DVD Review: Welcome to Rockwell: A Night of Legendary Collaborations

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2013
Images from the Internet

 

Welcome to Rockwell: A Night of Legendary Collaboration
Directed by Phlippe Baudet
Masterpieces
ABC Entertainment GmbH
66 minutes, 2012
www.MVDvisual.com

Apparently big arena shows for charities did not end in the 1980s or early ‘90s. Well, I’m so okay with that. For this recent show, held at the huge O2 stadium in London, some of the top British bands get together for Nordoff-Robbins, which is geared towards music therapy for disabled children. As with most of these events, it went on for hours and this DVD goes on for just over one hour, so a lot was obviously cut out, and the crème de le crème (i.e., the headliners) made the grade.

Opening up the show here is Razorlight. Now, I stopped listening to mainstream radio before I even heard the Ramones for the first time in ’75, so I fully admit that I had never heard them play before. Also, they apparently were much more successful in England than in the States. They are okay, especially their last song, “In the City” (not to be confused with the Jam song). Vocalist Johnny Borrell has a decent voice, though he comes off a bit privileged and arrogant to me, like, “My music is important,” rather than just getting out there and knocking it outta the park (or stadium). However, they still fare pretty well here, and they did come out for a charity event (publicity or true feelings is the question). FYI, Razorlight disbanded this year.

Though I would have thought he’d be the last man standing on the stage as the headliner, Robert Plant comes by and shows Borrell how to do it, by being relaxed and in the moment, rather than showing off. With a mixture of standard instruments mixed with Sub-Saharan ones, the band pulls out the Led Zeppelin songbook with three of their classic songs, “Black Dog” (sans echo), “Whole Lotta Love,” and the cover of the blues classic “Fixin’ to Die.” These are done less metal and shrill than Zep did, and slower, but it still is definitely in Plant-land. I was actually disappointed because since the end of Zep, he’s been focusing more on the Blues, and I was hoping he would do that rather than rehash his discography. Perhaps he was trying to bring in the charity cash, and if that is so, I will somewhat forgive him. I always found Zep kinda…tiresome.

Joss Stone always reminds me of Taylor Swift physically, but Stone definitely wins in both the looks and talent department. Yet, I still do not like to listen to her because of the rehashed (there’s that word again) neo-disco sound she insists upon burying her talent. What a waste. If she was doing rock, or preferably blues a la Joplin or Billie Holiday, I would be a lot more interested. But do we need another Donna Summers or someone of that ilk? Vocally, she’s the real deal, and could easily give the clinical Celine Dion a run for her power (vocal) chord money. Stone is just another singer who has a great voice that I can’t listen to because of either what she sings or the way she performs it (e.g., Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey).

Next up is Tom Jones, giving a rare appearance away from his Las Vegas hunting grounds. Speaking of rehashing, it makes sense that he performs “It’s Not Unusual,” and even makes it look like he isn’t sick of singing it however many times a day he has to in Vegas. His voice is a bit creaky at time, and can’t reach the high notes (from overuse of his voice?), but he’s still fun. I have to admit there’s something about Jones I like as a person, being totally willing to put himself on the line by making fun of himself and his “persona” in various films and television shows. He is a consummate celebrity who is comfortable with himself. That being said, with his extensive catalog of great songs, why in hell would he choose the awful disco – here it comes – rehashing of “Sex Bomb,” easily one of the worst songs he has ever done? What a squander of an opportunity. At least Stone did something new, even if the style is a throwback. Jones’ and Stone’s duet of the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” seems unrehearsed and slapped together.

Cult icon David Grey (who always reminded me of a British Elliott Smith) starts off his classic “Babylon” backed with the female electric string quartet of Escala, before sliding into “Fugitive.” He is a man that works on the strength of his songs, more than anything else, rather than having much of a stage presence (not a complaint), but without a doubt his writing hold it up.

Most of the musicians come back for the finale, which starts off on a bizarre note with Tom Jones bringing out a lyric sheet. He explains they hadn’t picked which song the organizers were going to use, so he needs the sheet: for “Let It Be.” Really? There are definitely more musician on the stage then there are on this DVD, and some missing (e.g., Plant), as they meander through the song with no harmony or being in sync. Jones uses his lack of knowing the song by doing a call and response, but reads directly from the sheet when it’s his turn at the solo. Rather than try to pretend and fake it, the fact that stands by his ignorance is something I respect.

