MY VOYAGE TO ITALY

I've been preparing for a trip abroad by reading books and watching films. It's pretty easy to get me to do these things. I'm reading my way through the Dark Ages, the late Medieval Period, and the Renaissance...and zipping through Netflix watching Italian movies, new films, travelogs, and some old favorites. There is a risk in revisiting things you loved when you were younger ("The Catcher in the Rye," for example) but some things seem to get better with age--take Fellini. Watching La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 again, I'm astonished. Especially with the latter, since I've seen La Dolce Vita several times over the years but I hadn't seen 8 1/2 since my twenties. Time plays its tricks. The film is identical, frame for frame, to what I saw back then but I've changed and grown and lived a good stretch of life since then and from this vantage point watching the film is an entirely new experience. Heraclitus had a point.

While everyone is rushing out to see the new Star Trek, stay home. Think up an excuse. Then pop La Dolce Vita into the box. Or 8 1/2. Take a deep breath and open your eyes for a lesson in cinema as well as life. Keep it to yourself. If you tell some people you like Fellini they might think you're putting on airs, or you're pretentious, or that you couldn't possibly understand what he was getting at. These people are fools. They have no poetry in their souls. You're better off without them.

Martin Scorsese talks about 8 1/2 in this clip is from his excellent documentary on Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy.

Part 2 is located here.

THANKSGIVING WITH THE BAND

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to bring out The Band. In spite of being 4/5ths Canadian, these brilliant musicians created a unique take on Americana, blending old time country, blues, gospel, and rock 'n' roll into a sound that was both timeless and resonant, a Memphis jukebox one moment, a tentshow revival the next, a killer bar band Saturday night, and when the smoke cleared Sunday morning, a motley crew of Civil War deserters playing tunes around a campfire. They told stories. They tended the still. They made great records, back when there was such a thing. They didn't warm to strangers right off, but once you got to know them they were right friendly folks. Now some of them are dead, and the rest are in rocking chairs. Drop by and say hello. Those rocking chairs won't go nowhere.

These clips are from The Last Waltz, a film of their final concert, Thanksgiving Day, 1976.



Starting out as the Hawks with Ronnie Hawkins, and later backing up Bob Dylan to jeering crowds on the 1966 tour (where the folkies were shocked by all the electricity), these scroungy old codgers holed up in Woodstock, New York, like the Dalton Gang. They licked their wounds and smoked their rope and practiced in the basement of a house in West Saugerties they called Big Pink, which would also be the title of their first album. These "basement tapes" were bootlegged, circulated, and discussed into the wee hours. Only a fraction were ever officially released (a double album in 1975) but the word was out; the rest of the rock world may have been plugging in to psychedelic paisley, but these boys were channeling the musical past--mining the ore of what rock critic Greil Marcus would call the "old, weird America."



Appropriately enough, their last official concert was Thanksgiving Day of the bicentennial year, 1976. As these clips show, The Band played their hearts out. Old friends showed up and played, too, including Dylan, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, The Staple Singers, Ringo and many others. Martin Scorsese filmed the night and turned it into a documentary called The Last Waltz. As I said, it was Thanksgiving, so along with brilliant musical performances guests were treated to a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Dylan brought a ton of salmon. Nobody left hungry.

The Band in "old, weird America"

Here's an added holiday treat--"All You Have to Do is Dream" (take 2), an unreleased "basement tape" with Dylan and the Band at Big Pink, 1967 (just click button):