Today
07:29 AM
Tina turner docutmentary on hbo sat 3/27
Tina Turner documentary tells such a harrowing, awful story that it becomes inspiring
Mick LaSalle
“Tina” doesn’t just tell you all about Tina Turner. It makes you feel like you know her, personally, and it gives you some sense of what it was like to live her life. To say that she had it rough is not enough. For decades, it was a loveless nightmare.
The new HBO documentary, which airs on HBO and HBO Max at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27 [[on demand Sunday, March 28), hits the familiar points of Turner’s story — discovery by musician Ike Turner, the domestic abuse, the years in the wilderness followed by the massive comeback — but it does so in illuminating detail. Along the way, there’s Turner herself, telling her story in both archival and recent interviews. Considering everything she’s been through, she’s remarkably even-keeled.
Hers is a sobering story, but inspiring, too. What makes it inspiring is Turner’s unassailable ability to survive. When she was growing up in Tennessee, Turner’s mother left the family. Then her father left, so she had to grow up quickly. Somehow, she had acquired ambition. Turner recalls seeing a magazine photo of Paris’ Champs-Elysees and thinking, “The world. That’s where I want to go.”
Her ticket to the bigger world came when she was still a teenager. She auditioned for Ike Turner and joined his band, and everything was fine, until they married and he started beating her. He’d beat her with a coat hanger or a shoe stretcher, and then he’d have sex with her. Just sick. She was terrified of him, and this went on for years.
At a time when Turner was an influential and successful singer — an inspiration to younger talents such as Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin — she was living the life of a prisoner. “I lived a shameful lie,” she says, with characteristic insight. “And I found a way to live with it by being ashamed.”
Look in her eyes circa 1968, even when she’s smiling. Then look at her closely, in the first flush of solo success in the mid-1980s. Her spirit goes from heavy to buoyant, from fearful to realized.
As the documentary makes clear, two escape attempts define Turner’s life. The first was her successful escape from her marriage. The second was her unsuccessful attempt to escape the story of her marriage — or as she puts it, “the ridiculously embarrassing story of my life.”
In 1981, she told People magazine about Ike’s abuse, hoping to put it behind her. But three years later, following the success of her album, “Private Dancer,” all the press wanted to ask her about was Ike. Imagine getting a question like this on national television: “When you were married to Ike, what was the absolute worst moment?”
The irony, which Turner seems to ruefully understand, is that the Ike story has become part of her legend. It’s part of what people like and admire about her, and it almost certainly added to the universal excitement that attended her great successes in the 1980s. After all, the audiences that filled entire stadiums weren’t there just to see a performer. They were there to see a person and share in her triumph, as if they themselves had a stake in it.
In the end, what might be most admirable about Tina Turner is that she has never basked in the commodification of her victimhood. The documentary shows her at a news conference for “What’s Love Got to Do with It” [[1993), saying that she hadn’t yet seen the movie about her life. She said she didn’t want to go through all that again.
But we want to go see Tina Turner’s life again, at least when the documentary is as good as this one.
“Tina”: Documentary. Starring Tina Turner. Directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin. [[Not rated. 118 minutes.) Airs on HBO and HBO Max 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27. On demand starting Sunday, March 28.
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/mov...omes-inspiring
Mick LaSalle
“Tina” doesn’t just tell you all about Tina Turner. It makes you feel like you know her, personally, and it gives you some sense of what it was like to live her life. To say that she had it rough is not enough. For decades, it was a loveless nightmare.
The new HBO documentary, which airs on HBO and HBO Max at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27 [[on demand Sunday, March 28), hits the familiar points of Turner’s story — discovery by musician Ike Turner, the domestic abuse, the years in the wilderness followed by the massive comeback — but it does so in illuminating detail. Along the way, there’s Turner herself, telling her story in both archival and recent interviews. Considering everything she’s been through, she’s remarkably even-keeled.
Hers is a sobering story, but inspiring, too. What makes it inspiring is Turner’s unassailable ability to survive. When she was growing up in Tennessee, Turner’s mother left the family. Then her father left, so she had to grow up quickly. Somehow, she had acquired ambition. Turner recalls seeing a magazine photo of Paris’ Champs-Elysees and thinking, “The world. That’s where I want to go.”
Her ticket to the bigger world came when she was still a teenager. She auditioned for Ike Turner and joined his band, and everything was fine, until they married and he started beating her. He’d beat her with a coat hanger or a shoe stretcher, and then he’d have sex with her. Just sick. She was terrified of him, and this went on for years.
At a time when Turner was an influential and successful singer — an inspiration to younger talents such as Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin — she was living the life of a prisoner. “I lived a shameful lie,” she says, with characteristic insight. “And I found a way to live with it by being ashamed.”
Look in her eyes circa 1968, even when she’s smiling. Then look at her closely, in the first flush of solo success in the mid-1980s. Her spirit goes from heavy to buoyant, from fearful to realized.
As the documentary makes clear, two escape attempts define Turner’s life. The first was her successful escape from her marriage. The second was her unsuccessful attempt to escape the story of her marriage — or as she puts it, “the ridiculously embarrassing story of my life.”
In 1981, she told People magazine about Ike’s abuse, hoping to put it behind her. But three years later, following the success of her album, “Private Dancer,” all the press wanted to ask her about was Ike. Imagine getting a question like this on national television: “When you were married to Ike, what was the absolute worst moment?”
The irony, which Turner seems to ruefully understand, is that the Ike story has become part of her legend. It’s part of what people like and admire about her, and it almost certainly added to the universal excitement that attended her great successes in the 1980s. After all, the audiences that filled entire stadiums weren’t there just to see a performer. They were there to see a person and share in her triumph, as if they themselves had a stake in it.
In the end, what might be most admirable about Tina Turner is that she has never basked in the commodification of her victimhood. The documentary shows her at a news conference for “What’s Love Got to Do with It” [[1993), saying that she hadn’t yet seen the movie about her life. She said she didn’t want to go through all that again.
But we want to go see Tina Turner’s life again, at least when the documentary is as good as this one.
“Tina”: Documentary. Starring Tina Turner. Directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin. [[Not rated. 118 minutes.) Airs on HBO and HBO Max 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27. On demand starting Sunday, March 28.
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/mov...omes-inspiring
Yesterday
09:05 PM
Would a few more leads have helped paul?
Otis mentioned in the book[temptations]that he didn't really know when pauls troubles started, he did state that paul wanted more leads but nobody was writing for him,do you think that maybe his mental wellbeing would've improved with more leads? I've asked myself this question also.
04-08-2021
09:31 PM
Singles Not on ‘Regular’ Albums
As I was listening to the Four Tops “You Keep Running Away,” I was reminded that this is a single that was not on a regular album. By ‘regular’ I mean an album that usually showcased a group or artists’ latest single[[s) along with otheer album fillers. Yes, I am aware that it may have appeared on some other compilation like a greatest hits album, etc. Offhand, I can only think of two other singles that were not on a regular album: Supremes’ “The Happening and the Ross/Richie pairing of “Endless Love.” I especially don’t understand why Running Away or The Happening did not make it on a regular album. I am sere there are other examples.
03-02-2021
09:44 AM
Songs with dances in the title
Mickey's Monkey
Twistin' Postman
Come On Do the Jerk
Can You Jerk Like Me?
Shotgun
Hitchhike
All of the above songs were original compositions released on various Motown labels, and all contain the names of dances.
I know there are more. Can you name more songs released by Motown that contain the names of dances that are NOT covers?
Twistin' Postman
Come On Do the Jerk
Can You Jerk Like Me?
Shotgun
Hitchhike
All of the above songs were original compositions released on various Motown labels, and all contain the names of dances.
