We live in a very vulgar, obnoxious age, don't we? So much of our media, especially in the realm of entertainment, is driven by digging up the most embarrassing details about a celebrity's private life and splashing them across a TV screen or a magazine cover in big, bold headlines.







And we eat it all up, every last crumb. Well, the good news is, not everyone in the media is out to sling mud. The documentary filmmakers behind the new British Invasion DVD series, for example, were not interested in all that rot.

No, for them, it was all about the music, and Grammy-winning writer Rob Bowman helped in that regard with new in-depth, probing interviews of artists like Gerry Marsden of Gerry & The Pacemakers, Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits and Ian McLagan of the Small Faces.

"With all of our DVDs we only care about the music, not who is sleeping with whom or what drug they might have taken," says the series producer David Peck. "I just care about the music. When I listen to 'What's Going On?' by Marvin Gaye, I don't think about his father shooting him to death. What I do think about is how beautiful the melody is and what was the inspiration behind the lyrics. My philosophy is quite simple: If it has nothing to do with the music or it's not focusing on the positive, then it's not going in my film. If someone wants to find out the 'dirt,' then use Google; it's easy to find. Our films are designed to entertain and educate. I enjoy making films that I can show my children and other parents can show their children, and they can learn about these great artists. Were these artists saints? No, but was their music timeless? The answer to that would have to be 'yes' or we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

As for Bowman, Peck gives him all the credit for how engrossing the interviews are in these new DVDs, which cover the careers of the Small Faces, Herman's Hermits, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Dusty Springfield.

"First of all it's very important that most of the credit for the interviews goes to Rob Bowman, who is a Grammy-award winning writer and a professor of music at York University in Toronto," explains Peck. "Every single DVD I've done that requires new interviews has involved Rob because his style is so amazing. When we did Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Smokey sat for four and a half hours! When the interview was over, he told Rob that not only was it the longest interview he had ever done, but the best. People think that anyone can ask questions, but they're wrong. it takes a certain style and an incredible knowledge of the subject to be able to converse properly with the artist and to make them comfortable and let them know that you care about their work. When that happens you get amazing stories from them."

For more information about these DVDs, visit www.the-britishinvasion.com and www.reelinintheyears.com.

Here's the thing about stardom: You cannot predict when, or if, it will ever happen. So, if really, really good fortune does come your way, you can't say, "No, thank you. I'll wait for the next bus to come along." You've got to grab the golden ring while you can.

And that's what Herman's Hermits did. In the summer of 1964, when all the boys were just that, mere boys, or rather, teenagers, Peter Noone and company were experiencing their first taste of runaway success with their hit debut single "I'm Into Something Good."






"We had all our success before we became accomplished musically," says Noone. "Suddenly, we're like 16 years old, and we're doing all this, while The Beatles were about 22 when they started recording."

That does not mean that the string of exuberant, buoyant pop hits Herman's Hermits produced in their early years should be dismissed. Far from it, in fact. Their tight, somewhat complex harmonies are a marvel, and perhaps no other song exemplifies that more than "A Kind Of Hush."

Noone, however, liked "No Milk Today" and "Sunshine Girl" more. He's always been a bit troubled by the intro to "A Kind Of Hush."

"It's not a great time code at the beginning," says Noone. "It kind of goes haywire at the beginning. But people don't realize that."

Hardly anyone, save for the most snobbish musical killjoy or Herman's Hermits themselves, have ever noticed it. Nor have people ever really thought about the band being in any way associated with punk.

Noone does, though. And it has everything to do with the simple innocence and not-a-care-in-the-world attitude with which Herman's Hermits went about creating a sensation.

"We never did have a plan," says Noone. "I guess we were punk-ish in that way. We never did have any aspirations but to be in a band."

A new DVD titled "Herman's Hermits: Listen People — 1964-1969" does a fine job of detailing the band's life and times, while culling choice vintage live and TV footage of the band. It's part of a whole British Invasion DVD series being put out by Reelin' In The Years Production, along with Voyage Digital Media and Naxos of America, Inc. Other DVDs deal with acts like the Small Faces, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Dusty Springfield. Plus there's a bonus disc of material.

The set is being released March 30. For more on the DVDs, visit www.reelinintheyears.com/britishinvasion.

