An Artist Lost and Found

Picture this: In 1968, a young Mexican-American singer-songwriter plays for a crowd in a Detroit club, a crowd that includes two producers in the music industry. Thinking they’ve found the “Chicano Bob Dylan,” they sign him to their label and quickly release two albums in the early ‘70s. Despite critical success, the albums flop commercially. The artist fades into obscurity; hazy news of his death makes the rounds, the most popular rumor being that he committed suicide onstage.

In the meantime, however, a bootleg copy of his first album makes its way to South Africa in the mid-’70s. Its anti-establishment tone grips young Afrikaners living under and opposed to the Apartheid regime. The government bans the records, which only fans the flame, and soon his name is a household word in South Africa. In the mid-‘90s, after his second album is finally released there on CD, two fans dig into the mystery surrounding his death. Imagine their surprise when they instead find him alive and well, completely unaware of his South African fame, working construction in Detroit.

This may sound like the premise of a Hollywood film, but it’s not. It’s the completely true story of the artist Rodriguez, and the subject of the documentary film Searching for Sugar Man. Filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul began making the film in 2006 after hearing the story from Stephen Segerman, one of the South African fans who set out to discover what had become of Rodriguez. After five years of work, the film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, winning the World Cinema Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary. It opened July 27 in New York and Los Angeles, and will be coming to theaters across the country in the coming months. (Click here for the film’s trailer, premiere dates, and more info.)

As for Rodriguez himself, he has returned to music since discovering his fame. He toured South Africa in 1998, and has been back several times since. His music has been rediscovered in his native U.S. as well, with both of his albums, Cold Fact (1970) and Coming from Reality (1971), being reissued in 2009. The soundtrack for Searching for Sugar Man released on July 24, containing selections from each album. He’s also embarking on a U.S. tour (with some international dates sprinkled in) to coincide with the film.

We’ll bring you details on this fascinating story’s DVD/Blu-ray release when they’re announced.

Hot This Week: July 30

Lockout takes the top DVD spot on the last Monday in July, with several other newcomers making the list as well. One notable entry on the CD chart is the Phil Collins compilation ...Hits, which returns to the chart nearly fourteen years after its original release. Daniel Silva's latest Gabriel Allon novel takes over the top fiction spot, while the non-fiction list remains largely the same as we head into August.

DVD

1. Lockout
2. American Reunion
3. 21 Jump Street
4. The Three Stooges
5. How I Spent My Summer Vacation
6. Wrath of the Titans
7. Friends with Kids
8. Casa de Mi Padre
9. Mirror Mirror
10. Intruders

CD

1. Nas, Life Is Good
2. Zac Brown Band, Uncaged
3. Kidz Bop Kids, Kidz Bop 22
4. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
5. Justin Bieber, Believe
6. Phil Collins, ...Hits
7. One Direction, Up All Night
8. The Dark Knight Rises Soundtrack
9. Adele, 21
10. Maroon 5, Overexposed

Fiction

1. The Fallen Angel, Daniel Silva
2. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
3. I, Michael Bennett, James Patterson
4. Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness
5. Creole Belle, James Lee Burke
6. Backfire, Catherine Coulter
7. The Sandcastle Girls, Chris Bohjalian
8. A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
9. The Next Best Thing, Jennifer Weiner
10. Close Your Eyes, Iris and Roy Johansen

Non-Fiction

1. Wild, Cheryl Strayed
2. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
3. The Amateur, Edward Klein
4. Killing Lincoln, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
5. The Dream Team, Jack McCallum
6. Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
7. The Mobile Wave, Michael Saylor
8. A Year Up, Gerald Chertavian
9. The Communist, Paul Kengor
10. Yes, Chef, Marcus Samuelsson

Appetite for Destruction Turns 25

July 21 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Guns N’ Roses’ debut album, Appetite for Destruction.

GNR came from the same mid-‘80s Sunset Strip scene that produced the likes of Poison and Motley Crue, and thus their music is sometimes lumped in with the pop-metal acts of the day. The truth, though, is that Appetite was edgier and far more serious than anything those bands did. In fact, Nicholas Pell at LA Weekly considers Appetite to be the most important album of the past 25 years, edging Nirvana’s Nevermind, a seminal album in its own right.

Personally, I’d agree with that assessment; I’d even argue that GNR set the stage for the success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the grunge scene to come. Can you imagine going from the popularity of “Unskinny Bop” (Poison) and “More Than Words” (Extreme) to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” without the heavier tones of GNR to act as a bridge?

Appetite eased its way into the mainstream when the first single, “Welcome to the Jungle,” gained popularity on MTV after the album had been out for more than a year. The second single, “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” built on that success, and the third, “Paradise City,” cemented it.

Since then, it’s been a long, strange trip for Guns N’ Roses. They followed up Appetite with GNR Lies in November of 1988. It contained four live tracks and four acoustic songs, including the megahit “Patience.” That held fans over until the dual albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II released in 1991 (debuting at #1 and #2 on the Billboard charts). While those albums contain many of the band’s best-known songs, they were also largely uneven. Then, in 1993, came the ill-fated The Spaghetti Incident?, an album of covers that would be the last recorded with GNR’s “classic” lineup (featuring Slash on guitar and Duff McKagan on bass in addition to Axl Rose on vocals).

