A few years ago I stumbled across this biopic about The Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones: Stoned tells the story about the British rockers with an eye on their multi-instrumentalist and original leader. Before Mick and Keith became the Glimmer Twins, The Rolling Stones were Brian’s band. The story goes that Brian got deep into drugs before he was unable to call upon his preternatural musical talents in the recording studio. Add to Jones’ decline the emergence of Mick and Keith as an original songwriting team, and Keith’s stealing Brian’s girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, and maybe it wasn’t very surprising that Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool after he was fired from the band.

Here are a few words from the Wiki…

Original Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman said of Jones, “He formed the band. He chose the members. He named the band. He chose the music we played. He got us gigs. … he was very influential, very important, and then slowly lost it – highly intelligent – and just kind of wasted it and blew it all away.”

At around midnight on the night of 2–3 July 1969, Jones was discovered motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm. His Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, was convinced Jones was alive when he was taken out of the pool, insisting he still had a pulse. However, by the time the doctors arrived it was too late and he was pronounced dead. The coroner’s report stated “death by misadventure” and noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.

Here’s the thing: Stoned is a conspiracy movie at heart:

Stoned, also known as The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones in the UK, is a 2005 film about Brian Jones, one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones. The film explores the idea that Jones was murdered by Frank Thorogood, a builder hired to renovate Jones’s Cotchford Farm in East Sussex. The film also illuminates Jones’s use of alcohol and drugs, and his relationship with Anita Pallenberg.

Anita Pallenberg’s passing on June 13, makes Stoned‘s YouTube presence timelessly timely. Here’s Stoned…

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If I say the words “deep dish” you’d likely think of pizza. But what if you thought about television instead?

From the Deep Dish site…

For 29 years, Deep Dish has been a laboratory for new, democratic and empowering ways to make and distribute video. It is a hub linking thousands of artists, independent videomakers, programmers and social activists. The network has produced and distributed over 500 hours of television series that challenge the suppression of awareness, the corruption of language, and the perversion of logic that characterizes so much of corporate media.

With humor, passion, creative flair and very low budgets, Deep Dish TV artists and producers have developed provocative video series exploring issues that profoundly impact our lives.

At the heart of the Deep Dish TV network have been the public access television stations, and now the public interest channels on the satellite networks: Free Speech TV on the Dish Network and LinkTV on DirecTV.

I love all examples of television being used for public education, and Deep Dish does this with artistic flair and anarchic verve. For instance, here’s one of their Writers Uncensored episodes featuring Allen Ginsberg. Keep your eyes peeled for Don Was on bass at the Ginsberg performances included here. Was is currently celebrating rave reviews on his latest production, Blue and Lonesome, the new release from The Rolling Stones.

Stay Awake!

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Today we celebrate the 1944 birthday of model, actress and Rolling Stones’ muse Anita Pallenberg. Pallenberg was Brian Jones’ girlfriend before he destroyed himself with drugs and she hooked-up with Keith, during which time she filmed the infamous love scenes in Performance with Mick Jagger.

Performance is a landmark psycho/sexual/crime drama masterpiece by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. Here’s the Wiki…

On its release the film received mixed reviews. Most reviewers focused on the graphic sexual elements. One reviewer (Richard Schickel) described it as “the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing.” In the late 1970s and 1980s, Performance gradually acquired a cult following on the late night and repertory cinema circuits. By the 1990s, the film had undergone a critical reappraisal. In 1995 Performance appeared at number 30 in a Time Out magazine “all-time greats” poll of critics and directors.[4] After Cammell’s death in 1996, the film’s reputation grew still further. It is often cited as a classic of British cinema.

In the September–October 2009 issue of Film Comment, Mick Jagger’s Turner was voted the best performance by a musician in a film.[5]

In his 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins says: “Performance was not only the greatest seventies film about identity, if any movie in the whole Story of Film should be compulsory viewing for film makers, maybe this is it.”

Here’s the best version of Performance I could find on YouTube. NSFW…

Stay Awake!

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“This is the Life. Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten any of it. Thanks and praises, Keith Richards”

Salt of the Earth

Perhaps the most highly-anticipated rock autobiography ever, Life is the most detailed account we have yet of the life of the legendary guitarist/songwriter.

Richards has lived his life in public since his early 20′s and he’s always lived it in the full-glare of the media – bad publicity be damned. That said, this is not a confessional reassessment that offers explanations – or excuses – for past sins. Richards greatest music and worst behavior are a matter of public record and Life doesn’t offer a new version of events so much as it delivers his version, and it’s full of crazy wisdom, smirking sarcasm, raspy rambles, heart and soul.

While other volumes – like Victor Bockris’ excellent Keith Richards – have revealed the man through the eyes of friends, family and Rolling Stones insiders, it’s Life’s first-person candor that sets it apart. Not only does Richards give us the straight-dope on Keith, he also illuminates the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the ’60′s counter-culture from inside the eye of the hurricane. Life is also about the creative life of one of rock’s most important guitarists and songwriters, and the book’s rich detail is at least partly due to a life lived on the look-out for the next song, the next riff.

It's only rock 'n' roll.

Life tells the story of Keith the boy, growing up in Dartford in a Dickensian, post-WWII landscape that included raiding old machine gun nests for discarded pin-ups and angling to make the most of candy-on-ration. It also reflects on recent times including Keith’s forays away from the Stones with the Expensive Winos and the Wingless Angels. Along the way, Richards lives up to his famous straight-forward, sincere persona. The man has always been a romantic and a rebel; a sensational hedonist and a sensitive artist.

He's got the silver...

None of this will come as a shock to well-read Stones fans. In fact, the book’s great lacking is its dearth of original stories. Although the media has made much of the book’s comments regarding his brother-in-arms-cum-bete-noir Mick Jagger, Life doesn’t reveal anything Richards hasn’t spilled to the press over the group’s decades-long reign as The World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ roll Band.

What makes Life unique is Richard’s ability to put you in his shoes and convey his passion for music-making. When he describes his early adoration for American blues, it’s  clear – perhaps for the first time – why this man has survived the hell of heroin addiction, the rigors of the road and the fallacies of fame to become the living symbol of the enduring power of rock ‘n’ roll –  a true soul survivor:

“You were supposed to spend all your waking hours studying Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson. That was your gig. Every other moment taken away from it was a sin.”

Amen.

Life

By Keith Richards and James Fox

Little Brown and Company, October 26

Pick up nearly 600 pages worth of Keith at The Sleepless Bookstore and help Insomnia stay awake! Check out our music below!

Joe Nolan <3