Music Documentaries...

Currently showing at the cinema, I'm sure it will eventually find a wider circulation:

'Summer of Soul'. While hippy wastrels were rolling around in the mud at Woodstock a real music festival occurred in Harlem. Doco features heaps of great artists- BB King, Nina Simone, Sly & The Family Stone, Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Mahalia Jackson etc. The footage was lost for years- leading to the political dimension of the film, about the preservation of African American culture and heritage etc. Many great insights and comments from people who attended, artists etc.

Another one I saw on SBS, probably about 10 years ago, and have never found anywhere since, is 'From Shtetl to Swing', about how the musical traditions of Jewish immigrants (mainly from Russia) influenced the early years of jazz. Listen to Benny Goodman's clarinet to see the connection.
 
“Cosmic Psychos. Blokes you can Trust.”
Doco from about 2014, on Amazon Prime. Missed it somehow until now.
******* brilliant! Had me in tears (of laughter) at times. What a life those Aussie boys have lived.
Best music doco I’ve seen in a while. So Aussie! Legends!

Edit. Found it on youtube for all you old punks!🍻🍻🍻🍻



An absolute classic from one of my all time fave Aussie bands.

Was pissed off their August show at The Corner had to be cancelled.
 

revo333

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"Echo in the Canyon" about 60's folk music in LA, particularly Lauren Canyon.

Thought it was pretty good.
 

MC Bad Genius

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Got a 14-day Binge trial just to watch this:



I had Woodstock 99 on pay per view that weekend and the music was killer for a young 20-something white kid in Adelaide. You only heard about all the other goings on afterwards.

What did you think? It was interesting and some of the footage was wild, but it seemed to make some pretty massive leaps in logic to try and prove its point (ie numetal = rape).
 
“Cosmic Psychos. Blokes you can Trust.”
Doco from about 2014, on Amazon Prime. Missed it somehow until now.
******* brilliant! Had me in tears (of laughter) at times. What a life those Aussie boys have lived.
Best music doco I’ve seen in a while. So Aussie! Legends!

Edit. Found it on youtube for all you old punks!🍻🍻🍻🍻



A couple of other Aussie music docos you might like are:

Autoluminescent on Rowland S Howard
Notes from the Underground - SixFtHick doco
 

AdelaideGT

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Docos like 'Get Back' make me really wish SBS would bring back something like 'Great Australian Albums'.

It doesn't have to air every year but a new series would be good every 5 years or so before the artists actually die...

My favourite is still on YT at least -

But even a Kylie Minogue episode would be better than nothing.
 
An absolute classic from one of my all time fave Aussie bands.

Was pissed off their August show at The Corner had to be cancelled.

Got tix for The Psycho’s and The Chats at The Railway Club. A small local club that supports independent music up here in Darwin. Three nights, all sold out. Stoked!
 
Back in the mid 90's there was a documentary series called "Rock Family Trees" narrated by John Peel. There were about 12 episodes about a number of different periods in rock history, such as the New York Punk, The Mersey Sound, California Dreamin'.

I haven't seen every episode but the ones I saw I enjoyed, and I've kept one episode called "Banshees and Other Creatures" which revolves around the London Punk Scene in late 70's and bands like Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Sex Pistols, PiL, The Cure, The Slits and Adam & The Ants, who were originally a punk band.
 
Sep 30, 2014
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I watched the Alanis Morisette documentary on the weekend. I enjoyed it for the nostalgia but she was a bit of a one album wonder who was in the right spot at the right moment.

They made her out to be this long lasting musical icon. I bet most couldn’t tell you any song off an album that’s not Jagged Little Pill.

She wasn’t a fan of the doco and I can see why.
 
Sep 30, 2014
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Has there ever been a doco made about AC/DC and Back in Black?

For me, that’s one of the greatest stories in music history. A band loses their iconic front man just as they’re about to hit the US and then find a replacement to record the greatest selling rock album of all time.

I’m no huge AC/DC fan but that story deserves to be told, preferably while the members are still around to contribute.
 
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“Cosmic Psychos. Blokes you can Trust.”
Doco from about 2014, on Amazon Prime. Missed it somehow until now.
******* brilliant! Had me in tears (of laughter) at times. What a life those Aussie boys have lived.
Best music doco I’ve seen in a while. So Aussie! Legends!

Edit. Found it on youtube for all you old punks!🍻🍻🍻🍻



Im no fan and had come across them a few times, but this was an excellent doco.
 
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I've recently watched the Country Music series on SBS (apparently a lot more footage in the original PBS production) - very good history of country. ...
That was a Ken Burns production - that's why it was a quality production - with his favourite narrator, actor Peter Coyote. Google him and you will recognize his face, he has done hundreds of bit pieces in movies over 50 years, never the star, and has been a voice over actor for docs for 25-30 years.

Burns' Country Music 8 x 2hrs nicely complemented his Jazz doco series of 10 x 2hrs from 2001. No more music stuff in his future projects for the next few years

As someone who doesn't mind some country music, rather than a greater lover of it, I knew Dolly Parton was a prodigious writer, producer of other people's songs but had no idea how influential Willie Nelson was away from his own performances over the last 60 years, and also the impact of Kris Kristofferson. Never new he wrote Me and Bobby McGee and had recorded it before Janis Joplin. Loved the Johnny Cash stuff in the series.
This top quality documentary, from the best there is in Ken Burns, is still on SBS catch-up - for free. I'd recommend
it to anyone with a general interest in the history of American music, including the blues and jazz, as their history is all intertwined (as the first episode shows), and later on the birth of rock from country and blues. The only downer is that the SBS version only has half of the original American PBS material (the episodes are edited back to 1 hour episodes),
so some of the greats are absent. But check it out, it's not just for country music lovers.
 
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