The Five Spot: Five Unforgettable Music Documentary Moments
The Stone That the Builder Refuse,
Shall Always Be the Head Cornerstone
I haven’t made it thru this two-minute segment of 2012’s stellar ‘Marley’ documentary without my eyes getting watery yet. These are two of Bob Marley’s first cousins, being told for the first time that the song “Cornerstone” is about an encounter with their father. Bob’s uncle, a white British Jamaica resident like Bob’s late father Norval, owns a family construction business. Bob goes to see him and possibly get him to invest in The Wailers’ first demo recording. His uncle denies his relation despite Bob’s showing him a photo taken with his brother. The result was him going back to Trenchtown hurt and angry which led to writing this song. Pay close attention to what Bob’s female cousin says at 1:30. It’s powerful.
If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to spend the wee hours of the morning hanging out with a very wasted trio of Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and The Band’s Rick Danko as they attempt to get an impromptu jam session going in the back of a Canadian National Railways train going from one side of North America to the other in 1970…then this clip is for you.
The musical merits of this particular rendition of the traditional prison work song “Ain’t No More Cane On The Brazos” is irrelevant. If you’re looking for that, listen to The Basement Tapes or any number of other folks who’ve recorded it. This is more about being a fly-on-the-wall at a great party with old friends you don't get to see anymore and never got to see together like this.
Keep an eye out for Jerry confessing his love for Janis then trailing off before finishing, to which Janis then accuses him of copping out. The full-length film, Festival Express, spends a little too much time focused on superfluous periphery people but this scene delivers at all-time great rock-doc levels.
editor's note: don't get too hung up on the unnecessary subtitles, they're not even transcribed completely accurate...but this link was the only on YouTube containing the complete scene.
Thelonious Monk Finds Out He’s Famous
This is from the opening scene of “Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser”, the 1988 documentary film about the mercurial and legendary jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Sphere Monk. The term gets thrown around too often anymore but Thelonious Monk truly was a genius, in the “f’real, f’real” sense of the word, when it came to music. And genius, in its rawest form, is oftentimes a companion of some level of madness. A madness that usually makes doing any of the normal things in life most humans do as second nature nearly impossible, if not altogether unfathomable. Ain’t Dat A Bitch?
Need we say more? If you haven’t seen Ozzy discussing the trappings of the music business while in a leopard-print bathrobe turning the breakfast table into a blizzard of Ozz…then just go ahead and click on this classic clip from Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years. If you have, I’m sure you’ve already done so because you wanna see it again…and again. This was probably the only clip they needed to hand MTV in a pitch meeting for The Osbournes. And it’s still better than just about anything you saw on it.
From the 1983 Sundance Film Festival Best Documentary award-winning Style Wars…Meet Kase2: street legend, one-armed graffiti writer, known as the “King Of Style” while decorating rail cars in the South Bronx during the nascent stages of the cultural/creative phenomenon we call hip-hop. And hip-hop, due to the relatively recent timing of its birth as well as its origin story, is the first major musical movement in American history where we can actually trace its beginnings back directly to the root. Not just back to a city like New York, a borough like the Bronx, a part of the Bronx as in the South Bronx….but actual street coordinates with a date/time/place.
You really can't get more hip-hop than this scene. You might be in a few rare cases be able to find equal but certainly not more. In addition to demonstrating how Kase2 does more with less in creating something out of nothing, you also have a teenager who went on to become DJ Kay Slay rapping lines from "The Message" *which had just come out at the time of this being taped* to a one-armed man in front of the train.
Ever the visionary, the late great Kase2 proclaims 34 years ago that hip-hop is not a fad but here to stay while soon to start growing exponentially as young Keith "Kay Slay" Grayson listens closely with a grin while being told "one day you'll be a king too". Knowing that kid went on to be one of the biggest DJ's in New York City under the moniker "The Drama King", makes it even better to watch now.
You can't invent figures, moments or movements this powerful in any script. Real life has to create them.
Philly heads recognize the name/logo of The Five Spot at the top of this page, from here on out The Five Spot is not only a nod to that once magical venue where many Philly musical legacies of the past 15-20 years started off but also in loving memory of our dearly departed homegirl (pictured above) Angel Elise Carter who passed away this April in 20SickDream. The above photo was us doing what we do, particularly circa 2004 when this was taken, which was get our boogie on while taking in a performance by The Legendary Roots Crew. Shout out to Black Thought for paying respects on Twitter back when it happened: https://twitter.com/blackthought/status/721026776420343808
Much Love Baby Girl, Your Name Will Continue To Manifest Itself In Your Absence.
