THE SLIFR FRIDAY-THE-13TH WEEKEND SCREENING ROOM

Perhaps it’s the two recent visits I’ve taken to the Los Angeles Zoo as a chaperon for my daughters’ first and third-grade classes, and the relative lack of man-eating carnage therein, but when I got an e-mail from Peet Gelderblom a couple of days ago recommending a little-known (at least to me) thriller called Rogue, I damned well sat up and listened. First of all, I like a good rampaging beast movie—of the post-Jaws variety I still hold Lewis Teague’s Alligator, from a script by John Sayles, as the crème de la reptile. Teague’s movie not only works as a crafty parody of the Spielberg classic, with Henry Silva standing in hilariously for Robert Shaw’s Quint, and a dandy riff on the worst-case-scenario urban legend of what happens when you flush a baby gator down the loo, but also as a clever metaphorical parody of raging subconscious. For policeman Robert Forster, and for us, the audience, the gator being pursued is nothing less than his own inner monster ripping loose and using the city sewer as its own personal underground subway system. (Some clever casting in the cameos department, like Sidney Lassick from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, reinforces this gator madness reading.) Rogue sounds closer to something like Russell Mulcahy’s Razorback (1984), which I found diverting but disappointing, but to hear Pete tell it it’s an efficient, funny thriller that more than gets the job done. A wildlife cruise through the Australian outback, headed by a cynical American (Michael Vartan) and a local boat captain (Radha Mitchell), goes horribly awry when a massive man-eating crocodile sets its sights (and its jaws) upon this unlucky band of tourists. Something like this can be just the ticket for a fun weekend watch, especially with it being Friday the 13th (again) and all. And frankly, staying out of the way of this slimy monster sounds a hell of a lot more fun than enduring the remake of the Wes Craven “classic” Last House on the Left, which opens today. Thanks to Peet, I do believe my weekend jolt quotient might be filled quite nicely by this very promising under-the-radar yarn. I’ll let you now how it goes.

Speaking of weekend options, there’s a couple of things going on here in Los Angeles, one of which can at least be tracked by your own home theater system, if you live somewhere other than Southern California. This weekend the Los Angeles County Museum of Art gets its retrospective of the late-period films of Howard Hawks under way tonight. My wife and daughters are taking advantage of the opportunity to see Rio Bravo (1959) on the Bing Theater big screen at 7:30 p.m. tonight. (You can see the trailer by clicking on Angie Dickinson over on the sidebar.) Tomorrow night you can indulge in a double feature of the lighter side of this famously masculine director with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in the delightful Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), co-billed with Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss in Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964). The rest of the retrospective is juicy too, and quite complete, with rare big-screen shots at El Dorado (1967), Land of the Pharoahs (1955), Hatari! (1962), Rio Lobo (1970) and even Red Line 7000 (1965). (For the entire Hawks schedule and more from LACMA in March, click here.) The nice thing is, if just reading about this retrospective gets you in the mood for the films and you can’t be here, most of them are available on DVD, so you can stage your own festival and be there in spirit. It’s no replacement for seeing them on the Bing big screen, but as anyone who has ever lived outside of a major urban center and had to hear about festivals like these second-hand can tell you, it’s better than nothing. And in whatever format, the movies are still great.

Our old friend The Mysterious Adrian Betamax passes along info on another rare screening this Saturday night, if Marilyn and Rock aren’t your cup of sexual innuendo. As part of the 14th Annual UCLA Festival of Preservation, Josef von Sternberg’s The Salvation Hunters (1925), a preservation undertaken by the Stanford Theater Foundation, can be seen March 14 at 7:30 p.m. According to the press notes, “Von Sternberg's first film--shot for less than $4,800 on location in San Pedro, Chinatown and the San Fernando Valley--was possibly Hollywood's first "independent" production. The gritty realism of its locations, the lack of artifice in its story and the lower depths of its characters shocked audiences and the industry alike. The film remains thoroughly modern. Sternberg's images thrive on composition and stasis. His ending resolves nothing and yet everything is different. The Salvation Hunters made a star not only of Sternberg, but also of Georgia Hale, who would play opposite Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925).” The M.A.B. has more here.

