Do It Again

I wasn’t going to see Ray Davies when he came to town this time. I know that sounds nuts. But it’s been a long slog, more than three years since we turned on the cameras to start filming DO IT AGAIN and frankly, with the baby and the house and the regular job, I’ve been swamped. The PBS run has been wonderful. It has also required endless hours of extra work. Sorry, I’m whining. But I’m trying to explain why, after literally begging Ray to watch the film for more than a year and then meet with me – all for the purpose of creating a DVD I can share with you – I’ve sometimes found it hard to just sit in the crowd and cheer. Then, a few weeks ago, word came from London that Ray might be willing to meet and chat about potentially approving DO IT AGAIN for DVD release. (For those of you unfamiliar with the arcane world of music licensing, I need his thumbs-up.) As instructed, I over-nighted a DVD to him in New York. Then I slapped down $77 for a seat in the balcony of the Wilbur and waited. And waited. There were moments I almost felt encouraged. A fellow journalist told me that he asked Ray about the movie during an interview and was told that he had the DVD. But whether Ray watched it or not, we’ll never know.
Because gig night came and still no word from London on a meeting. It was frankly kind of depressing leaving the family at home on Thanksgiving Eve and heading into Boston on my own. I decided to bring a bag of DO IT AGAIN buttons and let folks know I’d be at Jacob Wirth’s before the show. Once there, I found a surprising number of people who had seen DO IT AGAIN and wanted to say hello. Then Frank Lima (aka Dan the Fan) texted me telling me he was over at the Rock Bottom. I headed over there and encountered some of the superfans, many of them on their fourth or fifth or eights gig of the short tour. I also ran into complete strangers who, again, had seen DO IT AGAIN and wanted to say nice things. I realized that this was probably the only night in which I might be a pseudo-celebrity. By now, my London contact had told me to try to hook on with Frank. Why not? Frank’s got Ray’s cell number on his phone. He had tickets for the front table. He’s also been kind about DO IT AGAIN, trying to get Ray’s attention about the film. We left it open how we might proceed post-concert.
The show? I was impressed. Ray played a wonderful version of “Waterloo Sunset” and “Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl.” He seemed in wonderful spirits. The set with the choir surprised me. At times, Ray’s voice was overwhelmed by the many singers. But at other times – I think of “Shangri-La” – the choir added a depth and richness. I do wish Ray would have thrown at least a couple of “Workingman’s Café” songs into the mix, but you can’t play everything…
Then, the wait. Frank called as soon as the lights went down and told me to sit tight. Then, he disappeared. I hung with the superfans, first out front until it got too cold, then at the Rock Bottom. Frank wrote, told me he wasn’t in yet. I talked to TA. and Frank Reda and Michelle Pedretti (from Italy!). We each got a drink. Frank wrote again. This time, he had been able to get in but Ray was already taking off. He had to get the bus to Toronto.
It was all sort of depressing, though I’m not sure why. We made a movie which we’re proud of. It appears lots of folks have seen it. The film is going to continue to be on PBS stations – the Philadelphia Inquirer just called to arrange an interview in advance of our mid-December screenings. And I got to see Ray playing a killer set list and seemingly healthy and in good spirits. Sure, it’s disappointing that I can’t get the film out on DVD so you folks – the fans – can see it more easily. But the DVD/download issue is one of access, not revenue. I’ll never make money off DO IT AGAIN. I just want to share.
Which gets me to what happened two days later.
It was my birthday last week. I turned 41. So just after getting blown off my Ray, I get a package in the mail from western Massachusetts. The Muswell Hillbillies bought a 45 of “Do It Again” and each member of the band signed the sleeve. They also included a ticket to their Dec. 23 “farewell” show. (I honestly hope it isn’t farewell, which is why I put quote marks around the word.) I immediately went online and purchased a second ticket for Carlene. She should be there, too.
I don’t know what it was about that package. It was theoretically just a record. But if felt like more. It reminded me of when I was having trouble with Paul McCartney’s manager and Lila and I were walking to the beach on a summer morning and she said, “who cares about Paul McCartney. He’s in every movie.” At that moment, I could suddenly let Paul’s footage go.
Not that Ray’s off the hook. I still intend to nag and plead and work out something so I can get you all DVDs of DO IT AGAIN. But I care a lot more about a bunch of people I do know – my extended Kinks family – sending me a thoughtful gift on my birthday than a brilliant, eccentric, artistic stranger (and rock hero) blowing me off on a Wednesday night.

