Do It Again

We’ve raised enough to put the Mike Gent “Victoria/Big Sky” 45 into production. But I do need some more cash to break even on my maiden adventure into the record biz. The first 50 records – on sale for $50 each – will be numbered and signed by Gent, artist Dave Plunkert, “Do It Again” director Robert Patton-Spruill and me. As always, just email me at gedgers@mac.com or paypal me at the same e-ddress.

I’ll post a series of photos showing the wonderful, multi-fold design in the next few days. But for now, the big tease is to provide a couple of 30-second clips of Gent’s re-recordings.

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Sure, it was nice sharing “Do It Again” with the folks at the Nashville Film Festival – and particularly meeting a 14-year-old music savant from Chattanooga named Isaac – but my best memory of Music City had to be hanging with Ray Kennedy.

He’s the master producer who formed one half of the Twangtrust with Steve Earle. The Trust produced, along with a slew of Lucinda Williams and Earle records, one of my favorite albums of all time, 6 String Drag’s “High Hat”. Ray’s also a great musician in his own right with a wonderful, Merle Haggard of a growl. I’d love to hear him record another solo record.

I first connected with Ray because he co-produced the last Ray Davies record, “Working Man’s Cafe,” and I was so pleased with the results. What’s his skill? To me, it boils down to Ray having a way of making everybody sound natural. There’s certainly a wonderful crunch to his sound, at times, but there are other records he’s worked on that are almost bare. Great producers, I think, are like great editors. They’re self-confident enough that they don’t need to leave thick fingerprints over a song. (Unlike, say, Mitchell Froom or Jeff Lynne.) In a way, the great producer is there to make us forget about the process and focus entirely on the artist

Pretty early on, I figured I wouldn’t have time to meet Ray in person. The film festivals are pretty demanding, with mixing-and-mingling, attempts to catch particular movies, and the race to the free buffet.

Then it dawned on me. I heard Peter Noone was in town, so I tried to find him. Something seemed delicious about recruiting him to go to see DIA. But I couldn’t get to him. Then I met the extremely hairy Oak Ridge Boy-slash-artist named William Lee Golden in the hospitality tent. I’m not really a fan of his music or his art, which is kind of a cross between Leroy Neiman and Bob Timberlake, but it seemed amusing to go up to him, stare in his eyes, and tell him how much I admired his work, which I did. I kind of wanted to tell my friends back in Boston I’d met an Oak Ridge Boy.

But it showed me how absurd it was to meet Golden and not get out to Ray’s studio. I called and he said, come on by.

My pal Liesl, a fantastic singer who worked on the Full Frame staff, lives in Nashville and said she could swing by in her truck and take me over to Ray’s studio.

The first thing you notice when you walk in is the wall of guitars. He’s got a 1959 Fender Jazz Bass proto-type that was the first four-string used by the Everly Brothers, a 1961 Les Paul SG purchased from John Fogerty, a 1955 Strat (the second year ever made), a 1951 Fender No Caster (pre-Telecaster), a 1964 Rickenbacker 330 electric 12 string… you get the picture.

He also showed us the 1950 Gibson J-200 that Ray Davies played all over “Working Man’s Cafe.”

Here’s a picture of Ray with the guitar:

Ray also has lots of guns, one of which he let me point at the studio wall. He let us into his “tent,” which is in the middle of the room with the studio controls, and played a promising track by a group called Edens Edge.

I was lucky enough to have Ray come to the screening and he seemed genuinely impressed, which meant a lot to me because I know he wouldn’t have told me he liked the film if he didn’t like it. We went out for a midnight dinner and talked Kinks and family and a bunch of other things. It was great conversation, great sweet potato fries and made me glad I’d stepped away from the festival one night to hang with Ray Kennedy.

Reviews are nice. You can blurb them and feel good that someone with authority is justifying your creation. But there’s another level of feedback that can be just as gratifying. Those emerge from the personal connections you make showing a film. Take my experience Saturday at our Nashville screening.

I didn’t know what to think when the first question in the Q & A came from a kid in the front row. And I mean a kid. Isaac, 14, had come with his mom and younger brother. If I was worried, my fears disappeared as soon as he launched his question.

