This flyer was created and distributed by Lesbians Against Police Violence and The Stonewall Coalition in summer 1979 in the aftermath of the White Night Riots; likely drawn by Emily Siegel they say.
White Night, Big City, White Night
He held his arms out open wide
He had enemies on every side
A little man in a fit of rage
shot him down to make him pay
Yes, he held his arms out open wide
Last year I did an interview with with KnowTheMusicBiz.com with the unfortunate title of “What I know now I wish I knew when I was getting started in the music business”. (Not my idea). I went back and re-read it recently. Even though I say things I sometimes don’t mean, I still stand by this. So I’m posting it here. Plus I refreshed the thing with a new title “Just Fucking Do it”.
Enjoy,
C
What I know now I wish I’d known when I was getting started. Advice for musicians.
I wished I’d have guzzled lots less alcohol less and fucked lots more. I sort of wish I hadn’t bitch-slapped a promoter who cheated me. It seemed so important at the time. But what good would any crystal ball have done me?
Maybe try not to take yourself too seriously. Try not to be terribly precious —but it doesn’t hurt to be obsessive and dogged. To have some inner drive to get it right.
“Take the time to get things right.” Ike Turner taught me that.
I was always an Ike Turner fan. Especially his obscure solo records from the 70’s. In 1990, I saw an Ike Turner Soul Revue gig in San Francisco at the Last Day Saloon. There couldn’t have been more than 20 people there. It was gloriously unorganized. Ike and his band played Proud Mary like five times and then left the stage. Ike came out for the encore by himself and sang Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed at the Fender Rhodes. It was perverse, but oddly moving.
Odd. Moving. Cool.
We chatted him up, told him we were fans, musicians ourselves. Ike autographed a record for my friend Stephen Yerkey; he wrote: “Dear Steve, Always take the time to get the right people. Comeback next time, it will be much better. Sincerely, Ike.”
Seriously, it’s hard to say what I wished I’d known then… One thing that occurs to me is that I feel sorry for kids today with crappy MP3’s. When I was a kid I really had to seek things out. To seek out the music and find a culture weird enough for me to identify with. And most of that came from listening to records. It really opened up my world. And the literature and films and all that came with it…
It was the records that pointed me in those directions. From Ry Cooder to Wim Winders to the German Expressionist filmmakers… and Dylan to Woody Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt to Robert Johnson… The Clash led me to Joe Ely and the Sugarhill Gang back through the looking glass and inside myself.
I come from a fairly conservative, non-musical family. I begged for guitar lessons, got golf lessons instead. I just don’t think there’s much of anything dangerous about dropping out and joining a band these days. But if it’s fun, then I suppose it’s as relevant as ever.
What to look for / watch out for in managers, attorneys, band members
You mean like, ask for five references and call the last one first? Heck, I don’t know anything. You can hire lawyers and managers and all manner of sleazy ten per-centers/experts to help you navigate these decisions, but ultimate nobody else knows anything either. Some of the best guys are still one third bullshit….
It’s true. The best thing might be to just find someone you trust. If you have someone who’s a true believer in your corner, that’s worth more than an army of so called experts. You have to have blind belief in what you’re doing. Making a decent record is a lot like coaching high school football. You’ve got to be smart enough to do it and dumb enough to think it matters. It does matter. And it’s the music that fuels the business, if there’s any business at all to be had. But the buzz of doing it should be enough to get you off. If you’re out to make a quick buck steal car stereos for chrisakes.
As daft as that sounds, I really believe it’s true. Try not to be an asshole. But it doesn’t hurt to have an asshole friend or two who’s willing to shake it up for you. When people around me begin a statement or request or whatever with “In the future,” my guts churn. I guess the best advice I can give is to listen to from within. Shit, that’s what the Quakers do and they won the Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not.
No man is an eyelid, and as much as everyone would like to cut out the middle man, there’s nothing like the power of a gang; in guys that have your back. So surround yourself with cool people. Work with the label. Don’t be afraid to take suggestions. You’re all in it together. There’s the writing, and the recording and the live show to worry about. And that’s a lot. Fact is, you’ll end up getting in bed with some good people and you’ll ending up getting in bed with some people you’ll come to find you don’t want to wake up next to. And really, it’s hard to tell until you’re in the heat of battle who’s got your back and who doesn’t. So, in order to get your music out there, just fucking do it.