So we’re getting down to the wire. And if you know the rules of Kickstarter, you know that unless we reach our goal, we lose all of the money pledged so far. That means I need to raise about $1,300 in the next 49 hours. Or else the $1,700 already pledges goes bye-bye.

Can it be done? Of course. But we need your help.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/775822192/bringing-do-it-again-our-kinks-film-to-tv

You’ve seen the rewards section. If there’s anything else you’d like that’s not listed there, let me know. Everything is for sale at this point!

Need some motivation? Here’s a sneak look at our ad for tomorrow’s screening.

In our old house, we built an addition that required digging four-foot holes, pouring concrete, wiring, plumbing, painting, everything. We took down dropped ceilings, redid two bathrooms, added a brick walkway. And when we were done, and all I had left was to paint the trim around a living room window, I couldn’t do it. For eight years. Sure enough, when we moved in July, that trim had yet to be painted. For some reason, after all that other work, I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up the paint brush.

I think of that now as we approach our TV premiere. (Sept. 15, 9 p.m., WGBH-Boston, Channel 2.) For nearly two years, I scrambled to rent lighting, organize interviews, pick up hard-drives, insure shoots, and, on an almost daily basis, mail off screeners and promo material and festival apps. Then, when the festival run ended, I stopped.

It’s not easy starting again. It took me forever to log the list of video clips in our TV cut. I just kept putting it off. In the end, the task took about 35 minutes. Same for mailing a couple of posters to a fan who offered financial support. My lack of follow-through made me feel even worse. Then, sometime last week, I realized it was time to start again or else.

Here’s what I’ve done in the last few days:
- Pitched stories on DO IT AGAIN to various publications.
- Did interviews with the Concord Journal (my new hometown paper) and Patch.com in Arlington (my old hometown e-paper) and Boston Magazine.
- Arranged to go on WTTK on Friday morning with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan for the weekly quiz show segment (9:30 a.m. – 10 a.m.) to promote DIA.
- Borrowed $3,306 on my 401K to pay our E & O insurance bill. (I know, Mom, not a sound financial move. But the bill’s due Sept. 10 and cash to pay it won’t arrive until Sept. 15. I promise to pay myself back immediately.)
- Sent Morgan Spurlock a note begging him to tweet our Kickstarter campaign. We’ll see about that one. I mean, the dude seems to have a new movie out every month!

And tonight, I get to meet the elusive but hard-working Eric Luskin, our American Public Television czar, for lobster in Chestnut Hill. He zapped me a note earlier today that we added Albany. That’s nine markets. Let’s keep going.

Oh, and I’m heading out now to get a haircut. The last snip was in Turkey in early June. I look like a Muppet. Nobody should look like a Muppet for their TV premiere.

I don’t know why some songs spark an intense, emotion connection while others leave us cold.

For me, I can’t listen to Kathy McCarthy’s version of “Living Life,” Zevon’s “Desperados Under the Eaves” or the Kinks’ “Some Mother’s Son” without actually choking up. How to explain? I can’t. It’s not just the subject matter. I don’t feel teary when “Brick” or “Wish You Were Here” play. It’s the chemical, cosmic beauty of how our brains respond emotionally to art.

Which brings me to the new Warren Zanes record, “I Want to Move Out in the Daylight.” I remember the first time I heard it. April 25, 2010. At the time, it had no name. Warren handed me a burnable CD the night of our Boston screening of DO IT AGAIN. I remember an evasiveness when I asked him of his plans for the songs. He told me that he wasn’t sure when it would come out or if it was going to come out in this form.