Isaac wanted to know about the details surrounding the footage we acquired from Peter Quaife. He followed that with another doozy, noting that in our early poster drafts we had featured the name ‘Paul McCartney’ yet he was nowhere in the film. Early poster drafts? This kid was really watching. I explained how Paul’s manager blocked our plans to use our footage.

After the film got out, I met Isaac, his brother and their mom, who had driven them the two-plus hours from Chattanooga to see our film. I ended up handing him a 12-by-18 poster for free, yet somehow that seemed like not enough for the amount of devotion he’d shown us.

We also screened in Phoenix this month. Rob and I couldn’t make the show. But I received this wonderful email from somebody who did. I asked – and she agreed – to let me reprint it. So here’s Erica…

“I’m just another kid from Arizona – just some office-worker in advertising that took a free pass to the Phoenix film festival. I went with my friend to see Do It Again. I had no idea what the movie was about, and couldn’t name a Kinks song to save my life. I have incredibly questionable music taste for someone who is supposed to be a hip 27-year old and a purveyor of pop culture. However, I found your movie riveting. I was glued to the screen and became so attached to all the characters and your quest. In fact, my girlfriend and I cried near the end during your one on one with Dave. So kudos on a fantastic film. I hope it does really well and gets a big showing. Just know that I went home, and went on iTunes and enjoyed the Kinks. So, you’ve already won me over.

Thank you.

Erica”

We were lucky enough to have photographer Hathir Pfau at Full Frame documenting our post-screening experience. She’s posted the photos for a slide show and they’re great.

Click here.

Huffington Post
Stewart Nusbaumer
Blogging on Film Festival Circuit
Posted: April 13, 2010 02:01 PM
Film Review: Do It Again
Getting a hold of this film is like wresting an octopus. You are out-manned, with weird tentacles coming at you from every direction. Although its face is moronic looking, you sense the beast is smart and sneaky. And definitely slippery.

Do It Again is a documentary that focuses on a middle-age man, Geoff Edgers, and his attempt to reunite his favorite musical group, the Kinks, a rock group from the British musical invasion of the 1960s. A journalist working at Boston Globe, Edgers is determined to realize his dream of bringing the group together.

Wait — that’s a real slacker intro, I need to start over.

Do It Again is a documentary about journalist Geoff Edgers slammed by job insecurity and punched by a mid-life crisis — the Big 40! Confronting the possibility of losing his house if not his sanity, Edgers copes with the stress and fear by morphing into a hilarious comedian who embraces the totally whacky idea of uniting a dysfunctional group of British misfits and pathetic screw-ups formerly called the Kinks.

Yes, that is better. But something bigger is going on with this celluloid octopus.

Do It Again is a documentary about the collapse of the American Dream and the desperate struggle of Americans to evade the middle-class barbecue, which those still with jobs call a recession. One precarious American, Geoff Edgers, a member of the torched profession of journalism, confronts the possibility of being burnt toast and flushed down the toilet of the American Nightmare by bending the boundaries of reality to embrace a whacky mission to reunite his favorite band, the Kinks.

That’s a little better. Still — oh, forget it.

The roadblock for Edgers to reunite the Kinks appears to be lead singer and chief songwriter Ray Davies, who is either totally nuts or a humongous ego blimp. Actually, he’s probably both. When the band was together, Davies spent more time pounding on his brother Ray than playing his guitar. On the other hand, none of this really matters. Do It Again is really about the hunter, not the hunted. It’s about Geoff Edgers stalking America and England to realize his dream of reuniting the four wackos.

Edgers is of course missing more than a few marbles himself. Sure the Kinks had a few big hits, but they were a second-tier group, and that is a kind evaluation. I lived through the 60s and beyond, and I don’t even remember the group. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t remember any groups. Anyway, don’t attempt to enlighten this heat-seeking missile programmed for mission target that his quest to reunite the four psychos is mission impossible and if possible then it is mission unworthy. There are times when one should just keep their mouth shut. Not that Edgers ever does.

