It could be 1985, but it is 2011. Today I am here to see the Minneapolis premiere of Color Me Obsessed, the Replacements documentary. If I was going to see it anywhere, it would have to be here.

I probably should have made this trip back in the day, and I am not sure why I did not; I made it to other outposts of the revolution, like Chapel Hill and Athens, and honorary corners in Boston and DC. I stopped here once in 2004, when I was driving back home to New York from Seattle, and an overnight stop put us just outside of town. I got up an hour early to make the trip to 2215 S. Bryant, which is otherwise known as the Stinson family house and the roof that the Replacements posed on for the cover of Let It Be. I came back in the summer of 2010 on a trip to see U2 and Target Field but also very much to stand in front of the stars on First Avenue (which were being painted at the time – I almost ran a red light at the intersection when I realized they were all blank), have a beer at the CC Club, and sit for a few minutes on Bob’s Bench and listen to a recording of “Little GTO” recorded at CBGB’s years ago. You will either find this awesome or pathetic. The difference between coming here now as opposed to 1985 is that I would have been too self-conscious to do the kind of blatant fangirling I am completely reveling in now. I would not have had nearly as much fun.

Onto the movie. Color Me Obsessed has evolved dramatically since I saw an early screening back in the fall of 2010. Back then, it was a complex, meandering thicket that would have given up its secrets to the truly dedicated. I was fine with that, because the Replacements were not for the casual fan, not for the “well convince me why they are so good” fan, not for the fairweather fan. It wasn’t worth going if you weren’t invested, because something would annoy you or piss you off or infuriate you. I won’t tell you that there would always be something brilliant because that simply wasn’t true. But most of us went back, time and again.

Color Me Obsessed in its current, final incarnation is brilliant in the way that The Kids Are Alright is brilliant. TKAA didn’t pander, didn’t explain, didn’t put things in context like a Ken Burns documentary – you had to pay attention. You had to follow what was going on. You needed to care, passionately. The first time I saw it, I had no idea what was going on, only that I loved every single second of it and wanted to go home and find out everything I could about the Who (and at the time I thought I knew a fair amount. I knew nothing). I didn’t need subtitles or long explanatory passages or someone setting up who this person was and why they were Important. I also didn’t mind doing my homework, I didn’t mind seeing it again and again and again until all the pieces fell together and I sat there, triumphant.

This movie can do that for you.

The story is constructed, layer upon layer, introducing you to person after person. Some you will know, others you won’t. For some you get an explanation of who they are and why they’re important; others it just doesn’t matter. What matters is what they say and what story they have to tell. This is dense prose; this is intricate construction. If you blink for a minute you will miss something you do not want to miss. I loved when the audience laughed out loud but I also hated it because then I missed what was said next. There was such economy of space, every word that everyone said served a purpose. Space served a purpose. Laughter served a purpose. I loved the 80s era photos of the speakers popping up as they spoke, reminding us of what it was like, once upon a time.

What matters is what they say, because you will nod your head – if you were there – because you thought that or saw something like that or remember that. The fans manage to speak for everyone in some fashion, even if everyone’s experience is still unique, even if you were at the same show, you know there can be multiple versions of how it exactly went down. (I am involved in one of those segments, although it turns out – thanks to someone else’s better memory – that two shows are confused as one by even the person who promoted it.) The legends are dissected, the rumors debunked – no, the master tapes from Twin-Tone did not go into the Mississippi River (for example) – but it’s not done in a way that leaves you completely shattered or upset or wishing you still had your original version of the story. If you know this band (and I mean ‘know’ in the way that all fans know a band), you will walk out of the movie wanting to hear the catalog from start to finish again. If you weren’t lucky enough to have been there but love this band, you will feel like you were, after you see this movie. And if you don’t know this band, you will either walk out saying “Seriously?” or want to go buy everything they have ever done and begin at the beginning.

Which is the whole point, after all.

I expected a Minneapolis audience to be hooting and hollering and booing and cheering and yelling things at the screen. Aside from the women behind me who giggled the entire time at absolutely everything (if I hadn’t been resolute that nothing could ruin this for me, I would have killed them. That, and I wasn’t a local), there were few of these revelatory, communal, very local moments. It almost made me sad that this sold-out, packed theater did not have that, but upon later reflection, maybe it is more Minneapolis this way. (I am told that the Boston screening was like a revival meeting. I am not surprised, because that town loved this band.) It was over before I wanted it to be over, and I was sad I could not stay for a second screening the next day (three in total, all sold out).

