Before Channing Tatum took the vow as a movie star, he had a short career as a stripper. Out of that fun fact, director Steven Soderbergh has fashioned Magic Mike. It's not a biopic. The script by Reid Carolin simply uses a male strip club in Tampa, Florida as a backdrop to show the blood, sweat and desperation that go into making stripping pay. Tatum plays Mike, who strips to foster his dream job in furniture designing business. He and his fellow bare-assed dudes, including Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Kevin Nash, show the ropes to The Kid (Alex Pettyfer), a drifter who finds a home in the junk shop. The first part of the film is raunchy fun, with Matthew McConaughey stealing scenes as Dallas, the Club's den daddy. Watching the dudes work on their dance moves in front of ravaneous women exerts a real fascination, though the script never truly examines the motives of strippers or the audiences. Instead, Soderbergh dawdles over Mike's flirtation with The Kid's sister (Cody Horn). Worse, the film develops a virtuous squint that starts tsk-tsking everything that was first shown as a fleshy amusement park. It turns out that the sex, drugs and rock & roll lifestyle is really bad for these guys, especially The Kid. Magic Mike slowly degenerates into a simplistic cautionary fable. I didn't see that coming from a sharp observer like Soderbergh.  

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“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."