Full Moon Muse: Movies, Blues & Beer

That kind of sums up my weekend which was graced with a good movie, hearing some fine blues at Speiskammer by Howell Devine and playing a sunkissed gig at the Lagunitas Taproom in Petaluma. It always takes me a day or two to get back to the world after a weekend like that.
RE: the movie. Have you seen the latest Wes Anderson flic Moonrise Kingdom? It will take you back to your 10-12 year old self, when you're not-quite-grown-up but still a kid and have started to get big clues that there's more going on around you than you thought and that you have a choice in some matters. Especially if you like somewhat fantastic books. Anyhow, if you haven't seen, today's day of the  "Full Buck Moon" may just be a perfect opportunity. RE: The Moon, from Farmer's Almanac: "July is the month of the Full Buck Moon. Bucks begin to grow new antlers at this time. This full Moon was also known as the Thunder Moon, because thunderstorms are so frequent during this month."

Playing Chess: Cadillac Records

Saturday, I walked down to Opera Plaza to meet Em (and her banjo) for a screening of Cadillac Records, the bon-bon of a movie featuring Adrian Brody, Beyoncé Knowles, Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def as the Chess Records' label founder and his stable of drop-jaw talent: Etta Jams, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and the rest of the musicians who defined Chicaco blues in the 1950s. The movie isn't as great as the people and music it seeks to portray, but the loving eye director Darnell Martin casts on recreating the process of making the great blues hits of the era equals pure joy to both watch and listen. There's lots and lots of juicy studio drama (aside: engineering sorts will be scoping out the pre-Pro Tools gear and live takes. Were those the mics they used?) The story of music's powerful ability to transcend race, class and circumstance is a heart-warmer while the cast is equally kind on the eye. A scene of Beyoncé-as-Etta belting out an classic James tune to signal the end of both a love affair and an era is tear-worthy. Yeah! Now go by the soundtrack and be glad most of the royalties and credits have been straightened out to give due credit to their rightful creators (There's a post-script about how the copywrite and publishing was worked out in later years that's pretty interesting itself)

Film Night, mixing, mulling, urbanism

Film Night in the Park is one of those summer events that makes you happy to live in San Francisco, especially when the feature dates back to high school, and you're crowded on blankets with your friends w/Bi-Rite goods and half the Mission District. Saturday night was a John Hughes fest, featuring "The Breakfast Club." I don't think I've watched it since the movie came out (I asked someone 15 years younger than me if they'd seen it before, and they assured me it had since morphed into a cult classic). I see why it held up—the content has plenty of adult implications that I mostly missed at the time—and who can resist singing along to Simple Minds with 1000+ people? "Don't you/forget about me....."
It was that kind of a brain-drain weekend, lazy bike rides checking out different areas of the city, goofball movies, playing a little but mostly mulling. I've one, maybe two more mixing sessions so my big CD project of the past few months is almost complete and suddenly time is more available before the next phase of manufacturing and releasing the tunes. ".....hey, hey, hey-aaaaa....."