A Good Thing About Facebook, For a Change

     Maybe you're the genealogist or the keeper of family history in your family or maybe you're just like everybody else with a box or albums of old photos. Maybe some of them are washed out, creased, or blighted in some way. Don't despair, there are thousands of talented digital artists out there who know their way around digital editing software, and they will edit your photos for you.

    I was very excited to find these pages because I have little talent in the digital area, and I have been very pleased with the efforts made so far on a few older pictures of my family.  Here's how the groups work:  first, you join and read their rules for posting, then you scan and upload the picture you want edited, perhaps with what you're looking for, and some great volunteer will then post his or her effort in the comments. I've seen some amazing things done. People are able to remove people or objects, put pictures together, change backgrounds, colorize, and sharpen features - just about anything you want. All pictures won't necessarily be picked to work on, and it's possible the work might not be what you expect, but, hey, it's free, right? (Free is the operative word. I have read that some people offer their services or upgraded services, even in these groups, for a fee. That is generally frowned on within the groups.) And you're not hurting the original photo.

Here are some of my family photo examples.

My great grandparents and their 11 children in 1946

My great aunt, great uncle, and uncle around 1939-1940

A couple of great uncles in the early 1940s

My mother and two of her cousins, late 1930s

And these are some of the results.

    So you might be able to search for "photo restoration" on Facebook and find more, but these are the three that I've joined so far:

Random Acts of Photo Restoration https://www.facebook.com/groups/916705811676270

Photo Restoration A Free Service https://www.facebook.com/groups/190352302216996

Restore My Photos for Free https://www.facebook.com/groups/960468551377811

    So, dig out those old photos, scan them and see what miracles can be worked.

REAL MTV: Music Documentaries, part 3

 Continuing my look at some really good music documentaries that I've watched in recent months, here's my last batch of reviews.  

    Few stories are as compelling as Tina Turner's. She truly has lived a dozen lifetimes in one. She's known extreme poverty and enormous wealth. She's found herself at professional lows and highs, lower and higher than only a very few people have experienced. She's endured racism and violence. The HBO documentary Tina tells her story, with her full participation, and without pulling any punches. She goes there; she goes into detail about her relationship with and abuse by Ike Turner, who discovered her as a young and naïve backup singer and then realized that she was a bright star that could take him to heights that he had never dreamed. After she escaped, quite literally, that relationship finally, she still had to endure the press questioning her about the relationship and about subjects that he wanted to keep to herself. The performance bits are great, the interviews are direct and honest. I highly recommend watching Tina. 

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    INXS was a huge band in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the Aussie band's frontman, Michael Hutchence, was a superstar frontman. Handsome, sexy, talented, mysterious - he seemed to have it all. Then, in 1997, he was found dead in his hotel room, a suicide. Mystify looks at the career of the band and the man himself, revealing Hutchence's true character. Hutchence was quiet, introspective, sensitive, and very reserved. He didn't like all the attention. One of the interesting things I picked up from the doc was that his vision was extremely poor; he usually didn't wear glasses or contacts when he performed, so he rarely saw his audience, and he liked it that way.  

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    Duran Duran is one of those 80s bands that has persisted into the current day, still touring and still releasing new, good music, always evolving.  There's Something You Should Know covers the history of the band and their music, focusing on seven albums and how they were made and how they grew with each release. 

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    Rick James was one of those performers whose talent and accomplishments were overshadowed by the negatives - drug use and criminal charges. Did you know, that early on, he was a band mate, and roommate, with Neil Young? He started his musical career in Canada because he had crossed the border to evade the Vietnam-era draft. He dreamed of becoming a rock star and had moderate success. Then he left that band and eventually created the character of Rick James, and his music combined funk and rock. He became a superstar performer and producer. Unfortunately, he also became a major drug addict, leading to some very low spots in his career and personal life. He was an extremely talented man, and he deserves respect for his musical accomplishments.  He really is under-appreciated. Treat yourself to this doc, Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James,  and dig in.  

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REAL MTV: Music Documentaries, Part 2

     Here are some more really good music documentaries that I've seen in the past few months.  And yes, they're pretty 1980s heavy, because that was and is my decade of music. However, these documentaries are so well done that you don't have to be a superfan to enjoy them. A lot of these appeared on HBO or Showtime, but you can search for them on your favorite platforms.

   

    Do you know Sparks?  That's OK. I was only vaguely familiar with them because of their collaboration with Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos. I never bought their music, and probably only ever heard one or two songs. However, they were huge in Europe for decades starting in the 1970s, and they are considered a hugely influential band amongst pop and rock musicians. Musician Beck said in the documentary, The Sparks Brothers,  that anytime he's around other musicians talking about music, Sparks is always mentioned. Sparks was/is essentially two brothers, Ron and Russell Mael, who grew up in the Los Angeles area and became enamored with movies and then music. They formed a band called Halfnelson in 1966 and took off from there, becoming leaders in the art rock/pop or glam genres. They were maybe a little too far out there for Americans, never really having huge chart success in the U.S., but they developed a huge and devoted following abroad. The documentary tells their story, and it includes interviews with a lot of 80s music figures. Their story was quite entertaining, and the two brothers are quite entertaining. My only quibble is that the doc is  a tad long, clocking in at 2 hours and 20 minutes. 

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    Speaking of Jane Wiedlin, her group The Go-Go's are the subject of another documentary (The Go-Go's) that aired on Showtime, and they were just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October 2021.  I was a fan of The Go - Go's, but I wasn't fully aware of their backstory.  The band formed in 1978 as a punk band, and they became a sensation because they were an all-female group that played their own instruments and wrote their own songs. A few years later, they decided to go more mainstream, and the rest is music history. Along the way, however, there was a lot of backstage turmoil, with jealousies, drug and alcohol abuse, and personnel changes, and clashes with their own management and record company. 

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    Grace Jones is one of the most iconic 1980s figures there is. She is a superdiva. Her striking and uncommon look got her into the international modeling scene in the early 1970s. She was signed to a recording contract in the mid 70s and became a fixture in the disco and club scene, a fixture at the famous Studio 54 in New York City, and an intimate of Andy Warhol and other chic celebrities. She then transitioned into films, but she was always as famous for her "private" life - which wasn't very private - as for her professional career. Today, at age 73, she is still performing on stage. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami  captures Jones on stage and off. There is no narration, and there is no mention of timelines. The movie was filmed over several years, following her working, recording, performing, negotiating her own contracts, and following her home to Jamaica, interacting with her extended family. The movie is as mesmerizing as she is.

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        What comes to your mind when you hear the Bee Gees? Kings of disco, of course. Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart proves that they were so much more.  The Brothers Gibb (hence Bee Gees) were born in the U.K. but raised in Australia. The trio became a recording act in 1958, releasing 12 singes in Australia before returning to the U.K. in 1967. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they had several hits in the U.K. and the U.S.  Then Saturday Night Fever happened, exploding their career. Altogether, they've sold more than 120 million albums, and they are third most successful band on Billboard  charts, after The Beatles and The Supremes. The brothers, especially Barry and Robin, also wrote many hit songs for many different artists over the years. Unfortunately, the brothers also had lots of tragedy along the way. Maurice died during a medical procedure at age 53. Jealousy between Barry and Robin broke up the brothers for a while. Robin himself died in 2012 at age 62. And their youngest brother Andy, who had a big solo career in the early 1980s,  died at age 30 in 1988. Their story is quite a compelling one, and, of course the music is great.

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    Documentaries, part three, coming soon.