More fun stirring over at Cahiers2Cinema that could entail some intriguing weekend watching: The M.A.B. informs us of the availability (until April 1, 2009, that is) of Phil Karlson’s A Time for Killing on Netflix’s Instant Play service. The movie, never available on DVD, is, like the Hawks fest, a late-period selection from a hard-boiled, unflinching noir-hued director whose best earlier movies, like The Phenix City Story (1955) and Kansas City Confidential (1952), are exemplary specimens of a specifically American nuts-and-bolts cinematic storytelling inflected with bitter passion and empathy for the faces hanging out in the margins of society. Get caught up Karlson via the M.A.B. and consider seeing A Time for Killing while you have the chance, and maybe even contributing to the M.A.B.’s impromptu, open-ended, blog-a-thon-style Phil Karlson-Time for Killing appreciation. (Only don’t call it a blog-a-thon—that phrase makes the M.A.B. simply furious!)

Finally, take some time this weekend to update your blogrolls and bookmarks and make note of Larry Aydlette’s new address. He’s still operating under the Welcome to L.A. shingle (easily the best and most succinctly perfect of all the titles under which his blog has been incarnated), but Larry’s a follower of WordPress now, and he swears by it (more often, even, than he swears at Blogger.com!) Currently Larry is running an excellent series on director John Frankeneheimer that really should not be missed. His piece on The Extraordinary Seaman (1969), long considered one of the director’s biggest follies, is a real delight. Larry’s got Frankenheimer interviews and RFK presidential campaign commercials as well, and I breathlessly await word on my favorite Frankenheimer titles, The Train (1964), Ronin (1998) and, for sheer stupid fun, the director’s misguided environmental beast-on-the-loose epic Prophecy (1979).

Which gets us back to the top of this post in a rather neat way, don’t it? Whatever you’re up to this weekend, have a wonderful couple of days off. I’ll return next week with some catch-up considerations of Watchmen, Synecdoche, New York, Convoy, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and God knows what else, plus a special surprise (as much for me, believe me, as for anyone else). Stay tuned!

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A MAN, A .44 AND THEIR LIMITATIONS: MAGNUM FORCE: THE MUSICAL

I have never been one to routinely find myself riding the crest of breaking news, and this little morsel, via Lindsay Vivian, is about a week and a half old, a generation by TMZ standards. (Thanks, LV!) But though it be withered and dusty, I couldn’t help passing it along in the hopes that some of you are as behind on the major pop culture headlines as apparently am I, and in similarly dire need of catching up.
In the grand tradition of Sunset Boulevard, Hairspray, The Producers, 8½, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Shrek, Billy Elliot, Grey Gardens and even, for those of us with extra-long memories, Carrie, there is stirring news out of London re the latest unlikely movie-to-stage adaptation, and this one might just rival the Brian DePalma/Stephen King-based musical for sheer audacity/lunacy (take your pick). Robyn Hitchcock, British pop star, leader of the Soft Boys and the Egyptians, subject of a Jonathan Demme music documentary (Storefront Hitchcock) and occasionally presence in Demme narrative films (The Manchurian Candidate, Rachel Getting Married), apparently has a soft spot for Inspector Harry Callahan. In addition to featuring a song anchored in the fictional police detective’s second film on his latest album, Ole! Tarantula-- entitled “(A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs”-- now Hitchcock, the Magnum Force inspiration for that song apparently not having been entirely quenched, is said to be setting plans in motion for a full-length stage musical based on the 1973 Clint Eastwood sequel, in collaboration with MTV executive Bill Flanagan, which will set the movie’s violent vigilante action to more Hitchcock-penned tunes and (one would presume) lots of big singing-dancing-gun-slinging production numbers.

In a piece reported by Paul MacInnes in the Guardian last week, Hitchcock explained that his relationship with the movie, in which the Dirty Harry template of a rogue cop tracking a killer outside the lines of police procedure is flipped to set Callahan against a cadre of motorcycle cops who take his own methods of justice to perverse extremes, has a strange hold on the singer-songwriter. “It… seemed to be on all the time when I was on tour,” Hitchcock says. “By the fifth time (I saw it), I became addicted to it.” Surely Hitchcock is aware of the apparent oddity of trying to mount such a project, but that oddity, plus the absolute possibility of folly and artistic disaster (or, perhaps worse, mediocrity and indifference), count no doubt as further inspiration for an artist whose career has long thrived at the intersection of surrealist imagery, hooky melodies and challenging, often deliberately obscure subject matter.


