Articles for Electric Purgatory

Mo from KPFT 90.1 Houston, TX interviews director Raymond Gayle about the film and the state of Black Music. Director Raymond Gayle is candid with his views on why black audiences fail to support a genre their ancestors helped to create. ROCK MUSIC. This interview took place in March of 2007 as part of the Objectif Radio Hour with Mo. Click the link below to listen to the interview. For more information go to Objectif Magazine. ... [More Info]

By Colette Gaiter Photos: Trish D. Motolinia Consider the term “black rocker” in reference to a musician. It seems like an oxymoron. Black musicians do not play rock and roll, or so the cultural myth goes. Raymond Gayle’s film Electric Purgatory--the Fate of the Black Rocker breaks through those myths with the same intensity as the music itself--driving, relentless, and full of passion. Combining interviews and sequences from live performances, the film tells a visual... [More Info]

Monki here with an update from the Turks and Caicos International Film Festival. Things are going great here on this beautiful island; the people are laid back, the ocean is beautiful and the rum punch is flowing.

Click here to listen to an interview by KPFT Pacifica Houston.

Fourteen-year-old Jared Eveillard is an articulate kid with mouth full of braces, a cellphone, and a part-time job. The aspiring actor -- who paid his way into an actor's workshop taught by film and TV star Michael Beach -- woke up at 7 a.m. on this summer day, took in a McDonald's breakfast, and went through his monologue, over and over. Beach, the former ``ER" and ``Third Watch" star and Roxbury native, was impressed with Eveillard's short performance as Cory in August Wilson's play... [More Info]

S.F. Black Film Fest (Documentary) By DENNIS HARVEY A Payback production. Produced by Marc Newsome. Executive producer, Raymond Gayle. Directed, edited by Raymond Gayle. With: Fishbone, God Forbid, Doug Pinnick, Cody ChesnuTT, 24-7 Spyz, Burnt Sugar, Vernon Reid, Adam Falcon, Jimi Hazel, Sara Hill, Greg Tate. Why is rock music -- descended from African-American blues and R&B -- an almost exclusively white terrain today shunned by hip-hop-focused black audiences? These and... [More Info]

Director Raymond Gayle was interviewd by Community X online in April of 2006. Click this this link to read the Community X Interview.

Electric Purgatory is mentioned in an article previewing a Fishbone concert in Santa Cruz.

Director Raymond Gayle was featured on the Fox 26 Morning Show in Houston, TX.

The first NZ documentary festival runs 15-28 Sept at the Academy Cinema in Auckland, and 29 Sept – 5 Oct at the Paramount Cinema in Wellington. This festival is the first in Australasia to focus exclusively on documentaries, and brings you over 230 of them to choose from! For music lovers, there are some must-see films, including: 'Sing Until the Slaughter You', about SerbiansJovan and Valdan who formed a reggae band called Del Arno. When the former federation... [More Info]

It's fitting that in her review this month of Laura Thomas's new CD Slow, Carrie Crespo draws a comparison to Nancy Sinatra. It was the latter's 1966 hit These Boots Are Made For Walking that sticks in my memory, and it was the boots that Laura was wearing at her recent Knitting Factory gig that were similarly memorable. Laura herself made reference to them and was clearly pleased with the new knee high, titanium-healed purchase, for which she had shelled out nearly a month's salary. The... [More Info]

A new film examines the darker side of rock By Scott Faingold Published: June 30, 2005 Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling the white man down to the level of the Negro. -- Asa Carter, secretary of the North Alabama White Citizens Council, 1956 Living Colour's Vernon Reid Subject(s): Electric Purgatory Ironically, 50 years down the line, rock 'n' roll has done such a good job of "pulling the white man down" that black folks -- who created the genre -- hardly rock at... [More Info]

By Charlie Braxton A few days ago several friends including Cheo sent me a series of posts concerning the controversy over a conference on Asians’ roll in hip hop. The conference was called "Changing the Face of the Game: Asian Americans in Hip-Hop." It seems that the controversy centered on questions raised by Kenyon Farrow concerning Asian American hip hop journalist Oliver Wang’s comment which he felt de-emphasized the central role that Black people play in hip hop... [More Info]