Poster for "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind" directed by Ethan Coen
Every rockstar has their peccadillos and predilections, but very few have eclipsed the trouble conjured by Jerry Lee Lewis.
From drunken rages, pill-induced furies, mysterious deaths and all around rambunctious activity — Jerry Lee Lewis was a man possessed — in every sense of the word.
Released in 2022, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” presents Ethan Coen’s attempt at reconciling the man’s frankly tricky legacy with his indelible, foundational rock and roll.
A scant 73-minutes long, the documentary is entirely comprised of archival material: television footage, photographs and recordings all championing the wild man of rock. In other words, it’s one hell of a highlight reel.
Beyond the obligatory 70s Johnny Carson appearances, Coen keeps the private and intimate life of the Lewis house just that — private.
There’s no mass-reckoning with the man behind the piano and there’s no unmasking of “Killer” — it’s a portrait of Jerry Lee Lewis as the piano shaking, party making pioneer — no more and no less.
Honestly, I expected more from Coen on his solo debut, a tricky story told by a filmmaker who seems to revel in the trick.
The juxtaposition between the sane and insane — or rather, the insane and mundane — that makes the Coen Brothers’ films so enticing is noticeably absent in this first-person portrayal of Lewis’ meteoric rise, fall and unlikely return from the ashes time and time again.
If anything, Coen seems to pull his punches towards Lewis, falling back on the routine excuse: “It was a different time.”
In conversation surrounding the scandalous marriage to 13-year-old cousin Myra Brown, Coen and his team seemingly absolve Lewis of fault.
By the age of 22, Lewis had already been married twice, the first of which happening just after his sixteenth birthday.
While there’s no blanket statement absolving Lewis of his sins, the inclusion of the factoid is eyebrow-raising in comparison to his child bride.
Similarly, his notorious temper is treated with similar grace; a violent feud with Elvis boils down to nothing more than career misgivings and undo praise no different than Little Richard and James Brown with no mention of Lewis’ drunken threat to shoot Presley while on a visit to Graceland.
Similarly, one of the many incidents of gun violence against his band members is only mentioned in a brief talk show appearance and largely written off as just another legendary quirk.
For a man of such scandalous, tabloid-type character, Coen seems to skirt much of it for reason’s I’m not quite sure of.
It’s a good film and a highly entertaining watch, but that’s where the buck stops with “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.”
Coen isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or run a mass expose on Lewis; he’s simply spotlighting the tour-de-force of the pioneering rocker.
For fans willing to brush aside their personal quibbles and those who are new to the spectacle of Jerry Lee Lewis, Coen’s documentary is a wonderful, cursory glance at the life of a legend.
I never thought Squeeze would be a divisive band, but I thought wrong.
Whenever the band appears in conversation, it’s accompanied by a chorus of groans.
According to a certain subset of the population, Squeeze is a girl’s band.
Did the band garner an audience of young women? Of course they did; they were halfway decent-looking young men singing love songs.
But how does that change the sonic validity of a group?
Historically, teenage girls have always been on the cusp of greatness with who gets their fandom.
Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, Duran Duran, Madonna and Taylor Swift all captured teenage imaginations and were partially propelled to stardom because of it.
Now, we socially recognize the legitimacy of some of these artists as important to the fabric of pop-culture, but that was only until they gained a more adult audience.
So, what makes Squeeze different?
They ran in the same circles as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, being produced by the former and the latter appearing on 1981’s “Tempted” and “There’s no Tomorrow” and 1982’s “Black Coffee in Bed.”
The Official Music Video for “Tempted” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
Audio for “There’s No Tomorrow’ by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
The Official Music Video for “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
Argybargy:
For all intents and purposes, they ran with a cool crowd and played cool music. But because of their designation as a radio pop band for teenagers, they lost their luster.
I was going through my own record collection, and I stumbled upon my beat up copy of “Argybargy,” the band’s third studio album released in 1980 – and I fell in love.
It was a dollar bin lark because I liked “Pulling Muscles (From the Shell)” — a slightly dirty ditty about naughty diversions at the beach — but I never really listened to it until I pulled it from the stacks.
It’s jazzy, it’s fun, there’s almost a doo-wop flair to the dueling vocals of Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford and there’s a delightfully working class flair to the stories they tell — even with inconsistent songs — across the board it was a fun listen.
The album did well; they found an audience as young and spunky as their sound and they found their stride – good for them, because other bands would kill for a glimpse of that success.
So yeah, chicks dig squeeze (this chick certainly does) and maybe you should, too.
