Watch Thunder Soul Movie Online
The Kashmere High School stage band became a minor worldwide sensation in the mid-1970s. A group of black kids from inner-city Houston under the tutelage of brilliant musician and redoubtable teacher Conrad O. Johnson the band combined jazz and funk to morph the staid high school band tradition into a dynamic dancing toe-tapping great time. Now more than thirty years later the original band members are coming together — despite the fact that many of them have not picked up their instruments since graduating — for a reunion concert to pay tribute to the ailing Johnson.
The band members are incredibly sincere and forthright about their love and respect for Johnson. Many of them credit him for saving their lives — for giving them pride and purpose at a time when their peers were descending into gang and drug violence. The reunion’s ringleader who describes himself as a “thug” when Johnson and the band came into his life is particularly articulate and convincing in talking about what Johnson did for him. Music historians and awestruck bandleader contemporaries talk about the magnitude of his accomplishment in getting a professional-quality sound out of a group of 16-year olds. Thunder Soul spends roughly equal time depicting the tearful band reunion laying out the history of the band in its heyday.
The movie is heavy on talking head interviews singing Johnson’s praises and unfortunately scant on the sort of details that would have made this story interesting rather than generically inspirational. (Though the band members credit Johnson and the band for their life success for example we don’t even learn what they now do for a living.) It is also weirdly scant on the music: we hear a lot about how awesome the Kashmere band’s live performances were but Landsman treats us to only the briefest snippets of archive footage. The big reunion performance as depicted here is also strangely short and anticlimactic.
Ultimately then I think Thunder Soul was made for its subjects more so than for the rest of us; an elaborate scrapbook. But watching it with said subjects seated all around me was a hell of a time. In a lot of ways the audience did the work of the filmmaker. The energy in Austin’s Paramount Theater — from the people in the film their friends and families and the rest of the audience — was palpable and infectious; it replaced the energy and suspense that the movie itself lacked. Watch Thunder Soul Movie Online
The movie itself is I’m afraid a little bit anodyne. But watching it was the sort of prototypical festival-going experience that makes these trips worthwhile; a communal outpouring of enthusiasm and admiration. I can’t really recommend Thunder Soul but SXSW sure is fun.
It’s was Afros and pleated shirts James Brown and Bootsy Collins. It was the ’70s and at an inner-city Houston high school history would be made. Charismatic band leader Conrad “Prof” Johnson would turn the school’s mediocre jazz band into a legendary funk powerhouse. Now 35 years later his students prepare to pay tribute to the man who changed their lives–the 92-year old Prof. Some haven’t played their horns in decades still they dust off their instruments determined to retake the stage to show Prof and the world that they’ve still got it. To View The Full HD : free movies online for free
The Kashmere High School stage band became a minor worldwide sensation in the mid-1970s. A group of black kids from inner-city Houston under the tutelage of brilliant musician and redoubtable teacher Conrad O. Johnson the band combined jazz and funk to morph the staid high school band tradition into a dynamic dancing toe-tapping great time. Now more than thirty years later the original band members are coming together — despite the fact that many of them have not picked up their instruments since graduating — for a reunion concert to pay tribute to the ailing Johnson.
The band members are incredibly sincere and forthright about their love and respect for Johnson. Many of them credit him for saving their lives — for giving them pride and purpose at a time when their peers were descending into gang and drug violence. The reunion’s ringleader who describes himself as a “thug” when Johnson and the band came into his life is particularly articulate and convincing in talking about what Johnson did for him. Music historians and awestruck bandleader contemporaries talk about the magnitude of his accomplishment in getting a professional-quality sound out of a group of 16-year olds. Thunder Soul spends roughly equal time depicting the tearful band reunion laying out the history of the band in its heyday.
The movie is heavy on talking head interviews singing Johnson’s praises and unfortunately scant on the sort of details that would have made this story interesting rather than generically inspirational. (Though the band members credit Johnson and the band for their life success for example we don’t even learn what they now do for a living.) It is also weirdly scant on the music: we hear a lot about how awesome the Kashmere band’s live performances were but Landsman treats us to only the briefest snippets of archive footage. The big reunion performance as depicted here is also strangely short and anticlimactic.
Ultimately then I think Thunder Soul was made for its subjects more so than for the rest of us; an elaborate scrapbook. But watching it with said subjects seated all around me was a hell of a time. In a lot of ways the audience did the work of the filmmaker. The energy in Austin’s Paramount Theater — from the people in the film their friends and families and the rest of the audience — was palpable and infectious; it replaced the energy and suspense that the movie itself lacked. Watch Thunder Soul Movie Online
The movie itself is I’m afraid a little bit anodyne. But watching it was the sort of prototypical festival-going experience that makes these trips worthwhile; a communal outpouring of enthusiasm and admiration. I can’t really recommend Thunder Soul but SXSW sure is fun.
It’s was Afros and pleated shirts James Brown and Bootsy Collins. It was the ’70s and at an inner-city Houston high school history would be made. Charismatic band leader Conrad “Prof” Johnson would turn the school’s mediocre jazz band into a legendary funk powerhouse. Now 35 years later his students prepare to pay tribute to the man who changed their lives–the 92-year old Prof. Some haven’t played their horns in decades still they dust off their instruments determined to retake the stage to show Prof and the world that they’ve still got it. To View The Full HD : free movies online for free
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