Trailer: https://bit.ly/3uPZOXi

This movie starts off lame and then becomes FANTASTIC! When it ends you’ll be smiling, telling yourself how great it was, and lamenting that there is not more.

“Undercover.” I wrote about it. I got a lot of feedback from people who said they watched it and loved it. Certainly the first season, with Anna Drijver as Kim.

But the star of the show is Frank Lammers as Ferry, a big time ecstasy dealer who is not greedy, but is not wary of using force to keep order. Most criminals in filmed entertainment are one dimensional. Or bad with a heart of gold. They’re never people you know, who you could see growing up with, being friends with. Ferry breaks that mold. Ferry is VERY serious about business, but he loves to hang with his friends, watch football, drink, have a good time. I mean what sense does it make to be a criminal if you can’t relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor?

And it all takes place in a trailer park. Not exclusively, but that’s where the main action is. But Ferry has the best domicile, and they judge you based on how improved your trailer is. Cops Bob & Kim rent a trailer as part of their plan to entrap Ferry…but Ferry is streetwise, and hard to get on the record. So, they keep proffering more and more riches, unsuccessfully.

But Ferry has a much younger wife, played by Elise Schaap, Danielle. Who talks too much, alienating the rest of the residents, and is constantly complaining of aches and pains and relying on wackadoodle health treatments that Ferry doesn’t believe in, but…

Danielle is completely different in “Ferry.”

“Ferry” is the prequel to “Undercover.” We find out where Ferry came from. Amsterdam. But he was originally from “Down South,” which is said with a sneer, in the trailer park area. You see income inequality, upward mobility is not just an issue in the States. Danielle dreams of going to Amsterdam, meanwhile she’s cleaning trailers and manning a carnival stand to make ends meet. Life is hard. In America you dream of becoming a rapper or an influencer, but the truth is few make it, and then you find out without an education your options are limited, you end up working with your hands for very low wages, trying to eke out a living. The only difference is on this side of the pond we have the American Dream, we believe we can move up the economic ladder, whereas in Europe and the U.K., the class system is much more rigid, you’re born to your station and you end up there. Sure, people move up, but it’s not embedded in the national mind-set.

So Ferry has a job to do, and in the process of tracking down offenders…

He goes to the trailer of his sister. They don’t get along. They haven’t spoken in years. Ferry won’t apologize. And it’s not until deep into the movie that you find out what the problem is…it’s always family squabbles, they mean something to those related by blood, the rest of us just shrug.

But then Ferry moves on with the hunt and he encounters Danielle. She’s cleaning a trailer.

Now Danielle is wearing a very visible thong. And when she bends over…

And Danielle has an hourglass body, she has hips unlike the mannequin models. And when she starts to dance, slinking to the music on the radio…FERRY CAN’T RESIST IT!

This is an easy concept to grasp, but a hard concept to depict accurately. What gets someone’s loins burning…

So, Ferry and Danielle start doing the dance, but she’s not the depressed person of “Undercover,” she hasn’t lost her optimism, she smiles and she and Ferry connect and…

IT’S LOVE!

Oh, we see this every day in movies and on TV, but it rarely resonates. Here you can literally see the magic grow between the two. And then… When they wake up together and it’s new and Danielle starts talking about her breath and… There are so many hurdles to intimacy. You see someone from afar and have a crush. Rarely does anything happen. Most of the time you’re off the gridiron, just waiting to hit the playing field. And hip-hop records tell you the guys are irresistible and the women are sassy, and the pop records are fairy tales, but in truth, love begins in fits and starts. And it doesn’t always bloom. But the key element is when you realize…you’re both interested. Are you? When it stops becoming a pursuit and is more about being together.

And when you wake up in bed the next day… You’ve swapped spit, and more, but you don’t really know this person, but if it’s a real relationship, you let down your guard, you lower the boundaries and you reveal your truth. Your anxieties, your desires, you reference what happened between the two of you…

And then there’s one moment when Ferry leaves Danielle’s trailer and she asks…ARE WE OKAY?