The man is certainly self-absorbed — he can’t shut-up about reuniting the band — but his self-absorption is not ego-driven. For instance, when requesting the assistance of established musicians — Sting, Robyn Hitchcock, Paul Weller, Peter Buck, Zooey Deschanel, and eventually Dave Davies — his insistence upon singing with them is not because of ego. It’s the opposite. With ego blow torched by our American Dream slipping down the potty, self-defecation and embarrassing one’s self is natural. So with famous musicians, Edgers releases one of the world’s most horribly screeching, scrawny voices. He isn’t disturbed in the least.

With a goal that lies somewhere between ridiculous and worthless, it occurred to me that Edgers may have a hidden objective, one cleverly concealed behind the Kinks mission. It could even be something truly grandiose. Such as attempting to undermine human rationality and the social order … to turn us away from everything that made this country great — well, before the middle-class was cooked by the rich. On the other hand, I might be giving Edgers too much credit. Regardless, the man does bring magic to the screen.

His refusal to bend to practicality and middle-class conformity and common sense had the strong and strange effect of skyrocketing the mood of the capacity audience at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in Durham, North Carolina. Soon they were cheering for this man who was demanding life on his terms — clearly an alien concept in modern America. About three-quarters the way through the film, the audience was radiating an odd glow. It had turned envious of the crazy man. By the end, Geoff Edgers had transformed himself into a cute poster boy for the mentally insane.

It’s true, this man is dangerous to America as we know it.

Directed by Robert Patton-Spruill, Do It Again is a hilarious romp and clever distraction from a crumbling America and the middle class barbecue. In fact, this film is more. Like a sneaky octopus, it wraps you up, and when squeezing the laughter out of you, out flies a picture of your life. When leaving the theater, I couldn’t help but think I had taken a wrong road in one of those forks of life. The road that does not laugh enough. The one that does not allow anything between the ridiculous and the worthless. And I thought, I need to work on that.

When it’s time for a break, take a good one. Watch Do It Again.

This review is a piece of art in itself, with language blasting forward with little regard for slow readers. And I even get called “a cute poster boy for the mentally insane.”

Exclusive: Sting, Zooey Deschanel rock new Kinks doc “Do It Again”

BY SEAN O’CONNELL

The Kinks, to me, were a second-tier rock outfit. That’s not a slight against the band. Several of their hits, from “Lola,” “All Day and All of the Night” and “Tired of Waiting for You” to “You Really Got Me,” became part of pop culture’s conscience. They just never attained the same level of popularity and mainstream success as legendary first-tier rockers The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones or The Who.

Geoff Edgers would disagree. The Boston Globe reporter views The Kinks as one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. And with his 40th birthday fast approaching — the milestone of the mid-life crisis — Edgers sets a personal and professional goal. He’s going to reunite the four original members of the band, including feuding brothers Ray and Dave Davies, who haven’t spoken in years.

Robert Patton-Spruill’s documentary “Do It Again,” which trails Edgers on his impossible quest, screened to a raucous crowd last night at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. And while official awards won’t be handed out until Sunday, the lively and personable “Do It Again” earns a special achievement award as the best film I’ve seen so far at the fest.

“Again” dives into the volatile history of the British rock outfit, who admit to sabotaging their career every time fame came knocking. Most of the battles are attributed to lead singer and chief songwriter Ray Davies’ pride and ego, which struck sour notes with brother Dave.

But the film, as all good docs do, draws us into Edgers’ personal mission, and we suffer as this journalist deals with salary cuts at his unstable job and wince as Ray (and his publicity associates) plays hard-to-get with Edgers’ dream.

Others play along, however. Edgers’ status as a journalist buys him face time with rockers who happen to be big fans of The Kinks and want to see the brothers reunited. Sting, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, actress/musician Zooey Deschanel, Robyn Hitchcock, Paul Weller, and, eventually, Dave Davies, open up for Patton-Spruill’s cameras, recollecting their favorite Kinks songs and contemplating on the emotional forces that eventually drive bands apart. In an entertaining Q-and-A following the screening, Edgers revealed that $15,000 of his film’s $125,000 went to former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, a member of rock royalty, who eventually blocked his involvement in the project.

“Do It Again” doesn’t suffer from McCartney’s absence. It’s a rollicking trip through music history, and a worthy personal journey too many of us will be able to relate to. And Edgers capped everyone’s evening off with a live performance by The Kinksmen — a famous Kinks cover band — in the famed Carolina Theater. It was an ideal tribute to an energetic evening, and a highlight of the ongoing fest.

