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Music Documentaries to Watch

orsen said:
Festival Express
this one is a fun watch and is streaming for free atm

"Festival Express is a 2003 documentary film about the 1970 train tour of the same name across Canada taken by some of North America's most popular rock bands, including the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, Buddy Guy, Flying Burrito Bros, Ian & Sylvia's Great Speckled Bird, and Delaney & Bonnie & Friends.[1] The film combines footage of the 1970 concerts and on the train, interspersed with contemporary recollections of the tour by its participants."


https://tubitv.com/movies/257206/festival-express?start=true

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Old post....I have this on DVD. Found at a thrift. I have seen it a couple times at the local thrift, but never the Blu Ray.....

Excellent film.
 
Ross6860 said:
Ken Burns - Country Music
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Starting that one again today.

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https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music
 
This is more a "review" than a recommendation. I watched Martin Scorsese's "Shine a Light" Rolling Stone's documentary last night. The online reviews for it are great, but I honestly didn't find a lot to love. The first thing that's odd is in the "making of" segments in the beginning where it shows Scorsese in kind of a subservient position throughout the whole project. The band won't even share the set list for the concert with him (even though he is directing and has responsibility for capturing it all on film). It's just very very odd.

It isn't really a documentary -- just a concert video with some very old interview clips between songs. The concert footage is well shot, but it's not a great performance. Mick Jagger sounds very good on vocals, but he's kind of drowned out in the mix on volume level.

When Buddy Guy comes on stage, Buddy's vocals are amazing (and the mix deficit on Mick's mic becomes even more obvious). There is an odd interaction on guitar where Buddy solos some, and Keith is walking all around Buddy looking very into it, but not really soloing. Buddy is kind of half-soloing, waiting for Keith to jump in and trade off, as you would expect in an old Muddy Waters' blues song, but it never really happens, so the guitar is very underwhelming throughout the whole song. At the end of Buddy's song, Keith bizarrely hands Buddy Guy his guitar and says "it's yours", and a confused looking Buddy Guy walks off stage holding two guitars. It was a very nice gesture because it was a vintage Guild Starfire (presumably one Keith one owned a long time), but just felt very odd to me given the stature of Buddy Guy.

The duo with Christina Aguilera was good, and with Jack White was pretty good.

Ronnie Wood does all of the heavy lifting on anything intricate on guitar, and Keith really only plays prominently on the last song (Satisfaction). Mick's vocals and harmonica sounded very good, I just don't know why his voice is so buried in the mix. At the end, when they exit the stage and walk out the door, Scorsese again looks subservient trying to capture a glimpse of them on camera. The whole thing struck me as odd and not respectful to Scorsese.

I've seen Rolling Stones live twice, once in their "final tour" in 1981, and again in their "final tour" in 1990, so I like their music, but I didn't find a lot to like here to be honest. Not sure why the online reviews are so positive.
 
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Bill Ferris said:
I also really like the Wings (Paul Mc Cartney) over America concert.
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Is there a video of this concert? Did a search last night on Roku (which is usually pretty comprehensive showing all the options) and could find anything for "Wings over America".
 
peterp1 said:
Is there a video of this concert? Did a search last night on Roku (which is usually pretty comprehensive showing all the options) and could find anything for "Wings over America".
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No outside TV, here since 2010, so what I have is a rather large BR/DVD movie, select TV series, music concert, and documentaries collection, and the "Wings over America" is one such concert DVD that I`ve owned for many yrs. now.

I couldn`t tell you where it was purchased from, as I went on a optical video media buying frenzy after 2010, from Best Buy, Amazon, and e-Bay, plus some friends gifted me some BR, DVD movies, concerts, and TV series.

I never have, and don`t desire to stream music or video, so I can`t suggest where to look, if the W-O-A concert is even available via streaming.

I wish you good luck finding the concert, as I and others think it`s great.
 
Almost Beautiful is a decent band/tour documentary for a ageing underground band. It's hard to find but if you can get it at a decent price it's worth the watch. It hits all the tropes of a indie doc for better and worse but if you like the style of music (goth rock/electro goth/ whatever) it's good.

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Herbie Hancock: Possibilities -- currently free on Amazon Prime. This isn't so much of a documentary as it is a "making of" movie for his album "Possibilities" in collaboration with many mainstream artists. There isn't anything deep here, but there are some great performances/collaboration with Christina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Jonny Lang/Joss Stone, Sting, Paul Simon. It starts out with Christina, who has a tiny tinge of diva attitude but walks in cold and sings the living crap out of Leon Russell's "Song for You" -- it becomes immediately clear that her "I know what to do" vibe/confidence is not out of line. It's great to see Carlos in very fine form, Jonny Lang's guitar work is amazing, as is his vocal duet Joss Stone, Sting sounds amazing, and there are other interesting performances.

There is a little bit of documentary between the recording bits (e.g. some video of his work with Miles), but the focus is on the collaboration and the performances are the standouts here. Some have criticized this as 90-minute commercial for the album, but I don't think that's a fair assessment. There's nothing deep here, but the performances are excellent and I find it much more interesting to be able to see the rough studio takes and collaboration than listening to the album.

This is a trailer on YouTube -- the movie is currently free on Amazon Prime
 
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