Personally, since hearing about this project I have had fewer qualms about whether it’s a good idea or not than I have had fun thinking about the possibilities. I’m imagining a full-on song-and-dance spectacular to introduce the motorcycle cops, hopefully done up with choreography and costuming that amplifies their vaguely fascistic leather-pants-and-boot-straps authority. (No doubt the film’s homoerotic subtext will step right up to full-on text status as well.) Will we get a number in which Harry and his new partner Early Smith (Felton Perry in the film) express their mutual respect for each other, just before Smith gets an early retirement courtesy of a mailbox bomb? And whoever plays the corrupt Nazi-leaning Lieutenant Briggs (remember the brutal gleam in Hal Holbrook’s eyes as he leaned over the wheel of that Ford sedan and revealed the full monty of his nasty plans to Harry?) will undoubtedly be rewarded with a big moment in which to spew bombastic, melody-laden invective against not only Harry but also the drug dealers and pimps and gangster scum whose civil rights the once-reasonable detective suddenly finds it necessary to protect. (I could, however, do without a splashy production number in which a beleaguered hooker gets a can of Drano poured down her throat.)

Let’s just say that I await with great interest any further news of this project’s development. I sincerely hope that I don’t read in the next month or so that it all has been put down to a bad batch of jalapenos on Hitchcock’s tour bus and that the songwriter has abandoned Magnum Force: The Musical as just another bizarre idea that got leaked to the press, one taken out of context as something more than just another spitball that never should have stuck to the wall in the first place. I would see this over the Broadway adaptation of Dirty Dancing, or a Mamma Mia-style revue built around the hits of England Dan and John Ford Coley, any day. If it’s true that a man has got to know his limitations, then I hope Hitchcock either does or remains blissfully unaware, at least for as long as it takes to bring this crazy baby to life.

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And yes, news of Magnum Force: The Musical does beg the question: Can it get any weirder than this? What is the movie-to-stage adaptation you’d most like to see?

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HAPPY NINTH BIRTHDAY, BABY GIRL!

My most lovely and silly and inspired and creative and intelligent oldest daughter turns nine today, and I just wanted to wish her the happiest of birthdays and give anyone who wants to join with me the forum in which to do so. Each new birthday of hers is a mixed blessing for me—I love seeing her grow up and experience the world anew each day, but I also want her to stay innocent, to remain the little child who I could once hold in the palm of my right hand, her butt perfectly cradled in the crook of my elbow. And I look to the future with the same mixture of anticipation and dread, having no idea what the world will look like when she’s finally ready to head out into it on her own. But before that time arrives, I have told myself and anyone who will listen that I will be the crankiest of bastards when it comes to being the father of a beautiful teenaged girl for the first time. All you young toughs that come poking around my front porch had better not underestimate my willingness to run you through the psychological wringer, and God help the first one of you who somehow does her wrong—there’s a baseball bat at the ready to apply a Louisville Slugger tattoo to your backside. (Peet Gelderblom and I once vowed an arranged marriage between my daughter and his fine, upstanding, darned-good-looking young son, and I really think it would be much easier on all involved if we were to start the paperwork in earnest on that arrangement.)

I have always resisted publishing photos of my girls because I’m not yet entirely comfortable with the openness of the Internet when it comes to my family, which is why I also have never referred to my daughters by name on this site. Call me slightly paranoid, but in this day and age I think a little wariness and watchfulness has certainly shown itself to be justified and wise policy. But I wanted to share her with you on this day when she suddenly seems to be just a inch or two closer to becoming a young lady and not simply a little girl. The picture above was taken six years ago when she was three. She has changed markedly enough that I feel comfortable publishing it for everyone I know (and those I don’t) to see, yet the picture captures all the goofy charm of her personality that remains in her, amplified by six extra years of exposure to her parents’ senses of humor, to this day.

So raise a glass, have a cookie, see a movie, whatever you do to have an enjoyable night, and while you're doing so please think of her and wish her a happy birthday. She and I and her little sister are headed to Hollywood as soon as I post this for pizza and VIP seats to see Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience at the El Capitan, so we’re guaranteed a good time ushering in a wild weekend of celebration. (Right?) And if you’re near your computer at 5:00 p.m. this afternoon (a mere 25 minutes away at this writing), tune in to Dicey Reilly’s Shake and Pop for a special song block dedicated to my daughter-- I can’t wait to hear what tunes he’ll have in store.

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UPDATE 5:22 p.m.: Dicey's selections? Sponge's punk cover of "Go, Speed Racer, Go!" followed by the Randells' "Martian Hop" and "Rock and Roll High School" by the Ramones. Thanks, Dicey! That was awesome! And Emma says she understands about not spinning some Zac and Vanessa-- we don't want you to get fired, you know.

