Overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe was at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. With doctors and conventional medicine unable to help, Joe traded in junk food and hit the road with a juicer and generator in tow, vowing only to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for 60 days. Across 3,000 miles Joe had one goal in mind: To get off his pills and achieve a balanced lifestyle.
It is so cool to find an album that was cut by professional musicians that sound like they are having a blast and doing what they were born to do, and a perfect example of this is Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King’s Fat Man’s Shine Parlor, a killer disc from their recent return to the venerable Blind Pig Records label!
Centered around some soundtrack music that Herbie Hancock wrote for Bill Cosby's Fat Albert cartoon show, Fat Albert Rotunda was Hancock's first full-fledged venture into jazz-funk and his last until Head Hunters making it a prophetic release. At the same time, it was far different in sound from his later funk ventures, concentrating on a romping, late-'60s-vintage R&B-oriented sound. with frequent horn riffs and great rhythmic comping and complex solos from Hancock's Fender Rhodes electric piano. The syllables of the titles alone "Wiggle Waggle," "Fat Mama," "Oh! Oh! Here He Comes" have a rhythm and feeling that tell you exactly how this music saunters and swaggers along just like the jolly cartoon character. But there is more to this record than fatback funk. There is the haunting, harmonically sophisticated "Tell Me a Bedtime Story" (which ought to become a jazz standard), and the similarly relaxed "Jessica."
What began as the story of one man, is now a story about millions. After the film "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead" documented his 60 day juice fast, Joe Cross vowed never to go on camera again. Since then, more than 20 million people have seen the film and Joe realized there's still a lot for him to learn about becoming healthy and staying that way. "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead 2" taps into the tsunami of positive change that's sweeping the world when it comes to what we eat. As Joe sets out to learn how to be healthy in an unhealthy world, he talks to a wide range of experts, follows up with folks from the first film, and connects with new people along the way. Each one helps Joe learn that healthy eating is only one aspect of living a healthy life. From stay-at-home moms to world-class surgeons to office workers in Kenya, it seems like everyone is trying to be healthier, yet struggling to do so. While on the road, Joe experiences some ups and downs when it comes to managing his own weight.