There will never be another T.A.M.I Show. It was a once-in-a-lifetime cavalcade of rock 'n' roll stars who performed for a screaming throng of teens, the first televised rock concert.

And now, everybody's going to have a chance to see it again. Shout! Factory is releasing "The T.A.M.I. Show" DVD on March 23. Quentin Tarantino has said it belongs "in the top three of all rock movies," and VH1 listed it at No. 15 in its compilation of the "100 Greatest Moments In Rock History."






Why was it such a monumental event? Just look at who performed. From The Beach Boys to Chuck Berry to Smokey Robinson & The Miracles and Marvin Gaye to The Supremes ... I could go on and on. It's also famous for the Keith Richards' quote about the biggest mistake the Rolling Stones ever made, which was following James Brown at the T.A.M.I. Show.

So owning this DVD is — and I can say this without sounding overly dramatic — is like owning a piece of history.

Director Steve Binder, who filmed the show along with the crew he worked with on the "Steve Allen Show," says that what shows through on the DVD is the purity and exuberance that rock 'n' roll has always had.

"I think what really made 'The T.A.M.I Show' historically important — and if I can remove myself as the person who directed it, but just as a layman — it was what rock 'n' roll was intended to be from the very beginning, and that is fun and honest," says Binder. "And there were no frills, no real gimmicks. We didn't rehearse the audience and tell 'em when they were supposed to scream and yell. Matter of fact, just the opposite. We were trying to figure out how to get some of this stuff out of the track."

Binder compared shooting it to another performance he filmed, one that would bring his career in full circle as a former T.A.M.I. Show celeb took center stage.

"It's like when I did Diana Ross in Central Park, and we had this huge rainstorm," says Binder. "I'd seen a few shows in Central Park before and I said, once you saw the opening titles, you could have been in any park in the United States or the world for that matter. You never knew where you were. And I wanted to make sure when I shot that, you know, I saw the New York skyline in the background and so forth and so on. And with 'The T.A.M.I. Show," I wanted to make sure everybody who watched the film knew that this was not put together in piecemeal fashion, where James was there on Monday and Smokey on Tuesday ... I mean, everybody was there the entire time we filmed it."

That goes for all the artists, not just the stagehands.

"I arbitrarily picked — since there were no commercial breaks or anything, it was just a film — when halftime would be after the Lesley Gore performance, and [I] brought out the cast on to the stage that had previously performed before Lesley," remembers Binder. "And then at the very end of the show, I brought out the entire cast on to the stage. And what was interesting was, nobody went to their hotels or went home while we actually filmed. They were all there backstage or they were in the audience, or what have you. So it became like an adventure for everybody. You know, it wasn't just a job."

To learn more about the upcoming DVD of "The T.A.M.I. Show," visit www.shoutfactory.com. And watch the April 23 issue of Goldmine for more of our interview with Steve Binder.

It's a question we all think about, but hardly any of us actually will ever have to deal with at any point: If a movie was being made about your life, what actor or actress should play you?

Cherie Currie, former lead singer of The Runaways, did not have a say in the matter for the new movie that's coming out in March about the renegade band of teenage girls she once fronted that challenged the male-dominated music business in the 1970s with their rebellious, punk-spiked rock. But she could not have made a better choice.







Young starlet Dakota Fanning played Currie, and that's all right by Cherie.

"Oh, it was a dream come true, because she's my favorite actress of all-time," say Currie. "Yeah, from the first time I saw her, and I was actually sitting with my sister, Marie, watching, I believe, it was 'Man On Fire,' and our jaws were just on the floor and we were saying, "Who is this girl?" And I just became a huge fan of hers. And I ended up finding out that she was playing me, or was in negotiations to play me, on the 10 o'clock news, and my knees just buckled, because I just couldn't believe it. It was just ... it's beyond words."

And really, it was meant to be, which Currie found out in a lunch with Fanning.

"I asked her how she got involved in the film and wanting to do the film," relates Currie. "She had gone to school, and one of her schoolmates had brought these little temporary tattoos, and [Fanning] had picked a single cherry and put it on her arm. And when she got home, her mom had this script and said, 'Dakota, you're not going to believe this, but this girl has a cherry tattoo.' And she kind of figured that was a sign, and when she read the script, she knew there was no one else who could do the part as far as she was concerned. 'What are they gonna do?' she said. 'Get some 27-year-old to play a 16-year-old.' And so she really knows she's got that edge, you know that old edge that this part really needed."