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A TRIBUTE TO FORREST J. ACKERMAN

Those of you in Los Angeles this weekend might be interested to know, if you don’t already, about the Forrest J.Ackerman Tribute being held at the Egyptian Theater this coming Sunday, March 8. The memory of Mr. Ackerman, such an influential force for so many not only in the world of science fiction and horror films but the film industry in general, will be celebrated by those who knew him as well as those fans who spent their days growing up within the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland and dreamed of one day coming out to Horrorwood, Karloffornia to visit the man himself within the hallowed walls of the Ackermansion. According to the Cinematheque, there will be testimonials, slide presentations, performances and even a few items to few from the extensive Ackerman collection, such as Bela Lugosi’s costumes from Dracula (1931) and the robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Some of the guests scheduled to be present include Ray Bradbury, James Warren (publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland) and director John Landis, though I’m sure that will be just the tip of the iceberg on Sunday afternoon. The tribute proper begins at 4:00 p.m., however there will be a reception at the Egyptian Theater that is open to the public which begins at 3:00 p.m. There will be no charge to attend either the tribute or the reception.

Then stick around for a double feature in the Forry spirit—at 7:00 p.m. the Cinematheque will screen the documentary Famous Monster: Forrest J. Ackerman (2007; 48m.) by filmmakers Michael MacDonald and Ian Johnston, who will be in attendance for a Q-and-A in between films. The second feature is Ib Meclhior’s The Time Travelers (1964; 82 m.), a clever sci-fi thriller starring Philip Carey and Preston Foster which features 4SJ in a cameo appearance.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share memories of this kind, gentle and influential man in the presence of those who loved and admired him most. If you’re here in Los Angeles this weekend, I hope to see you there.

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Thinking about Forrest J. Ackerman has me somewhat nostalgic on this Friday afternoon thinking about how I would rummage through the newspaper as a child and look at all the ads for great triple and quadruple-feature horror programs that seemed to always be playing in Portland and Los Angeles and other places too far for me to travel. It was in these pages that I saw splashy, gratuitous ads for movies that were, most of the time, far better left to my fertile imagination, where they would undoubtedly remain far better and scarier than if I were to have seen the movies themselves. Here’s a few ads I found this morning that made me remember what dreaming about going to the movies was like for me as a kid. I’m glad to think of them as I think about Forry and the dreams he also inspired, and sometimes even made come true.

A LETTER TO DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON

UPDATE March 6, 2009

I got the information incorrect about the opening date for Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom. It's coming out May 15, not March 15, a couple extra months to wait for what looks like a terrific entertainment. Look at this trailer and see if you don't agree. (Choose "Play Now" to view on this page.)



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Mr. Johnson,

There are many occasions we have as moviegoers to experience regret, about as many as there are opportunities to opt for special, even once-in-a-lifetime screenings over the average multiplex fare, because we most certainly can never see all there is to see on any given night, especially in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle or anywhere else a moviegoer might be tempted. I can say with certainty that I regret having had to miss the recent “Festival of Fakery” you programmed at the New Beverly Cinema here in Los Angeles. The series, films all thematically linked by the notion of cons and fraud and the familiar idea of things not being what they seem, cleverly provided an showcase for your new film, The Brothers Bloom, a bunco comedy starring Rachel Weisz, Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo, which bows to the public on May 15. More importantly, within this theme you were able to introduce other films and continue what has fast become a bit of a tradition at the New Beverly, turning over the calendar to a filmmaker who can now share a love of films not only through the ones he or she makes but by programming and talking about the ones that formed his or her sensibility as a creative artist.


The movies in your “Festival of Fakery” series that I regret having missed included Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Spanish Prisoner, The Sting, The Man Who Would Be King, 8½ and F for Fake, all of which were undoubtedly made even more vivid and rich on the big screen through your introductions. But I cannot fully mourn missing the festival, because I did indeed make it out for the first night of the closing program, a delightful double feature of The Lady Eve (1941) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), a pairing I can’t imagine would have been likely to have come up in any other context. It was the pairing, however, and not the festival that brought me and my oldest daughter to the New Beverly last Friday. I wanted her to experience the giddy joy of Preston Sturges’ very best movie at my side and open up to her a new element of classic Hollywood—the screwball comedy—to ride shotgun with her burgeoning appreciation of westerns like Bend of the River and Buchanan Rides Alone. And I knew she would dig the demented dioramas and perverse gigantism of Gilliam’s movie—I’d shown her the first 20 minutes on DVD and so when we saw it would be playing at the New Beverly it instantly became a must-see event. I expected that she would find two new films to love that night.