There is no music in this movie, the band do not appear, the director did not even try. Some people don’t believe him, think he couldn’t afford it or the band said no or he was blacklisted, but I am also in this movie and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think he was being honest, if I thought he was being disingenuous. So many of us grew up on “Behind The Music” and assume that that is the only way to tell the story of a rock and roll band and think that anyone else is doing it wrong. I could not think of anything more boring than a “Paul Westerberg was born on…” type of movie, which talked to his next door neighbors and his classmates in high school and dutifully played a few live clips and had promo shots of the band fade in and out from left to right. Why would anyone, anywhere, want that for this band? I don’t get it.

When the movie was over, the afterparty was at the Entry, where the locals explained to me how the club was laid out back in the day, and I drank Rolling Rock while Matthew Ryan stood in the middle of the audience and sang ‘Here Comes A Regular’ acoustic while someone held the lyric sheet for him, while another band brought out horns for “Can’t Hardly Wait” (a point on which I wax eloquently in the film), while drunk local after drunk local insisted that they were the one who yelled “FUCK YOU” at the beginning of “Kids Don’t Follow,” while I sat with my back against the wall and sang along to every single song like I did once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away.

p.s. After the movie, I called a cab to take me from the screening to the afterparty.
“What’s at the Entry tonight?” he asked, after I gave him the address like I’d lived there all my life (or so I hoped).
“It’s an afterparty for a documentary – about a local band.”
“Oh, is that the Replacements documentary? I was supposed to be in that. I lit Paul’s cigarette before they played the first song at the first show at the Longhorn.”

If you liked “Color Me Obsessed” Minneapolis Premiere you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

The video above is Jesse Malin onstage at the Stone Pony Saturday night. Yes, that is me, singing along in the background, even though I was taping. I hit record because I was anticipating some kind of hopeful rumination about Paul Westerberg or the Replacements or something similar. Instead I watched a bunch of people stand and stare at the stage.

I continue to remain amazed that in 2011 that “Bastards of Young” is not canon, that it is not mandatory, that everyone in the world does not know the words to it. Or even at least a Jesse Malin audience who presumably bought the covers record for which this was the lynchpin (as per Jesse), that they would know this song. I remain amazed that the Replacements continue to fade from view, that people don’t know and don’t care and don’t care to know. I am like one of those old people who remembers when things were one way and they still think things are that way, because in my day everyone I knew loved the Replacements (or made a conscious decision that they did not) and they were huge and important and hugely important, they were massive, they were the kind of thing you planned your life around, an album, a tour, a show, a television appearance was like a national holiday of some sort.

You argued. You defended. You loved passionately – or, quite possibly, you hated them passionately and would argue and defend your opinion just as vehemently as I would defend my love for them. You cared, one way or the other, you cared. I would have applauded a raised middle finger over standing around looking bored complacency. Back in the day, I saw more than a few raised middle fingers in the middle of Replacements audiences.

(And before you get all “What do you want for a Pony audience on a Saturday when 75% of them were staring at the stage door the entire time, waiting for Springsteen to walk in” [which was, sadly, true] this has happened at Irving Plaza too.)

These days, no one gives a fuck. And I don’t know how you can listen to music or care about music and not give a fuck about the Replacements, because I guarantee you that the people you are listening to right now would not be doing what they are doing without the Replacements.

This ties in nicely to one of my pet causes these days, Gorman Bechard’s documentary on the Replacements, Color Me Obsessed. [Full disclosure: I was interviewed for, and appear in, this film, and am a supporter via Kickstarter as well.] Conveniently, his most recent blog entry talks about the day they interviewed none other than Mr. Jesse Malin.

Maybe this movie will help. At least it will make me feel better that I have done something to help keep the Replacements alive in people’s minds.

If you liked Jesse Malin & “Bastards of Young” you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

It’s not going to be a secret to anyone who’s read my work over the years that I’m a tremendous Replacements fan. I could not be happier that someone is finally telling their story especially when that someone is Gorman Bechard. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the author of one of my all-time favorite books, The Second Greatest Story Ever Told – which I found out about because the Replacements are mentioned repeatedly, and it popped up in some issue of The Skyway (which, if you’re a Mats fan, will be near and dear to you). (It doesn’t hurt that he’s also a tremendous Mets fan.) Anyway, he was raising funds for the film on Kickstarter and I couldn’t donate fast enough.