God, you know it, they’re leaving and it’s not completely lovey-dovey and you’re wondering, did what happen mean anything, will you ever see them again? Danielle is asking for reassurance, so she doesn’t torture herself in the ensuing hours/days.

And later in the show, when Ferry is inscrutable, inaccessible, Danielle says “I thought we clicked.” Whew! The honesty. She’s saying how she feels, she’s putting it all out there, willing to be hurt, just to get to the truth.

You see human connection is powerful. We’re all just animals, even if we’re potty-trained and can think and speak.

I’m not giving much away, because the truth is you know Ferry ends up with Danielle. Only in “Undercover,” he says he was married when he met her and there’s no hint of a previous wife here. But everything else lines up, the characters and the action, but we always wondered…how did Ferry get from there to here? We didn’t even know where “there” was!

To tell you the truth, “Ferry” made me mad. Because it ended. As I was watching I realized if this was a series instead of a movie, there’d be so much more detail, the story would be so much richer. Here, a glance suffices to move the action forward. But in a series, you’re privy to the inner thoughts, the motivation.

I’m always wary of these tack-on productions. They’re rarely up to the quality of the original. Kinda like the “Breaking Bad” movie… Okay, they wrapped it up, but it wasn’t visceral like the series. But “Ferry”? It takes a while to get going, but then you can see the arc, you can see Ferry developing his strategy and executing it.

And ultimately you find out his life story, well, at least more than you knew, but what makes it so great is the love story between Ferry and Danielle. Danielle is cute, but in “Undercover” she’s often not attractive. She’s not drop-dead gorgeous, and her attitude at times is not endearing. But here, she’s shined up, she smiles, she’s up for it, she’s wary of engagement but then she’s all-in. And when Ferry is all-in too… This is what we live for, this is the development of a relationship, the essence, and I can’t remember the last time it was depicted so well.

So, if you’re interested, watch “Undercover” first, both seasons, so the prequel makes sense.

If you’ve already watched “Undercover,” watch “Ferry” IMMEDIATELY!

Of course I’ve now overhyped you, then again I was disappointed at first. It was a bit too paint-by-numbers. But then the movie evolves and by time you hit the end, you’re thrilled, that someone has gotten it so right, satiated you, like I said, you only want more.

“Ferry” made me swear off movies. Literally, I told Felice that. They’re too disappointing. They’re too short, not fleshed-out enough. I could have watched ten episodes bringing me up to speed on Ferry. My only hope is there will be more, a third season.

We live in a b.s. world where we ultimately feel powerless. But when you watch “Undercover” and “Ferry” you focus on little lives, you go down the rabbit hole and you realize we all live little lives, “Ferry” gives us a sense of perspective. I LOVED IT!

I wasn’t expecting much, I didn’t absolutely love the first two seasons, but unlike conventional wisdom I loved the third iteration, maybe because it was only six episodes instead of eight, the story wasn’t drawn out.

The story?

“Big Little Lies” in Wales. At least that’s what critics said, but I can’t vouch for that because I never saw “Big Little Lies.” I go for more highbrow fare. Or much more lowbrow. But having said all that I’m recommending “Keeping Faith” because of EVE MYLES!

I haven’t seen a picture where I don’t see Nicole Kidman in every role she plays. She’s pretty good, but her acting is visible, kind of like Meryl Streep, she’s showing off, in an understated way, trying to win an Oscar.

That’s not Eve Myles.

Eve Myles runs the gamut of emotions, goes from zero to a hundred and back again with no governor, just like a real person. Kinda like Joni Mitchell said, “laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.”

So when the series starts, Eve’s husband Evan has disappeared, and she’s forced not only to carry the law firm, but the show. Sure, there are peripheral characters, but it all revolves around Eve/Faith. Without Faith, there is no show!