What I didn’t expect was that you would treat my daughter to not only these great movies, but also to what was surely the most elaborate and well-thought-out presentation in the short history of these New Bev filmmaker series. The essential ambience of the evening’s musical accompaniment was performed on pedal steel guitar instead of house organ, and it was a real treat. My daughter and I were sitting four rows from the front and had a great view of the card trick you performed (with the help of New Bev institution Clu Gulager) to warm up the crowd before the first film, and the look of amazement on her face, even so early on in the evening’s entertainment, was alone worth the price of admission. Nor did I expect that, perfectly in tune with another shot at exposing my daughter to classic cinema, you would essentially be putting on for the lucky audience a brief film school lecture, complete with projected slide show, anecdotes and directorial history, to lay the groundwork for seeing The Lady Eve. My daughter listened with great interest as you explained a little background on Preston Sturges and his position in the food chain of the studio system of 1940s Hollywood. She was even more fascinated when talk turned to Gilliam’s movie, its history, and even your experience viewing it for the first time. (I added my own little dimension of fascination when I revealed to her that Munchausen was, in fact, the very first movie her mother and I saw together, on the night we first met back in 1988, at the old Century Plaza Cinemas on the night the movie opened.) Again, the slide presentation really opened up what could have been a dry little talk and helped make it sing with your own enthusiasm.


And in between films I was caught up with a bit of emotion when you unexpectedly screened the two George Melies shorts, which so clearly demonstrated Melies’ fascination with motion picture photography and the endless possibilities for cinema trickery. Some of the tricks he employed in the first short, The Wizard, were precisely the same stunts my friends and I concocted on Super 8 back in the ‘70s, with minimal awareness of Melies or his significance. (The visual magic on display in Melies’ Four Heads, which you also screened, was and ever remained far more sophisticated, with its hilarious self-decapitations, than anything we could have ever come up with.) I was struck by that connection between Melies and young filmmakers feeling their way through this new (to them) medium, how we movie-geek kids were funneling creativity in our own way, virtually unaware that the same tricks had been discovered nearly a century earlier by a pioneer of film who was in his way as seduced by the movies as we were. I thrilled to the opportunity to explain why these old films were so important, and she laughed her head off at the crude, eye-popping slapstick, a fresh audience for hundred-year-old tricks who looked at them as if they’d never been seen before.


Finally, I couldn’t have appreciated more your sidebar discussion of those Renaissance cabinets of curiosity whose tradition is carried on by The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a funky museum of oddities and wonders that my daughter found very mysterious and fascinating from your description. We are planning our first excursion there very soon, and we will be thinking of you during our tour, to be sure.

All this for the very reasonable price of a New Beverly ticket and no expectation other than the enjoyment of the two grand movies we initially came to see. We both are very thankful that we were treated to so much more, courtesy of your genial and informative presentation, which made a simple night out at the movies for dad and daughter into what will certainly be one of the most memorable and enjoyable outings for us to the movies this year. I look forward to attending The Brothers Bloom during its theatrical run at the Arclight Cinemas here in Los Angeles beginning May 15. And right now, after I post this, I’m going to return to Brick. I tried seeing it last night, on about two and a half hours sleep, and I became mystified by the dialogue after about an hour—I literally couldn’t keep up with what the characters were saying in this strange but rewarding mystery where everyone in high school speaks Dashiell Hammett instead of John Hughes. I look forward to rejoining the movie tonight with a fresh set of ears and eyeballs. And I look forward to anything else you might have up your sleeve in the future as well. But most of all, I will always hold dear the memory of being in your New Beverly Cinema film class last Friday night with my daughter. If she develops a serious interest in the movies you will surely have played an important part in that, and even if she doesn’t she still laughed at your tricks, and at Henry Fonda’s elegant pratfalls, and Barbara Stanwyck’s supernatural turns of phrase, and the King of the Moon (head only) chasing Baron Munchausen around the Sea of Tranquility. For that you have my utmost appreciation and my best wishes for all the stories you choose to tell.

