magnificent body of work and takes a closer look at the woman who brought it to life.Blessed with a once-in-a-lifetime talent and nurtured as an artist by legendary mentors Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston's life had all of the makings of a modern fairytale and, in many ways, it was. The singer scored a remarkable ten #1 hit singles, and even made a successful transition to the silver screen in The Bodyguard, for which she recorded her immortal version of 'I Will Always Love You'. However, behind the beautiful face and the girl next-door charm that endeared her to millions of fans, there lurked a vulnerability that brought a searing intensity to her music and, eventually, tragedy into her life.Now, for the first time on DVD, the complete saga of Whitney Houston's glorious career.
A wealthy man's son is running for high school student body president, and the boy's father tells the principal that if his son wins, he will make a sizable donation that will pay for the football team's much-needed uniforms.