More Prince, and Coast to Coast AM

I was numb all day yesterday. I just couldn't believe it was true. I did my duty though. I wrote about it here, and I wrote about it on Biff Bam Pop! right here, and even did a short episode of The GAR! Podcast on it found here and here. I had to leave the South Jersey Writers' Group's Open House last night early because I was just worn out, and who knows, just maybe a bit depressed as well. When I got home, MTV was playing Prince videos, and then Purple Rain, still I was devastated, but unfeeling really. But it didn't really hit me that Prince was gone, until I was in bed listening to my nighttime nemesis Coast to Coast AM.

I had tuned in to the later half of the program, which sometimes, if we're lucky, will have some content of what Coast to Coast AM used to be known for. Otherwise it's typical radio drivel, the same old same old. Coast used to be unique, now for the most part, it's boring. But every once in a while, we old fans will get a scrap of what used to be. The guest last night was rock historian R. Gary Patterson. And of course the king of no-research, host George Noory.

Now I don't blame Patterson for saying it was Vanity was in Purple Rain instead of Apollonia, that's an easy mistake, especially for someone who admittedly had only a passing knowledge of Prince. He was a bit after the man's time, and Patterson does know his stuff when it comes to older rock stars and their mysterious deaths - I bow to him in that area.

It was George that infuriated. I can understand if he didn't do any show prep. Noory never does any show prep, no matter what he says. He comes in to interviews as empty-headed as he leaves, as if his mind was a sieve. Perhaps that's why details of Prince's life, that had to have been all over the news all freaking day, somehow eluded him. Yeah, he asked all the stupid questions that that seemingly unique person who had never heard of Prince would ask.

I was embarrassed for the guest, I was angry at Noory, and that's when it hit me, that's when the tears came. We've lost Prince, as surely as we've lost Coast to Coast AM, and David Bowie… Prince is gone. And when people stop talking, and when the radio and TV stop playing, he will still be gone. And, anger at a lousy dying radio show aside, I will still be mourning.

RIP Prince

This is devastating. Everyone has those artists who they love, that whenever they come out with an album or any project, you simply, blindly, faithfully just buy without having heard it - because you know it's going to be great. This year, barely five months in, I have lost two of them. David Bowie, and now Prince. It's no longer a joke or a meme, 2016 has truly been a soul crusher for music.

I first discovered Prince waaay back in late 1981 or early 1982, the first time I heard the song "Controversy," on WYSP in Philadelphia, a mainstream rock station. That's one of the things I loved about Prince, he crossed genres. To look at him, an African-American male with R&B airplay in his past getting time on a station that regularly pumped out AC/DC and Yes made an impression on me. Prince was something special.

I further explored his work by buying that album, loving it, and Dirty Mind, the one before it, and the two lesser liked ones that preceded them. Just because I didn't dig them as much, doesn't mean there weren't gems in there, or that I didn't respect the genius there. Anyway, by the time everyone else caught up when 1999 came out, I was already a life long fan. It may be hard for kids today to appreciate, but I played those cassettes so much, I wore them out, and had to buy new ones.

With each album, each fashion, each incarnation, and transformation (something else that Prince had in common with Bowie) I followed. I loved the man, I loved his music, his videos, his movies, his smirk, his sense of humor, his defiance. The man was fierce, and a fiery performer.

I'm still numb. I don't know what else to say. I love you, man. And I miss you already.


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A slightly different version of this appears at Biff Bam Pop!. Please pop over there for more remembrances of Prince by the staff there.

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1987

The Man Who Fell to Earth ~ I haven't seen the David Bowie version of this film in decades, so when I saw it on the schedule, I immediately DVRed it. At the time I didn't know there was any other version of The Man Who Fell to Earth, at least until I sat down to watch it. This is a 1987 television adaptation with Lewis Smith in the title role.