I’ve done both, woken up in both of those beds. But ultimately it’s about the music. Every great musician has some bad decisions in his past. Don’t get too tangled up in the business side of things. Who wants to be in a band to listen to a cash register? Wait: don’t answer that one.
You need much more than a good lawyer. You’ll need luck. You’ll need lightning. Then you can pay a lawyer to give you his opinion if it makes you feel better. If you can stay awake.
Just pay attention to the lightning.
And listen for the thunder.
The advantages or negative impact of technology on the business
MP3’s are crappy sounding. That’s a fact. Vinyl has always sounded better. But I try not to get too hung up on how the music is delivered into my psyche. It’s easy to forget that it’s all about the song, the mystery, the magic in the grooves.
That’s the dope that you want. It’s the dope that’s important. It’s not the needle. If you got to have it, you just got to have it. On cassette, vinyl, CD or whatever. If you need to hear Dusty Springfield singing The Look of Love ,you’ll seek it out.
And it’ll echo forever.
Advice you would give your favorite independent artist or band
I think I’d be more likely to seek advice from them. How’d they get to be my favorite. They must be doing something I can learn from.
Which reminds me, that it helps to be a fan. Learn other songs. Learn them, then unlearn them. Substitute your own life, your own absurd observations, your own point of view or lunacy into the frame.
Everyone needs to work to get by. Try to get a job where you have some isolation to think. Thebest job I ever had was parking cars. I once had a job parking cars at KMEL radio station in San Francisco, “America’s Most Hip Hop” radio station. After I’d climb in behind the wheel, out of boredom more than anything else, I’d routinely root around the cars’ contents. Don’t know what I was looking for. I swear I never took anything more than an Altoid mint (or two). But I loved that job, it afforded me: I had a lot of time to think about songs and scheming and plotting new records. It was actually a very happy time for me. And the structure was healthy. Or so I think.
Step away from the computer. If you’re to inspire people, you’ll need inspiration. Inspiration is in everything, in everyone. Take the time out to visit the odd Hunting Lodge. The more taxidermied animals on the walls, the better. Also, find a guitar that stays in tune. If you can’t, find a guitar you love and play it every day. You’ll get to know it. And you’ll get it to behave and do things for you after a while. Get intimate with its personality.
I still play the same 1984 Fender Squire Telecaster that Green On Red bought me when I joined them. Yeah, yeah, yeah: I know there’s some kind of irrational attachment going on. I own others, but I’ve never played any other guitar than the Squire on a gig. Not sure why, maybe because it knows all the songs and I don’t. Like Excalibur’s Sword, it gives me power; or like that lucky pen—when I play it everything just flows through me. If just everybody had one of these things, I’d probably still be folding underwear at Nordstrom’s. But really, I can’t stress this enough: Seek out your own culture and your own music.
Seek things out.
Once, in a studio in Scottsdale, I ran into Lee Hazlewood. He was working in an adjacent room producing demo’s for a local New Country singer and he’d assembled a group of housewife vocalists out of the union book to sing a background part imitating a train whistle (“Whoo whoo”). One woman turned to me and asked, “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Is this guy for real?”
Yeah, he was. Lee seemed to enjoy holding court for us, he gushed enthusiastic over Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy (a big hit at the time) and told us “Gram Parsons would have shot watermelon seeds it he thought it’d get him high.”
Years later, Nancy and Lee did a reunion tour and Lee refused to give any interviews. But, man he spilled it that day around the water cooler. I still have the business card he gave me in the top drawer of my desk.
I’m a fan first. For me, every time I make a new record, it’s the same process. I assemble of group of talented, intense, difficult people. Many of whom I’ve work with before and a few I’ll probably never work with again and I pray to the gods we can capture more than just the music. Maybe a little spirit. But you need luck.
Never quit being a fan. I don’t really have any advice for my favorite artists. They’re more like teachers to me. And never quit learning even if you have to unlearn everything first.
The value of music and musicians
Oscar Wilde wrote “All art is useless.” And Oscar Wilde was a fine artist. It’s okay to believe both. Music’s art. After all, Andy Warhol said it: You’re getting people to spend money on something they don’t need. Chew on that concept.
