Commentary by: Lazlo
Photos by Conni Freestone (www.connifreestone.com)

This page will be updated with more photos soon.


THOUGHTS ON THE FESTIVAL OVERALL

In it’s inaugural year, the Asbury Park Music In Film Festival made quite an impression. While the fest was not perfect (I have a few constructive criticism’s below), successfully doing a festival of this size without any major issues (noticeable to me at least), is very commendable. A great framework was built with this year’s fest hat I hope to see grow and improve in future incarnations.

To that end, here are a few things I noticed that I hope the organizers will take in the spirit it is given, not as complaints, but constructive criticism:

- On the first night of the event, all the events were scheduled to be on or near the boardwalk, but to pick up the passes for the festival one had to go to Where Music Lives, 708 Cookman Avenue, up by Main Street. I understand that you wanted to promote Where Music Lives, but attendees either had to find parking on Cookman and then again find parking by the boardwalk (not always an easy feat), or park one of those places and have a long walk to the other place. If all the Friday night events are going to be near The Paramount, maybe pass pickup should be near there too.

- I don’t go to the movies much anymore. I still love films, in fact I have a home theatre set up for that reason, but the movie going experience has been soured by people talking and texting during films. I expected at a film festival that the audience would be cinephiles, but many thought it was ok to talk and text during screenings. It is sad to have to do this at a festival, but maybe next year a short announcement should be made before each screening reminding everyone not to talk & text during the film.

- A lot of the projection screens were dirty, and the main one in the Paramount had multiple creases in it. These distract from a pristine viewing experience, as you can see the stain and crease marks on brighter scenes in the films. This may be partially a problem of the festival being new and using whatever you could get your hands on, but next year can you try to find screens that allow for optimal viewing of a film.

- While there was diversity in the subjects of the films this year, everything fell into either documentary or music video categories. In future years I would love to see other types of films where music is prominent. Concert films, musicals, even scripted films where music is a focal point (for instance, an indie movie called ‘Mount Joy’ recently had a limited release & the plot dealt with a small town band trying to make it big), could make the festival even more diverse and interesting.

- I’d also like to see more live performances of original music. While there was certainly some great original live music performances, some of the bigger live music events were musicians covering other people’s music. I know I am biased because BlowUpRadio.com is all about NJ’s original music scene, but there are enough cover acts in NJ on any given day already. Finding a way to tie in original music to the fest would be far more interesting to me (though I do know the cover sets were popular with some).

Again, these are my thoughts and opinions for what I think will make next year even better than this year.

Kudos to everyone involved for hopefully starting a new annual tradition in Asbury Park!


SATURDAY APRIL 11TH

Directing Music Videos and Concert Films: Q&A with Experts Adam Dubin and Casey Tebo
Sadly, I arrived late to this panel, missing the first half of it, but what I caught was entertaining and informative. These guys have worked with some of the biggest names in music, and told some great stories, but if I can sum up their panel in four words it would be, “don’t be a dick” (their guide for working in the industry…which really should be a guide to life). Adam even showed some brand new footage from a short Metallica documentary he filmed when the band played in Antartica. Metallica’s Robert Trujillo was in the audience (he was at the fest as a producer of the film Jaco), and joined the panel for the last portion. It is a shame more people were not here for this panel (and that I missed the first half), as this was one of the highlights of the fest for me.

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"Rye Coalition: The Story of the Hard Luck Five" and Hard Luck Five After-Party and Live Performance with members of Rye Coalition
Having already seen this film (see my thoughts on it here), I was more interested in the after-party. I got there just in time to see Sunshine & The Rain, a husband & wife duo that (more effectively than most bands) employs drum loops to supplement their guitar and bass playing. I really enjoyed their psych-blues garage rock. I understand they are in the process of recording some songs, so I hope to be able to play them on BlowUpRadio.com soon.

I had planned to stick around for me bands, but I had also planned to get some food from the snack bar at Asbury Lanes. Alas, the snack bar was closed, and starvation was setting in, so it was off to find something to eat.