Unlike Nicole Kidman, Eve Myles has not gone under the knife to try and excise her unique qualities to look just like every other Hollywood star. She has what my mother used to call “air-conditioned teeth,” which could be fixed, certainly by an L.A. dentist/orthodontist, but she’s owning what God gave her. As for her hair… Felice remarked how many colors there were in it. You see Faith is a mother and an attorney, and there’s just not enough time in the day to get everything perfect. This is not June Cleaver, put-together with her pearls… Faith is always running around, dropping documents, wearing her heels but kicking them off at the first opportunity… You see Faith is real.

As are the emotions.

Do you trust your spouse? Do you believe what they say? How much evidence does it take for you to question their statements?

And Faith is a bleeding heart to boot. She goes to the wall for her clients. Not only in the courtroom, but personally, when it’s not win or lose.

So in the original two seasons the story revolves around this criminal family. And the police investigation. But the third season…

It revolves around Faith and…

Someone we haven’t seen before. Who has caused Faith to be who she is. The backstory, it’s uber-important. Find out where someone came from and it will explain their behavior in the present day.

Also, Faith gets involved in the legal case of a dying boy and…

Yes, there are some hokey elements, especially at the end. And I’m not really giving anything away, it’s just…just when the show is approaching highbrow, it goes lowbrow.

But everybody looks to Faith, she’s the strong one, she has to be there for everybody, her no-good, wandering eye husband, her family, her best friend alcoholic Lisa… That’s a lot of pressure. And sometimes Faith reaches her limit, but she always puts on her coat and exits the front door and addresses the issue.

Sometimes an actor is so talented that not only do they supersede the material, they make the whole show worth watching. You can’t take your eyes off Faith, her behavior isn’t always predictable, she’s principled but not a goody-goody either. She is the opposite of the ice queens in Hollywood blockbusters, the eye candy who look good, but are wooden and two-dimensional. In the U.S. we think it’s solely about looks (and money!), whereas in the rest of the world, looks are not everything. I’m not saying Eve/Faith is unattractive, but she’s not the drop dead gorgeous star of an American production, she wouldn’t instantly turn your head.

You see Eve/Faith has a personality, an identity, and that’s what we’re drawn to. Sure, you might be attracted by looks, but they don’t go that far. You know the cliché, show me a beautiful woman…

I’m not sure you can say that anymore. You can’t say so much anymore. And some shouldn’t be said, but if thoughts just go underground is that a good result?

So, everybody ends up in love with Faith.

And the truth is it’s hard to be an attractive, dynamic woman in society. Men can’t stop propositioning you, you’re what they want!

I just cannot say enough about Eve Myles, how great she is. The six episodes of the new season breezed along.

And I loved how things fell through the cracks, when you’re trying to service everybody yet complete your obligations, some people are going to be slighted, and there could be significant effects as a result. We’re all imperfect, but some of us enter the fray nonetheless, willing to make mistakes in the furtherance of good.

“Keeping Faith” is on Acorn. Which costs $5.99 a month. The easiest way to get it is via the Amazon Prime app. Search for “Keeping Faith” and just before it plays you’ll be asked if you want to pay. But you do get seven days free, so if you watch fast and cancel in time… And if you sign up and then come back on again…you don’t get another free seven days, just so you know. And the good thing about buying through Amazon is it’s on your Amazon bill and Amazon has the best customer service of any online entity.

I wouldn’t put “Keeping Faith” at the top of my list, insist you watch it right now, but I’d put Eve Myles there. It’s your decision.

P.S. “Ferry,” a prequel to “Undercover,” started on Netflix yesterday, unfortunately it’s only a movie, I’d prefer a series, but Frank Lammers is in the league of Eve Myles, he’s a modern day Tony Soprano. I can’t wait!

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

This reminds me of Dick Cheney being charged with finding a VP for Bush II and then recommending himself. Huh?

The Grammy Organization is now no different from the Golden Globes. A cabal of self-serving individuals living off the largesse of CBS. Strike the TV show and you’ve got little left. But times change, and if CBS were smart it would look for a loophole to cancel the show of this travesty of an organization.

It’s a boys club, plain and simple.

