Some Big Guns of Music Explore Rock Docs

From assorted publications these past few weeks, some major acts are in process or about to release their own rock docs. To wit:

• Britney Spears: In addition to an upcoming MTV doc about her troubles in the past year, she’s also planning to do a feature length doc that will focus on her upcoming world tour, per wire reports.

• Bon Jovi: Billboard reported that Bon Jovi recently screened clips from an upcoming doc the band is self-producing. Early clips feature Bon Jovi talking about life on the road and guitarist Richie Sambora talking about his addiction to painkillers. Expected release Spring 2009.
• Smashing Pumpkins: Entertainment Weekly details that Billy Corgan and company have a new doc titled If All Goes Wrong > In an novel distribution strategy, the film will screen in 40 cities across the country for one day only: Nov. 6. The DVD is released on Nov. 11.
• Fall Out Boy: From a Fashion Rocks insert in the New Yorker comes news that Fall Out Boy’s last year has been documented by Albert Maysles, director of such legendary rock docs as Gimme Shelter. Per a quote from Pete Wentz, the goal is to document how the music industry is changing. Read more at MTV News.

Prague Loves New York

Some cities are forever linked with bands. Liverpool birthed the Beatles. San Francisco rose the Dead. The Laurel Canyon folk rock scene begat The Byrds, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell. Boston brought forth Boston (ha ha….those computer nerds were actually from Cambridge.)

New York, on the other hand, probably can only boast the Velvet Underground (and the solo work of Lou Reed) as its major contributions to the rock canon. This is no knock on the city. Indeed, as we lovingly recalled in our NY77 doc, NYC may not be known for bands but more for launching movements like disco, ‘80s New Wave (which of course did have seminal, near-canonical acts like Blondie, Talking Heads, etc.) and of course, the entire freakin’ art of hip hop (which deserves more than a parenthetical.)

But follow my train of thought. New York has a different importance to music. It’s an incubator of movements; a center of the business that would beam/transport these songs to the rest of the country; and, arguably, an arbiter of taste that influences what becomes popular. Plus, everyone comes to New York from somewhere else, hampers a homegrown sound or scene; instead, there are many. So while some critics lament the lack of a critical number of famed New York acts (Sonic Youth zealots – wait! Your moment is coming in this post) no one would really deny New York’s importance as a music capital.

Least of all the Moffom Film Festival, which is celebrating New York as a theme in its program this year. Why now? I asked festival organizer John Caukins. He says that every year, Moffom focuses on a geographic region. In the past, its been Russia, South Africa and even New Orleans. He admits that programming for New York City is a tough challenge due to the reasons cited above – so much is going on, there is a surfeit of films from which to select.

Among his selections this year are VH1’s NY77 (of course!) and our forthcoming Lords of the Revolution series episode, featuring Andy Warhol (there’s the Velvets.) Other NY music docs that have been making the rounds are also showing, including Note By Note: The Making of a Steinway; Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell; and From Mambo to Hip Hop; A South Bronx Tale. Some classics are represented too, like Henry Chalfant’s Style Wars.
Oddly, Sonic Youth’s 2006 doc Sleeping Nights Awake (shot by seven student filmmakers) is also at Moffom but not part of the New York section. When I asked John why, he said, “Well, the concert was shot in Nevada.” He implied that New York is kinda like a Kevin Bacon of music – lots of other films could plausibly claim lineage, such as Pete Seeger’s doc (he lived in NY for a time), Planet B-Boy (since B-Boys first appeared in NYC), etc. Maybe every film festival can be a New York film festival! In any case, I’m excited to represent my hometown in Prague. And here is a clip from New York’s own Sonic Youth doc.

Incoming: Notable Music DVDs for mid-October

Thanks to help from Pause & Play and other sources, here are some notable music DVDs about to hit stores in the next few weeks:

David Gilmour: David Gilmour Live in Gdansk
Ben Folds: Way to Be Normal (packaged on bonus CD)
Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison Legacy Edition
Grateful Dead: Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978
Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (23 minute DVD)
Lou Reed: Berlin
Jewel : The Essential Live Songbook
Roy Orbison : Black & White Night
U2: Under a Blood Red Sky: Live at Red Rocks (Deluxe Edition)
The Doors:, The Perception [CD/DVD box set]
Carpenters: Behind the Music: The Ultimate Critical Review
Genesis: Genesis 1970-1975 [CD/DVD box set]

Rock Me Falco!

Biopics are all the rage after the success of Johnny Cash’s Walk the Line. There are planned bios on John Lennon, Keith Moon, Biggie, etc. But, you may ask, what about Falco? A film about the Austrian pop star who gave the world Rock Me Amadeus will screen at the Moffom Festival. The title translates as Falco: Condemned, We Still Live. I can’t wait and I hope my high school German is up to the challenge.

The Battle for Moffom

While less of a festival for premieres, the Prague’s Moffom Festival still has a competition. Twelve music docs will take part (with one part of the first place prize being wines from Moravia..mmmm.) They’re not all rock docs – in fact, many are in genres that this blog wants to cover more on occassion but hasn’t. While the full program for all the films in the festival can be downloaded from the Moffom site, here are some highlights of the competition:

• Kiss Loves You
  Featured earlier in this blog, it’s a maybe too-close look at the KISS Army.
• Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony
  A stunning trailer (see below) that screams “big movie,” this is the story of the Berlin Philharmonic’s recent Asian tour. It’s a classic band film featuring clashing egos, feuds, hubris, the nature of genius – all the good stuff except that the band is made up of 126 members instead of four.
• Dub Echoes
  A Brazilian film all about the forty year history of dub, the sound that underlies modern beat music.
• Family Meeting
  When the Finnish Wentus Blues Band celebrates their 20th anniversary, ex-Rolling Stone Mick Taylor, Fabulous Thunderbirds frontman Kim Wilson, and more show up to celebrate the blues.

