Thank your lucky stars that people like Beatles4EvaLOL exist to bring you the truth. This video is as shocking as it is enlightening.
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This is a clip from the brilliant BBC series Extras, written by and starring Ricky Gervais. You may remember Ricky Gervais as the creator and star of the original series The Office. In this show he plays an extra struggling to get a decent part in any production he’s part of. Eventually he ends up creating his own sitcom, which is picked up and bastardized by the BBC. This scene takes place the day after its premiere.

This guy is so funny I can’t stand it. Check out Eugene’s site for much more Mirman than you can shake a stick at. Probably more than you can really appreciate. Too much, really.

www.EugeneMirman.com!

“Canada is what happens when love… falls in love.”

What can you say about a smiling, break dancing, smoking…

This interview comes from the documentary You Can See Me Laughing: The Last of the Hill Country Bluesman, about Fat Possum records and its artists.

Fat Possum is one of the only labels putting out blues worth listening to these days, and this movie documents how Matthew Johnson started the label with credit cards and his student loans so he could record Junior Kimborough and R.L. Burnside. This music is raw, dangerous, desperate, savage and alive, and nobody exemplifies this more than T-Model Ford.

Aside from the aforementioned artists, there are also has interviews and clips of Cedell Davis, Asie Payton, Johnny Farmer, Kenny Brown, Iggy Pop and Bono, who for some reason needs to be in every single documentary from the past 15 years.

“T-Model’s life reads like a horror story. At the age of eight, his father beat him so badly between the legs with a piece of firewood that he lost a testicle. His ankles are scarred from the chain gang. His neck is scarred where one of his wives slashed his throat. He has been shot, stabbed, pinned under a fallen tree with a broken ribcage, beaten unconscious with a metal chair. He watched his first wife go off with his own father, watched another die after she drank poison to try and induce a miscarriage. The only woman he ever really loved poisoned him at the breakfast table; he woke up in hospital that afternoon and never saw her again.”

–”Delta Force,” The Observer, November 16, 2003

Part 2:

“T-Model’s life reads like a horror story. At the age of eight, his father beat him so badly between the legs with a piece of firewood that he lost a testicle. His ankles are scarred from the chain gang. His neck is scarred where one of his wives slashed his throat. He has been shot, stabbed, pinned under a fallen tree with a broken ribcage, beaten unconscious with a metal chair. He watched his first wife go off with his own father, watched another die after she drank poison to try and induce a miscarriage. The only woman he ever really loved poisoned him at the breakfast table; he woke up in hospital that afternoon and never saw her again.”

–”Delta Force,” The Observer, November 16, 2003

This excerpt comes from the outtakes of the great documentary Benjamin Smoke by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen, an incredibly powerful look at the gifted songwriter. A truly unique, troubled, original personality who never compromised himself or his music.

This movie is available for rental from GreenCine.

This is a documentary about the famous manic-depressive, paranoid-schizophrenic cult music icon Wild Man Fischer. Its interesting, uncomfortable, sad, moving and funny, sometimes all at once. Contains some great interviews with Frank Zappa, Barnes and Barnes, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, Wierd Al and Dr Demento, among others. This movie assumes you already know who he is and are familiar with his discography. If you don’t, be prepared before watching it by listening to his debut 1968 album An Evening With Wild Man Fischer. That should give you all the autobiographical information you’ll need.

This short clip describes an episode during an out of town gig.
http://www.earpoke.com//wp-content/uploads/Derailroadedclip.FLV

You can only get this film from www.derailroaded.com until they clear the rights to some of the music in North America.

This is a short clip from the 2003 documentary about Jandek. If you’ve never heard of him its probably because he is notoriously reclusive and his music is, well, different. Its outside. You’re not going to hear it on the radio, if you want to listen you have to search it out yourself. This is a very sparse and low-key film, similar to the music it tries to describe.

Its almost laughable that throughout this entire 88 minute documentary Jandek doesn’t appear in the film at all. Instead they’ve utilized still pictures, disconnected film clips and album covers to take his place. The highlight of the film is a recording of the only phone interview with the man behind the music, during this scene they filmed a telephone to play the recording over – just so you understand whats happening. Its almost like the film was made, everybody interviewed (mostly music critics) talked about how much they loved him, and then they released it and suddenly realized they forgotten to put the subject in the movie. Its interesting if you like the music, if you don’t this might not do much to win you over. Then again, why would you consider seeing it if you didn’t?

His first album Ready for the House was put out in 1978 and he has since released about two new albums a year, his discography is up to 51 self-financed, self-released albums. He finally played his first live gig in 2004 in Glasgow, Scotland and a year later played his first gig in the US in his home state of Texas.

Jandek on Corwood

This is a short clip from the OOP 1993 film Speak of the Devil by Anton LaVey and Nick Bougas. It was created by LaVey to dispel myths and misconceptions about Satanism and the Church of Satan. I’m not sure it they accomplished thosee goals, but it certainly is an odd and entertaining 90 minutes of cheap 60’s style film making. The Black Pope is portrayed as a thoughtful and almost goofy nature loving artist, factotum and all around nice guy who gives you a tour of his home, private organ performances, a rundown of some of his more interesting jobs, and a chance to meet some of his artificial human companions. Interspersed with interviews, history, philosophy and commentary on a wide range of subjects it remains a very interesting film.

This clip shows LaVey’s pet lion, whom he later takes to the supermarket. Its narrated from the lions point of view by LaVey, who seems to channel Mel Blanc.

This is a deleted scene from the Frank Zappa film 200 Motels. It takes place on the streets of Centerville, while Howie is trying to get a groupie (played by Mark Volman) back to his cheesy motel room to the tune of Do You Like My New Car. This scene contains the only footage of the first trial run of Cal Schenkel’s PENIS MOBILE. For some odd reason this scene never made it into the final version of the film. This clip comes from the out of print documentary The True Story of 200 Motels. Highly recommended, if you can find it.