Thicker Than Water | Jack Johnson

Thicker Than Water | Jack Johnson | create cd

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Thicker Than Water

	Thicker Than Water Jack Johnson Umvd Labels, 2003 average customer review:based on 73 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Those who know Jack Johnson only as college radio fave are in for a pleasant surprise here, as are wave-riding aficionados with a taste for eclectic, cooled-out musical vibes. The project Surfer magazine hailed as 2000's Video of the Year was originally a collaboration between surfing champ/then-USC film student Johnson and school colleagues Chris and Dan Malloy. But Johnson also gratifyingly took the opportunity to prove that "surf music" is purely a subjective term; indeed, electric instruments are few and far between here, let alone the traditional buzzsaw licks of such genre stalwarts as Dick Dale and Gary Hoey. Instead, Johnson has stitched together an organically focused, acoustic-centered collection that would seem as welcome on a shady creek bank as a sunny, wave-lapped beach. Johnson offers up an acoustic take of his sophomore album's "Holes to Heaven" and the sprightly instrumentals "Moonshine" and "Cove," while longtime associate G. Love duets on the spare, rootsy "Rainbow." Love and band Special Sauce also contribute the even grittier instrumental "Hobo Blues" and laconic "Honor and Harmony." But its also a collection that ventures as far afield as The Meters' 70's-funky "Liver Splash"., Finley Quaye's spare soul, the folk-raga of Kalyanji/Anadji's "My Guru" and the spacey, haunting "Dark Water and Stars" by Natural Calamity. --Jerry McCulley

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Good one

This DVD is one I think every surfer should see at least once. I will not go as far as saying its one of the best surf movies ever made but in my top 15 list. Great surfing and a hip sound track.

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this is a great cd. Jack Johnsons older stuff is so much better that his 2 recent albums. This is a great compilation of music that goes really well with the attitude and type of lifestyle Jack Johnsons music used to be geared too. Read the album cover next time and you wont be disappointed when it is what is described. This beats the hell out of the curios george happy feely butterfly ride.

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Solid

I had never heard of Jack Johnson before I came upon his DVD called Thicker Than Water, at a used DVD store, which, if the DVD package was accurate, seemed to be a documentary about sailing around the world. The back cover features robed Buddhists on the bow of a boat, in an exotic sunset. Could this be a Generation X riff on the whole Seven Years In Tibet theme? I did not know, but always one to enjoy offbeat documentaries, I decided to give it a whirl. Was I surprised, or what?
Well, the disk is a documentary, but not of water-centered cultures about the world, nor of existentialism in a Thoreauvian vein admixed with rock music. No, instead it's a surfer film, although not of the sort brought to you by Hollywood airheads. It follows a group of young twentysomething surfers who spent a year and a half in the early part of this decade just bumming around beaches all about the world, and shooting their adventures with an old 16mm camera. It is part home movie, part guerilla filmmaking, part acid trip, part bad garage band, and all in all oddly interesting, if not riveting. There are, of course, some great shots of young studs riding through tubes of water- although very few bikini babes, and a good deal of lite pop music, spiced with a bluesy vein, by Johnson. His tunes are most akin to the music of The White Stripes, albeit a bit mellower, but nothing much really happens in the forty-five minutes of the main film. We see surfing in different locale, hear random voices come on and off and say things banal and observant, but, I guess, not much more can be expected from Johnson, who was a former pro surfer whose career ended after an accident, and has since become an alternative music icon, of sorts.
Don't get me wrong, some of Johnson's music is evocative, and he does seem like a nice enough guy. I just wonder what sort of vanity is behind such an exercise? That said, the camerawork is much better than one might expect from mere amateurs, but what deeper point is there in the whole exercise, apart from a vanity video. There are scenes that a filmmaker with a real vision could have cut together with much more effective music. The documentary- if one can really call it that; it's more of an extended music video, travels from Tahiti to India to Ireland to Australia to Hawaii and to many unnamed ports of call, seems like the first rough cut of a filmmaker trying to find his way, not a finished product.
All in all, this is the sort of DVD to watch if you're a teenager with a little bit too much weed and not enough pals to toke it with, but it is not a film for a serious cineaste, nor even a serious surfer, for the waves within the film are rather paltry. Not that any of that is necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly not too good of a thing, either. The fact that it could have been more suggests that the boys' youth was to blame. Ah, youth! If you need me to fill in the rest of that observation you will know how I felt watching Thicker Than Water. Okay?

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HEY!! ummm errr ohhh

YAHHH jack johnson.... ahhhh kind of disappointing. I was physched when i saw this one and sped on to buy it.... but then was very disappointed when I bought it. Definately preview this before buying it. Not great or good just ummm eehhhh

Not really Jack Johnson solo

I bought this disc in the hope that it would feature more of Jack Johnson's solo work. I was disappointed. The music is ok, but it is many different artists. It IS a soundtrack however, so I should not have been surprised. The music is not bad and is generally in keeping with the tone of most of Mr. Johnson's style. If you want more Jack Johnson, though, stick with his other discs.

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