Music documentaries

connect_icut

connect_icut

Well-known member
That Arthur Russell doc (Wild Combination) is incredible. Definitely the most imaginative and emotionally moving music doc I've ever seen.

I also thought that The Devil and Daniel Johnston was pretty insightful and moving.

The Scott Walker film (30 Century Man) is interesting for the interviews with Scott but it's horribly marred by sound-bites from Britpop no-marks and rock star wankers.

Finally, I vaguely remember really enjoying a film about The Ramones called End of the Century.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
You're right about bad interviews in 30 Century Man, but it's still so worth watching. Parts are really beautiful.

The Jim White one about the Southern US is great.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
Apparently it's all about Anvil, story of a really really crap metal band. Haven't seen it and suspect irony, but everyone who has swears it's great.

Also hear good things about Bill Withers doc, Still Bill, but haven't seen that either.
 
P

PeteUM

It's all grist
The Anvil one is great, yup. Also the Fugazi documentary and the Can film, which Nochexxx can probably remember the names of...?
 
benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
saw Les Blank's film on Lightnin Hopkins last week... really good. also contains one of the best jokes in music documentary history
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
have just seen Lomax the Song Hunter. a beautiful, immensely fascinating and profoundly moving film... of course representing only tip of the iceberg that was the man's work.

for instance he tried to map all the musical styles in the world, according to dozens of criteria... and forming correlations between climate, geography, social codes, and the form of singing which arises out of different conditions.

in Spain he found high pitched nasal voices which was highly constrained, the sound of something that was dying to come out but couldn't... and in more Northern parts he found voices which were freely flowing. and he made connection between this and the fact that in Spain youths could not freely court, and up North it was normal for thme to walk hand in hand into the trees at dusk.

he talks of cultural equity being as important as any other cause such as freedom of speech, etc. and the great injustice of the few voices who could afford transmitters taking over communication routes, and millions of poor voices, which are just as if not more beautiful and amazing, being silenced.

the film touched on the disappearance of lifestyles and songs under the sweeping effects of commercial music industry... shot in many locations around the world, tracing the paths Lomax took back in the 40s and 50s, often with the singers who appeared on his recordings, now very old, remembering his visit and listening to their own voice from half a century ago...
 
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Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
baboon2004 said:
The Jim White one about the Southern US is great.
Click to expand...

Searching For A Wrong-Eyed Jesus.

A couple of southerners were annoyed by it, they thought it was a very British take on "the weird south" (the film makers were Brits) but I absolutely loved it.

Harry Crews was ace, the acts appearing are wonderful, only David Johanssen is a bum note. And the Johnny Dowd clip is gorgeous:


As Flannery O'Connor remarked, "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
From an entirely parochial point of view I concur with Slim above. Really placing them as a product of their environment - Canvey Island (a byword for backwards and insularity down here on the Estuary), it makes a good case for their importance, particularly as a live band.

Wilko is fascinating - owning every frame he is in.

ohh... and my butcher is in it too expalining how Lee Brilleaux was a gourmand and polite to the ladies in the queue
 
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