Imagine if the Doors, The Byrds or Love had, long after their late '60s heyday, reconvened to record a quartet of brilliant albums, the first a double LP of classic, even epic, proportions issued just months before punk broke.
Donald Fagenson (Don Was) and David Weiss (David Was), two nice Jewish boys from the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, were the Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of the early '80s, making acerbic commentaries on Reagan-era geopolitics over superbly produced and polished, futuristic punk-funk.
Detroit being the Motor City and the home of Motown and the MC5, Was (Not Was) incorporated equal parts R&B and rock, with soul vocals from Sweet Pea Atkinson and angular guitar courtesy of Wayne Kramer of the '5.
Conceived as a black Woodstock in '72, an act of healing seven years after LA's Watts district had been all but burned down in race riots to the chanting of "burn, baby, burn", Wattstax was also, in truth, a masterful idea for a showcase of all the Stax acts of the time. Still, hell of a concert—112,000 people watched seven hours of Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas etc, and a legend was born.
Generic horror film, scored by Nathan Barr with contributions from the man who ups the eerie ante for David Lynch Angelo Badalamenti. Also has spooky-in-context songs from The Turtlenecks and Your Mom. Deliberately nerve-jangling: when I wanted to take it off, I couldn't. Most entertaining are Barr's sleevenotes: "After the score was completed I checked myself into the local psychiatric facility for various tests and shock therapy. They released me after a month with an electronic monitoring bracelet.
To say this ultraviolent 1983 flick is Chuck Norris'best movie might smack of faint praise, but what's good is mostly down to David Carradine as his strutting, butt-kicking, cigar-sucking nemesis. It's a modern-day western, heavy on the spaghetti, with Norris'Texas ranger taking on Carradine's gun-runner and his army of disposable borderland Mexicans. Did Walter Hill watch this before making Extreme Prejudice?
Directing, co-writing and starring, Matt Dillon does a pretty solid job. Set in a modern-day Cambodia full of outcasts and fugitives, the plot slowly curdles from globe-trotting crime thriller into primal psycho-weirdness. Dillon never shakes off the second-hand influences, notably David Lynch and Apocalypse Now, but a rich cosmopolitan texture is added by an eccentric cast including Gerard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgård and James Caan.
