Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Day 11: Lemmy

Date: July 11
Film: Lemmy [usa, 2010]
Where: Tulsa/home/DVD
Who with: loner style
Rating: ***1/2
"Ace of Spades" rating: *****!


The documentary Lemmy has one of the greatest taglines in the history of cinema: 49% motherf**ker, 51% son of a bitch. All done up in proper heavy metal font as in the poster that's about as good as it gets! Lemmy Kilmister is a legendary English rock musician known for a lot of things: over thirty years leading the onslaught on human hearing that is Motorhead, his obsessional collecting of WW2 era military gear [preferably German], his unique facial features, his odd mic placement that causes him to crane his head upward, his vicious bass playing and that awesome friendly mutton chops beard he's held onto for decades. This documentary attempts to give Lemmy his due and the list of fawning musicians extolling his virtues is long. Not being a fan of "metal" music, but loving music history, this is an entertaining doc that lets you get a glimpse into Lemmy's life [who would have guessed he's a bit of a hoarder!], his interests [the drink, the women, the drugs and of course, the music] and lots and lots of clips of Motorhead performing in the studio or live on stage. I think you'll hear "Ace of Spades" about five or six times in Lemmy, but you know what? It's an awesome hard rock song. 






On a side note, in the the 2009 Brothers of the Brush beard growing competition, I channeled my "inner Lemmy" for my beard which I dubbed the "Friendly Lemmy" rather than the more commonly known friendly mutton chops. Check out my tribute to Lemmy on the right. 

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