Do It Again

(Documentary) A Filmshack presentation of a Loneliest Monk Prods. production. (International sales: Loneliest Monk, Arlington, Mass.) Produced by Geoff Edgers. Executive producers, Josh Struzziery, Jeffrey Currie. Co-producer, Patricia Moreno. Directed by Robert Patton-Spruill. Written by Geoff Edgers.

With: Geoff Edgers, Warren Zanes, Pete Quaife, Clive Davis, Mick Avory, Robyn Hitchcock, Paul Weller, Shel Talmey, Zooey Deschanel, Sting, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Bob Henrit, Dave Davies.

By JAY WEISSBERG
The goal becomes less important than the obsession in “Do It Again,” director Robert Patton-Spruill’s good-natured docu about one man’s quest to bring the Kinks back together. Ultimate fan Geoff Edgers turns his midlife crisis into a personal crusade, doggedly pursuing his dream of reuniting “the greatest band ever,” despite the key players’ unwillingness to speak to each other. This mania becomes the film’s focus, resulting in a crowdpleaser that will connect even with auds unfamiliar with the Kinks’ legacy. Festgoers will be cheered, while ancillary play should rack up more supporters.
Boston Globe reporter Edgers is the kind of guy who talks about his high school years as if nothing will ever be as good again; this juvenile element about him can be wearying, and may turn off some viewers. However, most will go along with his quest, largely because he’s so passionately tenacious, against all odds. Main stumbling block is that band founders (and brothers) Ray and Dave Davies loathe each other, while some other former members are less than amicable.

Docu foregrounds Edgers’ persistent, all-American personality, having him address the camera while doing household chores and allowing auds to eavesdrop on uncomfortable conversations between Edgers and his wife about the family’s rocky finances. Before even getting to the Davies brothers, he attempts contact with anyone in their circle, receiving mostly curt rejections but occasionally winning over musicians and agents long enough to get some good quotes.

Edgers’ habit of requesting jam sessions during interviews can make him seem painfully like a teen who knows no boundaries, though there’s a very nice moment with Sting (always a gentleman).

In the end, of course, there’s still no Kinks reunion, and the nearest Edgers gets to Ray Davies is at an annual Kinks fan convention in London. But he does interview Dave Davies in a surprisingly clear-headed discussion. Warren Zanes, formerly of the del Fuegos, provides a skeptical but ultimately supportive voice of reason, understanding Edgers’ need to pursue his obsession but warning against a total plunge into madness.

Helmer Patton-Spruill is no stranger to music docus (“Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome”), but he recognizes this is more about Edgers than the Kinks, so hardcore fans wanting rare concert footage and the like may be disappointed. The final song, a homemade performance of Al Yankovic’s adaptation of “Lola,” is alone worth the price of admission.

Editing maintains the energy and mood, even as Edgers comes to grips with the futility of his cause.

Camera (color, video), Patton-Spruill, Brad Allen Wilde, Beecher Cotton; editor, Wilde; music, Ray Davies, David Davies, Mike Gent, Yo La Tengo, She & Him; sound, Lowell Meyer, Alexandra LoCastro, Jon Howarth, Scott Johnston, Paul Graff. Reviewed at Rotterdam Film Festival (Spectrum), Jan. 31, 2010. Running time: 85 MIN.

Now the going gets weird. Certainly, I knew the News & Observer, in my beloved Raleigh, was writing a profile. But somehow, seeing it in e-print is a different matter. I worked at the N & O for five-plus years. That’s what makes being profiled by the N & O so surreal. It’s a great story by Josh Shaffer, though I may be biased. At least Rob gets to call me annoying, though it should be noted that he was suffering from a bout of food poisoning on the day of his interview. (Okay. The intestinal issues had nothing to do with his assessment.)

So with less than a week before our Full Frame screening which, I have to confess, petrifies me – Fletcher Hall has something like 1,000 seats – we have begun our media campaign in the Tarheel state. Now buy another ticket!

Sir Walter Raleigh

We were lucky enough to have Janet Macoska at the premiere. Here’s a picture of Lila before the screening and of Rob, me and Jim Henke at the post-film panel.