SXSW2005–Rock School/Max & Grace/Robert Plant And Strange Sensation
“Keep a-cooly, baby!”
I’m still on a Plant high tonight! The only thing that could possibly make tonight better is if I had somehow managed to get laid at the end of it. But, here I sit. Alone, in my room, writing about the amazing show I just saw. But first, let’s start with the movies I saw today.
We all saw School Of Rock, right? It’s one of the few movies where a popular comedian is put with a bunch of kids and it actually worked. That’s probably because said comedian had a passion for the project that no other person probably would have had.
Well, here’s where it all came from, baby. Paul Green started the School of Rock And Roll in Pennsylvania (I think…I can’t seem to find my Film Festival book that would probably tell me…fuck it) and he is JUST LIKE JACK BLACK! He’s a slightly overweight force of nature who has a HUGE passion for rock and roll and teaching the kids the difference between good rock (Zappa, Zeppelin, Sabbath) and bad rock (Sheryl Crow seems to get the brunt of his bashing). He also tends to launch into profanity laden yelling sprees at the kids. They don’t seem to mind, but I’m sure a lot of the parents probably would. Especially since the kids tend to yell right back at him.
But, since this isn’t an official school course (strictly after-school with no affiliation with their actual school), there’s not a whole lot a parent could probably do about it.
For those about to rock, this is a great documentary. For the rest of you, get a fuckin’ life. It’s a lot of fun and it’s pretty fucking awesome to see these kids (all between the ages of about 9-17) rocking out to Santana, Sabbath and, especially, Zappa. And, yes, they play Zappa. One of the hardest artists to emulate and they do a pretty amazing job of it.
The star of the show as far as musical ability goes is CJ. He’s 12 years old and is a fucking amazing guitarist. He opens the film with a the “Black Magic Woman” solo and sounds just like Carlos. He does a solo at the end of the film that even has Napoleon Murphy Brock bowing down to him.
But it’s Will who will tug at your heartstrings. He’s 16 and, when you first meet him, you’ll laugh at him. He’s a goofy looking kid who talks about how the school thought he was retarded at first. Then, when he talks about how he’s tried to kill himself numerous times, all laughing will stop. His life was literally saved by rock and roll.
Don Argott has made a film that any student of rock should see. (And I count myself in that category even though I can’t play a damn note on any instrument.) Check it out when it comes out next month.
By the way, why didn’t anyone ask about School Of Rock in the Q&A? Were they afraid? I never speak up at those things, so I have an excuse…sort of.
From one of the most fun films of the festival to one of the worst.
This is the story of two young lovers with nothin’ better to do…than try to kill themselves over and over again. Max (David Krumholtz) has tried many times but, because of his meddling parents (David Paymer and Lorraine Bracco), he just can’t succeed. He gets thrown into a mental institution and meets Grace (Natasha Lyonne). She’s crazier then he is, so she’s stuck on medication all the time and it deadens her to everything except for her teddy bear, which she thinks is her daughter.
Max falls in love. They escape from their caring doctor (Tim Blake Nelson). They go on the run. Grace almost falls in love, but still wants to die. Max comes up with lots of different ideas to make her want to live. (All of them involve characters played by Tim Blake Nelson.)
Not much of any of this is funny. Especially if it doesn’t involve Tim. You never really care about Grace, so you don’t really care if she succeeds in her many attempts to kill herself. She’s just kind of annoying. We all started thinking, “Let her do it! It’ll end the fucking movie!”
Strangely, a lot of the audience were laughing loud and hard at this cheesy little flick. I don’t know if my friends and I were just all in really bad moods or what, but none of us thought it was any good. There were occasional funny parts, but overall it was just plain bad. The acting was way over the top (although I think this was a conscious decision) and the writing was worse. Everyone in the all-star cast should have known better.
ROBERT PLANT AND STRANGE SENSATION
Which, of course, brings me to the best part of the whole fucking day. Seeing the Golden God himself with a great back up band (the first of his that I know of with an actual name) and a group of awesome songs.
The night started with the mediocre rockabilly from hell band, The Legendary Shack Shakers. Lame-o. They did a lot of screaming with a stand-up bass. Who cares?
Then The Soundtrack Of Our Lives took the stage. Sounding like a weird-ass cross between Pink Floyd, Yes and Black Sabbath (with a dash of the serious side of Spinal Tap), they were pretty awesome. I had never heard anything by them before, but I think I’m going to get an album or two now. They’re just weird enough for me to check out.
But nothing could hold a lit doobie to Robert and the boys. They opened with a new arrangement of “No Quarter” that mainly relied on small drums and quiet guitars for it’s melody. It was a strange way to open a show (usually shows open with hard rockers), but it worked extremely well.
Next up was “Heartbreaker.” The whole place was singing along and playing air guitar. Jimmy might not have been on stage with Robert, but it didn’t really seem to matter too much. The new band (which he didn’t introduce! He did do a curtain call type bow with them, though) was pretty amazing and blew through every classic and new song with equal vigor and virtuosity.
Which brings us to the new songs: A-fucking-mazing! Sure, they’re no “That’s The Way” (which they pulled off quite well, also), but they rocked the house and made everyone in the Austin Music Hall want to buy the album tonight. Hell, I want to buy his last one, too, just because he rocks so hard again.
Speaking of which, he did two songs off of that album of covers, Dreamland (“Morning Dew” and “Darkness, Darkness”) and a cover of Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter” from 1993’s Fate Of Nations. As always, Mr. Plant is an amazing cover artist. Of course, we knew that because about half of Zep’s early material was basically cover versions of old blues songs. They just didn’t want us to know. (Heh heh.)
He probably performed about half of the new album. Maybe. I don’t know his solo stuff nearly as well as his Zeppelin stuff. So besides the covers, “Long Cool One” from Now And Zen and even “Shining In The Light” from the last Page & Plant album, Walking Into Clarksdale, I think the other non-Zep songs were from the new album. But the meat of the evening was the back catalogue of Zep. “When The Levee Breaks,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Black Dog”…all better than the last.
The show ended with an orgasm-inducing version of “Whole Lotta Love” that went on for about 10 minutes and featured the keyboard player twisting knobs and pushing buttons for about five of those minutes. There wasn’t a person in the room who wasn’t rockin’ out and splooging all over themselves. By the end of it we were all a mess.
So, at the end, the crew handed us all towels and we walked slowly out the door not believing what we had just seen. My friends had never seen Plant before (I saw him back in 1994 with Jimmy, but I think this was actually a better show. How did this happen?!), so it was especially cool for them. But we were all in rock and roll heaven for an hour and a half while Robert and his band of talented young ‘uns got it on in Austin.
