Ry Cooder - Performance (1970 Film)

Most will be drawn to this for the throw-away solo track by Mick Jagger, "Memo from Turner." It's a troubling collection, which tends to be a fair representation of the movie, except for the always rock-solid Ry Cooder, who has since developed into an excellent film score artist. Here he offers three tracks, though none approach his best work. Randy Newman is always a pleasure, especially when not throwing himself at gimmickry, and Buffy Sainte- Marie's "Died, Dead, Red" is worth a spin. --Scott Wilson Amazon.com

GREAT STUFF!!!

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST, EVER, SOUNDTRACK RECORDINGS OF ALL TIME...RY COODER, MICK JAGGER AND RANDY NEWMAN AT THE PEAK OF THEIR PERFORMANCE PRIME!!! October 16, 2008

MYSTR Treefrog salutes You RY

Short and sweet...This is a great Collection. Ry Cooder plays great slide(as Always) The (Main? ) reviewers comment about this album being "troubling" is odd.Eclectic maybe...troubling NOT.
There are several stand out tracks here..." GET AWAY" is a chopped up funky blues with Tabla on which one can hear Ry's work with Captain Beefheart...especially the flavor of the song " SHO NUFF I DO" off the Safe As Milk album..the second half is something the North Mississippi Alstars might have appropriated(haven't we all?) into their sound.
The track by the LAST POETS- " WAKE UP NIGGERS" is an amazing spoken w/ conga piece that is well before it's time(is that even possible?) and may be the most dramatic performance on trhe album. It precedes and completely eclipses the current rhyming dictionary inanity of most Gangsta/Hip Hop being offered to the world for the past few years. The LAST POETS blow my mind.I'm buying all their albums after hearing this.
Jack Nitzsche was a prolific producer of sountracks. Check out the Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker Jam on " THE HOT SPOT" and his production on C.C. Adcocks LAFAYETTE MARQUIS Album.
I do, however, doubt he actually WROTE these pieces. Directed-maybe- but wrote? Hmmm. sounds like a Production-Contractual agreement clause. He did have a rarely surpassed ability to bring musical elements together ordinarily not heard.He had a rare ear and imagination. He was a master of the art of Musical collage.
June 28, 2008

The Perfect Merger Of Music To Cinema

The movie's in-your-face depiction of the drugs-and-thugs decadence in the London underworld is encapsulated in this soundtrack, which was arranged by Jack Nitzsche and conducted by Randy Newman.

Mick Jagger is in full swagger in Memo From Turner, but there are numerous fantastic performances - Lost Poets, Buffy Sainte-Marie - with blistering bottleneck guitar solos from Ry Cooder and Newman delivering a gem with Gone Dead Train.

This is a perfect merging of music to cinema, as viciously brilliant as it is disturbing. March 25, 2008

Possibly the best film of the 60s

This together with Gimmie Shelter The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Region Free Import) serves as the final statement on the 60s decade. It is fitting that both films are related to the rolling stones. This one in an admittedly tangential way, while the former documents the fatal conclusion of the stones 69 tour. Both films are saturated with music and violence, and in the final analysis discredits the flower power woodstock mentality. In this way they are a fitting reflection of a decade overwhelmed by violence: wars, assassinations, riots, and a world infested with bigotry and intransigence. It is no coincidence that the lead players in these films faded into irrelevance. The Stones final (and greatest) achievement being the 1972 release of exile on main street Exile On Main Street [Limited Edition]. Anita Pallenberg's decent into addiction and depression seems almost a direct consequence of her involvement in Performance.

At any rate this film should be on anyone's top 100 list.

Perhaps the best way to view this film is only after watching one-plus-one Sympathy for the Devil (Goddard's classic on the confluence of the rise of the stones and the decline of England portrayed through the recording of sympathy for the devil) and Gimmie Shelter.

This film is truly a classic. September 16, 2007

"You'll look funny when you're fifty."

It is inevitable that the previous reviewers are of a certain age. And that hearing this remarkable album was a profound revelation to them (us). Performance the movie has certainly grown old with more grace than most of its stars. In fact its lengthy opening sequence still looks like it could have been made today; Donald Cammell should have gone on to greater things than wrting pulp fiction with Marlon Brando.

The same can be said of the soundtrack, which it should be noted was released some months before the film. At the very least, to discover Ry Cooder and rap music on the same record was an amazing experience in 1970. Dark and druggy, this is music completely of its time - adventurous, eye-opening, sexy and weird. Memo From Turner remains one of the perfect late-sixties Stone songs. With its brutal homosexual imagery and Ry's stinging guitar it reminds many of us old farts how supremely dangerous that band seemed to be.

I can attest that the record can still impress teenagers today with its relentlessly inventive mix of styles and the driving passion of its best songs. But the sheer magic of first hearing that mix and passion is unrepeatable. The ensuing four decades have piled so much good stuff into the musical hopper that for the youth of 2007 everything is out there and pretty easily sought out. In 1970 these pearls were much rarer. This is a great record and Jack Nitzsche a great producer. If you have never listened to it, do so. And then see the movie.
Whatever your age. June 9, 2007

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