For more on The Runaways, visit www.therunaways.com.

"Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood"

For the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, that plea has often fallen on deaf ears. That's not to say that everything written about the noisy, avant-blues anarchists has been derisive or belittling. In fact, critics have usually had nice things to say about the trio's hard-hitting, visceral blasts of deconstructed rock 'n' roll.






In taking apart and reassembling traditional forms of the blues and '50s rockabilly, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion pays only the most sincere homage to their heroes. Yet a lot of people don't buy it. They think it's all a put-on, that Spencer, guitarist Judah Bauer and drummer Russell Simins have, for the last almost 20 years, been creating gritty, wild, postmodern rock 'n' roll mayhem with a wink and a nudge and very little respect for the past.

Spencer takes offense at that.

"I do. I think we've been misunderstood," says Spencer. "We've been dismissed as a joke. We've been dismissed as ironic hipsters and even racists."

Sure, says Spencer, some of the Blues Explosion's songs have some humor, and he admits they can even be a bit silly, but he adds, "There's a lot of life to it."

And much of that life is fueled by from Spencer's deep appreciation of the blues and old-time rock 'n' roll, a genre that he feels is under attack these days.

"America has a real stick up its ass and a real problem it seems with rock 'n' roll," says Spencer, who continued about how it's even more marginalized and misunderstood than it was when the Blues Explosion arrived in the early '90s to give the dour, taking-itself-way-too-seriously world of alternative rock a good, swift kick in the pants.

To remedy at least one of those problems, the Blues Explosion is releasing a 22-song retrospective of its most bad-ass works titled Dirty Shirt Rock 'N Roll: The First Ten Years. Due out March 30 on Shout! Factory's Majordomo Records imprint, the record is the opening salvo in a Blues Explosion reissue project that will see the band re-release six albums.

To find out more about the reissue campaign and the band's first-ever greatest-hits package, visit www.majordomorecords.com.



 

Only cancer and human mortality could beat Doug Fieger.

The lead singer of The Knack, whose stuttering vocals on the 1979 power-pop anthem "My Sharona" will ring in the ears of generations to come, was a fighter right up until his death on Tuesday at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif.






David Was, of the idiosyncratic dance-music dynamo Was (Not Was), had known Fieger since junior high in the Detroit area. "Not only was he an inspiration," says Was, "but also a good friend."

Even while Fieger was battling his illness, Was visited often with The Knack front man, and Was hoped he'd beat cancer. But it wasn't to be.

Looking back during an interview today, Was recalled seeing Fieger for the first time. "He looked like he had fallen right out of New Music Express," says Was. "He was wearing bell-bottoms and he had pink leather boots on. I remember someone called him a sissy, and Doug kicked his ass. In fact, I think he dug his pink leather boot right into his chest."

Was added that "you didn't mess with Doug." And that extended to Doug's family. For those who don't know, Doug's brother is famed attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who gained fame for representing assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.

Doug Fieger, according to Was, was always ambitious when it came to music. In fact, Doug and Was' partner in Was (Not Was), noted producer Don Was, had quite the rivalry in school. Doug's single-minded determination brought him fame quicker as The Knack, the band he formed in Los Angeles in 1978, made the rounds on the Sunset Strip scene and broke it big with "My Sharona," a song Doug co-wrote that was inspired by a girlfriend of four years.

"He took rock 'n' roll as seriously as a physicist takes uranium," says David Was. "That kid was like a roman candle, with a trajectory that could take you to great heights and depths."

David Was says he owes everything to Doug Fieger, and that includes the success Was (Not Was) had. A new 19-song retrospective set titled Pick Of The Litter is due out Feb. 23 that encapsulates the career of Was (Not Was), described by the New York Times as "the funkier art-funk band" and featuring David's somewhat surreal poetry and a strange brew of jazz, disco, rock and skewed political-socio commentary.






We'll have more on Was (Not Was), plus stories about the group's connection to Ozzy Osbourne, Madonna and Mel Torme, among others, in this space. To revisit the strange, colorful world of Was (Not Was), go to www.myspace.com/wasnotwasfreaks.

