Last night I watched this Peter Himmelman documentary.\u00c2\u00a0 It was awful.<\/p>\n
Well, it wasn’t THAT bad, but for all the professionalism, for all the perfect sound, the filmmakers forgot one key movie element…STORY!\u00c2\u00a0 Without it you’ve got a film, a series of connected segments, but you don’t have a movie.\u00c2\u00a0 A movie brings you into an unknown world, where you bathe in the experience, learning not only about the subject, but yourself.<\/p>\n
Oh, there was a story in this documentary "Mittin Derinin" (that’s yiddish, Peter’s an observant Jew), but it was buried under endless performance segments.\u00c2\u00a0 And this was a tragedy.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the key plot point, the one I was waiting to be explored, was whether to give up your dream.\u00c2\u00a0 WHEN to give up your dream.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether YOU’RE in control of your life, or it just drifts right by you.<\/p>\n
Blame the Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 They made everybody want to be a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 If you were around back then, you know everybody bought an electric guitar, learned a bunch of chords and formed a band.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, to pull girls, but primarily to exult in the joy of music-making.<\/p>\n
And this trend continued until sometime in the nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 When boy bands eclipsed musicians on MTV and there were other, quicker ways to become rich.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s an interesting topic to examine, the shift of music from being primary in our society to secondary, but the question laid out in this film and not fully explored was about those who came before, who bought the dream and had some success but not enough to retire, where are THEY at, how are THEIR lives doing.<\/p>\n
Peter Himmelman got deals.\u00c2\u00a0 He criss-crossed the country 18 times on tours.\u00c2\u00a0 He opened for legendary bands.\u00c2\u00a0 He sold out halls.\u00c2\u00a0 But he never broke through.\u00c2\u00a0 He got married.\u00c2\u00a0 He had four kids.\u00c2\u00a0 He had to pay the bills.\u00c2\u00a0 He got a gig scoring "Judging Amy".\u00c2\u00a0 Which he admits he hates.\u00c2\u00a0 But the fear of its evaporation is scary.\u00c2\u00a0 And that happens.\u00c2\u00a0 The gig is over.\u00c2\u00a0 What is Peter to do?\u00c2\u00a0 He’s been off the road too long, his fans have moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 But music is all he knows.\u00c2\u00a0 So he goes back on tour.\u00c2\u00a0 To very little audience and no acclaim.<\/p>\n
Some people are so talented their songs are enough to make a show.\u00c2\u00a0 Others have to work the crowd, they’re performers, being there is EVERYTHING, you can’t duplicate the effect on record.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter Himmelman is a performer.\u00c2\u00a0 He only lights up in these circumstances.\u00c2\u00a0 In his own movie, off stage, he’s unlikable.\u00c2\u00a0 Not exactly pompous, it’s just that his ego shows through.\u00c2\u00a0 And you need an ego to make it, to stick it out.\u00c2\u00a0 But what do you do when your ego outstrips your success?\u00c2\u00a0 When it’s almost all you’ve got left?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you retire and laugh about it, dying on the inside, or soldier on?<\/p>\n
Peter lets go of the old band, the dudes he’s been working with for thirty years, and hooks up with a group from Israel, Flying Baby.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re good, the sound works, but it’s too much for his now geriatric crowd, they can’t handle the loud noise.\u00c2\u00a0 Realizing he can’t abandon his fan base, to the degree it exists, he hooks up with the old players.\u00c2\u00a0 Players who’ve given up their whole lives for the rock and roll dream.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfulfilled.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a highlight.\u00c2\u00a0 The now and then pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 And the musicians delineating how they got sucked into being lifelong players.\u00c2\u00a0 Believing that major league success was just around the corner.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the little fame they possess has been evaporating.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ve got no job with an upward career path, no house, none of the lifestyle of those who used to look up to them in high school, their early twenties.\u00c2\u00a0 If you look yourself in the mirror and admit you’re a failure is it a crushing blow you can’t sustain, so therefore you play on?<\/p>\n
I wish these questions were answered in this documentary.\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least explored further.\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind the stress on family members, the disappointment of parents.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t Bruce Springsteen’s mother say it wasn’t too late to go to college?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, believe me, it’s too late for Himmelman and his buds to reeducate themselves.<\/p>\n
But the future is bleak.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter flies to L.A. for a meeting about scoring a new project and gets blown off, by someone his junior, who doesn’t even give him an excuse, just doesn’t show up.\u00c2\u00a0 This would keep many in bed, but Peter’s got a gig to do that night.<\/p>\n
