Category: Complete And Total Genius

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I Am Everything

Hell yeah, I’m in! Anything more cringe than Pat motherfucking Boone singing “Tutti Frutti?”

Produced by Bungalow Media + Entertainment for CNN Films and HBO Max, in association with Rolling Stone Films, director Lisa Cortés’ Sundance opening night documentary LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Throughout his life, Richard careened like a shiny cracked pinball between God, sex and rock n’ roll. The world tried to put him in a box, but Richard was an omni being who contained multitudes – he was unabashedly everything. Directed by Lisa Cortés, LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING is produced by Robert Friedman, Cortés, Liz Yale Marsh and Caryn Capotosto and Executive Produced by Dee Rees.

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I’m Working Too Hard

Both proof that one needn’t be especially proficient as a musician to write killer songs AND an explanation for my recent blargh absence.

The Nerves weren’t around too long but are regarded by some as ground zero for the LA punk and power pop scene. Drummer Paul Collins went on to form The Beat (“Rock N Roll Girl,” “I Don’t Fit In”), bassist Peter Case formed The Plimsouls (“A Million Miles Away”), and guitarist Jack Lee’s song “Hanging on the Telephone” became a massive hit for Blondie when they covered it on Parallel Lines in 1978.

And here’s Collins a few years later with The Beat …