"When my ship comes in ... I'm going to open up a record store!"

How many of us have, at one time or another, dreamed of doing just that. I know I have. Well, it's a tough business, and in these troubled economic times, it's getting harder and harder to keep the small, local, independent record store going.






One that keeps on keeping on is All That Music in El Paso, Texas. Its owner, George Reynoso, has done an amazing job of not only staying afloat but actually thriving. Using every bit of guile, street smarts, business savvy and that ability to change with the times, Reynoso has kept All That Music going.

And for those that would like to follow his lead and open up their own independent record store, Reynoso has a word of advice.

"Don’t give up your regular job," says Reynoso. "I’ve been lucky because this is my passion and I’m too stubborn to fail. But in 30 years, I’ve seen most of my competitors come and go because they were poorly capitalized, mismanaged, or otherwise naïve. This is a fast, cutthroat, and rapidly changing industry. People are attracted to the glamour of music and entertainment. But in reality, we are living in the midst of a technological, computer-based revolution. The world is now a virtual marketplace of digital files. Do your homework before you jump into this industry."

Despite all the gloom and doom, there are stories of success among record-store owners. We've profiled many of them in our For The Record segment in the print issue of Goldmine. To read the rest of our interview with Reynoso, pick up the March 12 print edition of Goldmine.

To find out more about All That Music, go to www.allthatmusic.com.

Being the owner of an independent record store in this day and age is not easy, but George Reynoso is still fighting the good fight.

His is All That Music, out of El Paso, Texas. And like all small business owners, market forces create a myriad of challenges that make it difficult for them to just survive. Competing with the big-box chains like Wal-Mart and Best Buy is like swimming against a strong tide, and the whole downloading phenomenon has only exacerbated the problem for the mom-and-pop record shops.





Smartly, Reynoso, a former television journalist, has decided against going head-to-head with the Goliaths.

"Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target all sell what I call the 'no-brainer easy business' — that is, mostly the Top 50 Billboard chart CDs," explains Reynoso. "Although we stock these chart hits, we conceded the easy business to the giants long ago. Now, as the giants are allocating less space to deep catalog and the big chain stores are all but gone, we're realizing the increased traffic of customers who require and enjoy a good record store. Serious music buyers are left with the 'last man standing,' which is usually the local independent. That works for me!"

That enthusiasm isn't just false bravado. Reynoso sees a future for small record stores like his. They just have to work hard and figure out what their customers really want, and that extends to employees as well.

"The future will be service and collectibles for serious music enthusiasts," says Reynoso. "Today's record store employee must bring something to the table. Young clerks fulfilling cash-register duties and generally hanging out and acting cool are gone. Thank God! With today's bleak economy, we are all doing more with less. So slackers quickly find themselves unemployed. Today's employee needs to bring a depth of knowledge in any particular genre of music. Strong retail, marketing and merchandising skills are a must. Computer, database and Web site expertise is a bonus. In general, with Google, YouTube and hundreds of Web site resources, I tell prospective employees that logic, common sense and a desire to provide service to a customers is all that's necessary. We can teach the new hires the resources and steps for great customer service. Finding employees with charisma, values, good attitude and a strong work ethic is the challenge."

But there is more to it than that. These days, record-store employees have another role: That of an educator.

"We spend a lot of time educating people about the collectibility of records," says Reynoso. "Most are good sports, but some don't understand and get offended when we reject common, low-demand items in poor condition. With advance notice, I'll direct sellers to allthatmusic.com to read our guidelines for selling CDs, LPs & DVDs."

Having to take a tough stance in negotiations is just part of the business, which has benefitted from a boom in vinyl sales.

"In part, credit today's 15- to 30-year-olds for spearheading the return of the LP," says Reynoso. "They grew up knowing music by file trading, computers and ear buds. Eventually, these consumers mature and realize you can't beat first-edition, physical, hands-on product. In the end, whether for full, complete liner notes and a high-quality (non-MP3) sound, physical product will be sought out by the true hard-core fans. Sure, the volume of product sold is less, but remaining copies in the marketplace are worth more, especially if the condition of the LP or CD is like new. We sell lots of product in the $20-to-$75 range. This is our new marketplace. We've spent the last 30 years learning what's in and what's not and we use that knowledge to buy and sell fairly and strategically."