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The New Beverly Cinema continues to delight this spring, with a series of Sid Haig's favorite films (Mar 24-31), as well as a splashy new print of Aliens, screenwriter Josh Olson in person on March 8 & 9 to introduce A History of Violence (which he wrote) and Straw Dogs, a new print of A Boy and His Dog paired with The Day the Earth Caught Fire, a William Peter Blatty double feature of The Exorcist III and The Ninth Configuration, Ashes of Time Redux, a Mad Max triple feature, Tartovsky's 205m. Andrei Roublev, and on April 14 & 15, for those who missed them in theaters the first time around, a pairing of Kelly Reichardt's sublime Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. I was going to say, now there's a double feature not to be missed, but you'd really have to say that about the entire upcoming schedule at the New Beverly. Check out their calendar for the dates for all these pictures and tons more coming up between now and May. The New Beverly continues to be a wonderful oasis for Los Angeles movie lovers, and we should all be doing our part to give some of the love they project every single night back to them on a regular basis. See you there soon!

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REMEMBERING MICHAEL BRECKER

“You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here’s a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They’re either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Strains of Michael Brecker
Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees…”

- Joni Mitchell, “Hejira,” as performed on the Shadows and Light live LP and DVD (1979)

Since we’re talking about music…

Every once in a while my friend Peet sends me a passionate e-mail describing an artist by whom he is especially moved, sometimes with a link to YouTube clip attached, and it is remarkable how often our tastes align. Almost exactly a year ago he sent me a heads-up about a new artist that was hijacking his iPod named Missy Higgins. Peet said this at the time: “"I keep thinking of you... when playing this song, probably because it sounds from something out of a forgotten Western.” The song was called “Forgive Me,” and indeed it did evoke for me some of the pain-ravaged landscapes of a movie like The Proposition, and I glommed onto the new Missy Higgins album quickly afterward. (It also provided me with a haunted, comforting soundtrack to an intense period last year when I was preparing for my CSET teaching exam.)

So whenever I get a music-related e-mail from Peet I have learned to sit up and quite literally listen. Here’s what I found in my inbox late last week: “Do you have 9 minutes and 13 seconds? I have no idea if this is your cup of tea, but given your love for music, it almost has GOT to be. To me, this man was God.”

Attached was a link to a performance clip that does indeed give a whole lot of weight to Peet’s claims for the divinity of Michael Brecker. Here is the influential and supremely talented artist, who died in 2007 of complications from leukemia, performing a spectacular, otherworldly solo on EWI entitled “Song for Barry.”



Peet also sent along another clip illustrating the singular brilliance of Michael Brecker, this time with the beloved standard “In a Sentimental Mood.”



Brecker’s inspired career started in the early ‘70s, and the list of people with whom he collaborated is a literal who’s-who of defining musical talent from that important era of jazz and rock and pop, everyone from Billy Cobham to Steely Dan to Frank Zappa to Frank Sinatra to Quincy Jones to Chet Baker to Charles Mingus, just to scratch the surface. I heard all that music growing up, but probably the first time I was actually aware of Brecker as a force all his own was during that Joni Mitchell Shadows and Light concert video from 1979. It was Mitchell in concert during her much maligned and/or misunderstood jazz phase, coming off two brilliant albums (Hejira and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter) and in the midst of ostracizing nearly her entire fan base with the more outre inspirations of Mingus, and she had a backup band apparently assembled by Apollo himself—Brecker on sax and woodwinds, Jaco Pastorius on bass, Pat Metheny on guitar, Lyle Mays on keyboards and Don Alias on drums. Brecker’s ethereal way with the instrument was evident throughout this concert (which is available on DVD), so when Mitchell substituted his name for Benny Goodman’s in the lyric of her paean to the impulses of movement for movement’s sake and how each mile forward expresses precious freedom but also awful finality it never felt like a cheap promotional stunt or gag. Instead it was a moment of handing over the baton that allowed Brecker the keys to Mitchell’s existential vehicle, acknowledging the yearning of the notes floating from his horn that expressed so well what even Mitchell could not. Here’s Brecker with the Shadows and Light band doing Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”:



Michael Brecker has been gone for over two years now. Thanks, Peet, for the reminder of just how great he was.

And one more sublime moment from Shadows and Light, if you would allow me. This concert marked the very first time I ever heard Pat Metheny or saw him perform. This solo, the transition between Mitchell’s awe-inspiring solo performance of “Amelia” and the aforementioned “Hejira,” was a watershed moment for me as someone whose appreciation of the possibilities of guitar music was about to be expanded immensely (Frank Zappa would explode that appreciation and reform it, but that’s another story…) Just watching the possession of Pat Metheny in this clip literally floored me—I could not sure if I wasn’t witnessing the jazz fusion equivalent of someone speaking in tongues, or whether this was just a new language altogether that I would have to someday learn, but either way it moved me at a subterranean level and continues to do so to this day. Behold, “Pat’s Solo.”



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