Cinematic Notes From All Over: The Best Kept Secret in the West

As you may have noticed, we seem to be living in a Golden Age of rock documentaries. For example, I saw Becoming Led Zeppelin the other day, and trust me -- it was more fun than actually enduring the Zep live in concert. And then yesterday I saw another one, by an artist I actually like, that -- fortuitously -- I can recommend without reservations.

I'm speaking, of course about...

Aptly titled The King of In Between, the film chronicles the remarkable half century-long musical odyssey of Garland Jeffreys, a dreadlocked Brooklyn born and NYC-based singer/songerwriter who never quite broke through to a mass audience despite several major label albums and at least one song -- "Wild in the Streets" -- that was a massive hit outside of the USA. Why isn't he a household name? Well, basically nobody ever quite figured out how to market him, as Jeffries' music and persona straddled genres -- r&b, reggae, Dylan-esque narratives, street punk a la Lou Reed (with whom Jeffreys went to college) -- and influences in a way that inevitably caused the kind of confusion that doesn't easily make for chart success, especially for a mixed-race guy.

The film, deftly helmed by first-time director Claire Jeffreys (yes, the missus) has all sorts of great performance footage, from the downtown late-'70s to some intimate house concerts done before Jeffrey's retirement a few years ago, and celebrity fans like Laurie Anderson, Harvey Keitel, Vernon Reid (who has, as you might expect, some interesting things to say about Jeffreys and race in America) and Bruce Springsteen show up with fond reminiscences of working with the guy. Jeffreys himself comes off as funny, likeable and (surprisingly) without a trace of the bitterness I would have exhibited if I'd had his career (heh).

Bottom line: A must-see; it's playing in theaters now, so if it's near you, make tracks. In the meantime, you can find out more -- including alerts for when it will be available on home video or streaming -- over at the film's official website HERE.