"Boy George & Culture Club": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1arIh7WCkU 1 There's only one problem with this movie...IT'S MISSING THE THIRD ACT! Forget the reunification like in "Behind the Music," all those years after the band stopped having hits, what happened then? I was surprised that wasn't covered in the movie. And I was also surprised how great this documentary is. A lot of times your mind is drifting while watching these retrospective documentaries, you know so much, it's hagiography, but this film... Funny how's it entitled "Boy George & Culture Club," because that was an issue, delineated well in the film, how Boy George ended up dominating and overwhelming the other three. And it does cover George's descent into heroin addiction, but what happened over the decades after that? That's always fascinating to me, when you can walk the streets without bodyguards, when you're not exactly a has-been, but the mania has moved on to others. And there was mania for Culture Club. When people talk about the explosion of MTV, the wiping away of the old and the replacement with the new, they always focus on Duran Duran, with their expensive, exotic videos. And that was all great, but Culture Club was there first. It was Culture Club that not only broke from what was, but also broke MTV. It's hard to believe, but MTV was once exotic. Not everybody had it. It was rolled out market by market. Such that when you went to someone's house and they had access, you stared at the TV for hours. And Culture Club is when the script flipped. Culture Club was broken by MTV, not radio, a paradigm that continued for decades, to the point new MTV-centric Top 40 stations appeared on the FM dial and the old AOR rockers either collapsed, like KMET, or moved into oldies or... It was a whole new world. Demi was the one who turned me on to Culture Club. I was at their house in the afternoon, probably ready to go to Los Tacos with Freddy, as we were doing every day at that time, and Culture Club appeared on the screen and she got excited, started waxing rhapsodic about Boy George's clothing. Meanwhile, the song... "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"...was confounding. We'd come from the era of bombastic rock, this was more akin to what came earlier, nearly twenty years before, but with a reggae beat. I mean how could this guy have such a sweet voice? Even back then we thought it was a trick, long before Pro Tools and AutoTune, never mind Suno, could make anybody a singer in any style. Now once Culture Club broke, the gates opened and a slew of English acts blew in. We had lasting ones, like the Eurythmics, and those that seemed to go as fast as they came, everybody from Haircut 100 to T'Pau to Spandau Ballet... Something was happening across the pond, and it wasn't the old farts, but young 'uns, who seemed to be living the life of Carnaby Street with a twist. Fashion was a key element. And it was bright in a way that rock had been dark. And there was no equivalent in the U.S. This music was both accessible and exotic. Fashion was a key element. You purchased "The Face" on import to see what was going on. When you went to see these acts live, the audience looked like those on stage, and... It all started with Boy George. 2 What is utterly fascinating in this film is the charisma of Boy George. Stay around long enough and acts are baked into their success, their role as stars, many are still hanging on decades later. But Boy George? He's sui generis. Never been someone like him before and never since. He's very endearing without being cloying. He doesn't want to be your best friend but you know if you ran into him he'd be open and nice. And he's self-deprecating. What a breath of fresh air! Everybody else is myth-making and this guy is owning his drama and his faux pas and laughing about it. Usually the leader of the band fights back, settles old scores, tries to prove they're worthy, never mind respectable. But not Boy George. The thing about George is he was going nowhere. And worked in a clothing store. Today, for years since, clothing and image have been key. Look at Billie Eilish! A manufactured look, and when she changed it, her audience went berserk. But this is who Boy George was. There was nothing made up or fake about it. And it was clear he had a good voice, and as a result he was pulled into Bow Wow Wow and then pushed out, for hogging the mic, for being himself. So different from the U.S., where everybody plays it safe to stay on the ride. Get booted and usually it's the end. But George didn't seem to care, never mind not being bitter about his exit, he admits he deserved it! And from there he runs into Mikey Craig in a club, and the bass player asks him if he wants to form a group. And rather than foaming at the mouth or being standoffish, George says sure, he was going with the flow, there was no five or ten year plan, like there's been with musical acts for years now. So they get a guitar player who they replace with Roy Hay, but... Jon Moss comes in as the drummer. It's been well-documented that George had a thing for Jon, but stunningly, Jon owns it in this movie. How when he encounters