I know there are more. Can you name more songs released by Motown that contain the names of dances that are NOT covers?
04-08-2021
03:19 AM
Favorite ex: Temptation Solo Record
For me, a close call between David Ruffin's 'Walk Away From Love' and this one; 'Don't Look Any Further' wins, for today at least ...
Yesterday
09:37 AM
The 100 Greatest Motown Songs [According to Rolling Stone.com]
In 1959, an aspiring songwriter and record producer named Berry Gordy Jr. borrowed $800 to start his own record label in Detroit. Good investment. Within a year, Motown had its first million-selling record, with the Miracles’ “Shop Around.” By 1969, the label would place dozens of records in the Billboard Top 10 as it reshaped the sound of pop music for a generation, thanks to its somewhat contradictory mix of assembly-line consistency and individual artistic brilliance, integrationist upward mobility and black self-assertion, fierce competition and familial camaraderie. “I was so happy whenever I got a hit record on one of the artists,” said Smokey Robinson, the label’s greatest songwriting genius. “Because they were my brothers and sisters.”
After defining “the sound of young America” with the mid-Sixties pop elegance of Mary Wells, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations, and the girl-group glory of the Supremes, the Marvelettes, and Martha and the Vandellas, the label’s two most visionary artists, Gaye and Stevie Wonder, pushed against Gordy’s dictatorial rule to create adventurous, socially conscious landmark Seventies albums like What’s Going On and Innervisions, which expanded Motown’s scope while staying true to its core hitmaking values. Motown stars like Robinson, the Commodores, Diana Ross, and Michael Jackson kept churning out great music through the funk, disco, and easy-listening eras, and hitmakers like Rick James, Lionel Richie, DeBarge, and Boyz II Me kept the label all over the radio in the slick Eighties and into the Nineties.
Getting down to a list of the 100 Greatest Motown Songs wasn’t easy. This year is the 60th anniversary of Motown’s first Number One hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” by the Marvelettes, and yet the joy and power of this music hasn’t diminished even a tiny bit. Even if you’ve heard them a million times or come across them in a dozen movie soundtracks, classics like “My Girl,” “Come See About Me,” or “The Tracks of My Tears” still sound almost impossibly fresh, just as the radical spirit of “What’s Going On” or “Living for the City” resonates perfectly in our present political moment. And amid all the hits, there are still lesser-known gems to be discovered.
Read More Here:
Best Motown Songs: Supremes, Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson - Rolling Stone
After defining “the sound of young America” with the mid-Sixties pop elegance of Mary Wells, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations, and the girl-group glory of the Supremes, the Marvelettes, and Martha and the Vandellas, the label’s two most visionary artists, Gaye and Stevie Wonder, pushed against Gordy’s dictatorial rule to create adventurous, socially conscious landmark Seventies albums like What’s Going On and Innervisions, which expanded Motown’s scope while staying true to its core hitmaking values. Motown stars like Robinson, the Commodores, Diana Ross, and Michael Jackson kept churning out great music through the funk, disco, and easy-listening eras, and hitmakers like Rick James, Lionel Richie, DeBarge, and Boyz II Me kept the label all over the radio in the slick Eighties and into the Nineties.
Getting down to a list of the 100 Greatest Motown Songs wasn’t easy. This year is the 60th anniversary of Motown’s first Number One hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” by the Marvelettes, and yet the joy and power of this music hasn’t diminished even a tiny bit. Even if you’ve heard them a million times or come across them in a dozen movie soundtracks, classics like “My Girl,” “Come See About Me,” or “The Tracks of My Tears” still sound almost impossibly fresh, just as the radical spirit of “What’s Going On” or “Living for the City” resonates perfectly in our present political moment. And amid all the hits, there are still lesser-known gems to be discovered.
Read More Here:
Best Motown Songs: Supremes, Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson - Rolling Stone
After 7 - Bittersweet, first...
Today, 02:23 AM in Soulful Detroit Forum