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“Live From The Sun” with Performance by Jon Francis
Live From The Sun was a short documentary directed by musician Jon Francis. The movie documented local band Karmic Juggernaut as they performed on the roof of Asbury Park restaurant Langosta Lounge last summer, using only solar power for all their electric instruments. The first half of the documentary showed them performing a song, while the second half was split into four segments, one for each band member, some giving more insight in the performance, others just being funny & silly. It may not have been the most informative documentary, but it was nice nonetheless.

The documentary was followed by a performance by director Jon Francis, and his band, A Computer Generated Dinosaur. Guitar, bass, and violin, and a massive amount of pedals, made for a mesmerizing 20 or so minute improv instrumental piece that to me was a soundtrack to a movie that was only going on inside my head. It was extremely relaxing and enjoyable.

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Life on the V: The Story of V66
Until today I was completely unaware that in 1985-86, there was a UHF station in Boston that was an alternative to MTV. This documentary changed all that, and showed how some entrepreneurial DJ’s from Boston found a way to buy a UHF station and do (what they believed to be) a better job as a 24/7 music video network than MTV. To me this was a fascinating documentary from beginning to end, telling the narrative of how the idea came about, the rise of V66, and the eventual death of the channel 18 months later. As surprising as it may sound to say about a film about a station that failed, this documentary inspired me to want to try some new ideas with BlowUpRadio.com.

BTW - oddly funny moment, during a clip from V66’s music news program in 1985 they are talking about how scalpers are charging the outrageous markup of $60 for tickets to see Madonna.

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Jaco
It is really sad as a music fan how little I knew of Jaco Pastorius's music going into watching this film, and knew nothing of his troubled life. I suspect this my be true of lot of people. This film will hopefully change that in much the same way that “Searching for Sugar Man” made more people aware of Sixto Rodriguez (both films are released by Passion Picures)

This compelling film showcases why Jaco Pastorius was a groundbreaking bassist, through his music and testimonials by well known bassists that were inspired by his playing. “Jaco” is also a narrative about his life, his family, and his untimely death. After seeing the film I started going through my record & CD collection to find albums he played. In this day and age of so much disposable cinema, if a movie can move you to take any action, even as little as listening to someone’s music with a new understanding, than the film has done it’s job.



FRIDAY APRIL 10TH

Salad Days is a documentary about the Washington DC punk scene of the late 70‘s thru the 90‘s. I like a lot of the music from that scene, but this documentary didn’t work for me. It is not that it is a bad documentary per se, but it was not a narrative, Salad Days was pure nostalgia. A lot of interviews about the time and place, but not a lot of substance. If I had been directly part of the scene I probably would have loved the nostalgia, but since I wasn’t, the film left me bored. It just disjointedly jumped around from one interview segment to another. There were a few interesting moments here or there, but with the lack of structure, it just felt empty to me.

Oh and, when did it become a law that Dave Grohl has to be interviewed for every rock doc?

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DMC Squared is a really short documentary (maybe 10 minutes long) about Run DMC’s Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels, and his son, Dson McDaniels. The doc was a glimpse into the start of Dson’s rap career, and while brief, it did what a good short film does, leaves you wanting more (which my happen, as the director is continuing to film footage of Dson and Darryl. To let you know just how brief the documentary was (or conversely how long DMC likes to talk), each answer DMC gave during the Q&A was longer than the film itself. That is not to say that his answers weren’t interesting, as he clearly has a lot on his mind, and it was fascinating to listen to him. I’d pay money to see DMC doing a speaking/one man show tour.

The Q&A was followed by a performance by Dson, who has great lyrical flow, and some cool rap tunes. It was clear though that he has not played a lot of live shows yet, I think midway thru his set he said it was his first live show. His between song banter wasn’t as fluid as his dad, though that should come with time, and during the first few songs he didn’t look comfortable up there. He wasn’t “in the moment”. When he did get there 3 or 4 songs into his set the show picked up, and of course when DMC came out and ran thru some Run DMC classics with his son, well that was just plain awesome! I look forward to seeing Dson again in a year or two after he has played some more shows. Once he gets his stage presence down, his live show could be something very special.

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