If you have a pair of working ears on your head, you need to experience the revelation-heavy rock documentary Moses, directed by master cinema storyteller Fran Guijarro. Crafted over a 15-year time period, the documentary follows Alvin Carbins, who was well known in the San Francisco business district as the elderly panhandler outside the Starbucks. Carbins is one of the nicest guys you could meet on the street, as he has very strong feelings about communication, weaving a community of people together. At night, he would self-medicate with crack in a Tenderloin hotel to numb his pain from his ailments as well as the wreckage he had caused loved ones over the years. Guijarro came to San Francisco from Spain to study filmmaking and started talking to Carbins outside the coffee house. Guijarro made a short film featuring Carbins that was accepted into an international film festival. Lots of people in the city start chipping in to help Carbins get his passport and get a plane to Spain to the festival.
When trying to hunt down the needed documents, Guijarro and company locate Carbin’s remaining family as well as former bandmates. Turns out, before he went homeless, Carbins was one of the top guitar players in the Bay Area, writing songs under the name Moses. And Moses can play those strings hard enough to split the Red Sea all night long.
In the opening to this incredible film, there are some statements about being homeless as being lost behind a fog, where other people can’t see you. This is twined with images of a homeless man by a steam vent and fog in fast motion oozing through San Francisco. It is a very poetic way to start you on your path to one revelation after another. As the fog lifts further and further during Moses, you find out the most remarkable things about this remarkable musician. Guijarro knows exactly what to let you in on at the correct time to build up the momentum. The director even does that trick that as a kid I hated, which is not letting us see the whole monster until the end of the monster movie.
Alvin Carbins returns to the studio after decades to record his song “Peek-a-Boo” in Fran Guijarro’s documentary, Moses.
“…before he went homeless, Carbins was one of the top guitar players in the Bay Area…”
This is not to say Alvins is a monster, even though the film doesn’t flinch from the headache he caused his brother Homer and his sister Renee. The monster that comes out to play here is the Godzilla that Moses becomes when he picks up a guitar. Longtime recording studio owner Peter Miller remembers Moses as one of the top players he ever worked with. The final reveal of how big Alvins’ talent is hits you like a Mack truck.
One of the songs Moses wrote but never recorded due to his slide into freebase was Peek-a-Boo, a tune he wrote for his daughter on the day she was born. One of Alvins’ former bandmates, Myron, recalled the tune as being the hottest thing since sliced bread. Guijarro hypes the song several times with photos of Moses back in the day, as well as snippets of other taped songs. But when Alvins picks up the guitar after 40 years to record Peek-a-Boo for the first time, you realize Guijarro hasn’t even hinted at how amazing of a musician this man is.
This is why Moses belongs in the rock doc category, even though many more will classify it as a film about homelessness. Many musicians like Alvins ended up on the streets on drugs; the only difference is that many of them got better known for their work before the fog got them. But when you hear Alvins play that Peek-a-Boo, you will realize there is no difference between him and someone like Sly Stone. God help me, Alvins may even be a little better. Moses will restore your faith in humanity as well as rock n’ roll, as it turns out, some of the best stuff that happened we haven’t heard yet.
"…will restore your faith in humanity as well as rock n' roll,"
