Music Documentaries + Films -- S/D

Instrument: Ten Years with the Band Fugazi

200 Motels

I hate concert films/videos.

Popol Vuh - Sei still wisse ICH BIN (lots of people in white wander about the Sinai Desert following a Jesus-like "prophet" who is played by a woman in a beard - all to the accompaniment of Popol Vuh's weirdest album)

The Residents - Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? ("...deals with the community of Vileness Flats, a town populated by round one-armed midgets")

& don't sleep on the Led Zeppelin Danish TV special from 1969.

Bin that negatively creepy Radiohead movie, couldn't watch it.

I hear "the Osbournes" is a good show

A pretty good, quite recognizable example = I Am Trying to Break Your Heart...

an AMAZING, not-as-recognizable example = Genghis Blues

Beat Street, Wild Style and Krush Groove are all worth checking out.

Standing In The Shadows Of Motown was pretty decent too.

I really enjoy 'Friends Forever'. Not the most popular band in the world, but I find the film terrific.

(When is someone going to bring all the Comic Strip stuff out on DVD?!?)

"Help!"

"Melodie Nelson" French TV Special

Can't wait for the Zeppelin Live DVD's.

Jena - Here you go. Anna , with Anna Karina and Jean Claude Brially singing Gainsbourg songs, is great, too.

I just watched the Electric Miles documentary and think it's outstanding.

http://www.thelanguageofmusic.com/

Musk? Muso. Muso stuff.

Just wait for the Grimes doc with the Musk stuff.

Heh

Just noticed the Grant Hart doc is up on Amazon Prime video.

Yeah that's a top one. He's wistful and funny.

I guess that's a third category. cf. "The Punk Singer" (K. Hanna) and "Hit So Hard" (Patty Schemel).

Evergreen:

https://www.theonion.com/ask-vh1-behind-the-music-host-kris-kristofferson-1819583574

Yeah, my enjoyment of a documentary and performance videos is only very loosely coupled with how much I like particular records. With this past year's releases, I'm meh on the Khruangbin album, and love the Olden Yolk album. Yet I'm hypnotized by every gig video on youtube for the former, and couldn't make it through a session of the latter.

search

bjork live at royal opera house
roxy music (any live DVDs)
dj shadow-cut chemist live
pj harvey - please leave quietly (uh huh her tour with rob ellis and josh klinghoffer on drums)
bjork volumen (complete music videos)
goldfrapp - black cherry tour dvd

I liked parts of the PBS series "American Epic" on Amazon.

Much of it is historiography about early recording - blah blah Carter Family, Son House, etc.

The last episode is a bunch of recent and contemporary Americana ppl recording on reconstructed 1930s recording equipment, direct to vinyl.

Content/trigger warning: Jack White's fingerprints are all over it, but many bits shine in spite of his presence.

the series on dre was really great

honestly i prefer youtube interviews with musicians like the rick rubin kendrick lamar extended interview, though the older i get the less i care about what a musician has to say outside of their music, it is like demystifying the experience..the lyrics can give me what i need. im probably just an asshole tho

A very cuddly Quincy Jones doc is up on Netflix

There's a feature doc about ubiquitous NYC superfans/ merch couple Dennis and Lois (known to all local Mekons fans, for starters):

http://www.docnyc.net/film/dennis-and-lois/

further:

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/legendary-nyc-superfans-dennis-lois-the-subject-of-a-new-documentary-watch-a-clip/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoBDSH_P9s

Is there a general thread on early rock critics? Couldn't find one.

I don't have much sense of Ben Fong-Torres as a writer. I've never read any of his books, and though I've known his byline probably since I first started reading rock critics, he's not in Stranded and he's not in my edition of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (second, I think)--Charles Perry, who goes hand-in-hand with Fong-Torres in my mind, gets both California chapters--and those two books are largely my frame of reference for early American rock critics. He does have a list in Gambaccini's first Top 200 book, and he must be somewhere in The Rolling Stone Record Review Volume II, a book I consult all the time, but I scanned a couple of sections and couldn't find him.

So I spent the first half-hour of Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres wondering why the film was made: seemed like a nice guy who had lots of big names advocating for his importance, but there was a disconnect there for me. Gradually, it did become clear how central he was to the first few years of Rolling Stone, and I guess that in and of itself is historically important. (If this were a film on Brooklyn Dodgers '50 dynasty, he's not Jackie Robinson or Duke Snider or Roy Campanella--he's more like Carl Furillo.) Like Mikal Gilmore, but in a very different way, he has a brother who figures prominently in his life--that section was interesting. And while I imagine some people will recoil, I liked his scenes with Cameron Crowe. Crowe comes across like the 15-year-old version of himself in Almost Famous, still in awe of Fong-Torres.

The best parts are audio snippets from some of his '70s interviews: Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Jim Morrison. Morrison comes across as much more soft-spoken and thoughtful than I would have guessed.

I like your Brooklyn Dodgers comparison. Carl Furillo....

I was watching it thinking, 'man, some of those interview cassettes look beat'

If they haven't already, I hope someone takes the initiative and digitizes them soon.

The Ray Charles excerpts were pretty pointed.

Got to see the forthcoming Aquarius Records documentary (still in festival only mode for the moment) -- a fun treat, and I have a nice little bit near the end (and an even smaller one in the opening credits).

Author Ned S8blette showed the "Omara" film doc tonight that has just been at movie festivals. He publicized the Vimeo showing vis his email list. It's a doc on Cuban singer Omara Portuondo, who came to fame for many via her role in the Buena Vista Social Club. After the screening on Vimeo, Ned had a Q&A with filmmaker Hugo Perez. A knowledgeable interesting guy. Great doc w/ archival footage, plus recent tour footage of her in NY, NJ, Cuba, Mexico City, South Korea . I didn't know she was the daughter of a white Cuban mother and a black Cuban father. Her mother got excommunicated from her well-to-do White family in 1927 for marrying her Dad. Dad was a baseball player and sang at home with Mom and the kids

Director hasn’t been able to get a company to purchase rights to film to distribute it to theaters, plus while some of the footage in it is “fair use”, other clips require payments to record companies that director can’t yet afford

Omara is a really well done film

‘Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg’ Filmmakers on Working With Her Son to Capture His Complicated Mother’s Life: ‘Marlon Encouraged Us to Go Deep and to Go Dark’

xpost Ned Sublette has done some incredible work for Afropop Worldwide:https://afropop.org/search-results?q=Ned+Sublette
And I really enjoyed his album Kiss You Down South--looks like it might be OOP, but still on spotify.

This looks like it could be interesting, I really wish this mania for cheap animation in music docs would stop tho, it doesn't work at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9cQSENpysQ

I really wish this mania for cheap animation in music docs would stop tho

That ain't workin'
That's the way you do it
Get your money for nothin'
And your chicks for free

Billy was an odd duck and at almost every Boston gig I attended in the 90s. This should be a fascinating inside look into the whole scene.

I'm two episodes into Break it All: The History of Rock in Latin America and it's definitely worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWprHs86xao

Yeah, I watched Rompan Todo last year and really enjoyed it.

Even if you don't want to commit to the full six episodes, the first two are amazing in the amount of old footage uncovered. I had never heard of the Avandaro Festival before and certainly didn't know how important it was.

"Catching Fire" was good!

Hadn't heard of this doc about Gary Young, Pavement's outlying drummer---"almost impossible to stream" sez previewer, so better get to Orlando:
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/movies-tv/enzian-hosts-orlando-area-screening-of-louder-than-you-think-about-wildcard-pavement-drummer-gary-young-37089100?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqKggAIhDzSAbhwaCkgQKJPs2BtmwzKhQICiIQ80gG4cGgpIECiT7NgbZsMzCZvoYD&utm_content=rundown

"illustrated with well-executed recreations of anecdotes using puppets"
"Malkmus (via Zoom)"

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/swamp-dogg-gets-his-pool-painted-review-1235847189/

I saw "Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted" at a DC doc film fest and it was great. Swamp lives in a San Fernando valley home near LA with musicians Guitar Shorty and Moogstar. Some impressive archival footage and photos shown in an entertaining way. Plus Swamp hanging out with visitors near the pool while it gets painted.