And I remember that next day, after the insanity of the sold-out Boston screening and the knowledge that our young son would be born three days later, having “Daylight” on as I drove around doing errands. I listened straight through until I got to “That’s All There Is,” and had to listen to that particular song again.

“That’s All There Is,” to me, summed up why this record had to come out. Like much of “Daylight,” I assumed it was about Warren’s dissolving marriage. The breakup had hit Warren hard and I assume he was unsure of how to deal with the art that came out of it. Because while Warren is a musician and deep thinker, he’s also – and pardon me for sounding like a cliché, but it’s true – a father first. He’s also a student of family dynamics. (You saw DO IT AGAIN, right?) He’s spent a lifetime contemplating his own upbringing – the Zanes clan has never been mistaken for the Cleavers – and I know his desire was never to drop an emotional music bomb on his boys.

That’s what’s so perfect about “That’s All There Is” and so many of the so-called breakup songs on this record. There is the “Here, My Dear” school of breakup records and then there’s “Daylight.” What Warren does is chronicle a universal experience (breakup, midlife crisis) without naming names. It never feels mean or petty. I assume with a little distance, Warren realized that these songs were too good to keep to himself and they also were not damaging to his kids. That’s why you can now buy a copy of “Daylight.”

What does the album sound like? Those of you who saw DO IT AGAIN know that we featured several songs from Warren’s previous solo albums in the film. He’s one of those rare people (along with Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan) who thrives as both an historian/critic and a musician. He has a great pop sensibility and understands the importance of a juicy hook. That’s evident on songs like “Would it Be Wrong to Love You” and “Nothing to Do Now.” In other places, Warren has stripped down his sound, emphasizing his voice and acoustic-instruments to make the record feel more intimate than his previous albums.

So go buy “Daylight.” Warren barely plays out. He’s a grown man with children and he’s never going to be a rock star. (Despite getting blurbs from Tom Petty and Cameron Crowe on this disc.) But he deserves to be heard. And he deserves our support as a member of the DO IT AGAIN family.

Sometime this fall, a group of PBS stations will roll out our 60-minute version of DO IT AGAIN. Here’s the tease that will be used to plug the program.

No need to bury the lead here. We’ve received our first wave of commitments for the one-hour, Public Broadcasting Service version of DO IT AGAIN. It’s an exciting group of stations in eight markets: Boston, Austin, Atlanta, Connecticut, Wichita, Oregon, Louisiana and Hawaii. I expect it’ll be shown sometime in the fall. We’d love to add more stations. The challenge, for affiliates, is paying the syndication fee to show DO IT AGAIN. A bunch of programmers let us know they’d love to buy in, but there simply isn’t money available for syndication. That means you should continue writing, begging, and pleading for DO IT AGAIN. And here’s an idea: Make a pledge promise contingent on their picking up the program. In some cases, their broadcast fee is as little as $500.

I’d also suggest that fans of the film let Ray Davies know they would love to be able to buy a DVD or see the longer version of the film on European, commercial cable or in movie theaters. Ray is an immensely busy guy. He’s programming festivals, overseeing reissue campaigns, executive producing films, teaching and writing his own music. As far as we know, he hasn’t watched DO IT AGAIN yet, as much as I’ve been begging and nagging him to. For us to move forward on anything beyond public television, we need his thumbs up.

But even if we don’t get it, we’re so thrilled to be coming to these PBS markets. It’s now been just over three years since Rob and I started filming with a couple of college kids, a single camera and not a single person committed to appearing in our doc. So much has happened. And I, for one, could never have imagined we would end up with a nationally broadcast fim.

And as I’ve said so many times, there is no way we could have made it without your support. Through Kickstarter, through poster and t-shirt donations, through private parties held to raise money, through an unexpected check slipped to me at a party or after a festival screening… That cash made DO IT AGAIN possible. Many of you will realize how much we remember your help when the credits roll sometime this fall and you see your name flash across the tv screen.

