Current mood:	nostalgic
Current music:	"A Boy Named Sue"

Reminiscing with the Man in Black
This week I enjoyed a few days off from work to rejuvenate the old brain (which marked 55 years with a nice family gathering recently) and to catch up on some things. That included checking out a much anticipated new DVD release, watching the first installments of Ken Burns’ “The War,” sampling a few of the new fall TV offerings and catching a movie.

I’ve been looking forward to a set like the newly issued “The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show” for a long time. For years, I wondered why all the terrific musical moments from Cash’s groundbreaking 1969-71 ABC variety hour, featuring a lot of rock performers as well as country stars performing at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, weren’t available on video. After a couple of bootleg DVDs started circulating with a bunch of these performances, I was really anxious to see an official release. But getting legal clearances takes time, so it’s nearly three years later that this two-disc set from Columbia Music Video has come out, featuring 66 performances that total more than four hours of music. The first disc, hosted by Kris Kristofferson, alternates reminiscences by folks involved with the show and musical performances. The second disc is largely music.

The artist selection for what I hope is just the first volume released from the Cash show skews a bit more mainstream Nashville country from the era than I would have preferred, but it still includes a nice selection of the Man in Black’s non-country guests, most notably Bob Dylan, who in a departure from his usual practice at the time appeared on the very first show. The DVD has Dylan doing “I Threw It All Away” and then duetting with Cash on “Girl From the North Country.” (This is the only segment where the video is not pristeen; it looks a couple of generations removed from the original. Otherwise, the video and sound quality are great.)

Also included are Louis Armstrong, Stevie Wonder, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor (when he had hair!) and Neil Young in segments taped at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes (with Clapton and Carl Perkins trading licks!), Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Ray Charles (doing a slow, soulful “Ring of Fire”), Tony Joe White, Glen Campbell, Neil Diamond and Roy Orbison. The country stars featured include George Jones, Waylon Jennings (cleanshaven and with his hair slicked back), Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, Bill Monroe, Conway Twitty, Chet Atkins, Merle Haggard, Homer and Jethro, Roy Clark and Hank Williams Jr. Plus numerous numbers by Cash himself and the show’s regulars: wife June Carter, the Carter Family, Perkins and the Statler Brothers. All the musical performances are live onstage.

Aside from some silly bits with June, the DVD doesn’t include (thankfully) any of the show’s cornpone comedy elements, but I was amused (and my daughter aghast) at some of the fashion choices, particularly the big helmet hair and Elly May Clampett dresses sported by such Nashville stars as Wynette and Lynn. The package also includes a slim booklet with liner notes and some vintage clippings reproduced.

In one of the introductory segments, Kristofferson (who’s also seen performing on the show) talks about how Cash defied network wishes by keeping the “wishin’ Lord that I was stoned” line when he sang “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.” And then there’s my favorite story: During rehearsals, June noticed that Linda Rondstadt, clad in a very short mini-dress, was wearing no panties. She sent out for some and insisted Linda wear them. Linda said she sang better bare-bottomed. "Not in front of my Johnny," June said adamantly. (We pause to accommodate boomer men’s fantasies. As a friend put it: “The young Linda Ronstadt without panties. Excuse me, I'm getting woozy.”)

There’s more in the vaults (as we know from the bootlegs), including the likes of Jose Feliciano, the Guess Who and the Monkees. Let’s hope this sells well enough to merit them going to the trouble of clearing a second compilation. Meanwhile, look for some of this material coming up on PBS.


NEW SEASON ON THE TUBE: So far I’ve caught a handful of new shows. The first two episodes of the Fox TV news sitcom “Back to You” with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton had funny moments (mainly the scenes with Grammer and Heaton) but the supporting cast is ill-used and some of the humor about on the level with that dreadful film “Anchorman”. NBC’s “Journeyman,” with British actor Kevin McKidd (“Rome”) playing a San Francisco newspaperman who keeps inexplicably finding himself going back 10 years in time and then returning, has an intriguing premise and a good cast, but it’s awfully confusing if you don’t follow it closely, so I wouldn’t bet on its longevity. The Peacock Network’s “Bionic Woman” has an appealing star in Michelle Ryan (another Brit playing an American) and is a definite improvement on the cheesy 1970s original, but I haven’t yet decided if I’ll stick with it for the long run.

I’ve also been watching Ken Burns’ latest PBS maxi-documentary, “The War.” It’s well done (as you’d expect of Burns) and often affecting with its concentration on the war as experienced by everyday folks in and from four American towns (rather than concentrating on world leaders, generals and using historians to tell the story like in past Burns series). But some episodes (particularly the second) have felt a bit padded (didn’t we see the same ball-turret gunner footage several times?), and the America-centric approach sort flies in the face of the fact that the war was an ALLIED effort. (This particularly bothers my British mother.) Still, “The War” beats 90 percent of what’s on TV, and if it gives younger viewers an appreciation of the life-changing experience my parents’ generation went through, Burns deserves a big thanks.

AT THE MOVIES: Leslie and I caught “Eastern Promises,” the David Cronenberg thriller about a midwife (Naomi Watts) who tries to find out more about a teenage prostitute who died in childbirth and winds up getting involved with the Russian mafia in London. These mobsters are based at a restaurant run by a seemingly fatherly (but really ruthless) mobster (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his ne’er-do-well psychotic son (Vincent Cassel). Viggo Mortensen (with an impeccable Russian accent) plays a mob driver who yearns to be more. As you’d expect of a film by Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”), it’s graphic and violent, with an especially nasty fight scene in a steam room (with Mortensen naked). But it’s absorbing viewing and recommended for those who don’t mind their dramas dripping blood.

QUICKIES: Sorry to hear that Lois Maxwell, who played M’s flirtatious secretary Moneypenny in the James Bond films up through Roger Moore’s stint, has died at age 80. Like Moore, she stayed too long at the ball, playing the role long after she was decades too old for it, but the fact that you probably can’t remember a single one of her successors as Moneypenny says something about what she brought to the admittedly minor but memorable character originally. … Taking a look at this year’s crop of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tells you all you need to know about the music of 25 years ago, with Madonna and Donna Summer heading the list that also includes Leonard Cohen, the Beastie Boys, Afrika Bambaataa and repeat nominees Chic, the Dave Clark Five and John Mellencamp. Not a real impressive group to choose from. Madonna probably merits inclusion and you could make a case for Mellencamp. Cohen is one of those critics’ picks that are usually a shoe-in. None of the rest deserve to be in any more than the never-nominated Monkees. And then there’s the matter of the Hall continuing to ignore Ringo Starr, whose three ex-bandmates got in on their own. … Out this week on DVD is “Good Times Again,” a single-disc Time Life compilation of performances from the 1969-72 “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour” variety series. I’ll let you know how it is after I see it.

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