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Music Documentaries? Your favorites and least fav?
- Thread starter Robot.G
- Start date
The Last Waltz, just fantastic. Also, The Beatles Anthology series, I had it on VHS when it came out and literally wore the tapes out. Sonic Highways and Sound City for more recent ones.
I haven’t seen it in ages but I really liked Jarmusch’s Year of the Horse when it came out.
Plenty of other ones too, Zappa, Don’t Look Back, 20,000 Days On Earth, the name escapes me but there was a really good Little Richard documentary on the BBC a month or two ago. I enjoy gear documentaries too, as long as they don’t get too technical.
edit - I also really enjoyed the series Neil Brand made for the BBC; Sound of Cinema, Sound of Song and The Sound of TV (he also made Sound of Musicals but I gave that one a miss), quite in-depth analysis and good historical context, well worth a watch if you can find them.
I haven’t seen it in ages but I really liked Jarmusch’s Year of the Horse when it came out.
Plenty of other ones too, Zappa, Don’t Look Back, 20,000 Days On Earth, the name escapes me but there was a really good Little Richard documentary on the BBC a month or two ago. I enjoy gear documentaries too, as long as they don’t get too technical.
edit - I also really enjoyed the series Neil Brand made for the BBC; Sound of Cinema, Sound of Song and The Sound of TV (he also made Sound of Musicals but I gave that one a miss), quite in-depth analysis and good historical context, well worth a watch if you can find them.
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The Last Waltz was great.
Imagine
Blackberry Smoke Leave a Scar
VH1's Behind the Music, When _______ Ruled the World series, or classic albums show
Yeah, it was, hadn't seen it before. Dee Dee makes it look like a coherent thought is a struggle. Always liked their music though.
Imagine
Blackberry Smoke Leave a Scar
VH1's Behind the Music, When _______ Ruled the World series, or classic albums show
Yeah, it was, hadn't seen it before. Dee Dee makes it look like a coherent thought is a struggle. Always liked their music though.
Beyond the Lighted Stage is fantastic - those guys are so wholesome! Loved the interviews, they almost made Sebastian Bach and Gene Simons likeable....almost.
That last dinner nearly made me cry because we know how the story ends.
I miss Rush.
Pretty much most of what I would have posted have been listed already. I would add these two:
Stop making sense (Talking Heads) is a classic. I just watched on a plane George Michael “freedom uncut”. You forget what an amazing singer and performer he was! Beware of Mr. Baker (Ginger Baker). Yep, crazy man worth the watch.
Most of these are great choices. For my less than musical friends as well as music geeks I have found Muscle Shoals to be the best as an independent film. I saw a documentary about the making of this film by Freddie Camalier (?) and they were film makers on a road trip who where interested in not 1 but 2 music studios in this little area of Alabama. I always wondered how they got the in-studio views of the Queen of Soul but apparently a Swedish documentary group had taken hours of footage in the studio years ago which they put into their film. Great film. My most recent was the Paul Butterfield one on Amazon. I never knew so many musicians were in his band at one time or another....
Hired gun is fantastic! Made me like Alice Cooper more and Billy Joel less.
I'm not at all a fan of the music of Rush, but I watched this and Time Stands Still (about the last tour) and was very entertained.
My favourite--the ancestor of all music festival docs (Newport Jazz Festival, 1959). Beautifully filmed, timeless music:
Saw this 40 years ago, and then on a trip to NYC in ‘89, saw him in a small basement club there. A once in a lifetime experience. Few people understand how it would have been a different world without him, not so much for the guitar, but in the realm of music production and recording…
Watched Miles Electric recently, really good.
Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue (2004) - IMDb
Lots of in-depth interviews with the band members and other interested parties, plenty of archived interviews with Miles and the full Isle of Wight set, too. There’s a good long close-up of Dave Holland’s right hand and I can’t believe how light his touch is, just grazing the strings. Recommend for any fan of this period of Miles’ career or of fusion in general.
Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue (2004) - IMDb
Lots of in-depth interviews with the band members and other interested parties, plenty of archived interviews with Miles and the full Isle of Wight set, too. There’s a good long close-up of Dave Holland’s right hand and I can’t believe how light his touch is, just grazing the strings. Recommend for any fan of this period of Miles’ career or of fusion in general.