Perhaps we put too much weight on how popularity affects the “coolness” of something — a prevalent WKNC conversation — but I beg that something is popular for a reason…
You can call Squeeze whatever you want — New Wave, Pop, Airheaded-Teenie-Bopper-Love-Songs — whatever you want, but if the music sounds good and the band is respected by contemporaries, maybe we should respect it, too.
A look at “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.”
By 1966, Bob Dylan and his apostolic audience were at odds and that tension boiled to a head during one pivotal set at Manchester Free Trade Hall, not the misbilled Royal Albert Hall.
In 2022, Cat Power brought Dylan’s words back home, this time in the right venue.
Power, the notorious alternative folk songstress of ’90s acclaim, while known for being obtuse and inaccessible, feels remarkably accessible in this recording.
Released in 2023, as far as cover albums go – which she is no stranger to – this one is almost painfully straightforward.
Equal parts faithful reconstruction and self-aware reimagining of Dylan’s last supper, the album playfully tugs at the frayed edges of folk’s second death knell – Farcically, Dylan had already “killed” folk alongside Mike Bloomfield the year before at the 1965 Manchester Folk Festival.
Following the set song by song right down to the acoustic/electric split half-way through, Power effortlessly waltzes between her own delicate, ghost-like phrasing and Dylan’s nasally-spoken slide.
But as a listener, I’m not entirely sure what keeps Powers back from the precipice of empty pantomime she teeters on.
If anything, “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” feels reverential to the point of becoming defanged.
Whether it be the mix or the crowd, there’s a heavy silence that hangs over both the acoustic and electric portions of the album, miles away from Dylan’s caustic bite and his audience’s simmering discontent.
Warning: This Clip Contains Explicit Content.
Bob Dylan’s 1966 “Judas” Incident from YouTube.
It’s a beautiful album and a wonderful showcase of both Power’s vocal stylings and Dylan’s lyricism but it feels empty above all else.
The moment is too self-aware, too self-referential.
Her audience sits in rapt attention, intimately acquainted with each dip and turn of the score, even attempting to recreate the “Judas” moment…only for it to be on the wrong song.
It’s Power’s response to the Judas heckle that says everything about the auspices this project was conceived under; “No, Jesus,” she responded dryly before launching into a haunted rendition of “Ballad of a Thin Man.”
We all know what that moment meant for the future of music, for the folk messiah to betray the movement he helmed…it changed everything – and that is the albatross that hangs around Power’s neck throughout the set.
Because we know now what that concert meant and what he means to music, we can’t possibly recreate it in earnest – it’s holy, now…it’s larger than us.
But it shouldn’t have been.
“Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” is a wonderfully accessible foray into Bob Dylan’s discography and the stylings of Cat Power. But beyond a well mixed, well arranged reproduction, Power doesn’t bring anything new or fresh into the conversation.
A good cover album, which, technically this is, should expand upon the material or revive the energy that captured audiences originally – and from where I stand, Power dropped the ball on both.
The sun is shining, the grass is green, and that, good people of WKNC only means one thing; Bodhi needs to go to a baseball game.
It’s a chronic condition at this point, the moment I get a whiff of 70 degree weather, I need a cold beer in hand and my butt in a stadium seat.
Lucky for me, we’ve got hometown (adjacent) heroes just a stones throw away from campus that made it into silver screen history.
What Do You Believe In? The Church of Baseball
Written and directed by Ron Shelton, “Bull Durham” brings a fictionalized version of real life minor league darlings, the Durham Bulls, to the big screen with Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
Released in 1988, the film predominantly follows baseball-groupie Annie Savoy and her tug of war between green gilled, neophyte pitcher, Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaBoosh and 12-year minor league veteran Crash Davis.
Every season, the aptly named Annie – an “Annie” is shorthand for a baseball groupie – picks an upstart from the team who needs a little extra loving and coaches them up in the bedroom and the ballpark.
And say what you will, Costner’s brand of rough-n-tumble, all-American everyman makes a home run every time.
“Bull Durham” 1988 trailer from MGM YouTube.
To match Costner’s homegrown, heartland charm, the film pulls from straight to the heart Americana-boogie rock like The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Los Lobos and John Fogerty.
As such, Reel-to-Reel is headed to the ballpark with our very own, 80s smalltown juke joint set.
Bodhi’s Best:
Take Me Out to the Ballgame by Dr. John.
In the old American sport, if there’s one song you best play at the ballpark, it’s this one; one short ditty to get the crowd rollicking as the bats crack.
More so, John’s cover comes from a Ken Burns docu-series chronicling the rise of the sport from gentleman’s hobby to national past time, giving a pedigree to the film’s basis.