It’s a thrilling time to be a Kinks fan. Fantastic reissues. Meltdown. And a few weeks of a truce – or at least silence – from Ray and Dave, raising at least the specter of two brothers reuniting in one way or another to celebrate the brilliant music they created together.

For those of you eager to see “Do It Again” now that our film festival run is over, there is good news. American Public Television, which distributes programming to PBS station across the country, has agreed to take us on. That’s why we’ve been so busy. Rob and assistant editor Missy turned our 85-minute festival into a (cuss-free) hour-long version. We did this in anticipation of our big day. That day has arrived.

Later today, APT hosts its closed-circuit “offer” broadcast for the roughly 175 public stations in the world. Some programmers will watch this teleconference live. Others will tape and watch it later.

What hangs in the balance? For “Do It Again,” it’s the very chance to be seen on TV. We’re no lock. We have to get a number of PBS stations to sign on for the terms of our APT deal to kick in. How many? It’s hard to tell. Bigger stations are weighed more, money-wise, than smaller ones. But everybody counts.

Our hero, as of now, is a man named Eric Luskin. He’s the vice president of syndication and premium service for APT and the guy making our pitch. Eric has decades of experience in public television, several Emmys to his name and knows how to make a sale. For our purposes, we’re pleased to know he plays bass and saw the Kinks in Philadelphia in the ‘90s.

So what can you do to help? We’re told that a respectful note to your local public television station can make a difference. Tell them you heard that “Do It Again” is available and, as a fan of that era of music, the Kinks, and the film if you’ve seen it, you would love to see it shown locally. Most of these stations have a viewer services department that can be called or e-mailed. Sending a personal letter, not an e-mail, to a programmer might also be a cool idea. So few people take the time to actually send letters these days.

We should know by early May whether we’ve been successful. And “Do It Again” could be shown on TV as early as July. Sitting here tonight, a good part of me has no idea whether we’ll be successful and reach the right folks at PBS. But I also can’t help but think of just how lucky we’ve been so far, how resourceful and passionate our fans have been, and how impossible it is to imagine this train grounding to a halt when we’re so close to being seen by a wider audience.

Even if he hadn’t come to a single screening, Bruce MacQueen would deserve a special thanks from the home office of “Do It Again.” Bruce shot some key footage when yours truly either respected his hero or wussed out. No worries. Bruce was there, with his camera. Which isn’t surprising, because Bruce is almost everywhere. In fact, he has now informed me that he’s heading to Wichita this week for our special screening and karaoke party. Very cool. Or disturbing. Or both. No, really, we love Bruce. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, and will have now traveled to Cleveland, London, New York and Kansas to check out “Do It Again.” That’s pretty special. And it’s a perfect time for me to slap on my journalist hat and find out a bit more about superman Bruce.

Bruce MacQueen is 56 and works as a property manager just outside Washington, D.C.

Q: When did you first get into the Kinks?
A: I knew of the Kinks hits on AM radio growing up in Wilmington, Delaware but didn’t really listen to them until graduating high school in 1972. I borrowed my friend’s brother’s “Kinks Kronikles” and was hooked. The first proper album I bought was “Preservation Act I” and “The Great Lost Kinks Album.” (I still need to return “Kinks Kronikles.”)
Q: How many times have you seen them play and what was your most memorable memory from a show?
A: Not as many times as others I’m sure. But I’d guess I saw them at least once every tour since 1973. I followed Ray around for multiple shows in the past few years. Most memorable? My wife would say that it was when I handed her my watch, wedding ring and wallet at Cobo Arena and told her, “Hold these! I’ll probably meet you outside!” and jumped on-stage and bear-hugged Ray!
Q: How many times have you traveled to see the Kast-Off Kinks?
A: These guys are a lot of fun! Including four Konvention appearances, I’ve flown to the UK for 15 of their shows in the past four years.
Q: How do you explain yourself to your wife?
A: She is a Stones / Rod Stewart fan but is very understanding and knew of my preference for the Kinks before we were married.
Q: Why are you crazy enough to go see Do It Again a fourth time?
A: Besides the free tickets and beer, it’s a great movie and lots of fun to see the crowd reaction, whether or not they are fans.
Q: What are your most prized Kinks possessions?
A: That’s a toss up between a guitar & T-shirt I have had signed by almost everyone in the band. But Dave and Ray are not together on either!
Q: Will they or won’t they… do you hold out any hope Ray and Dave will play together again? If you were in charge, how would set up a reunion. Would it be a concert? Recordings? Tell us your master plan.
A: I think Ray is hopeful it could happen and realizes his age and mortality. That’s what I credit his creative spurt and fairly relentless touring of late to. I also think he talks about it to stir up media attention and to wind up Dave. I believe that Dave thinks and sees the world differently and doesn’t feel the need to get together for any reason.
If it were to plan a reunion, I’d do a limited number of dates and bring the whole range of band members from over the life of the band and cover the entire scope of their discography. I loved them all! Give the people what they want!!