And in each gig, Peter tries to connect, tries to enrapture the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s tough.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the venues aren’t full.\u00c2\u00a0 You can sense failure in the air.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, Peter tries.\u00c2\u00a0 He sends a fan out to find grass from a field so he can make noises blowing through it on stage.<\/p>\n
Still, these endless segments were too much to take.\u00c2\u00a0 At about the fourth interminable live segment, I started to fast-forward, trying to get to the small interstitial segments of talking, trying to divine the story.\u00c2\u00a0 But watching Peter exit a hall at two times speed, I slowed the DVD down and found out the gig wasn’t over.\u00c2\u00a0 He was leading those in attendance to a city park.\u00c2\u00a0 When finally there, he said the show was over.\u00c2\u00a0 That this was just a bonus.\u00c2\u00a0 Then he started to strum his guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody started to sing along.\u00c2\u00a0 To Peter’s song "Impermanent Things".<\/p>\n
I’ve been hyped on Peter more than once.\u00c2\u00a0 I never really got it.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, he’s talented, but not quite enough.\u00c2\u00a0 I know, that’s a harsh review, but rock and roll is a tough game.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I was familiar with the song he was playing.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d heard it before.<\/p>\n
The acoustic strumming cut to my core.\u00c2\u00a0 The way it did at campfires of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 Before I got a chance to throw the dice on my aspirations, when I was just experiencing life, when every moment counted, in a way I wasn’t even aware of.<\/p>\n
And then everybody started to sing along.<\/p>\n
There were probably forty people in attendance.\u00c2\u00a0 And they seemed to know every word.\u00c2\u00a0 But worried about the magic evaporating Peter started to give lines to the audience, so they could keep up.<\/p>\n
There was no amplification.\u00c2\u00a0 Just a group of people.\u00c2\u00a0 In the middle of nowhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Having the time of their lives.<\/p>\n
You can’t duplicate this on tape.\u00c2\u00a0 No hard drive in an arena can have the same effect.\u00c2\u00a0 This can’t be preprogrammed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got to be spontaneous.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got to feel like it’s for you only.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got to be a story that only you can tell.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you don’t.<\/p>\n
Have you gone to a club and seen your favorite band?\u00c2\u00a0 And sung along with every note?\u00c2\u00a0 Not even noticing the rest of the people in the room?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what this was like.\u00c2\u00a0 But better.\u00c2\u00a0 Because everybody in attendance was JUST LIKE YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 Not checking their look, not worried about exiting from the parking lot, just exulting in the joy of music.<\/p>\n
All these impermanent things A little success is worse than failure.\u00c2\u00a0 Because you can’t give up.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve tasted the applause, the accolades, you’re addicted, you believe you can win at the slot machine of life.<\/p>\n In high school everybody’s interested in you.\u00c2\u00a0 The teachers, the administration, your parents.\u00c2\u00a0 How are you going to turn out.\u00c2\u00a0 But after graduation, you’re on your own.\u00c2\u00a0 If you fuck it up, it’s your own damn fault.\u00c2\u00a0 And people focus on winners.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet you’re still human, with feelings, you’re still here.<\/p>\n I’d like to see a movie that explores all this.\u00c2\u00a0 In neither the heavy-handed nor lighthearted fashion of VH1, rather in the style of "You Can Count On Me".\u00c2\u00a0 One that realizes it’s life and life only.<\/p>\n Still, I can’t get "Impermanent Things" out of my head.\u00c2\u00a0 Or the story Peter told of writing a song for his dying father (maybe this one, it wasn’t clear) and bonding with him in a way that made both of them cry.\u00c2\u00a0 For your parents are impermanent.\u00c2\u00a0 Your whole life is about separating from them.\u00c2\u00a0 But when they’re gone, you just want them back.<\/p>\n "Impermanent Things" has got the feel of your bedroom alone after school.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe your first solo apartment in your twenties after work.\u00c2\u00a0 We do our best in this society not to feel, to keep busy, so we don’t have to face how scary life is.\u00c2\u00a0 We used to count on musicians to explore these dark areas for us.\u00c2\u00a0 And when successful, we followed them, we believed in them.<\/p>\n And that’s why people still come to see Peter Himmelman.\u00c2\u00a0 To bask in his humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet to be the provider…\u00c2\u00a0 Why are they coming, are they still coming?\u00c2\u00a0 The self-doubt can be enormous.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re burdened by the little impermanent success you had.\u00c2\u00a0 Willing it to be permanent.\u00c2\u00a0 But oftentimes that’s beyond your power.\u00c2\u00a0 What do you do then?<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night I watched this Peter Himmelman documentary.\u00c2\u00a0 It was awful. Well, it wasn’t THAT bad, but for all the professionalism, for all the perfect sound, the filmmakers forgot one key movie element…STORY!\u00c2\u00a0 Without it you’ve got a film, a series of connected segments, but you don’t have a movie.\u00c2\u00a0 A movie brings you into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Oh how they fool me
Dominate and rule me<\/em><\/p>\n