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"FacebookPinterestSoul Train.jpg\n\nWe would have liked VH1's documentary Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America better if it had been 11 hours long and hosted by ?uestlove. But the 90-minute version (on which the Roots bandleader and avowed Soul Train fanatic is a funny, encyclopedic talking head) was the best thing we caught up on during our long-weekend DVR binge\u2014a de facto history of black pop culture told via the TV show that put that culture on the national stage. The performances alone\u2014Al Green, singing with his broken arm in a suave-as-hell silk-scarf sling! Curtis Mayfield skipping the \"coke...weed\" stuff in \"Pusherman\"! Stevie Wonder performing the best song anybody ever decided not to sell to Jeff Beck! David Bowie jerking through \"Fame\" like a vampire with jaundice!\u2014are enough to make you want to own every episode of this show and use it to home-school your children. Except\u2014travesty!\u2014you can't! It's not available on DVD in the United States, and for years collectors have had to make do with subtitled VHS copies from Japan; we were going to use this space to urge host/ecutive producer Don Cornelius to give up the funk, but apparently Don sold the rights to the franchise to another company in 2008 and the hold-up is about the usual music-clearance issues that have kept all awesome things from coming out on DVD since the dawn of the format. If and when the Time-Life Soul Train Collection happens, we're crossing our fingers for a bonus feature compiling vintage commercials from Soul Train sponsors; the VH1 doc includes an Afro-Sheen commercial in which a young man is chastised for the unkemptness of his 'fro"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/pick-of-the-3-day-weekend-the-soooooooooooooul-train-documentary>