VIDEO

Rip It Up, Issue 130, 1 May 1988, Page 34

VIDEO

Loving You (CEL) Jailhouse Rock (CEL) Next to the “real life” dramas of Elvis That’s The Way It Is— these two are the best cinematic Elvis. Loving You is perhaps the best

rock’n’roll film because it’s about the machinery of rock’n’roll. Presley plays Deke Rivers, who gets strung along by the leader of a down-and-out western swing band, who uses Deke’s stage power to help his band and make some bucks. There is of course the love triangle between Elvis, an older woman and the obvious good and pure young girl. Plus the sub-plot of rock n’roll being a force for good and not some terrible sexual plague.

A film about exploitation, but the plot doesn’t matter; unlike other Elvis films this shows him in a rock context, playing live. The other films have him with dancing girls, yoga instructors, scuba divers and cute animals. Here he’s pretty raw — like during ‘Teddy Bear’ and ‘Mean Woman Blues’. As an interesting note, you can see Elvis’s mother in the final concert bit; Elvis never watched this film again after her death. Jailhouse Rock has Elvis as Vince

Everett, a real JD, and in Loving You he isn’t the nice guy either. Highlights of Jailhouse are the choreography of the title song, the prison riot and the famous whipping scene. Best songs being ‘Baby I Don’t Care,’ ‘I Wanna Be Free’ and of course the title song, which to my horror someone referred to as “the one the Blues Brothers wrote,” pathetic but true. All the best songs in the film were written by that great song writing duo Lieber & Stoller; they make

this one of Elvis’s best musicals. Both films show Elvis the emerging icon; not just the early wildness, the first flash of genius, but Elvis the media king, Elvis the commodity who might be bought but never owned. He’s just so stunning in these early films that it’s easy to forgive him for Clambake and Paradise, Hawaiian Style. Kerry Buchanan Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (CEL) Over two hours of a celebration of everything Motown, - a television spectacular that features all the people that made Hitsville USA the musical and cultural bombshell it was. Hosted by Richard Pryor who gives a very funny monologue called ‘Motown — A Fairy Tale,’ the show brings together the past and present through wonderful live performances and well-used historical footage. There are so many highlights: the clips of an almost pre-natal Michael Jackson singing James Brown, then the Jackson 5 with ‘I Want You Back,’ Marvin Gaye free-associating over the piano, and a Supremes montage that is stunning, a meeting of the songwriters jamming on the songs that shaped a generation. r Good also is the emphasis on how important i Motown was ®to > black ■ people and the black cultural experience. Amongst every ‘Twisting Postman' there was What’s Going On’ and the Vandellas’ own ‘Nowhere To Run.’ Which leads me to wonder about the inclusion of Adam Ant doing a most embarrassing version of ‘■Where Did Our Love Go’ — it has to be seen to be believed. The grand climax is about everybody on stage doing ‘Someday We Will Be Together,’ an emotional moment indeed. Kerry Buchanan

That Was Rock (CEL) Now this is the real McCoy: excerpts from The TAM! Show (which stands for Teenage Awards Music International), the greatest teen music flick ever. You get Chuck Berry being Chuck, Jan and Dean being terrible, Marvin Gaye in wondrous form, the Supremes on the beat, the Stones just at the point before they storm the States ... and best of all is James Brown at his finest, whose dancing on this show changed the way white America moved their bodies: it made them black. Just look at Big Bad Bo Diddley throwing his voodoo guitar at those poor white girls-This sort of music brought real cuture to young America; it liberated them. The audience is great, just a mass of screaming kids throwing their bodies about, feeling that evil rock’n’roll beat. Whereas in Cool Cats the main thing seems to be about how you cut your hair, in The TAM! Show you get to see the raw excitement of youth culture during one of its most crucial periods. Kerry Buchanan Cool Cats (CEL) A doco circa 1985 about style in music and its influence on society and fashion, etc. Told through historical footage and contemporary shots, and presented by “experts” like Pete Townshend, Vidal Sassoon, one Everly brother and Malcolm McLaren. So we get teddy boys, mods, hippies and punks. The problem here is that it’s all English, so the perspective is very limited, and the expert testimony amounts to Townshend being a complete arsehole. Funniest bit is him and Daltry saying how contrived and silly mod was. Instead of real footage of mods and rockers, we get too much of Quadrophenia. Which is not the real thing, but then again, English rock’n’roll style isn’t the real thing either. A good idea poorly done.

KB