The Blog Goes to Prague

There are film festivals that are now media events, where a slate of films vie for attention from critics who help create buzz for buyers. A handful of titles get picked up and the rest of the hopefuls wonder where their marketing dollars went. Other festivals are founded from a common, shared interest of film, less about premieres and more about cinema-hopping and shop talk about how hard and rewarding this craft is.

That’s why I’m very excited to be off to the Moffom Festival in Prague, which appears to fit the festival bill. Moffom, in its fifth year, has five days of round the clock screenings of music docs (The Story of Anvil opens the festival) and a few fictional pieces around music (i.e., I’m Not There screens this year; Once screened last), concerts and more. One extra is a special program featuring six of our VH1 Rock Docs. Brad Abramson, our VP in charge of the series, and I will introduce some of these in Prague.

Visitors to this blog know I’ve always dreamed of starting a kick-ass music doc festival in the U.S. so hopefully I’ll see it in action overseas. I’ll be making posts about Moffom’s offerings leading up to the Thursday’s kick off and I’ll be covering the festival as well. So watch this space. To whet your appetites, check out this clip from Planet B-Boy, a film about global breakdancers still making the festival rounds.

Placefilms

Music, like dialect and food, has traditionally been a local grown. A town, city or region gets it own style and sound based on the forefathers and scenesters. They propogate a certain style, which begats imitators and soon a moment is happening, a city is dubbed the “next Seattle” and a Motown or a Staxx or a Sub Pop is founded to capture the noise and sell records. Then, a documentary comes along to put it to film and everyone argues over who discovered that this backwater actually is a rich source of culture.

But does this happen anymore? In an era of four labels and basically one radio chain and the world linked together by the Internet, is there a city’s scene that is so distincitve anymore? Have regional differences been erased by mass culture?

I’m not sure if Nowhere Now, a new documentary that premieres tomorrow night at the Tucson Film and Music Festival, addresses these issues directly. But it seems to speak to it indirectly. The film features music made in the Joshua Tree desert outside of Los Angeles. This is a scene that’s way different from the traditional spots where music usually blooms. What kind of sound germinates in such an unforgiving and isolationist spot? Per the program guide:

This place—its history and traditions, its isolation from urban centers, and its unique atmosphere and community—have contributed to this phenomenon. Each writer-performer has his or her unique story, but all have had to face the conflict between maintaining their identity as performers and the struggle to survive in the music industry. The film paints a portrait of life in the desert, far from big music industry, while examining our notions of success and failure.

It features the cool indie chanteuse Victoria Williams, old rocker Eric Burdon (of the Animals), intriguing Gram Rabbit (who I started listening to after seeing the trailer) and more. Preview below:

Are Shiny Happy Rock Docs Worth It?

I’m tossing Spinal Tap in this rock doc blog because its upcoming fancified release on Blu-Ray raises some interesting issues about filmmakers intent. (You can debate internally about whether Spinal Tap as a ficitional mockumentary is worthy of the Rock Doc designation.) The new Spinal Tap remaster will take advantage of Blu-Ray’s capabilities to display in high-def widescreen format as well as 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Audio (for the tech-averse, that means it will sound very very clear.) Yet the blog Gizmodo raises the obvious questions about whether such a spitshine is really necessary for this film:

[The]5.1 DTS HD Lossless Audio track….is all well and good if this were, say, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or Rob Reiner’s other masterpiece, A Few Good Men. But this is Spinal Tap—er, that is, This Is Spinal Tap! No Dubbly, no dice.

I’m actually not convinced that a 1080p transfer will change the emotional tone of the movie. This is supposed to be a handheld, herky-jerky film, not some sweeping epic. How can high-def do more for those intimate moments—Fran Drescher almost not annoying, the late Bruno Kirby explaining the joy of Frank, Harry Shearer, aka Derek Smalls, trapped in his body-snatcher pod. Those don’t improve with resolution.

It reminds me of the colorization debate, whether old classic black and white flicks should be painted by new technology. Of course, there are many rock docs in dire need of improvements to sound quality….but would they seem less authentic? But more than hisses and pops from subpar recording equipment, I think picture quality is the thing to maintain at all costs. Technology shouldn’t mess with the images since do signify aesthetic choices as well as a time stamp. And no one needs to see Spinal Tap’s tight leather pants in unvarnished video!

Weigh in on the comments about which rock docs could be touched up and which shouldn’t be touched.

The World’s Most Dangerous Group

There are acts that break through musically, by selling truckloads of records and/or through critical applause and then there are the few groups that also change history. Thinking about such acts in the last twenty years results in a slim list: Nirvana, Britney, NSYNC (the whole bubblegum phenomenon really) and NWA. From the lite rap days of the Wreckin Cru (see the hilarious excerpt below) all the way to an FBI crackdown and nationwide outrage over “gangsta rap”, NWA and their 1988 smash Straight Out of Compton changed rap, the music business and society. Now that’s entertainment! The latest VH1 Rock Doc portrays the birth of the band with rarely-seen footage. There’s the juicy story of how Eazy-E plotted to kill Suge Knight, among others. The doc features new interviews with Ice Cube, DJ Yella, Eazy-E’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright, and former manager Jerry Heller. And Chris Rock takes a star turn as the narrator. It premieres tomorrow night at 11 pm Eastern.

Kissing Your Sister

As they say, it’s nice to be nominated, right? Our VH1 Rock Doc: NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell didn’t take the Emmy for Best Arts and Cultural Doc. The winner: Frontline’s The Undertaking about a poet/funeral director. Congrats to them…but this blog’s readers can see from the excerprts below which doc they prefer!

NY77

The Undertaking (Frontline)