I mean, if you can entertain yourself then there’s value. And if you’re having fun doing it, that’s something too. I’m not totally behind the everything should be free theory. I mean, if I really wanted to put that to the test I’d move into Chris Anderson’s house. There’s really no value. There’s a point between every other point, isn’t that what they teach you in school? Infinite. But does that mean you can’t walk home from school?
I know that in recent years there’s a been an increase in well-adjusted musicians out there. Fuck, even I might have become one of them. But I’m not sure that returning every e-mail or MySpace message makes anyone more interesting. And as much as I love the freedom the internet provides, I do miss mono-analog-vinyl culture. I like it when records bring people together. And I do agree with Robert Christgau when he says that people generally do a better job if they’re getting paid. These days, I see journalism really taking a rabbit punch and that’s sad.
I never really thought of music as a vocation. In fact, I don’t have a job. I’m not sure I’m actually making a living. You think you’re in control? Are you sure that computer doesn’t have YOU by the balls?
Just listen to what your guitar is telling you. Unlearn your songs. Then learn them again.
And watch for the lightning. It’ll come.
Come back next time, it’ll be much better. Sincerely, Chuck.
Chuck Prophet
Autumn 2009, on the road
Somewhere in England
Van Christian (Naked Prey) reached out to me for some quotes for his new record. I listened to it. And it moved me.
By the way, not that it totally matters, but Van’s record was completely financed by running pot cross country for Mexican National’s. Shortly after Van finished his opus he got busted and served 3 years. He’s out now. And flying straight. Anyway, seek out the record. It’s worth the seeking.
—CP
Mom, Spitting in Her Hand
Trust me here - that weird title is a good way of thinking about Van Christian. Maybe I’ll be able to explain that. First, you know, we all ought to be a little bit more grateful. Maybe quit worrying so much about being graceful. Is there any single creature who made the Tucson scene more interesting, more fun? And am I grateful for him? Damn straight I’m grateful. Now you go and be grateful.
Seriously, did anyone make Tucson cooler? No. Any one more than Van fucking Christian? Name one and I’ll go down on you with the cameras rolling at the 50-yard line at half time on the Super Bowl where everybody in America is waiting for the high-dollar commercials and wardrobe malfunctions.
Way before Desert Rock was shanghaied by careeristas -shit-snipes who in a (forget perfect) merely fair world would be teaching Jazz Band at a second-rate community college in Los Posole, New Mexico or Glee Club in Pacomia - before there were even matches at Burning Man…
Before any of that, there was that crazed son of a doctor Van Christian. My opinion here. My opinion this time out is flat fact.
In the Zonie tradition - from Alice Vincent Cooper to Hector Molina - you’ll find the true Desert Rock where, I guess, people couldn’t go any further on the 10. Desert Rock: the skuzzy stuff, the truly good stuff, the skanky and skeezy right-off-the-bone real stuff. Rock and Roll. Loose, tight. Sloppy, precise. Clear-eyed and fucked up. Messy, Greasy. Revelations from the desert. The deep fried nausea, the pass the fucking bong I really think I’m Elvis lunacy.
That’s Van Christian. I don’t have to say this. I seldom get paid for anything and I damn sure don’t expect a paycheck from Van. No, this praise isn’t because of all the things he knows about me I wish he didn’t - and that grizzled dishwasher better take those tales to his grave. No. I want to say this because, hey! this time out he means business. He financed this record about the hardest of ways - but also sort of traditionally. When Black Flag were broke, Henry delivered Dominos in Venice. Or so they say. Van did his time as a deliveryman, but there weren’t many pepperoni with extra cheese thin crusts involved.
He stayed alive. That’s business. There’s an amazing - true - story about how that madman got called into his day-job boss’ office for a spanking at best and a firing at worst. The crazy fucker saluted his boss who was baffled by how Van looked - sort of like a chipmunk who’d been eating peyote buttons. But he started laughing. Couldn’t keep a straight face. And when he grinned, his boss saw that Van had somehow managed to get an entire hand grenade between his jaws and onto his tongue and then close his lips. But he started laughing. And his boss fled from the room.
