Live at Carnage Hall!

Earlier this year, I finally got around to watching an oddball movie I'd heard about for a while but hadn't seen: Rock & Rule. It's a Canadian animated sci-fi fantasy featuring the musical contributions of such greats as Debbie Harry, Cheap Trick, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed. 

While the plot is fairly convoluted--something about a post-apocalyptic future where people are human/animal hybrids and an elderly rock 'n roll star is on the hunt for someone with just the right singing voice to release a demon. Huh? Yeah. At any rate, the plot isn't the reason to watch the movie, the music is. (And the animation is pretty good, too.)

This movie is sort of a companion piece to 1981's sci-fi animated musical Heavy Metal. Indeed, the company that made Rock & Rule, Nelvana, was offered the chance to work on Heavy Metal but turned it down to do this film instead. It's based on a 1978 Halloween special Nelvana made called The Devil and Daniel Mouse, which draws heavily on the themes from the short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster." 

Since Rock & Rule's source material is a bit more tame than the magazine Heavy Metal was based on, it's not nearly as graphic in terms of sex and violence, but its soundtrack is no less classic. Debbie Harry provides the singing voice of the angel-throated heroine whose pipes are needed to release the demon, and Lou Reed is the singing voice of the guy who has her under his spell, Mok. Today's song is Mok's villainous ode to himself: "My Name Is Mok." For a guy who looks like a deflated Mick Jagger, this guy sure thinks highly of himself! It's a great song, though, and since today happens to be the seventh anniversary of Lou Reed's passing, let's have a listen in his honor.