Beverly Knight, who is not anywhere else on the DVD, steals the finale with her powerful R&B. But where was Lulu? She performed at the show, and she is someone I would have enjoyed seeing, as she is another belter who was underrated in North America (have you ever heard her version of “Shout” when she was a mere teen?; absolutely stunning). I definitely would have taken her segment over Jones or Grey, but she isn’t where the dollars are these days, is she?

Track List:
Razorlight: I Fall to Pieces
Razorlight: Golden
Razorlight: In the City
Robert Plant: Black Dog
Robert Plant: Fixin’ to Die
Robert Plant: Whole Lotta Love
Joss Stone: Free Me
Joss Stone: Super Duper
Tom Jones: It’s Not Unusual
Tom Jones: Sex Bomb
Tom Jones and Joss Stone: It’s Your Thing
David Grey and Escala: Babylon
David Grey: Fugitive
All: Let It Be



Bonus video:

DVD Reviews: Robert Plant’s Blue Note

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet

Robert Plant’s Blue Note
Executive Producer Rob Johnstone
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual, 2010AM
155 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedreams.co.uk
MVDvisual.com

Is it possible for you to respect a musician, and yet not care much for his output? I’ve felt this way for some about the likes of Bowie, Brian Ferry, and Robert Plant. The one time I saw Led Zeppelin in concert at Madison Square Garden was the late 1970s (Bonham’s last tour), and it was one of the more boring shows I have ever seen, with tepid music and a thunderously lackluster performance (I’m guessing they were as stoned as those in the audience around me).

Yet, I still remember the very first time I heard possibly the most overplayed song in the classic rock era, “Stairway to Heaven,” on the jukebox at the Kingsborough Community College Annex. I also recall thinking, that’s it? I do still enjoy, however, Little Roger and the Goosebumps’ “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island”…

But for some reason, Plant has intrigued me, even though I actually know very little about him, in a similar way that Jimmy “whip-in-my-suitcase” Page did in his pre-Zep days, when he was a studio musician (England’s Glen Campbell?) and while in the Yardbirds.

Yet another part of the continuing British series on classic rock by the amazing Chrome Dreams, this documentary doesn’t just focus on Robert Plant, but also on the major influences on his musical life. While overly long at nearly 3 hours, this study actually gets it right: the people who are interviewed discuss their particular specialties, such as British writers Nigel Williamson (The Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin) and Barney Hoskyns (Trampled Under Foot: The power and excess of Led Zeppelin) focus on the general role of the band, Americans Richie Unterberger discusses the ‘60s San Francisco scene (bet Jeff Tamarkin would have been a good add, too) and Brooklyn-based author and journalist Amanda Petrusich and music historian John Lomax III (The Country Music Book) describe the Nashville period.

Even further, and this is what really excited me, is the part that tends to be weakest in this series, and that is musicians who are contemporaries. For this study, there are the likes of Tom McGuiness (Manfred Mann), Dave Kelly (The Blues Band), Chris Dreja (Yardbirds), Hossam Ramzy (Egyptian percussionist and composer), Robbie Blunt (guitarist and songwriter who worked with Plant during his early solo career) and songwriter/producer Phil Johnstone (of the Dangerous Brothers; any relation to the DVD’s executive producer, I wonder?). Usually these collections are shy on collaborators of the artist in focus, but here they’re thick as, well, musicians.

There are also a plethora of clips, most pretty short, highlighting many points of Plant’s musical life, including live and music videos, as well as various interviews. In fact, the opening segment is part of Plant’s acceptance speech at the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 1995, discussing American music, especially the Blues. However, there are nearly as many by the artist that influenced his encyclopedic and broad range of styles as there is of him. A good example is right near the beginning, when a young Plant first discovered rock’n’roll, and we see snippets of Elvis (“That’s Alright Mama” and “Hound Dog”). As he then discovers the blues, there are live bits of Big Bill Broonzy (“Worried Man Blues”), Muddy Waters (“Got My Mojo Working”), Son House (one of my faves, “Dead Letter Blues”), Howlin’ Wolf (“Smokestack Lightning”; “Don’t Laugh at Me”), Sonny Boy Williams (Getting Out of Town”; “Keep It To Yourself”) and of course Robert Johnson (“Preachin’ Blues,” “Crossroad Blues”), among many others. There are even some Stones (“Not Fade Away”; “Little Red Rooster”) and Yardbirds (“I’m a Man”).

Plant discusses this early period, and further onto other segments of his career throughout the disk, on the Canadian Q radio program in 2010 (probably interviewed by an unseen Jian Ghomeshi). Most of this pre-musical period of Plant’s life is taken up in discussion and description of rock and earlier Blues, so Plant barely shows up in the first 30 minutes of the disk.