That was it from Guns N’ Roses until Chinese Democracy finally surfaced in November of 2008 after being rumored since 1999, with Axl Rose being the only original member of the band remaining. Despite a completely different sound than any previous GNR material, it went platinum and was generally well received by critics.

The original lineup of Guns N’ Roses (Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year. Axl and Izzy did not attend, but the others reunited (along with “auxiliary” members Gilby Clarke and Matt Sorum) to perform three songs from Appetite for Destruction with Myles Kennedy on vocals.

As for the future, it’s very much up in the air. Rumors swirl that the new GNR lineup is preparing to begin recording a new album, while some longtime fans continue to hold out hope that Axl and Slash will try to put their differences behind them for a reunion of some sort.

Whatever happens going forward, there’s no denying the impact that Appetite for Destruction has had and continues to have on the music world. Make sure you have this classic album, as well as GNR’s other work, on your library’s shelves.

Hot This Week: July 23

The latest installment of the American Pie franchise jumps to the top of the DVD chart, with most of the rest of the list holding firm. The CD chart welcomes the Zac Brown Band and Frank Ocean to the top two spots. Half of this week's fiction list is made up of new titles, while the top newcomer on the non-fiction side shines a light on the 1992 U.S. men's Olympic basketball team.

DVD

1. American Reunion
2. 21 Jump Street
3. Wrath of the Titans
4. Mirror Mirror
5. Safe House
6. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
7. Wanderlust
8. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
9. The Flowers of War
10. A Thousand Words

CD

1. Zac Brown Band, Uncaged
2. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
3. Justin Bieber, Believe
4. Chris Brown, Fortune
5. Maroon 5, Overexposed
6. Linkin Park, Living Things
7. One Direction, Up All Night
8. Adele, 21
9. Katy Perry, Teenage Dream
10. Kenny Chesney, Welcome to the Fishbowl

Fiction

1. Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness
2. I, Michael Bennett, James Patterson
3. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
4. Backfire, Catherine Coulter
5. The Next Best Thing, Jennifer Weiner
6. Wicked Business, Janet Evanovich
7. The Great Escape, Susan Elizabeth Phillips
8. A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
9. The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafron
10. Night Watch, Linda Fairstein

Non-Fiction

1. Wild, Cheryl Strayed
2. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
3. The Dream Team, Jack McCallum
4. The Amateur, Edward Klein
5. Killing Lincoln, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
6. Cowards, Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe
7. The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
8. The Presidents Club, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
9. Mick, Christopher Andersen
10. Yes, Chef, Marcus Samuelsson

Review: Paul Williams Still Alive

Written by Kirk Baird

Paul Williams Still Alive is a nontraditional documentary that generated deserving buzz when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year. (Paul Williams Still Alive is not out on DVD/Blu-ray yet, but it’s worth watching for in the future.)

The documentary plays with the conventions of the genre in that writer-director and self-proclaimed Paul Williams fan Stephen Kessler (Vegas Vacation) inserts himself into the movie and becomes as much a focal point of the film as its singer-songwriter-actor subject; consider him a non-political Michael Moore.

As a refresher for some and introduction for others, the 5-foot-2-inch Paul Williams dominated popular music in the 1970s. It’s Williams who wrote “We’ve Only Just Begun” as the theme to a bank commercial and it was the Carpenters who turned it into a No. 2 hit. He also wrote “An Old-Fashioned Love Song” (Three Dog Night), “You and Me Against the World” (Helen Reddy), the Oscar-winning “Evergreen,” which he co-wrote with Barbra Streisand for her 1976 remake of A Star Is Born, and “The Rainbow Connection” from 1979’s The Muppet Movie.

He made appearances in numerous 1970s TV shows and a few films, was a regular on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and was a frequent fill-in host for Merv Griffin. Through that decade Williams’s career couldn’t have been much hotter. But as the cliché goes, drugs and alcohol nearly killed him in the 1980s, put a freeze on his career, and wrecked several marriages. Williams got sober—25 years and counting—got his life and career on track, and continues to perform to sold-out audiences in small clubs and theaters worldwide.

But how many of us knew that?

And that’s the premise of Still Alive: to inform us that, yes, Williams is still around and quite active. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that; Kessler didn’t either, which is how he came to make a movie about Williams.

Williams and Kessler make for an awkward pair at first, with the documentary’s subject unsure of what to make of the filmmaker and his omnipresent camera. But their friendship grows throughout the 90-minute film. Williams opens up about his past troubles and learns to trust that Kessler isn’t out to get him with an unflattering film; Kessler, meanwhile, has the wish fulfillment of a chance to bond with an idol of his growing up.

Still Alive is not revelatory, rather warm and clever. Kessler’s ongoing narration is rife with witty observations and the film’s pacing is like a veteran stand-up comic working a room through the ebbs and flows of a routine: it’s funny, dramatic, illuminating, and even touching. It’s also a genuinely heartfelt tribute to a talent many of us have forgotten about and, sadly, assumed everyone else had as well.