The film is called Color Me Obsessed. Spread the word.

(I really, really, really need to drag out all of my contact sheets and negatives from the 80s and get them burned to DVD. Tons of great Replacements shots. Yeah, in my copious free time.)

If you liked Color Me Obsessed you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I’ve been loving the coverage of the movie premiere at Sundance: “You mean to tell me that Yellow Submarine has a narrative arc?” (Bono, in response to some trainspotter criticizing the film’s lack of cohesiveness).

1) There’s no doubt that this was the right band to test this technology. Big and bold and loud – but not loud enough. It’s a concert film. TURN IT UP.

2) I found myself fascinated by the oddest things, like – what drink, exactly, does Larry Mullen, Jr. have next to his drum stool, within arm’s reach? Iced tea? Mint Julep?

3) The film needed a pause, and a zoom, mostly so I could see what, exactly, Bono had taped to the stage in front of his mic.

4) Every person in South America owns a tiny digital camera. Or at least so it seemed every time any member of U2 got near the edge of the stage.

5) The setlist is incredibly deficient. Where were some of the no-brainers like “Elevation,” or “City of Blinding Lights”? I mean, “Miss Sarajevo” is compelling and all but it’s not “Even Better Than The Real Thing.” This was a BIG SCREAMING MULTIMEDIA THING and not the place for subtlety.

6) You know those guys at every concert who get up on each other’s shoulders, take their shirts off, and wave them around in a circle above their head? They have them in South America, too. (Former readers will be interested to know that woo girls also exist in S.A.)

7) I realize that any song from “Achtung Baby” is going to present a tempting opportunity to recreate ZooTV in 3D format. However, when “The Fly” gives me the only time to watch all four members of U2 wearing instruments and jamming together at center stage, I do not want to have my view obscured by words and letters at the front of the screen.

8) If you went to this movie to see anything, it would be “Streets,” right? I got goosebumps just thinking about it during the opening notes. South America, 100,000 people, if God was ever going to walk through the room, it would be here, right?

It was so underwhelming it was just sad. “With Or Without You,” a song I hate and despise (HI SHARON), was more compelling than “Streets” in U23D.

9) You will find yourself scanning the crowd, at least I did. You are looking for the people like you, the people like your friends, the people that are like the annoying people you don’t want to be near at any concert. But I liked that. The commonality is refreshing.

10) Cutting between cities/venues in one song was terrible. I felt cheated later. This isn’t a Disney ride.

While it was definitely U2, it didn’t really give you the feeling of seeing them, I don’t think. I think “Streets” in Rattle and Hum, in all its one-dimensional simplicity, gives you that feeling a million times more than U23D did. I am glad I saw it for free, if I had paid for it I would have felt more than a little ripped off.

If you liked U23D: the review you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

My problem with this remains that the house (well, the orchestra) is fake, and I think history deserved a real fucking audience with real fucking fans, no matter how old, wrinkled and unattractive the fan base might be.

If you liked shine a light you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

On the one hand I loved the unconventional approach taken, not yet another boring documentary with hours of headshots and voiceover gravely intoning the details of the subject’s childhood. And I knew who the players were, so it was fine for me. But all I could think was, what about the people who haven’t read every word written about John Mellor and the Clash? We’re documenting Joe’s legacy and we can’t be bothered with a small unobtrusive caption identifying who the person was? I mean, ya know, I *think* that was Bobby Gillespie, but I wasn’t sure, and would it have not been punk rock to let people in on the secret?

And maybe that was it, but the whole “punk is a secret world only for the insiders” ended a long time ago, especially for Joe. The whole point of the campfires was inclusion, and Joe was INCLUSIVE. Wouldn’t it have been meaningful for people to know that Mick Jones was doing the interview from the same counsel block (if not the same apartment) that his grandmother lived in, with its view of the Westway, the ledge he purportedly wrote “London Calling” on? Why deprive someone of that if they don’t know it? People weren’t born knowing punk rock legends, they learn them. Why not teach a whole new generation and the generations after this one?

Even if the film wasn’t meant as definitive, but more of an oral history, I’ll point out that none of the major players are getting any younger. It’s hard to get them all in one place and it may never happen again. Just the most basic of conventional documentary standards would have served Joe’s legacy well, without choking on conventionality.

