A Three Doc Night

I watched three short documentaries last night.

The first film was a documentary about the rise and fall of Rollen Stewart, the rainbow man. You may not recognize the name but if you’re my age or older, you might remember his rainbow hair dancing around at every nfl, nba, mlb game in the late seventies. The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 was a strange dude who also liked to smoke a lot of dooby. His meteoric rise to semi-fame flew straight into a becoming a born again Christian after being groped by a bunch of professional cheerleaders (huh?). At this point he started to hang his John 3:16 signs (For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life) everywhere he went, which was wherever there was a television camera. I remember him more for the giant John 3:16 signs made of bed sheets than and only have foggy memories of a dancing prism with an afro. Like lots of born again’s (George Bush Jr. comes to mind), John’s grip on reality started to slip and he decided that the rapture was just around the corner. Well, desperate time call for desperate measures and he ended up taking a maid hostage in a downtown Los Angeles hotel and smoking more weed (no harm to the maid). He has since been sentenced to life in prison. It was a really interesting film with too much stock footage from Hard Copy tha ultimately ended up being sorta sad.

The second film I watched was The Making of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains’ about the cult favorite Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains which I have never seen but now desperately want to. If anyone knows how to get a hold of this movie please contact me. The original movie starred young 14 year old Diane Lane, and was her first film. Other notable actors included member of The Sex Pistols, members of The Clash, the lead singer of The Tubes, and Black Randy and his band, The Metrosquad. Needless to say, there were all sorts of drugs, sex, and rock and roll happening all over the set. Good times! I’m dying to see Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. It looks like one of the best and one of the worst movies of all times. Here is a youtube clip I found.

The third documentary I watched was Pie Fight ‘69 which was a weird, eight-minute, documentary about a pretty weird event. The film consisted of footage lost since 1969 of the notorious ‘pie-fight’ incident at the San Francisco Film Festival. Two dozen costumed radicals descend on the fancy black tie & red carpet festival with one fully laden pie truck and six cameras in order to wreak havoc. The coolest thing about this was the term “soft bomb” which seems like the 1969 version of a “flash mob” with political intent (what in the late sixties didn’t have political intent?).

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The End Of An Era

I was aware that CBGB’s was closing soon, but it wasn’t until last sunday when I was surfing the net that I found out that one of my favorite ole punk bands would be one of the last to play at the infamous venue. Bad Brains played there on Monday & Tuesday of this week. And to top it all off MVD Entertainmaent released Bad Brains - Live At CBGB 1982 just three weeks ago. You can watch it it’s entirety below. The first 30 seconds tell you all you need to know, but I suggest you do like I have all morning, and crank this shit up the whole way through!

Not only was the Bad Brains show this week one of the last shows at CBGB but it’ll probably some of the last shows by the full line up. See, it’s a well know fact in the punk rock world that the lead singer, HR, is absolutly off his rocker. Completely mad. This can be witnessed in this video of Monday’s show were he wore a motorcycle helmut for a duration of the concert. You can see they rocked it out on Tuesday though. As you can tell the both the band and the venue are not what it was in 1982. I’m just glad I had a chance to go there during my trip to NYC this summer.

CBGB’s is dead, long live CBGB’s!

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Some People Are Luckier Than Others Part III

Part I
Part II

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