A woman comes in with experience in the nonprofit world, with her own vision and…they can’t take it, they’ve got to return to the norm, of opacity, of manipulation, of no credibility. Hell, they hire Tina Tchen, Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, to find the perfect candidate, but they know better. As for Mr. Mason, he’s a person of color, so he checks that box, but where is his background in running a nonprofit? He seems to have been hired to herd cats and quelch dissension, and that does not move an organization forward.

And if you want to truly be horrified, check out Mr. Mason’s new salary…

They hire Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO…it was just a diversion, why don’t the members of the Recording Academy claw back that payment from Mr. Mason’s salary, what a waste of money!

So let’s see, you’ve got an out of touch organization running a failing TV show with so many awards voted by old nincompoops that they’re irrelevant. The voters are so out of touch that they vote in the leading categories based on publicity, not quality. Really, did Billie Eilish deserve another Grammy this year? It seems like she didn’t even think so. As for a Grammy’s impact on a career… There’s no longer a meaningful sales/stream bump, the industry has changed, but the Academy has not. Turns out everybody who is truly interested already checked it out. And n with the streaming model you don’t have the threshold you did in the physical world, where you’ve got to convince people to pull themselves over the transom by having multiple hit singles and awards…no, you can check anything out for free, when it’s happening, and it turns out those who weren’t interested before are not interested again when an award is given.

And who wants to listen to all these wankers thank God when everybody knows God had nothing to do with it.

And if you’re not white, good luck. Tell me again how the Weeknd is excluded? Oh, the secret committees! So now they’re gone and the truth is…all those Recording Academy insiders who passed Grammy nominations around, gave each other undeserved statuettes, are SOL. No, they didn’t want change, they liked it the way it was, where they controlled the Grammys and now…

Well, the Grammy organization was started back in the fifties. And what has changed…NOTHING! When the whole world has changed! Records start on TikTok, but you don’t hear about it on the show. How about a segment on a TikTok star instead of one of those retread duets that no one likes?

I mean you’ve got to change with the times, or you’re history!

Come on, want to buy a Compaq computer? Or how about investing in Sun? Even better, Digital Equipment, the ruler of the minicomputer world that never believed it would be usurped by microcomputers, never mind the smartphone. Change or die, but in the Recording Academy world…

So, Apple excommunicates Steve Jobs and is then run by…

A guy who sold flavored water. And a salesman. And…eventually the company is on the verge of going under. So Jobs comes back and what does he do? PLAN FOR THE FUTURE! A stable OS based on Unix, a slimming of the product line, a focus on consumers and creators… And speaking of tech, everybody in the music world relies on it, how about an explanation of Ableton or Logic or Pro Tools on the show!

And even the Rock Hall has a fan vote, but Grammys are sacrosanct! Hogwash!

Which is why anybody with a real career doesn’t bother to display their Grammys, at best they’re in the bathroom, whereas those on the undercard have got them right up front and center, they keep telling you they won, it’s like a student council member bragging of their achievement at the retirement home. The joke is on THEM!

The Recording Academy doesn’t need a placeholder, someone to make the trains run on time, they already did that, with Neil Portnow. And the end result is the organization took ten years, when our country was changing nearly daily via technology, to make sure it stayed back in 1999.

What the Recording Academy needs is someone to shake it up, move it into the future, question all of its principles and activities, but this might mean…someone will lose their job or influence, and that just can’t happen. That’s what’s wrong with America at large, business and society change but no one can lose out, everybody’s got to keep their job, meanwhile youngsters come along with no investment in the past and disrupt the entire enterprise and everybody loses their job.

Where are the skills Harvey Mason, Jr. brings? Does he have an MBA? Musicians can’t run Fortune 500 companies and the CEOs of the big public companies can’t make a hit record…but they know how to run an organization, they know not only how to manage people, but to keep the stock price up. And there’s no stock traded in the Recording Academy, but there are issues of credibility and relevance and Mr. Mason and his male cronies are doing a good job of running this vehicle straight off the cliff, they’re nearly equivalent to Van Morrison and his right wing ravings, wait long enough and the truth comes out, which is that there’s a cancer at the heart of the Recording Academy and the only way to treat it is to rip it out!