Because beyond dugouts, curveballs and garter-belts, “Bull Durham” is about one woman’s love of the sport and how she reignites that in two very different men; the jaded Crash and the naive Nuke.
Sure, she uses her feminine wiles to coach Nuke up to his true potential as a pitcher and reignites Crash’s passion for the sport that washed him out…but beyond the sex and romance, she loves the game.
So why not start with the song we all know and all sing from the cheap seats? For the love of the game.
“Take Me out to the Ballgame” by Dr. John from YouTube.
I Drove All Night by Cyndi Lauper
I am not ashamed to say, the first time I saw “Bull Durham,” far too young I might add, I thought it was set in the fifties.
Now obviously that was a massive misjudgment on my part -Annie Savoy uses a speed-gun to hunt prospects for Christ’s sake – because the film is contemporarily set in the year before it’s release, 1987.
That being said, I love a good trend cycle and “eighties goes fifties” is one of my favorites; big skirts, curled hair, petticoats and pegged jeans all jumped from Mom’s photo album to your closet.
As such, the quasi-rockabilly reminiscence colored my interaction with the film and how I approached this set.
With the film being Annie’s story (fight me on it), I wanted to have a commanding female presence in the romantic sense present within my playlist.
Originally written for Roy Orbison in the 70s, recorded in the 80s, and posthumously released in the 90s, “I Drove All Night” is a perfectly saccharine teeny-bopper pop hit in the late-50s/early-60s tradition.
But, with Lauper at the helm it takes on a whole new level by putting female agency at center stage; no longer the pursued girl waiting in her bedroom, she’s the one at the wheel taking off into the night for her lover.
For a film like “Bull Durham,” where an older woman controls the dynamics of every scene she’s in, I can’t help but feel this would’ve made it’s way into Annie’s tape deck at some point in time.
Cyndi Lauper’s “I Drove All Night” music video from YouTube.
But that my friends is just a tease of what I cooked up for your listening pleasure; an hour-and-a-half of good old jukebox rock to bring you centerfield with Crash, Nuke and Annie.
Reel-to-Reel airs every Friday starting at 8 a.m. only on WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1, Raleigh, NC.
Album Review: “A Dream Is All We Know” by The Lemon Twigs
Bodhi Says, “Check It Out:” “Church Bells,” “If You and I Are Not Wise,” “How Can I Love Her More?” and “Rock On (Over and Over)”
Helmed by Hicksville, Long Island brothers Michael and Brian D’Addario, The Lemon Twigs pull saccharine 60s pop melodies off the shelf, dust them off, charge them with potent 70s jukebox chords and release their somehow nostalgic yet fresh rock upon the masses.
In layman’s terms, Power Pop.
With four albums under their belt, the band introduced a fifth into their canon in May of 2024, the jangly and jubilant “A Dream Is All We Know.”
However, don’t let the numbers get to you; the album is easily one of their cleanest releases to date, leaning further into more Brian Wilson-esque charms rather than the Badfinger-adjacent, guitar-driven rock of their earlier albums.
More pop than rock, “A Dream Is All We Know” takes the impermanent, liminal unreality of day-to-day life and embraces the dream we all know with open arms.
The sonic scenery is hazy and ephemeral, with the listless possibility of a summer day spent by the record player, the dust from the stacks filtering through the sunlight; Tom Petty, NRBQ, Todd Rundgren, Big Star and Cheap Trick make heavy rotation that day.
“A Dream Is All We Know” is falling asleep with the window open, a little sunburnt and a little sweaty, letting the cool breeze brush your sun-kissed shoulders as the sheets pool around your feet while a Wings song plays from the next room.
While I like to call myself an “avid reader,” I find during the nine-ish months of the school year I hardly get to read anything at all.
Well, let me rephrase: I do plenty of reading, just not reading of my choice.
But, the bright beautiful, summery light at the end of the tunnel has appeared and I’m back, baby.
So why not start off with my favorite read of last season; “Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture” by Grace Elizabeth Hale.
One part research, one part lived experience, and all Southern legend at it’s finest, Hale dutifully recreates the Athens of her youth and the college town that changed the game – sorry, Chapel Hill.
Whereas other music-history books err on either the side of salacious rumors or strict fact, “Cool Town” wasn’t only an easy read, it was a fun one too.
Those Summer Nights:
I picked up a hardcopy on a complete lark, and for a couple weeks it was my faithful companion between beach, pool and patio.