https://artsfuse.org/302922/arts-feature-the-10-best-music-documentaries-of-2024-along-with-others-worth-watching-and-a-few-disappointments/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3Jxb26nASUZU6wzGa2uv-jJdm2Oj0R2YW4yHGdIiMGJO5vGmM8PmvkWUE_aem_Bf4Q5skoiNrpa16hd8ZPSA

Writer Noah S saw a lot of music docs in 2024

(extremely NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRu_2TnoYe4

Got a ticket for this Peter Asher documentary:

https://www.stratfordfilmfestival.com/movie/peter-asher-everywhere-man/

Over three hours? A little dubious, unless there's a lot more than Peter & Gordon + Linda Ronstadt that I don't know about.

(And Peter & Gordon are worth at least seven minutes...)

anybody watched Questlove's Earth Wind and Fire doc on HBO yet?

(xpost) I swear I looked up the Asher documentary beforehand and saw a three-hour running time, but evidently misread--regular two hours. It was okay. I should have added James Taylor's two big albums to his production credits, and also helping to pave the way for Tapestry. Funniest thing happens over the end credits (and to answer the question posed, obviously yes). I think the person claiming to be Linda Ronstadt here was played by Sally Field.

Xpost - watched the Earth Wind & Fire doc today, it’s great. Lotta stuff about Maurice I didn’t know, but has a lot of good interviews w his wife & the band & some pretty revealing archival interview stuff from Maurice himself. And the archival live performances are great <3

What Veg said, the EWF doc is excellent. Maurice’s childhood tho, yikes, poor kid. And it was impressive how deliberate and thoughtful he was building his vision. I liked the way they used drawings as a substitute for gaps in the photos or video of Maurice’s life.

Saw 2 docs at the DC/Dox festival yesterday - neither have been acquired yet by distributors so not streaming and just at fests for now. Both have some flaws but are worth seeing.

“Newport & the Great Folk Dream” directed by Memphis author/filmmaker Robert Gordon w/ 1963-1967 obscure footage taken from 80 hours of footage never used in full before of blues (Annie & Fred McDowell, Skip James, Howling Wolf, Son House, Taj Mahal), the Chambers Brothers, Staples, Freedom Singers, bluegrass, Dylan & Baez, & Peter, Paul & Mary. The film references Pete Seeger wanting electric Dylan turned down but no created dramatic "A Complete Unknown" footage! There's also a mention of an annoyed Alan Lomax getting in a fight with Albert Grossman. Gordon said he was shown all the footage and he didn't want to make a film about Peter, Paul, & Mary and Pete Seeger, but he said he ended up finding footage of them that he liked and he enjoyed telling the story of how the fest changed and didn't change. It was put together by people who were later involved with doing the similarly eclectic Smithsonian Folklife Fest and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest.

Gordon was the exec producer for Sam Pollard's “The Lorraine” re the Black Memphis motel & its role in music & civil rights as well as MLK ‘s death. The Stax musicians hung out and created songs at the Lorraine and other touring stars stayed there. Incredibly sad film re segregation, King's death, the managers of the hotel, the Memphis garbage workers strike, but inspiring also in how people persevere. Pollard received an Academy Award nomination for 4 Little Girls with Spike Lee.

Anyone seen the Devo documentary on Netflix? Really enjoyed it. A bit front loaded with the best stuff about their time at Ohio State and honing their chops in rough dive bars before heading off to New York.

Actually it was Kent State but that whole era is so important to their whole reason for bring that I felt it was worth the time. The bit about them previewing "Satisfaction" for Mick Jagger (which caused him to dance around like a chicken in enthusiasm) kinda blew my mind.

eh, reason for being

Sorry, yes Kent State.

The Devo doc was pretty illuminating/entertaining. Iirc the only thing that surprised me was no mention/inclusion of all the other weirdo rock bands in Ohio at the same time.

> A bit front loaded with the best stuff about their time

Not a criticism of this observation or the doc, but it's true of most worthwhile docs about bands - how the initial chemistry catalyzed is the most interesting thing.

Oh I also saw "The Essence of Eva" film as part of Filmfest DC (soulful Bowie, MD singer Eva Cassidy died young of cancer but became famous later on BBC)*