Who's the r+b band in the Movie House Bar scene?
Who's the r&b band in the Movie House Bar scene? Anynone know?
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This appears under "FUN STUFF" in this IMDB listing for POINT BLANK :
"Mighty Good Times"
Written by Stu Gardner
Performed by The Stu Gardner Trio
it is a funny ending to that scene - the screaming by the band, audience and then the REAL screaming by the dancers at the end.
shareIt was noisy, to be sure.
shareThats singer and his senseless screaming gave me a headache. And few sounds have this effect on me. Not even "nails on chalkboard".
shareApparently not anyone can do James Brown, after all.
shareThe singer was a poor man's James Brown – actually, a bankrupt man's James Brown. And the fact that he had to enlist members of the audience to do the singing speaks volumes of his talent.
shareI believe that the idea being suggested is that he was probably tripping on acid and so fried that he didn't care what it sounded like. The psychedelic trappings of the club, liquid slides, light projections, black shade glasses and expressions of both ecstasy and agony on his faces while they are performing all look like an acid trip at work. What's weird of course is that the club is populated for the most part by guys in suits who are getting drunk, and the racks of film canisters in the back room suggest that the "Movie House" name for the place was some sort of a front for a mob run psychedelic trip club. It's too bad that a soundtrack album with the full song being played was never released because it's definitely a bizarre little piece of music.
If you do some surfing for Stu Gardner you'll find that he did some other movie scores including some of the music for a Ralph Bakshi's COONSKIN/STREET FIGHT as well as a lot of work for Bill Cosby. As such you can probably conclude that's Stu himself either singing or on the organ.
You are right that the singer appears completely blitzed in the film, so that's certainly in keeping with the far-out nature of the club. I wouldn't be surprised if a club like that were run by the mob, a place with guys in suits would let it all hang out. I wonder if clubs like this were really typical of the mid-'60s or just a Hollywood creation.
Could that singer have been Stu Gardner himself, who I see was musical director for "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World"? I suspect it is, judging from this album cover:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KY1Ez0TsjN8/RopRaFe3InI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/jKPzgiP_ dZY/s400/Stu%2BGardner.jpg
Um, no. Blacks rarely used l.s.d. and even if he did he wouldn't be dancing and relating with the audience. I'd say cocaine and cannabis. Maybe benzedrine. James Brown loved cocaine.
shareI don't see the connection between the film cannisters and LSD, but Angie Dickinson's character has already explained to Walker that the mob had indeed taken over the club. Recall that she says that it "used to be" a "good" jazz club, implying that it sucks now by comparison. Methinks Master Boorman achieved the desired effect.
shareEven in the mid-60s, suits for men and dresses for women was the typical attire worn most places -- offices, table-service restaurants and nightclubs.
This place was probably considered pretty trendy -- a black R&B singer, 'psychedelic' light shows and probably considered somewhat upscale; wasn't the woman Lee Marvin met there and got Angie Dickenson's address from a cigarette girl? It would have been unusual to see people there NOT wearing suits. Psychedelic would have been a very hip theme at that time in San Francisco and something a lot of people would have been exposed to given the presence of Haight-Ashbury; borrowing elements from the "scene" and using them in a setting middle class people would feel comfortable in would be just kind of typical.
As for whether or not it was "a mob front" -- the mob wasn't really involved in the psychedelic scene, although a mob presence at any nightclub wouldn't be out of place. LSD was the province of hippies and beatniks and until the 1970s the Italian mafia actually forbid most drug dealing -- it attracted unwanted attention and in their own way they felt that they were "protecting" their communities by staying out of the drug business. Remember Ray Liotta's character being told he couldn't deal drugs in "Goodfellas"?
"... the mob wasn't really involved in the psychedelic scene, although a mob presence at any nightclub wouldn't be out of place. LSD was the province of hippies and beatniks and until the 1970s the Italian mafia actually forbid most drug dealing -- it attracted unwanted attention and in their own way they felt that they were "protecting" their communities by staying out of the drug business."
You seem so confident; but you are incorrect.
That lead singer was a bad James Brown impersonator. His screeching was too much for me.
It's that man again!!