George he's entranced, even though he never swung that way before. And most of the lyrics are written by George to or about Jon. Did Jon still care about him after they'd gained fame, with all its attendant opportunities? And George owns how he was insecure, that he didn't know how to have a relationship, he had no models in his life. 3 Now I won't say they were handing out record deals to everybody, but back in England in the early eighties it wasn't that heavy a lift. Now KEEPING your record deal, that was hard. Culture Club signs with Virgin and are going to be dropped, but "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" becomes a hit, even though George doesn't want it to be released (but laughs about how he was wrong), and the juggernaut begins. And oh, what a juggernaut it was. It wasn't quite Beatlemania, but an eighties version thereof. Unlike so many image-heavy groups, the songs stood up, they transcended the clothing. Which made the act even more enticing. So you're watching this movie and... You're brought right back to the era. It's palpable. How we were alive and optimistic. Sure, many were disillusioned that Reagan had become president, but you were not consumed with politics 24/7, you could take your eye off the ball and live your life. And you still believed you could get to the destination. In an era where you bought the albums and played them, knew them by heart. And the bands didn't start in arenas, I remember seeing the Eurythmics at the Hollywood Palace, even though their hit was monstrous. You were there on the way up. And you were either in the club or not. It was kind of akin to the sixties when either you grew your hair long or you didn't. Either you sat by the sidelines or you jumped in. And once Culture Club and the English acts broke through, both youngsters and oldsters threw off their shackles and embraced this new sound and its hedonistic mores. Not that it was only hedonism. Although uneducated, Boy George is smart. He can opine on not only his career, but the world around him. Which is a far cry from today's barely pubescent acts looking to become brands. As for what they were selling... Think about it, an obviously gay front man, dressed out of your grandmother's closet on steroids, was singing these sweet tunes... And they were not identical. My favorite Culture Club song is "Church of the Poison Mind," which actually opens up this film, my jaw dropped. It's not like the song is obscure, but as time goes by usually only the monster smashes are remembered, focused upon. And they do cover "Karma Chameleon"... George knows this is a hit, but the rest of the band thinks it's too soft. And there's mention of Mikey's bass lines and if you can't say Culture Club was pushing the envelope musically, you can say that they brought together so many different strands of music and melded them together into something new and appealing. The tropes of yore... The long hair, the guitar solos...they were nowhere in evidence. Now they did reappear cloaked in spandex at the end of the eighties, as every hard rock act sang a ballad they hoped would be a hit, but that was after the power of MTV was established. George and the crew weren't thinking about world domination, they knew what breaking in America meant, and how difficult it was to do, but really, they got strapped to a jet and flew around the world and worked 24/7 until they burned out. That's what outsiders aren't aware of, the work involved. They see the recording and the releases and the tour in their country, but all the interviews, the radio appearances, getting up at the crack of dawn needing to be upbeat and friendly even though you were on stage and partying until the wee hours the night before... It's a job. That causes you to do drugs just to cope. It burns you out. And then George starts hanging with Marilyn... God, I haven't thought of Marilyn in years! Another failed music business hype. The most cutting edge thing about him was his name, but we only read about Marilyn in the press, we see him here, and he looks like some guy who sat in the back of your high school class. 4 So this is the rocket ship. This is a peek into the early to mid-eighties. I kept looking at the bar at the bottom of the screen, seeing how much time was left, when were they going to go deep into the denouement... But they didn't. It peaks and then... Ultimately they get back together and go on the road and... That's not satisfying enough for me, that's forty years gone by, quite a life! And the truth is this is a promotional flick. Primary Wave acquired a stake in Culture Club's assets and created this film to amplify earnings. This paradigm started with the Amy Winehouse movie, which is the Holy Gail of these docs, especially about latter-day groups, but the thing about this Culture Club movie is... IT WAS NEVER BORING! My mind didn't drift, I was positively entranced. Because I'd been there. And it felt like a badge of honor, having lived through something. Also, it was inspiring, as to future possibilities. But it was quite an era. And this film encapsulates it. If you were there, you'll love it. -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
