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Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard (2011)
He floated into our world fully-formed, like some ghostly aristocrat...
This is a nice portrait of a unique guitar player with a noisy yet melodic style, whose presence helped define a decade or more of primitive, arty and ambitious rock music.
It relies on first hand accounts by a number of people close to Howard, including Nick Cave, Wim Wenders and Howard himself. Interspersed with waist-up interview shots are clips from various club and festival gigs, and a few still photographs.
They pay special attention to the seeming contrast between Howard's droll sense of humor and the rather tragic melancholy of his music, and to some extent, his countenance.
Like most rock docs, it has a sort of up then down trajectory that traces the subject's rise to prominence and subsequent fall into despair. But Autoluminescent doesn't really dwell on the drugs or the sickness or the failed romances. Instead, it uses them to set up each segment of the artist's musical development, from teenage prodigy to prodigal middle- aged son, returning to form from the brink of irrelevance.
Cave's recollections seem especially affectionate, while rock doc stalwart Henry Rolllins seems typically awestruck by having crossed paths with such a transcendent talent.
You get a good appreciation for the high regard in which Howard's contemporaries held his playing style, despite the difficulties they had maintaining personal connections with the man.
I came away wanting to delve much further into his discography, beyond the Birthday Party stuff which mostly defines his career.
The Streets of San Francisco: The Thirty-Year Pin (1972)
Stone Pursues a Shooter With a Vengeance
When one of the SFPD's veteran beat cops is shot during a holdup in North Beach, Lt. Stone takes it personally, and pursues the shooter with revenge in mind.
Luckily, the clearer headed Inspector Keller follows up on Stone's leads, and together the pair of detectives combs through a list suspects consisting of local junkies and petty criminals who may have had a motive.
This is a fairly suspenseful episode, with plenty of bullets fired, and some good chase scenes.
This episode begins in the North Beach area, at what appears to be Lombard and Columbus, and includes some good shots of the area at that time. There is also some nice footage of San Francisco General Hospital, in Potrero Hill, which hasn't changed noticeably since this footage was shot. The climactic scene takes place in the underground BART station at either 24th and Mission or 16th and Mission, which hadn't yet been fully constructed at that point. The system would begin service the following year.
The Streets of San Francisco: The First Day of Forever (1972)
A Slasher Stalks Hookers In The City
The episode opens at a crowded nightclub, where a business man sheepishly cancels a date with an elegant-looking call girl. As the girl leaves the club a man emerges from the shadows and slashes her with a knife, only to be hit by a car moments later as he flees.
Stone and Keller are called to the scene to investigate, and the call girl is taken to a fleabag hotel to spend the night under Keller's watchful eye.
Meanwhile, Lt. Stone runs down some leads taken from the hooker's little black book, which take him to another local businessman boasting a classic Horatio Alger-style tale of working his way up from the mailroom to the boardroom.
As the investigation develops, Keller's antipathy towards the woman he's protecting slowly defrosts, and the two of them end up sharing a few laughs down at Fisherman's Wharf just prior to the climactic scene.
The viewer sees the lit-up marquee for "Orphanage" in the opening scene. It turns out that this was actually a famous SF rocknroll club at one time, located on Montgomery in North Beach.
The hotel where Keller watches over the call girl is identified as the Hotel Kennedy, near the Embarcadero, south of Market. It was also apparently featured in the Steve McQueen movie, Bullitt, but is no longer in business.
The Streets of San Francisco: Whose Little Boy Are You? (1972)
Stone and Keller foil a kidnapping
Interesting episode, with a couple of choice quotes from Lt. Stone. "Molestation is a serious thing", he deadpans in the opening act.
Unlike many Streets episodes, there are no shots fired in this tale. The plot concerns a man who returns from Vietnam intent on kidnapping his own son, who had been given up for adoption by the child's mother shortly after birth.
The aspect of this particular story which is most gripping is the tension that builds towards a climax that is psychologically unnerving, but without violence.
The noteworthy landmarks featured here are Fort Funston, near Lake Merced and Skyline Blvd, and Marina Safeway, at Marina Blvd and Laguna, near Fort Mason. If you pay close attention during the beginning of the car chase scene, you may spot what appears to be a campaign poster bearing the surname of a prominent contemporary SF political figure in the background.