I don’t really care on a musical level. I never respected a Grammy win, never ever. But as a business lesson… When an organization keeps doing the same damn thing expecting a different result… When women are out of the equation, with no real power, never mind the interests of rappers… What you end up with is an out of touch edifice that can crumble with just one push.

It’s bad enough to see a world where almost half of the public believes the election was bogus, where elected officials are cowering, afraid of alienating them. But now we’ve got the Recording Academy doing the same damn thing.

Ridiculous!

https://amzn.to/3ffx2ZM

It’s hard to write a rock and roll novel. First and foremost because most fans don’t read. Second, if they do, they want nonfiction, they want to dig deeper into the histories of the stars. Most of those books are awfully written. To the point where you wonder if they were even edited at all. Out of sequence, grammar and spelling mistakes…yes, even when a major publisher is involved!

As for the independently published books… It’s too cheap to do that. So it’s just like Spotify, there are the hits and then…every boomer who can no longer work in the music industry has written a book, and then you’ve got the youngsters writing a guidebook to try and get ahead, but they all share one thing in common…THEY SUCK! Because writing is a skill. You can have such an incredible story that the writing is secondary, like “Educated,” but Tara Westover is a better writer than everybody referenced above! As for rock writers… Like the critic in this book, they focus on taking notes, getting down the facts, leaving the feel absent, and the feel is what it’s all about. The book must be so well written, so inviting, that the subject is secondary. Having said all that, you should read Rob Sheffield’s “Love Is a Mix Tape”… The story is engrossing and the writing is intimate and more than adequate…unfortunately, sans such a great story, Sheffield has not been able to reach this peak again.

So…

Not a single person in the music industry has reached out to me about this book. NOT ONE! I reach six figures of people and there’s absolutely no buzz. Then again, is that the modern era, is there only buzz in your own, maybe tiny, niche, and then almost everything stops there, to grow is nearly impossible?

Yet, “Opal & Nev” has gotten stellar reviews, and Curtis Sittenfeld, whose work I admire, has said it’s one of the two best books of the year, but…you just can’t feel it. Then again, unless they’ve got famous names attached, books tend to take a while to percolate in the marketplace, so maybe “Opal & Nev” still might reach a wider audience.

So is this the best rock novel ever written? Well, that’s not a very high bar… Yes, you’ve got Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity,” but that’s a story set in a record shop, the music is secondary, but it’s not in “Opal & Nev.”

Now if it were a couple more decades down the line, youngsters would read “Opal & Nev” and mistake it for truth. As a matter of fact, the only elements untrue in this book are those attached to Opal & Nev, everything else is rock and roll fact. So, if you lived through the era, you’ll live through it again. All those events, all those references that you think only you know, they’re in this book.

So Opal & Nev make music in the early seventies.

Let’s be clear, this is after the Beatles, the entire British Invasion, FM rock radio was already established. These are the big money years.

Nev comes from the U.K., and his history is well told.

Opal is African-American and she comes from Chicago, and her background is put forth too.

And then Nev rescues Opal from obscurity and…

Nothing happens.

But then it does.

What today’s wankers who think they’re entitled to get paid beaucoup bucks on Spotify don’t realize is back in the so-called “golden years,” most acts did not make it. They soon went back to civilian life. As for signing cash? It went into the production of the record, living expenses at the time and…you probably didn’t even net enough to buy a car. And if the record didn’t start to fly, they dropped you. Sure, Warner Brothers was famous for giving you multiple chances, but most acts did not get one and were not successful.

But then comes the Rivington Showcase… One event can change the course of history, both public and personal.

So the music business was built by individuals on a lark. Those with rough edges, nearly criminals, who were forces of nature who got things done. Now it’s mostly corporate, but back then…there were colorful characters.

As is Howie Kelly, the head of Rivington Records.

And Rosemary Salducci is his secretary/receptionist, back when you could still use the s-word, but she’s so much more than that. Entrepreneurs have gatekeepers, usually of long tenure, you may think they’re secretaries, but they’re powerful people.