Good news. We’ve been offered a chance to create a 57-minute version of the film for a nationally syndicated series of broadcasts. But there is a downside. This is for public television, which doesn’t pay very much. (But does offer us a chance to show the film to lots and lot of folks.)

Cutting an 85 minute documentary to 57 minutes will take some work. We anticipate two, very intense weeks of 20 hour days in the editing chamber. To broadcast, we also have to get something called error and omissions insurance and pay to lay our new cut onto an HDCam tape.

I estimate the whole thing will cost between $7,000 and $10,000.

I’m not going to create a Kickstarter campaign for this sum because I want to reserve that idea for a larger need. What’s that? Our major hope is to get approval from the record companies to license “Do It Again” for DVD/download and wider broadcast. We’re waiting on our request.

In the meantime, we want to create this shorter cut.

Can you help? If so, I’m going to accept paypal contributions at gedgers@mac.com or checks at my home address. (Write me at gedgers@mac.com for that.)

What can you gain? We’re going to offer a few of our collectibles and, much in the spirit of Kickstarter, an awards system.

$50 gets you a signed, 12-by-18 “Do It Again” poster OR a limited edition, signed 45 record (it plays!) of “Victoria/Big Sky” recorded by Figgs leader Mike Gent. The record also includes original art by our poster man Dave Plunkert.

$50 also gets you a signed DVD if “Do It Again” is released on DVD. I don’t want to mislead anybody. There is a chance it’ll come out on DVD. There’s a chance it won’t. If you contribute to this, you’ll have to accept there’s a chance we don’t get released. (And you can always turn your reward in for another gift.)

For $75, you get a signed copy of my Beatles or Elvis children’s books for kids, ages 8 to 12.

For $90, one of our remaining “Do It Again” t-shirts. I only have about three medium and two large left.

For $200, I’ll add your name to the credits for “Do It Again.” Just beware… we may not get long credits for our TV cut. If that’s the case, I’ll add you to our IMDB listing.

For $300, you get one of our 10 remaining, full-size “Do It Again” posters. I’ll sign it or I won’t. You decide.

For $1,000 – and airfare, lodging – I will bring “Do It Again” and outtakes from the film to your home for a private screening. We did this in Los Angeles earlier this year and it was great fun. I’ll even put you in touch with Steve, who hosted us, to give a full accounting of the experience.

For $1,000, you can get a one-of-a-kind, full size “Do It Again” poster signed by Sting and Zooey Deschanel.

For $1,500, you get the acoustic guitar that Dave Davies plays in “Do It Again.”

For whatever you can give – $1, $10, $100 – we remain eternally grateful.

This weekend, “Do It Again” plays six times at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square. But if you have a choice, come to the Friday night, 7 p.m. show. Director Rob and I will be there to introduce the movie, conduct a post-screening Q & A and then I’ll be hanging around for what the Brattle is calling a Kinks party. It’s really a two-hour disc of super-hot Kinks clips as curated by St. Louis master collector Jim Napoli. The performances take us from the Cavern Club in the early ’60s to the video for “Do It Again,” one of my MTV-favorites.

I can’t say we’re going to sell out, but you never know. So go here to purchase tickets ahead of time.