Rick Rosas, who plays Buster opposite Oscar winner Meryl Streep’s rocker character Ricki in the new movie “Ricki and the Flash” lost his battle with cancer in November (14), shortly after filming wrapped on the Jonathan Demme project and there’s a special tribute to him in the credits at the end of the movie.
Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Rosas also worked with Demme on 2006’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold documentary.
One of California’s most in-demand session musicians, he also worked with Joe Walsh, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ron Wood and Etta James.
He was the only bassist to have played in three of Neil Young’s bands – Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Crazy Horse.
The new film has other ties to Neil Young – the rocker taught Streep how to play guitar for the project.
Here is more about the guitar lessons from Entertainment:
Meryl Streep appeared on The Tonight Show Aug. 3 to promote her new movie Ricki and the Flash.
The actress, who plays a struggling musician trying to reconnect with her family in the movie, revealed to host Jimmy Fallon that she did not know how to play guitar prior to filming so director Jonathan Demme set up a meeting for her to meet Neil Young.
“My first lesson was 45 minutes with Neil,” Streep said. “He is amazing, it’s cool.”
When asked if she learned anything from the legendary rocker, Streep said Young told her: “’You see all the amplifiers and all the wires and you go ‘what is all this s–t?’” Young then told her to “crank it up to 11. You’ve got to turn it up, turn it up loud.”
Adrian Mack at the Georgia Straight writes about the Bernard Shakey Film Festival currently touring the country.
The latest showing was held July 31, Aug 1 – 4, 6 and 10, at the Cinematheque, a 194-seat theatre in the heart of Vancouver’s downtown.
Mack writes: “Musically speaking, we love it when the chaos of this singular singer-songwriter’s imagination coheres into something inexplicably moving—think of the bizarre imagery that gives ‘Powderfinger’ its unlikely force, or the silver spaceships of ‘After the Goldrush’—but we’re less forgiving when he applies the strategy to the seventh art.
“This movie was made up on the spot by punks, potheads, and former alcoholics,” is how Young described Human Highway, an improvised home movie self-financed over four years to the tune of three million bucks, and then released in 1983 to the same howls of derision that seemed to greet everything the musician did in the ‘80s.
Viewed now in its director’s cut, Human Highway is far more entertaining than its critics allowed, Mack said.
As for Young himself, Mack calls his uninhibited performance as uber-nerdy car mechanic Lionel a “true marvel.” What millionaire rock star has ever elected to make himself look this goofy? “Jerry Lewis movies, Japanese horror movies, The Wizard of Oz—it’s all in there,” was Young’s appraisal of this brazen and unapologetic mess; a vanity project perversely free of anything remotely vain.
According to the article:
Bernard Shakey’s first ever celluloid credit appeared nine years earlier with the infamous Journey Through the Past (1974). Young made the film as Harvest was turning him into the world’s shorthand for sensitiverustic hippie. Along with the album of the same name, it helped transform Shakey’s reputation as something quite different, raising its auteur’s gambit of not giving a shit to dizzying heights. Journey Through the Past obliterated everybody’s expectations, but if the subsequent panning of the album was understandable, the film deserved better.
If we see Shakey now as a man with a steadfast loyalty to his own muse, and a sincere indifference to your opinion, this movie clued us in 40 years ago. Its value as cinema, meanwhile, is best summed up by long-time collaborator Larry “LA” Johnson, who praised Young’s primitivism. “He will try stuff people more knowledgeable than him would never think of trying,” he said. “He’s the naïve explorer.”
The explorations of Muddy Track (1987) might provide this retrospective with its towering moment of dreadful inspiration. Young was in Europe with Crazy Horse when his entire world went into free fall, and his diary of that disastrous 1987 tour, captured with a video camera named Otto, is unmissable. “What I’m looking for is anything bad,” he tells a small crew at the beginning. “If people get uptight while you’re filming, don’t stop… Anything that happens that’s going wrong, I want it.”
Cue endless sheets of freezing European rain, riots, numerous cancelled shows, bad shows, worse shows, band fights, more band fights, painfully bad interviews, and the pitiful sight (and sound) of Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina trying to wrestle with synth-drums. Muddy Track is a terminal document from what should have been the end of Neil Young’s career. “It was a tour with a bunch of people that hated each other, hated what they were doing, and it showed,” said producer David Briggs.
Significantly, the gonzo humour is also still intact. In fact, Young is straight-up nuts in Solo Trans. “I got way into that guy,” he said, of the greaser Shocking Pinks persona he adopted at the time. “I was that guy for months. He was out there. It was a movie to me. Nobody saw it but me, but who gives a shit?”
“Nobody saw it but me, but who gives a shit?” What a great title for this must-see weekend of films.
Also Included: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Neil Young Truck Show (2009, directed by Jonathan Demme), and Dead Man (1995, directed by Jim Jarmusch).
According to Rolling Stone, the annual event, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, will be held on September 19th at FirstMerit Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island near downtown Chicago. In addition to board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews, the show will feature Jack Johnson, Imagine Dragons, Kacey Musgraves, Old Crow Medicine Show, Mavis Staples, Holly Williams, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Insects vs. Robots and Blackwood Quartet.
“We organized the first Farm Aid concert in Illinois in 1985 to respond to the people suffering during the Farm Crisis,”Farm Aid President and Founder Willie Nelson said in a statement. “Thirty years later, in Chicago, we’ll bring together so many of the people — farmers, eaters, advocates and activists — who have made the progress of the Good Food Movement possible. At Farm Aid 30, we’ll celebrate the impact we’ve had and rally our supporters for the work ahead.”
Tickets for this year’s Farm Aid — ranging in price from $49.50 to $189.50 — go on sale Monday, August 3rd at 10 a.m. CDT at FarmAid.org.
An article in Rolling Stone dated July 24 is reporting that Monsanto has issued a statement regarding Neil Young’s new short film: “Seeding Fear,” an anti-GMO documentary featuring a farmer named Michael White.
According to Monsanto, as quoted in Rolling Stone:
“Mr. White is not transparent in describing his actions or the situation,” a rep for the company tells Rolling Stone. “He actually admitted to knowingly planting, producing, saving, cleaning and selling Roundup Ready soybeans illegally. All of this information is available in court documents.
“Protecting patents and copyrights can be difficult in any business – including the entertainment industry,” the rep continues. “Mr. White’s actions are equivalent to pirating an album, producing thousands of copies and selling bootleg copies – all while knowing what you’re doing is illegal and that it will result in criminal charges if caught.”
The rep also referenced a LinkedIn blog by Monsanto’s chief technology officer, Robb Fraley, in which he responded to Young. “Here’s an invitation to establish that dialogue with Neil Young,” Fraley wrote. “I invite him to visit our company and talk with us about what we’re doing.” The rep also provided a link to another blog, hosted on the Monsanto website, titled “Correcting The Monsanto Years,” published earlier this month in response to the album Young put out this year, which attacks the company.
“See the sky about to rain, broken clouds and rain. ” by -- Neil Young
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
Rick Rosas, who plays Buster opposite Oscar winner Meryl Streep’s rocker character Ricki in the new movie “Ricki and the Flash” lost his battle with cancer in November (14), shortly after filming wrapped on the Jonathan Demme project and there’s a special tribute to him in the credits at the end of the movie.
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
