Gonzo Music Diaries, NYC
Feature Documentary
IMDB
Gonzo Music Diaries, NYC is a time capsule of the music and politics that shaped New York City in 2004. Director/Producer Roy Szuper, brother-in-law and music fanatic Concert Joe, and punk rocker Tony Petrozza, set out to create the 1st Annual Williamsburg Music Festival as a statement of protest against the incoming Republican National Convention. Joe acts as our guide through the New York music scene while Szuper borrows money, seeks advice, and secures talent for the festival. Along the way we meet legendary activist/musician, David Peel, who entertains us with his history of political irreverence. We also interview another New York legend in Hilly Kristal, founder of CGGB’s, who touches on topics such as the corporatization of music and the impending closing of CB’s. After tremendous financial maneuvering and miles of red tape created by the city bureaucracy in their pre-RNC paranoia, the festival takes place as scheduled, 9 days before the RNC. Despite all the hard work and expectations, torrential rains put a damper on the festival. Despite the rains, 8 bands performed including David Peel, Tony Petrozza and his band SQNS, Dana Fuchs, the city’s most intense subway performer Shakerleg, and headliner Vernon Reid and friends. Despite the financial disaster for producer Roy Szuper, the spirit of the festival carries us through to the RNC. Once there, we experience the largest protest in the history of any political convention in history and the premiere activist concert of RNC week featuring Tom Morello and Michael Franti and Spearhead. The film also features appearances Agnostic Front lead guitarist and Hardcore Tattoo Founder Vinnie Stigma, Dana Beal, leader of the Yippies, legendary TV/radio host Joe Franklin, Jake Hill, Publisher of Spin Magazine, the festival’s main sponsor, and Punk Magazine founder John Holmstrom.
Review
by Eric Danville
In 1969, feminist theorist Carol Hanisch wrote an essay entitled “The Personal is Political,” giving two things to the burgeoning Women’s Liberation movement: a clear-cut, easily defined ideology and more important an easily remember slogan with which they could expound it. But while Women’s Libbers may have a righteous claim to the phrase they hardly have a lock on its sentiment. With Hamlisch’s motto as its tacit and more than likely unintentional mantra, director Roy Szuper’s rock ‘n’ roll diary Gonzo Music Diaries NYC, NYC bridges the gap between the grassroots activism of the hippie ‘60s and the DIY ethic that all but defined punk from the mid-70’s to about noon yesterday.
The film finds Szuper and his co-conspirators-music fan Concert Joy, Szuper’s brother-in law who also happens to lay claim to the world record for concert attendance (sanctioned by no less a governing body than VH-1) and punker Tony Petrozza of SQNS- planning the Williamsburg Music Festival (WMF), a gathering of the tribes meant to entertain the musically sophisticated, enlightened the culturally naïve and, oh yeah… welcome the Republication National Committee of New Your City for their 2002 Convention at Madison Square Garden with a big old heaping helping of Fuck You, Buddy.
Instead of going the all-out punk route and annexing Seventh Avenue, erecting a makeshift stage and kicking out the hams in some guerrilla expression of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion, these guys play by rules. The documentary takes viewers through the mind-numbing laborious steps necessary to throw a full-fledged musical happening in the days of Clear Channel and Live Nation; boring little details like acquiring permits, gaining (gasp!) corporate sponsorship and coming up with a roster of performers to put meat in the seats.
At times Szuper seems to lose sight of whether the story is the making of the festival or in its juxtaposition with the Convention (the WMF took place nice days before the Repubs annexed Seventh Avenue themselves). The narrative connection between the two could be a little tighter, and some of the well-meaning ramblings by the likes of a Yippie co-founder Dana Beal expounding the virtues of the addiction-curing drug ibogaine (again) and the musings of career music pimp Ron Delsener could have wound up on the cutting room floor with no ill effect.
When its focus is clear Gonzo Music Featured among the performances are on acoustic set by Tom Morello (ex-guitarist of corporate nose-tweakers Rage Against the Machine now with Audioslave) and a set by Michael Franti and Spearhead during the RNC-led occupation of midtown Manhattan. As for the WMF, the fruits of Szuper and friends’ labors are borne in the musical styling of Vemon Reid, Papa Mali and blues-beltin’ babe Dana Fuchs. Elsewhere you get to see Petrozza’s band performing at CBGB and former Agnostic Front guitarist Vinnie Stigma interviewed in his NYC Hardcore Tattoo shop.
If Szuper and friends occasionally seem like they’re tilting at windmills with this whole affair, it’s because they are. (Don’t think that an undertaking such as theirs is without its pitfalls or just a hint of irony; the WMF ultimately takes on a true, of wholly unintended Woodstock vibe of its own that you’ll have to see the film to experience.) At its core, Gonzo Music Diaries is a heartfelt look at the dedication, perseverance and (no pun intended) concerted effort it takes for a small group of driven, like-minded people to confront the powers that be—not on their turf, but on your own—while also examining the motivation it takes for someone to try it in the first place. And why is that? Because the personal is political, asshole. Yeesh.