There’s some sort of movie about Tucson music out there, censored/uncensored. What the fuck ever. But the Van Christian movie won’t ever be made. And for that I’m grateful; Van’s life has been a free flick you want to see over and over. Somewhere, those idiot desert rat new born transplants like Larkins are laying down that country club/high country groove. And for that the world shows it’s gratitude with rolled up twenties. But Van is under that radar. His new record says it all. Van is a natural, and his henchmen are perfect for the heist. Guitars into Memory Mans. Fuzz in just the right places. I can taste broken strings and I can imagine the bent spoons it took to cook it up. I smell the perfume of brain cells in the ozone.
This record is Van’s movie. It’s like Mom spitting into her hand to try to lay your cowlick down. It’s defiant. Stubborn. Perfect. The violin’s just enough out of tune to pull your ear. The record’s an assault in some ways, yes, but it’s tender and chaotic at once. Mostly, it’s sweet, the sweetly definitive Tucson record.
Maybe it’s better than sweet: it’s poignant.
I salute you, Van Christian.
Chuck Prophet, San Fransico/Los Angeles/Baja
This appears in its original form on IFC.Com here: http://www.ifc.com/blogs/indie-ear/2009/10/chuck-prophets-top-movies-of-a.php
I asked Chuck Prophet if he could list a few of his favorite films for me while he’s finishing up a documentary about the ill timed (swine flu) trip to Mexico he took to make a record. Read this bad ass list he wrote up and if you need a breather, give a listen to this jam, “Sonny Liston’s Blues,” off his record ¡Let Freedom Ring! - due out Oct. 27. It’s gonna take an aspirin! ******************
Chuck Prophet:
These are movies that I’ve lived with and return to again and again. I’ve included a couple of small movies so good that if you’re like me, you can’t help but wonder, “Why aren’t there more movies like this?” I have to root for the underdog. That’s how I’m wired. And remember, in the immortal words of Ray Charles: “It’s easier to bone the President’s wife than to get a movie made.”
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Cliff Stern: “A strange man… defecated on my sister…”
Wendy Stern: [pause] “... why?”
It’s really two movies: One about a struggling documentary filmmaker (Woody Allen) trapped in an unhappy marriage and in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back. And in the other, a classic noir story where Martin Landau is a successful doctor who has his mistress (Anjelica Huston) murdered. And gets away with it.
Some of Woody Allen’s later movies have a rather tossed off feel. But this movie is like a can of concentrated orange juice. Concentrated. You know, like before you add the water? It’s almost three movies in one. Thick. Dense. Bullet-proof.
At the end of the film Allen’s character, Cliff, listens to Martin Landau’s character pitch him an idea for a movie. Cliff tells him that in order to make a good film there needs to be some redemption in the story. It’s an achingly sad moment when Landau says to Allen, “You watch too many movies, this is about real life.” Just one of the many moments that stack up to make the torn half of the Admit One worth having.
And remember: “If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it isn’t.”
I’m down for any Woody Allen. I’ll see anything he does. I’m sure people will be quick to disagree but I think Woody is incapable of making a bad movie. The same way Bob Dylan is incapable of being uninteresting.
All The President’s Men (1976)
“Print that baby!”
At one time I wanted to be a journalist. Took a few college classes before I got frustrated looking for parking and starting cutting class and going to matinees. Seeing this movie as a child with my mother probably had as much to do with my romantic notion of journalism as anything. Just the roar of all those typewriters rat-tat-tatting away in unison at the Washington Post hooked me. Or maybe it was the glee in hearing Jason Robards growl: “Where’s the fucking story?” Every scene is a diamond. It’s brief, but the Lindsay Ann Crouse (David Mamet’s first wife) scene where she has maybe three lines, is a movie unto itself.
It’s fascinating to look back at this now as a kind of period piece. As news papers are folding and Investigative reporting is dying all around us. Syndicated articles are passed around like cheap whores and papers can’t afford to keep on a paid staff to do any serious reporting. One more reminder of the apocalypse, now we live in a time where opinion and entertainment rule over truth.
D Tour (2008)
I was really knocked out by this informative rock documentary directed by Jim Granato about Rogue Wave drummer Pat Spurgeon who was born with one kidney that’s failing and needs another to keep living.