Looking back, it was a prescient read; My first summer coming home from school, struggling to find my footing as a weird, music kid in a Southern college town and this book fell into my lap.
Not to suggest I can even attempt to eclipse the likes of Michael Stipe or Vanessa Briscoe Hay, but it felt good to hear about “outsiders” forcefully carving out a space that ended up defining a generation.
Of course, you can’t tell the story of Athens in the 1980s without R.E.M, Pylon and the B-52s, but Hale is able to also highlight bands that were lost in the backwash like to every potent Love Tractor or her own band Cordy Lon.
Really, it is the underdogs and ancillary acts that make “Cool Town” and Athens of a certain time sing; young, broke and hungry for more people on the fringes determined a revolution in how we see and hear the South.
The most memorable and beautiful moments form the book are recollections of seemingly insignificant moments of DIY debauchery: a church-turned-crash-pad housing a still unnamed R.E.M’s first gig, the B-52s nearly caving the floor during a house party after raiding every thrift store within driving distance for costumes or Matthew Sweet being bullied by his pen-pals to join the fight and leave New York City for the college rock hamlet.
Before it became music for the masses, the Athens sound was queer, feminist, cartoony at times and achingly raw depictions of the chaos that surrounded their stomping grounds; an active folk archival of bohemia as it blossomed and withered.
Build a Better South:
Beyond my own need to feel seen and heard by people who (most likely) would have understood how I felt moving to NC State, I am acutely aware that what we do at WKNC wouldn’t really look the same without what happened in Georgia – and bled into Chapel Hill/Carrboro – nearly fifty years ago.
College kids across the nation, but especiallyin the Southeast glommed onto this new driven, jangly music through shared tapes and party bands.
The cretins (like myself) who found their way into the DJ booth then proliferated the new sound across the air, offering respite from the crude and careless old guard – looking at you, Howard Stern.
For the first time in a long time, the radio was fresh and new…and from a current DJs perspective, we’re still riding that high today; most of the listeners who reach out first found us through that eighties boom.
At universities across the South, armed with college rock/jangle rock/power pop/whatever you want to call it, DJs and musicians have been redefining what it means to be Southern in radical ways.
Simply put, y’all means all at WKNC and I will proudly stake part of that in the work coming from Athens some 45 years ago.
Do you want more college rock beamed to your brain?
Fear not good readers, I’ve got the best of the best for your listening pleasure all inspired by the cool sounds of “Cool Town.”
The year was 1974, and the good old sport of the Great North was bloodier than ever.
From semi-pro to the NHL, fists swung with the same if not more force than the mighty stick.
And no one more personified small-time, minor league Old Time Hockey quite like the Johnstown Jets.
Where We Started From
Based in Johnstown, PA, the Jets were known to be some of the nastiest players to take the ice.
Tough but talented, they beat the opposition into submission just as frequently as they out-scored them.
However, amongst their ranks are four men who would help take the Jets from NAHL darlings to legends of the silver screen: Ned Dowd and the Carlson Brothers, Jeff, Jack and Steve.
While Ned Dowd and the Carlson brothers were the origin of so many hockey-hijinks that made it on film, it was his sister Nancy Dowd who put pen to paper and crafted what we would all come to know and love as “Slap Shot.”
“Slap Shot” (Hill, 1977) trailer from YouTube.
Written by Dowd and directed by George Roy Hill, the 1977 film “Slap Shot” follows minor league underdogs the Charlestown Chiefs in a bid to go out with an end-of-season blaze of glory, the failing team resorting to dirty plays to win the affections of their fans.
It’s simple math; a fist to the face puts butts in seats.
The aforementioned Ned would appear in the film alongside two of the three Carlson brothers, Jeff and Steve, as two-thirds of the fictitious “Hanson Brothers.”
Jack, was unable to participate in filming due to contractual obligations with the Edmonton Oilers.
Instead, he was replaced with Dave Hanson who played the fictional counterpart to Jack.
While all three “Hanson Brothers” would have respectable pro careers, Jack Carlson became a legend in his own right upon the ice, totaling 1111 penalty minutes across 508 combined professional games within the WHA and NHL.
With most of the on-screen antics pulled from real-life incidents on the ice, the film has garnered a somewhat checkered reputation within hockey circles.
The official NHL company line suggests that’s not what hockey is about and never has been, but, player commentary suggests it’s a mainstay on busses and charters.
Do with that what you will.
On the other hand, within the minors the film has garnered the singular reputation as “the bible.”
Once again, do with that what you will.
A Legacy Worth Leaving
But beyond goons, the film is funny and crass and violent and most definitely a product of its time.