Bob Hize is the guy who ankles his major label gig to work for Rivington, so he has a chance to produce. You’ve got to believe in yourself. But that’s not enough to make you successful. Even back then… Opal & Nev’s album is released, and they have trouble getting gigs. Now it’s the reverse, you prove you can get the gigs and then you might get a record deal.

So, the book is a fake oral history. But unlike too many oral histories, which are unreadable, it’s not one sentence at a time, the interview statements are lengthy, so it reads like a book.

So, Sunny is writing a book about Opal & Nev. She’s got history through her father…I’ll leave it at that.

Sunny is also the first African-American editor of “Aural,” which represents “Rolling Stone,” even though “Rolling Stone” is a competitor in this book.

So, Sunny does her interviews and then adds her editor’s notes and…

At first it’s like one of those rock bios, only much better written. You’re getting the backstory. But then, about halfway through, you realize “Opal & Nev” is a real book with a real story, themes bigger than rock stardom. And throughout there is wisdom, like:

“But my personal definition of success is that you don’t do a goddamn thing you don’t want to. If you ain’t feeling it, you ain’t doing it.”

This is uttered by a musician. OF COURSE! Musicians, not necessarily stars, are different from the rank and file, it’s a secret society, with different mores. You see it’s about playing and getting high and inside jokes and late nights and friends… You think you’ll be privy to this if you get backstage, but you won’t. You’ve got to be on the bus. First and foremost they’ve got to trust you, and they know better than to trust anyone, but… Forget running a corporation, imagine doing work that you love, and only doing work you love…doesn’t that sound great? As long as you’ve got enough money to get along?

So ultimately, there emerges a dichotomy… Do you do what’s expedient or do you do what you feel.

Now the truth is everybody in America has short-term thinking. Not only the reality TV stars, but the corporate executives and the elected officials. People will do whatever they’re told for fame and money. But later..? All those Republican congresspeople believing in the Big Lie… Funny, now Liz Cheney is a household name, her sins of the past have been wiped away, solely because she stood up for what’s right. She’s the new Colin Kaepernick! (No, don’t take that too far, but you get the point, suddenly everybody knows their names because they stood up for their beliefs.)

So the book is littered with real companies, real situations, like Opal signing a deal with Sire.

But really “Opal & Nev” is about the people. The record business is secondary to the story, even though the story is told through the record business, it never wavers.

So, should you read “Opal & Nev”?

Well, I didn’t absolutely love it. But I enjoyed reading it.

But I loved how the author, Dawnie Walton, wove truth into fiction, getting the past right. And also wasn’t worried about angering anybody. That’s another point about artists. They do what they feel inside, employ their inner tuning fork. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes your best work is ignored and then is exalted decades later. So, you’ve got references to Trump, and you’ve got the issues of Black people but you definitely don’t feel you’re lectured to, these points are integral, hell, talk to Black people, they’re Black 24/7!

As you can tell from the above, this ain’t your regular music book.

But I try to only recommend slam dunk stuff.

This isn’t quite a Steph Curry three-pointer from half-court, then again you need five players to win a basketball game. And all of those players are in this book. Hell, forget reading all the passing b.s. from people who can’t write, the rock news, and read “Opal & Nev,” you’ll learn much more about the essence of the music business. And you’ll start to wonder about your path, your choices. Novels are supposed to inspire, you’re not supposed to just be able to read ’em and instantly forget ’em. You won’t forget “Opal & Nev.” As a matter of fact, you’ll be mad that it doesn’t continue, you want to know more of what happens to these people. And you also want to know more about their history and motivation, even though so much is delineated. That’s the essence of a great rock musician, they leave the fan wanting more. I want more of what “Opal & Nev” is selling instead of today’s two-dimensional music business where cash is the only consideration.

So, I think you now know enough to know whether “Opal & Nev” is for you.

But if you do read it, you’ll be a member of a club. Right now, relatively secret, although it could become bigger, and that’s what we’re looking for most, a place that resonates with us, where we belong. Good books deliver this. “Opal & Nev” does.