The campfires. They became so important to Joe, but we don’t learn this until the end of the movie, which is filmed from the vantage point of someone looking into the campfire, not as a member of the campfire, another thing that seemed exclusionary and foreign and, well, not Strummer, ya know? I felt excluded, and I consider myself a distant member of the tribe, the girl who skipped her senior prom to see the Clash at Bond’s Casino. The boyfriend, who values Joe’s place in the rock pantheon, felt that even more strongly: “Okay, I get it, we’re not invited.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it but for two different people approaching the movie from the two places people are likely to approach this work, it seemed a valid sample size.

I don’t know why Simonon wasn’t part of it. If it was his ego, get the fuck over it already. If it was the ego of the filmmakers, I don’t even know what to say. Even Mick showed up and was, I felt, reasonably honest about things. Not, of course, that I pretend to really know what went on – only the men involved will ever truly know – but I felt like he stood up and honored his friend and their band and their work with his honesty.

Finally, a touch of brilliance to overlay Joe’s BBC broadcasts. It was like he was there, and had never left.

It just could have been so much more.

If you liked joe strummer: the future is unwritten you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

And watched all four. Avidly.

It will probably sound ignorant in the extreme when I offer that on one level it amazes me that there was a significant enough story to comfortably fill four hours without feeling thin. It’s not so much ignorant as myopic, I think; I was never an *enormous* fan and kind of stopped following his career around Wildflowers. And probably ignored some of the commercial releases after Damn The Torpedos, because, well, it was everywhere and you didn’t have to work for it or look for it.

But I liked Petty, even if he struck me sometimes as an absolute bastard. He was definitely one of the good guys.

The documentary is priceless for many things (including the fact that someone around Petty had a video camera since the band’s VERY FIRST TRIP TO CALIFORNIA, not to mention every single other moment after that), but the winning footage to me is the evolution of the Wilburys. What luck to have such great interview footage with George. What serendipity that the camera was there the whole time. How sad that they never got to tour. The footage of him working with Johnny Cash – even more breathtaking than Petty and Orbison.

I sat there the entire time going, “Oh, yeah, *that*, I forgot about that.” The tour with Dylan. The fight over the $9.98 album price. Filing for banktruptcy, which at the time I didn’t even begin to understand. How good the videos were, and how many of them were so iconic and still hold up today. The unsung talents of people like Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench.

I also felt that the coverage was fair but not fawning. Howie Epstein’s death, Stan Lynch’s departure – these were the things that were not ignored, not glossed over.

Even if you think you don’t care about Petty, if you are at all interested in the history of rock and roll, this is worth the investment of your time. And for Petty, it’s a dignified representation of his legacy; there’s no other word for it. Would that other artists of his stature use this as a model. (Hint, hint.)

If you liked the petty documentary you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

Keith’s scene in the new Pirates movie.

[via undercover, via rocks off]

If you liked dammit keef you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

If you liked THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN. you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

It’s a document about how anger fades to — well, it just fades. And, truth be told, much of what Arthur said and felt I would bet that David and Syl felt at one time or another: the anger at watching the disciples of the Dolls make millions of dollars while for years you couldn’t even buy the Dolls albums in the U.S. except used, or imports of Dutch reissues. One could probably write a thesis about this, but, again, anger fades, and people move on.

Arthur’s life is portrayed with dignity and sympathy but also objectively, and the religion isn’t shoved down anyone’s throat, it’s presented exactly as it was for him. You can feel sorry for him but he doesn’t ask anyone to do that. The film captures perfectly and cleanly what was swirling around this reunion: was it going to happen? Would everyone actually show up? If they showed up, would they be able to play together? Would they implode before making it to London? And even worse, would it suck? Bob Geldof (one of many luminaries nicely assembled to speak passionately about the Dolls) relates how his children, fans due to their access to his record collection, utterly refused to go to Meltdown “because it wouldn’t be like the poster”. Mick Jones, Chrissie Hynde, heck, even Fern, who has been in the front row of every Dolls related show since the beginning of time was there. The tears in (Dolls and JT biographer) Nina Antonia’s eyes as she speaks about the upcoming shows are genuine and moving.

And it wasn’t like the poster, but even most of the people who were there Back In The Day barely remember what it was like. It was what it was, and it was big and glorious and even watching badly filmed live performance of that first moment when the three of them, the reformed Dolls, stepped onto that Royal Festival Hall stage and played those first notes will give you goosebumps.

Well, provided you give a fuck. And if you don’t, why on earth are you reading this blog? Because, as Morrissey said, without the Dolls, I wouldn’t be here, doing this.

If you liked review: New York Doll you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/