"Family Band: The Cowsills Story" on Showtime 2: Wed. March 6 @ 7PM

well, having seen the dvd, i am not sold on the idea he was merely a 'flawed person' to do the things he did to his own children, physically and mentally, not to mention squandering the money THEY made, and he was tasked to look after and manage, to chalk that up to his comment of "I ain't show business, etc...." and be done with it is a little too convenient......yes, he was NOT a show biz guy, but dang, didn't he owe it to his own children to take better care of them or find managers that could help? their climb (and fall) was fairly gradual, so I can't believe he didn't have time to figure stuff out.......

 

Finally got around to watching this today. Really enjoyed it. So much so, that I immediately watched it a second time. You can tell that Louise Palanker was/is a fan of the group (she even has an unsent letter to the band, from her childhood, on her website), and the whole film came across as much a valentine, as it did a tale that simply focused on any of the more tragic aspects of the band's story. I'm a big fan of the group's music, and was pretty familiar with most of the personal stuff, but I still found the whole narrative very compelling.

I also thought having the meat of the documentary basically unfold in real time over the course of the last decade really added a lot to the poignancy of everything. I mean, Bill taped his interview just a few months before his death, and to even hear him acknowledging Barry's disappearance, just a couple months before his own demise, made me feel as if was watching a very real human drama unfold before my eyes.

Whatever rough-around-the-edges quality the doc had, it didn't impede my enjoyment at all. Sure, they played a little loose with the band's actual timeline, and I probably would've enjoyed a little more emphasis on the chronology of the band's music, but I thought everything fit well in the big picture (and I'm also aware of what "sells" in these types of docs to the general, unfamiliar public). It may have been the basic Rise-Fall-Redemption formula, but it never felt fake to me. Touching, tragic at times...and with a dose of self-deprecating humor. Hopefully, it will cause more than a few people to check out the band's catalog who may have previously dismissed them as nothing more than a "few hits," kiddie, novelty act. These folks have real talent and deserved a far better hand than they were dealt in the music industry.



PS - As a postscript, the band's been doing quite a bit of press promoting the movie, and I have to say, after stumbling across this interview with Bob, the story he conveyed here just haunts, perplexes and chills me at the same time. Wild eh?:

"Bob says he and the other surviving members have come to terms with their difficult past, and with themselves. And he notes that his dad did pay one final, unexpected visit to each of the Cowsill siblings not long before he died.

"He was living in Mexico, but he came to visit me one last time," Bob recalls. "It had been a long time since I had seen him. I didn't get to see my mother much, either, because she stayed with him. But one time he just got in his his Volkswagen bus, with his white hair and white beard like Ernest Hemingway, and showed up at my door. He said he just wanted to stop by. I didn't even know what to say."

Bud went with Bob that day to see his son play baseball, and then went with him to his wife's tennis lesson. "He didn't say much," Bob says. "But there was one thing he said that I will never forget. He asked me, 'Are you prejudiced?' I said, 'Of course not, dad.' And he said, 'At least I did something right.' Then he left."

Bob says he never saw his father again. But his father left $1,000 on Bob's table that day. "He visited all of us like that, every one of us," Bob says. "And he asked all of us the same question.""

http://therenodispatch.blogspot.com/2013/03/exclusive-dark-but-redeeming-story-of.html

 

It's interesting to hear the family talk about ther dad in the dvd extras. Didn't hear that story but Paul John and Susan each talk about seeing their after he left the family.

 

Very much enjoyed the documentary (caught it on Showtime). A little hard to follow who's who with so many brothers. Only familiar with the band from their hits with Hair being my favorite- interesting to learn that they recorded and mixed it themselves; perhaps we really did miss out on much of their creative talents.

Time to dig a little deeper into their catalog...

 

If you don't care for bubblegum, you might want to check out their later albums first, particularly Global and The Cocaine Drain.

 

I watched this and found it quite interesting and moving.

However, I was watching with my girlfriend who had NO CLUE who the Cowsills were or why there was a documentary about them. So I felt like I was watching thru her eyes and wished they had focused a bit more on the music up front so we understood there place in music history. Not only were the video clips brief but the hit songs were always truncated too. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine to have a documentary about musicians that glosses over the music part of the equation. Maybe it's a licensing issue but from that standpoint, it was somewhat frustrating.

Later in the show the parents are never mentioned again. You don't know if they're alive, still part of the picture... nothing. I was scratching my head since I really didn't know the story. We find out at the end when they died but there were still large holes in the storyline.

Like others have stated, I couldn't tell who was who, especially when being interviewed later. I didn't realize who the older Bill was until the show was nearly over!

So, I did enjoy it but agree that it could have been told better and put together a bit more cohesively.

 

I love bubblegum but will check out those two albums as soon as I finish 20th Century Masters - The Millenium Collection on MOG. I really enjoyed much of the background music during the documentary and want to check out Susan Cowsill's albums, too.

This is one of the few documentaries that I may watch a second time...

 

So I got back from Jazzfest in New Orleans earlier in the week. I had dinner with Susan and her husband Russ. At one point in our conversation the movie came up. I asked her about a couple of the points raised in this thread. First off why no full clips of the song?. She said it was because they wanted to focus on the family. That's what the movie is about. I told her that some folks were a bit confused on who was who in the interviews since there were no names attached to the person speaking. She and Russ did think it was a valid point. She said something funny in that when people come up to her and talk about the movie they don't know what to say to her. "Sorry?" " Enjoyed it?" Susan also said that they have been contacted about a movie being made about their story. It was a great night with two very cool people. Please if you like some of the music in the film seek out The Cowsills CDs and Susan's Lifehouse CD which had songs featured prominently in the film.

 

Just finished watching this with my wife. We both thought it was very well done. I had always thought of them as just another top 40 bubblegum band. I now have respect for the Cowsills I didn't have before and would like to hear some of their experimental music that was mentioned in the documentary.

 

I watched it again last week. Given that it was done on a shoe-string budget, I was certainly moved by the story.

 

I honestly could not tell it was made on a show-string budget.

 

Thanks for confirming this. I just got my copy today and I thought I got ripped off!