Following the Blues history, we catch up on the folk rock movement and San Francisco scene with Buffalo Springfield (“For What It’s Worth”) and Love (“Love is More Than Words”). As Plant forms Band of Joy with John Bonham (among others; there is a rare sound-bite of their cover of “Hey, Joe”), psychedelic rock also makes an impression with Moby Grape (“8:05”), Jimi Hendrix (“Purple Haze”), Cream (“Sunshine of Your Love”) and the Yardbirds’ experimentations (“For Your Love,” “Happenings 10 Years Ago,” “Dazed and Confused”).

After Band of Joy dissipate, and the Yardbirds fall apart, Plant – not the first choice of lead singer – joins Jimmy Page and the others to form the New Yardbirds, which, of course, would become Zeppelin. Surprisingly, LZ only constitutes about 10 minutes of the whole story here, though there are a number of quick clips (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”; “Whole Lotta Love,” “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” “When the Levee Breaks” and the song that introduced Plant’s interest in Eastern music, “Kashmir.”)

No, I’m not going to relate, in detail, the whole DVD, you’ll have to purchase it on your own, though my guess if you’re reading this you know the story, anyway. But to quickly give an overview, Plant goes solo in the 1980s, focusing at first on Arabian music, focused around Egypt, in part thanks to the influence of singer Oum Kalthoum.

When he formed his next couple of new groups (just known by his name), he released a bunch of LPs with the full electronic nonsense that made the 1980s somewhat unbearable (think drum machine and synths). I remember seeing some of the videos on MTV and just feeling squeamish, thinking “Jeez, this is just horrible” (e.g., “Little By Little”). Of course, he wasn’t alone as many other British musicians went the same route, such as Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and Robert Palmer. I blame this, in Plant’s case, on his production team of the Dangerous Brothers. This would be followed by a period of melding the awful ‘80s style with a more rock-oriented feel (e.g., “Tall Cool One”), as his Led Zeppelin past began to catch up to him. He started doing occasional Zep material in his live shows. Funny, there is no mention about later LZ tours with Bonham’s son filling in on the kit; or is my mind making that up?

Of course, once LZ songs come into the mix again, so would his partner, Jimmy Page, and together they’d form, what else? Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (no resurgence of John Paul Jones though, as the doc mentions in passing; would have loved both Page and Jones to have been interviewed on this doc). Together they would, for a couple of LPs worth at least, delves deep into the Eastern sounds, even covering their own LZ material rearranged to their new focus.

By 2006, after some uninspired string of original songs, Page and Plant were kaput. Forming yet another band, the Strange Sensations, the material Plant focused on was wide ranging, from Blues to SoCal-based. In an interview, he calls it a “quasi-psychedelic North African mish mosh.” This was followed by Mali-inspired material, as this DVD posits that Africa is the actual home of the Blues, so it’s logical that Plant would find solace there. The viewer gets some background of this music, and why it is thought to be wellspring of the American-based style.

This is all very well and good, but it’s the next phase that piqued my interest, as he headed for Nashville, hooking up with Americana singer supreme Alison Krauss, who in turn introduced him to her muse, T. Bone Burnett. At this point, we’re given yet another history lesson about C&W. Explaining the connection, Lomax quotes Hank Williams Jr. as once stated that “Country music is nothing but white man’s blues.” Okay, so we’re on the same page as the to the Plant link.

For the last phase we see Plant is his formation of another Band of Joy which, as far as I know, is his current situation.

The reason for the length of this DVD is not just that it covers Robert Plant’s career, but it also informs the watcher on the history of each of his influences. While each one of these topics actually deserves its own documentary, it’s nice to get an encapsulated overview.

One aspect of Plant’s life that is completely untouched here is his personal one, outside of the music. But that’s okay, because I’m actually happy to learn more about what makes him an artist. Am I any more of a Robert Plant fan having watched this? No, I guess not. However, I feel like I understand a lot more about what drives him, and my respect for him has definitely increased. There was so much I didn’t know about they guy, and I’m grateful to be caught up a bit. Plus, learning about the Mali-Blues connection, and Plants forays into Eastern sounds did pique my interest, so I may go back and check out some of the artists that influenced him. It’s all good.

The extra is a few minute piece connecting Plant, Lomax, and Leadbelly (including some clips of the latter performing, alone making bonus worth a watch).

This review is dedicated to the lovely Miss Pamela, who should have been interviewed as well.