Romantic Warriors 3 - Canterbury Tales

Just got back from a wonderful evening with a neat group of people of an advance screening of Adele and Jose's new Romantic Warriors 3 movie. Filmmakers,  musicians, record label owners, famous prog music reviewers, and saps like me just taking up space

I think everyone will LOVE this movie.  While the RIO one was my favorite for simply educating me a great deal on a scene and music I really didn't know well, this one was more pure ear candy.  Some cool stuff and live clips I had never seen before, and lots of great interviews.  Everyone keep your ears out for it next year!  Another great labor of love from those Adele and Jose! 

And REALLY looking forward to the planned next one.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Looking forward to this one.

I did gain a helluva lot appreciation for the Softs, I'll say that. Very very well done. As if we expected anything less from Jose and Adele.

It will be worth seeing for the Daevid Allen interviews. Classic

oh btw. I think the Gong Army gained a few more recruits.  Some of the people invited were not prog fans, more movie makers and the such, and after the screening we had a nearly 2 hour comment and discussion about the movie.  One thing was clear... they LOVED Gong!

Raff wrote: I already have a lot of ideas for what I will write in my review. This is going to be a truly special film - not only very accurate in historical terms, but also very touching. There is also a section that our friend H.T. will particularly appreciate ....

yeah... smokin' hot

Also looking forward to it.

progrockdeepcuts wrote: I contributed to the Indie Gogo campaign for this! Psyched to see it!

Trust me...  it is going to be great.  The rough cut as we saw was great as it was,  in fact as I alluded to there were NON prog fans there and they were quite honest in their thoughts and feedback (as we all were. One reason we spent 2 hours dissecting every inch of it).

The most interesting thing to note from their comments in particular, the film was nearly 2 hours long, and they made a point of saying that even though many of the groups (well nearly ALL of them) were not familar at ALL to them, they never found the film boring and found it quite interesting.

That more than anything, like my own personal thoughts on it, tells me it will be a great documentary.

From the "Romantic Warriors - A Progressive Music Saga" page on Facebook:

NO!!!!!!  pictures of me.  I cry foul on that. I am trying to help promote this, and in return they give away my precious anonymity.

Who had the camera??

Adele!!!! 

way cool!  Now they need to take requests for volume 4.... RPI or Krautrock.. which will it be? Either one would be AWESOME!

Smurph wrote: I think another awesome one would be all the groups east of the Berlin Wall that were basically breaking the law to play their music.

helluva idea.  That would be damn interesting to see a volume of RW on the prog scene in the 70's in the old Communist Bloc..



It wasn't Reagan that killed Communism... it was prog rock...

First Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter:
www.progdocs.com
ROMANTIC WARRIORS III - Canterbury Tales [DVD] (Zeitgeist Media; USA) Directed by Adele Schmidt & Jose Zegarra Holder; Two hours. An outstanding documentation/story about the Canterbury Scene! How did a small allegedly non-existent "scene" of perhaps a dozen musicians from the mid-sixties British town of Canterbury go on to influence several generations of musicians and fans from around the planet earth for so long and still resonate today fifty years later? This is/was an ambitious task and it is the third in a series of films that these two directors have done to explore and explain certain areas of progressive music that could use (y)our respect. The Canterbury scene started in the mid-sixties with the Wilde Flowers, mostly school friends from the Canterbury area, who by 1967/1968 split into two bands: Soft Machine and Caravan, two odd/pop/psych bands who had a number of similarities at the beginning of their careers. The original Softs featured Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, four very different creative musicians with distinctive and different personalties. Soft Machine recorded eleven albums between 1968 & 1976, the personnel changed on every record, so their sound was always in flux. Since a handful of key members of the CS have passed away over the past decade (Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Steve Miller, Kevin Ayers, Pip Pyle and very recently Daevid Allen), there are dozens of interviews with many of the survivors: Daevid Allen (ever-enchanting, longtime leader of Gong speaks the most), Brian Hopper, Richard Sinclair, Roy Babbington, David Sinclair, Bill McCormick, Didier Mahlherbe, Phil Miller, Mont Campbell, Robert Wyatt, Chris Cutler... A number of Canterbury-related bands are mentioned as well: Egg, Matching Mole, Hatfield & the North, National Health, In Cahoots, various versions of Gong, Soft Works and Soft Machine Legacy. There is a large amount of rare footage of different eras of Soft Machine & Gong, Caravan, Hatfield and Softs Legacy, making this a deep treasure chest unending gems. The complex histories of many of these bands are unraveled as best as could be done, making this consistently compelling.
About a third of this long film features interviews and live footage from the many bands worldwide who have been influenced by the Canterbury Scene from the time it started until today: Supersister, Moving Gelatine Plates, Forgas Band, the Wrong Object, the Muffins, Glass, Planeta Imaginario and Sid Arthur. A trio of Canterbury experts also get to make a number of their own points throughout: Americ Leroy (Calyx website, historian & liner notes writer), Leonardo Petrovic (head of Moonjune label) and yours truly (DMG founder & 1/2 century Canterbury devotee).
There are a number of magical musicians here who give their own charming perspective and are quoted throughout: Daevid Allen, Didier Mahlherbe, Richard Sinclair, Phil Miller and David Sinclair, who closes this film with a poignant solo version of the Caravan classic "Nine Feet Underground". Bravo here to both directors who have done a marvelous job of capturing the spirit of something most elusive yet still so important to many of us who are long nourished by it. - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG