Do It Again

Tonight, we’ve got an important broadcast on Philadelphia’s WHYY. Watch it, tell your friends to watch it and then write into the network and tell them how much you loved the film. (Those of you who don’t love DO IT AGAIN, send me that note… I’ll make sure it gets to, ahem, the proper authorities.)

Thanks to the good folks at the Philadelphia Inquirer, today’s broadcast comes with quite a nice preview. Oregon PBS plays us Jan. 1 and we’re still waiting for word on our broadcast date for Hawaii, though it seems likely for mid-January.

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.

The latest Dave interview tells us that there could be a reunion, provided it only requires Ray and Dave to hang out for an hour. In other words, don’t count on it. I know these stories periodically emerge and I try to ignore most of them. But why not float Dave’s quote out there: “I love my brother, I just can’t stand to be with him.”

I’m a big Beach Boys guy, or Brian Wilson guy. And that’s why I’m still kind of stunned that I hold a genuine pre-release copy of the SMiLE box in my paws. For the uninitiated, SMiLE is the most famous record that never came out. This is what Brian created after “Pet Sounds” and for a variety of reasons – we won’t get into them here – the album was shelved in 1967. It didn’t just end the competition between the Beach Boys and Beatles. It really marked the end of Brian as a vital creative force. It would take years before he could even really crawl out of bed and back into the studio. That’s SMiLE. As I explore the box – which I’m writing about for the Boston Globe, hence I get it to check it out before the November release – I think of how it relates to the Kinks. So much of what Brian Wilson recorded has been unreleased. SMiLE. Landlocked. Adult Child. Sweet Insanity. The Paley Sessions. And countless unreleased songs. If I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit that some of these songs are godawful. Brian basically singing for cheeseburgers, his voice reduced to a hoarse groan by chain-smoked cigarettes. Yet I love these sessions. They feel so special because of how I discovered them, from other fans, on the original Napster, in record stores on trips to New York. Even if you paid $29 for Brian’s unreleased big band record, you felt as if you were getting a secret widow into the creative process and the psyche (for better or worse) of a tortured genius. Wait. Is there another tortured genius in the house? Are you listening Ray? We’ve all got our favorite Kinks bootlegs and outtakes. But what if whole slabs of Kinks history were relegated to the archives? Imagine if Preservation Act ! and 2 were an unassembled, unconnected group of boots we had to guess our way through? Because as SMiLE reaches my door, I’m feeling a weird sadness that it actually exists in released form. It’s like when the Red Sox finally won the World Series. It felt unbelievable in the moment but you were left thinking… what next?

Of course, Ray is no Brian Wilson. He’s not about to get bullied by his bandmates or the record company wankers. You don’t like my new record? Kiss my arse. That’s Ray. That’s why, instead of cobbling together the rock opera chapter of Kinks history, we’ve got the material in front of us, sequenced, remixed and presented in full.

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.

So wouldn’t you know… we need your help again! DO IT AGAIN – I’ve taken to caps locking it because that’s what industry folks seem to do – is now being offered for syndication by American Public Television. Eight markets have picked us up. But a couple of other big ones – Philadelphia and Chicago – want to but say they can’t afford to pay for the broadcast fee. If you care about getting programs on the air that don’t involve Regis or obese people forced to weep as they step on scales or Travis Tritt, we are calling on you. Philly, for example, would show DO IT AGAIN if we can get 20 folks to sign on as patrons of WHYY for $100 each. I’m sure Chicago would do the same. And what can I do to make the idea more enticing? We’ll offer you DIA merch for signing up with the stations. I’ll also offer to call you, at your convenience, and talk to you about the Kinks, the making of this film, the Red Sox rotation, anything and everything. Because as you might guess, it means a lot to me to get this film seen widely. Want to help? Write me at gedgers@mac.com and we can start chatting.

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.

It’s hard to know where to start our thank you. I came to Wichita for the first time in October. I found a small but growing film festival run by passionate, organized, fun people. I found a city that’s not so sure of itself but, if it were to step back, might find it has quite a bit going on. And I found an audience that loved our film, laughed at the right parts and gave us the kind of feedback we needed to realize that “Do It Again” would play well outside London, New York and Boston.

And that was before Tallgrass and Go Wichita!, sparked in part by the viral spread of my travel story, cooked up an innovative and inspiring plan to bring us back. That return came last week, as my family and I were flown to town, put up at the Courtyard Marriott Old Town, treated to the most delicious doughnuts we’ve ever had, bundt cakes, a special dinner, and a glorious, post-screening breakfast (and daily root beers) at the Tasty. Friday night, we showed “Do It Again” at the Orpheum, raising enough money to pay a chunk of our TV cut budget.

So today, when editor Missy called to ask about credits as she was making a final pass, I told her of a few folks to slice off the list and a couple of important entries to add. We’re going to thank the “Community of Wichita” and the Tallgrass Film Festival in those credits. And if I had more space, I’d thank, by name, Ann Keefer, Lela Meadow-Conner, Nick “Help!” Pope, Arietta Austin, Gretchen Mitchell, Mike Marlett, Shan Jabara, Marta McKim, Stephanie Galicia, Kathy Schlegel Deane, Jedd Beaudoin, Kari Schmidt, Marcia Scurfield, Jeff Emerson, Francine Fairweather…. I could go on. Wait. I will. I should thank Mary Turner for finding us Saturday night at Watermark Books without a ride and promptly popping us into her Scion for a return to the Doughnut Whole. Or Mark, in town visiting his cardiologist, who met us at the screening, took us to the zoo the next morning and hung with us all day. I could go on and on and on.

But I better stop. Because we’ve got an edit to finish. Rob tells me I’ve got to watch the 57-minute cut he’s created and, that, of course, we can’t add anything in. I’ve got to negotiate with National for a reasonable sound mix fee. And I’ve got to pop a couple of envelopes in the mail to the E & O dudes to make sure we can get our insurance policy in place before long. That’s the business side. I can’t imagine Carlene, Lila and I (Calvin gets a pass, he probably won’t remember much about the week) will ever forget the warmth and hospitality and just the chance to watch “Do It Again” one more time on that big screen. We may not be back for a while, but I’d like to think we’ve taken a bit of Wichita back home to Boston.

So with love and continued admiration, I say…

Thank you Wichita and if you visit Boston and need a place to stay, we’ve got a full second bathroom, and a futon on the third floor…

Geoff