| The Open Mouth - 05-15-09 |
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The Open Mouth: A Bi-Weekly Crash of All Forms of Music Video This Week: Groupies (D: Ron Dorfman/Peter Nevard, 1970) ILV's exclusive column from Blake Carlisle of End of An Ear Records, Austin's main source for eccentric, ecstatic, experimental & reckless outsider music & video. This week, Toothpaste Fetish Girls Bull-Whipped by Jimmy Page...
Groupies (Dir. Ron Dorfman / Peter Nevard, 1970) By 1970, people were starting to get really high. If you need to be reminded, watch Groupies. This documentary is a great unbiased portrait of both male and female starfuckers who linger around in a surreal, alternate, neon-lit universe. Most of them tell their stories to the camera in overbearing, drunken, completely delusional states of mind. It makes me wonder how insane a documentary like this would be if it was made today. You know there would be way more insane stories, way worse shit than had been invented in 1970! This movie features lots of great footage of bands including Ten Years After, Terry Reid, and Spooky Tooth. There's also footage of Joe Cocker, but I wasn't all that stoked about that. There's lots of scenes of girls out of their heads on schwag bud talking about how cool it would be to screw Led Zeppelin. In a part filmed in San Francisco, we get to see some real train-wreck male groupies going after Terry Reid's band. They get denied, but not before they blow your mind by showing you how drunk and luded-out you can be in high heels and a mohair coat with bleeding cuts on your face. This part of the movie is really out there and fun. For some reason, the directors of this movie liked watching girls brush their teeth. The best one of these scenes has an extremely hungover and out-of-it girl talking about getting whipped with a bullwhip by Jimmy Page while blue Crest toothpaste foam gathers around her mouth. The guys in Spooky Tooth play pretty mediocre hard rock and try to act cool with the chicks, but come off like inexperienced wankers. The girls who make up the Plaster Caster gang prove to be too much for them. When they try to make a mold of the singer's schlong he makes a weird whimpering sound like he's in pain. Apparently Jimi Hendrix was the biggest and they've got the trophy to prove it. All the parts with Alvin Lee from Ten Years After seem like he's so stoned that he's about to pass out. He rambles on about something, but you can't really understand him, which is all right with me. The footage of them playing live is great. They do an awesome version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" that's about as heavy as any rock music that had been made by anyone by at that point. They're totally the highlight of this movie. You get the vibe that they were the band that all kids who were really into rock music really liked at that time. It's not hard to see why, and Alvin Lee might have been one of the most severely underrated guitarists of the 70's. One of the parts in this movie shows a girl named Iris getting sent home to her parents on a plane after she's been partying at the beach with the guys from several different bands. She's about 15 years old. Groupies set the pace for other rock excess docs like Cocksucker Blues. This movie has a little more innocence though and doesn't seem so end of the road. In one half-second long shot, a girl is holding up the first Stooges album and smiling. It's a very haunting shot. One lady claims that Crosby, Stills, and Nash are really musicians (could have fooled me). Watch for the crazy blond girl who never shuts up and gets on everyone's nerves, she's great. |
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