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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

youth in a movie

I'm watching a terrific little Netflix DVD of a 35 minute film ["MC5:Kick Out the Jams" (1999)] about the MC5, an important, loud, musically brilliant Detroit band that flourished briefly in the late 1960's. For extent of musical influence & sheer cultural power, the MC5 are often compared with the Velvet Underground or Big Star. There are some great performances on this DVD.

All the audience members--people in the film who aren't playing music onstage, if that sounds less hierarchical--are performing their youth, reveling in their youth, radiating their youth; it seems to be the most important, urgent, striking thing about them. But in the meantime every single one of them has lost that very thing.

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