I learned a lot. Like being on the organ recipient list for a new kidney is no cakewalk. And being in a touring band while on dialysis is no day at the beach. It’s involved. I won’t tell you how this story ends but it’s a heart wrenching journey for sure. If you haven’t already, you might want to consider checking that box on your driver’s license.
Walking out after watching it, I thought about all the useful things I’ve learned watching movies:
1) Eric Stoltz picking a safe in “Killing Zoe.” You’ve got to have the right tools. You’ve got to have a talent for it. But it can be done if you know what you’re doing, apparently.
2) The proper way to spy on someone and get it on tape. Gene Hackmen following Frederick Forest and Cindy William’s conversation in the middle of San Francisco’s Union Square with a shotgun microphone in “The Conversation.”
3) There’s a right and a wrong way to talk to a girl after she catches you tricking her in to touching your penis by burying it like a prize in a popcorn box. Just ask Mickey Rourke! (“see Diner”). If you know what you’re doing she won’t even get mad.
4) The lottery-like impossible odds of transcending your background by playing b-ball (“Hoop Dreams”).
Back to “D-Tour.” Warning: there are enough pretty, open acoustic guitar chords and sweet harmonies courtesy of Ben Gibbard (and a host of celebrated indie rock semi-royalty). Enough of that to send you into a diabetic seizure. So, if you’re hypoglycemic, you might want to enter at your own risk.
Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll (1987)
Chuck Berry: “Don’t touch my amp!”
Keith Richards and a bevy of special guests get paraded out for Chuck’s 60 Birthday concert. But make no mistake: it’s Chuck’s show all the way. It’s the rehearsals where the real action is. And we get to watch. “Don’t touch my amp!” And take a Chuck guided through St. Louis. Chuck Berry is a complicated dude. This movie is endlessly fascinating. Rock and roll is Rock and Roll. And nobody tells Chuck Berry how to play Chuck Berry. Just ask Keith!
Meantime (1984)
I was torn between mentioning this film or the John Cassavete’s film “Gloria” (1980). Ah…. the 80’s. Movies from the drought.
I can still remember stumbling across this film by chance on BBC 4 one night in my lonely room at the Columbia Hotel in London and being completely riveted. There was something different going on here. What I didn’t know was that I was seeing my first Mike Leigh film. And as a bonus, making the acquaintances of Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, with their screen debuts. Something different was going. These weren’t just actors saying lines. They were the characters. Nobody makes pictures like Mike Leigh.
Badlands (1973)
I once read an interview where Terrence Malick said that the cops and much of the cast in this film weren’t actually actors. Anyone other than principal actors were civilians. He found that real people are less vain, he said. Felt less compelled to act. Naturally, the camera captures that. Knowing so was just one sign of Terry’s gift. Another was his amazing ability to have the audience feel - and feel deeply - for the villain.
And when the deputy delivers his line while Martin Sheen is handcuffed in the back seat magic happens: “I’ll kiss your ass if he don’t look like James Dean.” A scene I simply can’t forget. It’s creepy. Martin Sheen gets my vote for sexiest sociopath since Robert Blake in “In Cold Blood” or Tommy Lee Jones in “The Executioners Song.”
Art can do that. Get you rooting for the bad guys.
As a songwriter always on the lookout for something to steal, and shoe-horn into a song, I can’t help but notice the first line in Bruce Springteen’s song Nebraska is the opening scene of the movie, “Saw her standing on her front lawn, just a-twirling her baton…” Close your eyes or keep them open: it’s Sissy Spacek.
Dylan once said, “Oh yeah? Well why not write a song about that guy who went into a McDonalds and blew all those people away? I bet if he could speak from the grave he’d have a story to tell.”
But can you make us care for him?
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)
“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”
—Francis Ford Coppola
A documentary that follows the making of “Apocalypse Now.” Heart Attacks, millions of dollars in budget overages, lead actors fired after shooting starts. Now that makes for a great movie.
Having gone over budget making records as much as I have, I studied the scene where one of Francis Ford Coppola’s writers talks of quitting the project only to have the director convince him that he was making the first film that could go on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize and like that he’s back on the gig. That’s genius. Worth studying.
It was made by Francis Ford Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola. She said somewhere that she suspected Francis gave her the gig just to get her out of his hair. Turns out “the brains behind pa” made a movie even more fascinating, informative, and intriguing than “Apocalypse Now.”
