The wonderful summer-long Amoeba's Monday Movies @ Space15Twenty in Hollywood (the weekly free outdoor screenings of music-related films curated by Amoeba Music) ends tonight with a screening of the highly recommended Anvil! The Story of Anvil. If you have to miss the screening, the DVD of this underdog story about endearing Canadian metal band Anvil comes out next week, October 6th, on DVD, and will be available at Amoeba Music. Last Monday evening there was another Amoeba-curated screening of the film up in the Bay Area at Elis Mile High Club. 

I just loved this film so much since it is totally unlike your typical, run of the mill music documentary. LA Weekly summed it up pretty well when they dubbed it "Hilarious and achingly touching." In fact, it is so touching and personal, yet always respectful of its subjects, the two lifelong metalhead buddies Robb Reiner and Steve "Lips" Kudlow, that you instantly connect and feel watching it that it has to have been made by someone whom the band members really, truly trusted and felt totally comfortable around.

Not surprisingly then, Sacha Gervasi, the director of the documentary, was once a roadie for the band. And for this riveting documentary he went out on the road again with Anvil, a band who looked all set to make it big in the 80's metal world but somehow never did. He's made a film that will remind you of Spinal Tap except that it is real, and more importantly, reverential. Last week I caught up with the film's director to ask him about this refreshingly unique music documentary. 
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Amoeblog: I love your film, including how it flows so naturally and seems to have taken on a life or direction of its own. Did the film turn out differently than maybe what you had initially expected?

1. Os Mutantes - Haih Or Amortecedor
2. Rodrigo Y Gabriela - 11:11
3. V/A - Panama! Vol.2
4. Nelly Furtado - Mi Plan
5. V/A - A Orillas Del Magdalena -- Coastal Cumbias From Colombia's Discos Fuentes (LP)
6. Mario Ortiz All Star Band - Mario Ortiz All Star Band Tributo 45 Aniversario
7. V/A - Black Rio Vol.2
8. V/A - Psicofasicos De Bolivia
9. V/A - Sound Of Wonder!
10. Ruben Blades - Cantares del Subdesarrollo

Fueled by a great instore performance, Os Mutantes' latest release, Haih Or Amortecedor tops Amoeba Hollywood’s World Music chart for September. Hot on its heels, though, was the latest by another group of former Amoeba instore performers, Rodrigo Y Gabriela. 11:11, Rod y Gaby’s new release, comes with a DVD of live performances and even some instructional footage for the up and coming Flamenco guitarist in you. Nelly Furtado's first all Spanish album, Mi Plan, is starting to pick up some steam as well, coming in at number four.

At number five is a vinyl only release from the Domino Sound label out of New Orleans entitled A Orillas Del Magdalena -- Coastal Cumbias From Colombia's Discos Fuentes. Domino Sounds goes a bit deeper in this compilation than Soundways' excellent Colombia! compilation (both labels licensed tracks from the Discos Fuentes catalog), adding personal favorites by the likes of Andres Landero and Nafer Duran. I highly recommend this LP for anyone who wants to know where the true roots of Cumbia come from.

If the gentlemen of London’s The Big Pink and New York’s A Place To Bury Strangers are to have their way this fall – you will have a serious case of tinnitus by Winter Solstice via their dark-veined noise-pop. Both bands love the volume loud, worship at the alters of 80’s Gloom-Pop and early-‘90’s Shoegaze, and both have new releases out in the next month. While both bands paint with Kevin Shields’s and Daniel Ash’s brush-strokes each band shades their canvas quite differently and uniquely.

The Big Pink signed to cult-label 4AD this year. The team-up couldn’t have been a better fit as the duo’s tunes could slide in nicely in a playlist alongside tracks from the label’s 80’s and 90’s roster of ethereal and gothic-leaning releases. They also share with their predecessors a keen eye and love for packaging their music -– a dying art form for sure --adding dimensions to the music and an additional keyhole into the universe the band has created within their sound. The band’s pre-4AD releases of dead-sexy lo-fi electro vs. feedback bliss-outs were accompanied by homoerotic and ethereal sleeve artwork by Dennis Cooper (The duo also borrowed the title for their song “Frisk” from Cooper). The band’s newly polished, less-amorphous and refined sound (courtesy of major league mixing-czar Rich Costey) featured on their debut LP, A Brief History of Love, is issued with a murky, blurred and slightly unsettling cover photo of a bare-chested woman - insinuating and helping inject a similarly subversive sexual tone of their indie releases into the hazy pools of stoned reverb and romantic wistful grooves of the new album.

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Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Yes, 9/09/09 was Beatles Day at Amoeba Hollywood, and fans lined up before opening to purchase the long-awaited stereo and the mono box sets (the mono sets sold out at 1pm), plus sundry standalone albums and other Beatles “stuff.” (It must have been the Bob Smeaton documentary that was included in the stereo set, right?) Beatles songs were played throughout the day in their upgraded forms (miraculous), and the atmosphere was festive from the time the store opened until late. It was like an actual holiday, a warm eggnog and feety-pajamas feeling...only with a guy who looked like John Lennon (circa his Lost Weekend era) staying for the duration, and a couple of employees dressed in Sgt. Pepper’s regalia.


Beginning at 1 o’clock, Amoeba’s own Daniel (of Mandala fame) took the microphone and hosted Beatles trivia on the hour until 4 o’clock. His accent swayed between Brummie and Sherman Oaks, but he definitely looked like one of the Lonely Hearts Club Band. He even sported a vintage mustache. A throng holding cardboard fans stood in eager anticipation to prove they knew Ringo’s middle name and that Paul is a birthpath 4 Gemini and that he’s the exact same height as Lolo Ferrari. This crowd could not be stumped—though Daniel tried his best. One of the questions he asked was “what is ‘you’ referring to in the song ‘Got to Get You Into My Life?’” This set off a torrent of people going “ooh-ohh-oh” with their arms stretching to heaven. The answer was, of course, Chong, from Cheech and Chong (or, the green leaves that made Chong Chong)! With each right answer, Elicia (drums) and Becca (sax), also in garb, played some fizzling dying thing as a show of triumph.

Happy birthday to friend of Amoeba Elvis Costello -- born Declan Patrick MacManus on August 25th 1954 -- who celebrates his 55th birthday today. A renowned, longtime crate digging music collector with most diverse tastes, Elvis is not surprisingly a big fan of shopping at Amoeba Music.

"One of the things that makes Amoeba a stop for me is that you are going to go in there with the intention of buying one record and come out with an armfull of other things because you know you want to go into the area where the jazz artists are. But at the same time they're sitting next to the hillbilly records, or the opera records, or the show tune records, or the new groups that are coming up and the old groups that are still there," Elvis told Ameoba's Josh Pollock at the Haight Street store on June 22nd when the artist played packed houses at both the San Francisco and the Hollywood Amoeba Music stores on that same day.

Above is the full Elvis Amoeba interview, interspersed with some music, which includes Elvis talking with Josh Pollock about such topics as his new TV show Spectacle on the Sundance channel (where his guests have included Smokey Robinson, Diana Krall, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Clinton), and also how certain fans just want him to remain 22 forever and be making the same music that he was over three decades ago. Meantime, below is the Amoeba Music concert segment featuring Elvis and band doing the songs "Complicated Shadows," "Down Among The Wines &..," "Blame It On Cain," "Red Cotton," and "My All-Time Doll." Click here to purchase Elvis Costello's new album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane: Note that these videos are different from the famous Elvis Costello - Live at Amoeba YouTube video, which was culled from these videos. That video has racked up a quarter of a million YouTube hits since it was posted on there three weeks ago.