I’m almost tempted to place it on the list of “films that couldn’t be made today” but beautiful blue-eyed Canuck Jared Keeso sought to prove that thought wrong.
In modern comparisons, you wouldn’t have the TV show “Shoresy” without “Slap Shot,” but as I said before, it’s simple math: fist + face = butt in seat.
Bawdy and brawny, yes, but really at the core of both pieces is the love of a good old hometown hero; something for people of a failing town to fall behind when times are tough.
Much like the fictional Charlestown of the film, the real Johnstown was troubled from the turn of the century by flooding.
Nicknamed “the flood city,” Johnstown saw the flood of 1977 bring about the demise of the Jets during the off season, coinciding with the inevitable fold of the NAHL.
Yet, their story lives on decades further than I would bet any player ever thought a rinky dink minor could all because a sister took stock in her brother’s stories.
Now, that being said…here’s some songs to start a fight to, in the name of Old Time hockey, of course.
Bodhi’s Best:
“The Stripper” by David Rose Orchestra
Big, Bawdy and indisputably raunchy, “The Stripper” is a mainstay on burlesque stages across the globe, but Michael Ontkean brings the lascivious display of the stage to the ice in protest to the so-called goon-like antics of his team.
Beyond violence, “Slap Shot” is without a doubt a film about sex. The players are hounded by (and hounding) groupies, a housewife is turned into chirp-material for experimenting with other women while her husband is away on the road, and a couple’s marital tensions underscore Ontkean’s Ned Braden’s real emotional strife throughout the film.
In the final knock-down drag out against the fictional Syracuse Bulldogs, Braden makes a show of his own with a striptease worthy of even Ms. Gypsy Rose Lee.
While blood spilt rips the crowd into a frenzy, it’s the playful sensuality of the strip that shocks the masses.
It’s not until a high school marching band in the stands launches into a ramshackle rendition of “The Stripper” that the crowd finds their feet once again.
But then again, I’ve always thought there were two “f-words” in the English language…but I’ll leave you to figure out what those are.
“The Stripper” by David Rose Orchestra from YouTube
“Trampled Under Foot” by Led Zeppelin
In a movie that’s equal parts sexual as it is violent (at least by 1970s standards), what’s better than a song that serves up both in equal doses; you can woo your woman and win a fistfight all in one fell swoop.
“Trampled Under Foot” is the fifth track off Led Zeppelin’s 1975 album, “Physical Graffiti.”
A play on Robert Johnson’s 1936 song, “Terraplane Blues,” “Trampled Under Foot” uses cars as a metaphor for you guessed it, sex.
But, that’s not to say it is also one of what I would consider one of the band’s toughest tracks throughout their discography.
It’s one those songs that comes right out from the stereo, grabs you by the throat and refuses to let up.
From Jimmy Page’s absolutely ripping chords to Robert Plant’s screeching wail it’s breakneck in every sense of the word.
In Bodhi’s words, a real romper stomper.
“Trampled Under Foot” by Led Zeppelin from YouTube.
“The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors
Speaking of stomping, what good is a hockey set if I don’t have at least one song directly referencing the game?
Because for all the fighting and the…other f-word I’m not legally allowed to say, I deeply love this sport and I especially love the smaller teams.
From NC State’s Icepack to the Winston Salem Thunderbirds all the way up the the Carolina Hurricanes, I think there’s something so absolutely beautiful about this rough-n-tumble, raggedy damn sport.
Maybe it’s the fans, maybe it’s the on ice celebrations, maybe it’s because I’ve got a weak spot in my heart for scarred and toothless men, I don’t know.
But what I do know is the collective energy of being in the old barn or the stadium is only paralleled to the most energetic concerts and even then, it doesn’t always match up.
Simply put, it brings people together in a way I’ve never quite seen before, and I think that togetherness is something we as human beings need more than ever.
“The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors from YouTube.
So, 7 years of college down the drain…what now? Might as well join The Peace Corps.
Big, bawdy, raunchy, ribald, and surprisingly heartfelt, 1978’s “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” or simply just “Animal House” brings us back to the deceptively simple year of 1962.
“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man”
Jeff Bridges as The Dude, “The Big Lebowski” dir. Joel & Ethan Cohen, 1998
I’m sure most of you are well aware, but Kings is a gem in the middle of downtown Raleigh.
The sound is good, and the beer is cheap — what more could you ask for?
On Saturday evening, March 23, 2024, the Kings stage transformed into an altar of bowling pins and White Russians in honor of “The Big Lebowski’s” 25th Anniversary.
