1/22/09: The Rodnees: We Mod Like Dat! (2005)
As we enter our grand post-racial society, it’s time to celebrate The Rodnees. We should first note that The Rodnees are fictional. It was tempting to write this entry as if they were real, but we’ve all been suckered enough lately. You wouldn’t have known any better, though. T
he Rodnees: We Mod Like Dat! didn’t exactly win a following on the film festival circuit.
The critics should’ve been happy to buy into another mock rockumentary—particularly one about young black men who discover the Beatles in 1999 and start an inner-city flower power revival. John Rodney and Rodney Barnett are struggling in New York City with their thugged-out rap act. Then one of the Rodneys finds an old LP of the
Revolver album. He knows enough about the Beatles to convince their wack deejay to spin the vinyl:
“Guess who got smoked on the streets long before Biggie or Tupac even thought about it?” he asks. “John Lennon, that’s who. You wanna know some more gangsta shit? Check this [album title] out! Tell me the Beatles weren’t on top of hip-hop with a title like that!”
The young rappers are instantly won over. (“Beatles be keeping it real, man! Taxman ain’t no joke!”) They’re then inspired to seek out even better bands. It isn’t long before one Rodney is humming a Herman’s Hermits tune at the bus stop, and debating with the other Rodney whether it’s really a song by Freddie & the Dreamers. The duo then remembers a guy down the street named Rodney York: “He’s always into classical music like The Beatles!”
This should be the Rodney who knows about Arthur Lee’s legendary psychedelia, or that Run-DMC once sampled The Monkees. Never mind that for now. The burgeoning band decide to write their own songs after learning that sampling The Beatles can get expensive. Now known as The Rodnees, they come up with several lovely pop tunes. Unfortunately, they make their stage debut with a crackhead drummer who nods off during the set. They’re also upstaged by a ventriloquist.
The good news is that they meet Roy “Sweet” Bailey, M.Sgt., USMC (Ret.). We’ve already seen him at the start of the documentary, explaining how his wife passed away and he had a few extra hours to kill after work. “I decided to go into the entertainment business,” he explains, “on the managerial end.” Sweet has his own idea of how a band should be run.
“Today,” Sweet explains, “your young hip-hop performers got no discipline. They dress like a bunch of ragamuffins, and that’s a sad commentary on this nation. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, all the musical groups wore suits. They kept up an esprit de corps. They were spit-and-polish operations you were proud to be a fan of. If you watch some of those old Motown groups—I’m talking The Temptations, The Four Tops, the Pips, and The O’Jays—when you look at the military precision of their dance steps, that ain’t no accident, and I can guarantee you that each and every one of those band members came out of the United States Marine Corps.”
Sweet meets with the band. “Now the first thing I see,” he explains, “this crackhead has to go!” He throws the drummer out the door, and brings in Rodney “Modney” Woolcott. (“I was in the Marine Corps Fife & Drum Band.”) Sweet then starts looking through old copies of Spec magazine to build the Rodnees’ colorful image. He also finds a receptive audience when he books the band for a series of concerts in inner-city schools. An old white guy who’s with the school board praises The Rodnees for their “clean-cut content” and for being “well-mannered.”
Things start to go wrong when one concerned parent is upset over a tune called “The Penguin Dance.” He soon finds an ally in Vice Principal Virginia Waverly, Ph.D. She lectures the camera about how her “nagging doubts [were] justified” by this particularly controversial tune:
Our African-American young children simply don’t behave this way, repressing their self-expression. It’s not in their nature. They’re used to moving their arms this way and that way while dancing, opening up like a flower, and freeing themselves from the shackles of this European Male-dominated society. When you hold your arms stiffly at the side, as in the Penguin Walk, you’re shutting down the left hemisphere of your brain. It’s the creative side. I have a Masters in Sociology, so I know these things.That old school board guy is soon condemning The Rodnees, with Waverly smiling in the background. “The negative influence of The Rodnees can’t be understated,” he explains. “The question becomes whether our children can exist in the culture dominated by European males. That’s the reason I cancelled their contract.”
This is probably when most critics decided the film wasn’t worth covering. Actually, things just keep getting better. We haven’t even mentioned the narrator. The documentary is the work of obsessed fan William D. Kappelmeyer, who was a 49-year-old Bear Stearns stockbroker before he discovered The Rodnees. He’s a perfect parody of a societal dropout looking for anything to enhance his life. Kappelmeyer is trying to interview that ex-druggie drummer when cops raid the crackhouse, prompting our narrator to start screaming in protest like he’s at Kent State.
Kappelmeyer is played by Moogy Klingman, who’s a veteran NYC scenester and songwriter of some renown. All the credit for The Rodnees’ originals still goes to writer and director
Lindley Farley. He composes better ’60s pop tunes than a lot of overrated modern pop revivalists. Farley’s a black guy, too, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. So was Arthur Lee.
Make it your own: There’s no DVD to buy, and it seems our soundtrack CD is a collector’s item. Fortunately, you can hear The Rodnees’ music at the film’s
official site. You can also enjoy a lot of the movie from
clips on YouTube. The site says that a DVD release is coming soon. Hopefully, that hasn’t been posted there for several years.
