MovieChat Forums > The Blues (2003) Discussion > 6th episod

6th episod

posted 20 years ago by rednatse
7 replies | jump to latest

i love the blues. some episodes of this series was the most enjoyable tv i've ever seen. i totaly loved it.
but i'm gonna say this flat out.. the 6th episode sucked! (the one with all the brittish dudes, it was all bout rock, soul etc.. everything but blues! and you saw tom jones in a studio ever 10th minute.. that show really was no intrest to me as a blues fan. you saw a clip of muddy waters and that was it. the 6th program was so booring and bad that i wish it had been taken out of the series.)
the best episod was the third program.

[–] instander 20 years ago

Now, which was the third episode? I didn't see the 6th (british dudes) entry so I can't comment on that but, the least enjoyable for me was the one titled: "Godfathers and Sons" directed by Marc Levin. I got pretty tired of Marshall Chess pretty quick. A lot of time and attention was centred and wasted on someone who was/is nothing but a hanger-on. Admittedly, he does seem to have a genuine love and appreciation for blues music however, you can pick up a feeling of forced friendship and comaraderie on the part of the old blues artists he sits down with on camera. It's like there's a patient sense of tolerence they have for this little white boy who, years later, is still hanging around back stage. Best episode for me? "Warming By the Devil's Fire" directed by Charles Burnett. That's the one that utilizes a dramatic back-drop of a young boy sent from the big city to spend time in the rural south with his reverend uncle in order to give him some grounding in ol' time salvation. He is, however, met at the train station by his OTHER uncle, the ne'er-do-well, drinking, womanizing, blues-loving black sheep who gives him quite another experience than his city parents had intended for him.

[–] rednatse 20 years ago

It was so long ago now.. sorry i didnt answer sooner. i dont remember the first show so much, but in the third, it was all blues. the were showing clips of Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf etc, and BB King was the center of the episod. you saw him and other bluesmen singing togheter live on stage. you followed bb in the bus on a tour etc, so the third episod was really a thrill. enjoyable.
godfathers and sons, that was about all the hip hopes and rappers, right? i agree, i didnt like that too much either.
Warming by the devils fire, yes. was that the one were a young kid saw ghosts while waiting in the car? and he was visiting a mans home, and he had pictures of bluesmen all over the home. even in the shithouse? i liked that episod also.

[–] Freddy_Newendyke 19 years ago

I totally agree. I just watched this last night and I was bored out of my tiny mind. Mike Figgis should learn that Jeff Beck and Tom Jones listening to a tape of Ray Charles and then trying to copy it does not a film make. It had a whole section called 'guitars' which had all the interviewees talking about their first guitars, but not in a meaningful reminiscencing way, but just naming the make and model of them, for garden seed! I thought it was going to get interesting when it came to the title card 'The 60s Explosion', because the blues-inspired rock from then was some of the most genuinely exciting music ever to come out of Britain, but it was dull as dish water; they had about two seconds of one of the first recordings by the Rolling Stones and that was it. I have no idea how this very interesting subject was rendered so mind-numbing. Grrr.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] vanillainflux 17 years ago

3rd episode (according to the list of directed episodes on imdb..sorry if i'm wrong)
Mike Figgis (episode "Red, White and Blues")
i admit seeing tom jones also p-ed me off a bit, i mean..tom jones a bluesman? please.
but he wasn't that bad.
what about lulu in the end..how random. not bad though, and i enjoyed the segment in general.

it's a dirty world Reich, say what you want

[–] Hyman_Flomax 17 years ago

I would actually argue that Mike Figgis' segment on the British influences was the most effective and entertaining of the set. Its certainly the most multilayered and does the best job of truly explaining what this genre of music means to people and the artists who play it. The Road To Memphis was about as good, while the Wim Wenders segment ranks as the weakest.

[–] secretalphabet 17 years ago

I disagree Fuzzynavel-1 i loved the Wenders episode Soul of a Man, i thought that it or Burnett's Warming by the Devil's Fire were the pick of the series. Both really set the scene about what its like to live the blues, to come from the American South and be poor and suffer discrimination in everyday life. On the otherhand i learnt absolutely nothing from God Fathers and Son's and relatively little from Red White and Blues. Iam a fan of all the british blues groups, but not tom jones or lulu. I couldn't help thinking whats the point of all this? I hear scorsese is doing a documentary on the stones hopefully it goes abit more into depth on the origins of the Stones and their love for the blues.