There are changes to the story, including oddly the characters' names, and of course the ugly updating that happens with any remake. Smith lacks the charisma of Bowie, yet brings it off well and is adequately believable. Look for Annie Potts and Beverly D'Angelo, as well as then-future "Star Trek" cast Wil Wheaton and Robert Picardo. I love Wheaton, but he's not good in this at all.

Once the memory of Bowie, and the original movie, can be removed, this flick isn't bad. It's not good either, mind you, but it's harmless viewing, a sometimes painful, sometimes amusing 1980s time capsule. All things considered, it's probably better than it should have been.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

A Million Ways to Die in the West ~ Steven Spielberg once predicted the death of the superhero movie, saying it would soon go the way of the Western. This comes from the man who co-created Indiana Jones, a character that is essentially a superhero, lacking only a mask. It wasn't that he said it that bothered me, it was the derision with which he said it. Bad form, Mr. Spielberg.

I think it's a matter of quality not genre. Bad superhero movies may well go the way of bad Westerns, but good movies, no matter the genre, will last. When it comes to bad movies, only the really, really bad ones are remembered. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, anyone? And we shall not even speak of Batman v Superman…

They still make good Westerns, just sometimes they're in disguise. They wear the trappings of the South like Django Unchained, Japanese theatre like Bunraku, the post-apocalypse like Mad Max, or simple covered in dirt like "Deadwood." I left the remakes of True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma out because I didn't particularly like them, no matter how critically acclaimed they were.

And sometimes a good Western, like in the case of Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West, it's shrouded in shameless inappropriate humor. I would never have thought it before seeing it, but I loved this flick. Co-written, produced, and directed by MacFarlane, this movie has that old time Western feel, but with that raunchy fall down funny vibe of Blazing Saddles, and even has the dirty authenticity of "Deadwood."

From the start with the opening credits sequence, MacFarlane sets the stage for this film as a classic Western. Old fashioned titles matched with sweeping colorful scenery of the Old West, overlaid with the beautiful score of Joel McNeely, made for an opening that could have been swiped from a sixties John Ford epic. I watched it twice. That good.

Once it's over though, the trademark MacFarlane humor kicks in almost immediately. This is no Blazing Saddles but it's real close, and if you liked Ted or "Family Guy," you will love this. This movie is a gift for Western fans, and piss-your-pants funny for comedy fans. Recommended.

The Killing of Randy Webster

The Killing of Randy Webster ~ This one is another lost telemovie that I remember from my youth that I thought I would never find again. One thing that made it stand out to me was the soundtrack by April Wine, a band that I had liked back in the day. Hardly anyone remembers them now.

Though largely forgotten on the mainstream rock scene, the Canadian band April Wine is still active, and had more than a few hits way back when. Among them were the Dungeons & Dragons flavored Lorence Hud cover "Sign of the Gypsy Queen" and the power ballad "Just Between You and Me" as well as my personal favorites "All Over Town" and the cleverly titled "If You See Kay." There were others, and for a very very short time in the early eighties, April Wine, with its great rock logo, was hot.

The soundtrack was not the only thing that makes this film stand out. It's also one of the lost few not found on video or DVD with any reliability. Luckily it does run on some of the nostalgia networks and is also on YouTube. It also stars three actors - Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, and Anthony Edwards - who would all appear again together a year later in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

The Killing of Randy Webster, a true story based on a 1977 Shreveport LA murder of a teenager by a police officer, is actually quite relevant in this age of Ferguson and "Making a Murderer." What are the facts, and who really did what? Hal Holbrook stars as the teenager's father trying to get to the truth, through a Rashomon-like maze of contraindications and controversy. Also look for a younger thinner Dixie Carter as the mom.

The movie is painfully both a product of television movie of the week-ness and the 1970s, but that doesn't ruin what is a powerful story once it gets going. Later in the movie it becomes more a father's quest and a legal drama, with Holbrook getting the bulk of the emotional action.

I have to confess that The Killing of Randy Webster wasn't as good as I remember, but the concept and the music still hold up in my book. Worth seeing if you can find it.