Ghost World (2001)
Seymour: “I can’t relate to 99% of humanity.”
A coming-of-age teen flick movie that pivots around Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” can do no wrong with me. And shouldn’t with anyone else.
Some kind of cosmic coincidence that mirrored my own world: I once heard Lorrete Velvet sing that same song at the Antenna Club in Memphis and also became obsessed. It’s a kind of blues Rosetta Stone. Everything else makes sense after you figure out what language it’s written in. Here’s a movie that was after my own heart.
I love the scene where Thora Birch’s character Enid after buying a blues compilation LP from Steve Buscemeis’ character at a garage sale takes the record home and hearing Skip James sing Devil Got My Woman” becomes totally obsessed and returns the next weekend to the garage sale. Asking Steve Buscemi’s character: “Do you have any other records like that?”
He says, “There are no other records like that.”
Last I heard, the writer (Daniel Clowes) was banging out a screenplay about three Mississippi kids who spent a good seven years in the 1980s making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s mystifying. Anyway, “Ghost World.” It’s sad when friends grow apart, especially if your best friend is Scarlet Johansson. This movie nails that feeling.
Bonus: This is where we got the expression Blues Hammer. I don’t know how many people saw this movie but Blues Hammer is now part of the musician’s lexicon. It’s part of the vernacular. Like “gig-atoni”.
Rumble Fish (1983)
“California’s like a beautiful, wild… beautiful, wild girl on heroin…”
This is the movie that turned me on - made me aware what cinematography is or what it could be. Francis Ford Coppola was interviewed in a local rock magazine here called Bam Magazine when this came out. It was there I learned about the lengths they went through to make this movie look the way it looked. They actually painted the shadows on the ground. Lots of slo-mo rolling clouds, smoke and tweaked out Foley. It turned me on to moving making, to understanding that they’re made.
If you read the S.E. Hinton novel, you’d know that the Motorcycle boy was deaf. Explains why all the sound is muted when our soft spoken hero Mickey Rourke speaks. It’s disorienting.
Matt Dillon as Rusty James, Tom Waits as Benny. Diane Lane? Dennis Hopper? It’s a feast. The soundtrack by Stewart Copeland and Stan Ridgway is brilliant as well. Really ahead of it’s time.
Der amerikanische Freund (1977) The American Friend
“What’s wrong with a cowboy in Hamburg?”
This is Wim Winder’s take on “Ripley’s Game” Starring Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper as the sinister Tom Ripley, a loner cowboy making his way around Hamburg dealing in forged paintings, consumed with existential angst and all the freak you’d expect in this sideways take on classic noir.
And the soundtrack is right there, “Too Much On My Mind” by The Kinks. Bruno’s character Jonathan is humming it to himself while he works building frames in his little shop. It’s a beautiful moment. Counterfeit as art and art as counterfeit. Fucking rock and roll.
The Object of Beauty (1991)
“I’m worth it.”
Commodities broker, Jake, has just lost his nest egg. Now he and Tina (Andie MacDowell) are slumming it in a chic London hotel they can no longer afford. Or at least not willing to admit they can’t afford it. They get it on, and Andie MacDowell’s character takes forever to get off—but says, “I’m worth it.” Who’s to argue?
I’m not sure I’d want to hang out with these people. They’re nasty. But they’ve got each other. Even if they bounce a check here and there,—one has to do what one can to keep his gal in designer threads. But it’s a rare film. They don’t make movies about these kinds of people very often. Maybe we’ll see more of these recession blues films in the future. If I’m to believe what I read on the web, I hear Carrie Bradshaw’s new husband Big runs into financial trouble in the currently-in- production Sex and the City sequel. But heck, what would I know about that?
Paris, Texas (1984)
“What the hell?” (First line of the script.)
“Paris, Texas” came later for Wim Wenders. That was a kind of John Ford ass-buster for my generation. And here another European gently reminds us what’s great about our culture and nails it to a t-bone steak. Back then, I don’t know what they called this kind of thing. I guess they call it Americana now. I suppose this movie is really just a western. It ends with our hero Travis played by Harry Dean Stanton walking off in to the sunset, and those four notes Ry Cooder plays over and over? ‘Nuff said.
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