Post a controversial music opinion

Contra op? Most music docs fucking suck and I don't understand the point of them. There's only like 3 good ones. The Ornette one, the Daniel Johnston one and VU.

xp my controversial take is that people are lazy now and the skill of combining different takes into a track that sounds natural, including tonal continuity and rhythm of speech is something that is not valued (maybe this is more for unpopular conservative beliefs than this thread)

Contra op? Most music docs fucking suck and I don't understand the point of them. There's only like 3 good ones. The Ornette one, the Daniel Johnston one and VU.

― kurt schwitterz, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 6:47 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

milford graves

Step Across The Border (the Fred Frith doc) is one of my favourite films ever

Both of those films are as much about "life" as music, of course, reflecting their subjects' perspectives.

yes, they are good music documentaries

The Bill Withers one kinda fits in there too.

Lee Morgan doc, too

for the record I thought the Velvets one was just OK

The Rodriguez one is cool

Not sure if it can be strictly classified as a music documentary tho

Summer of Soul.

This thread has got me interested in relistening to Stars of the Lid and rewatching Searching for Sugarman

ok the Rodriguez doc is not as good as I remembered it.

is there a thread for music docs recommendations?

Anything here actually worth watching?
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-lists/70-best-music-documentaries-24757/

Stop Making Sense is a fucking classic but it's actually a concert not a documental?

My latest controversial music opinion is that McCoy Tyner's Expansions is every bit as good an album as A Love Supreme and I might even prefer it

(Take that second part with a grain of salt: I've loved ALS for two decades and somehow just heard Expansions this year)

A Poem Is a Naked Person is a good doc, the weird chicken/snake thing notwithstanding

I was talking about the Eric Andersen scenes from that movie in another thread.
It's funny that, in his review of Les Blank's work, Robert Christgau criticizes Leon Russell's "masscult shtick and flash" which, on the basis of the film, appears to consist of... wearing a top hat onstage? I guess shtick and flash will look different 50 years later.

Decline of Western
Don't Look Back
No Direction Home
the Rush one
Daniel Johnson one
Dig
Metallica

^^are all stellar music docs

Spinal Tap

maybe not controversial, but the best music biopic of all time is 'walk hard: the dewey cox story'

What about like VH1 Classic Albums series or the Song Exploder eps on Netflix? Do those count for this discussion?

Also, as far as movie-length docs, I remember thinking that Hit So Hard (the Patty Schemel doc) was really good, but I haven't seen it in like 10 years.

The Nilsson one did nothing to sway me towards admiration of the artist, but it had rainbow beard guy, who ten years after viewing I still contemplate.

xp those are just behind the scenes explainers, meant to complement a piece of art but not really meant to stand as a work itself

Trances is fantastic, though I might say it's more of an excellent movie than music doc

maybe not controversial, but the best music biopic of all time is 'walk hard: the dewey cox story'

― roflrofl fight (voodoo chili), Thursday, March 10, 2022 7:35 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wow, how did I never know this existed?! Must see. I opined on another thread once that a great film could be made of the Stax Records story, but Hollywood in its infinite wisdom would probably screw it up.

I really liked a True Testimonial when I saw a bootleg copy in like ‘04. I was woefully ignorant re the 5 at the time.

The Grateful Dead doc "Long Strange Trip" was excellent.

xp yeah that MC5 doc was really great.

really like this controversial opinion, it's caused me to reflect on what music documentaries i actually appreciate as films and the answer is jazz on a summer's day (which is i guess a concert film but the ambient interstitial footage of teenagers dancing and smoking on rooftops makes it feel more like a world)

decline of western civilization part 2 would be another one

but aligning with the post that started this discussion off, i also love made in america, that shit is crazy

the Death one was good -- idk if I could really enjoy a music documentary where I thought the music was horrible though (unless the point the film was trying to make was that the music was horrible, but even still, at my advanced age, I would most likely think, why am i watching this then?) -- the Metallica one is a unique case (though some of their earlier stuff I do like)

The Fugazi one was also good -- if only for the ice cream eating motherfucker bit

ice cream-eating motherfucker

nilsson one sux so bad. one of the more useless docs.

i love the documentaries that leave gigantic gaps of information, like, one moment they're talking about writing one album, and suddenly they jump to being on tour for the next one, and entire people have left the band

I love a lot of music docs, especially about musicians whom I don't really care for. I love the multi-part Grateful Dead doc, it made me understand my love-hate affair with them and their fans a lot better.

I recently watched the doc about a lot of the players from Parliament Funkadelic, and it was batshit— George Clinton is even more of an awful person that I previously knew. Just awful, if the doc is to be believed, and I do believe it.

That said, it wasn't beautiful. More like a "big scoop." Sometimes that's okay.

I think Walk Hard only makes sense if you also saw Ray and Walk the Line
(at minimum), plus the Doors and Almost Famous and Spinal Tap and and and. It's a tropefest and you can't appreciate a tropefest when you don't know the tropes.

That said, I have very low standards for music documentaries/biopics, including Classic Albums, Behind the Music, concert films, parodies, spoofs, all of it really. I will watch basically all of them, even if I am not particularly a fan of the artist or scene.

Sometimes it's actually better that way, b/c you're not hung up on accuracy and "well actchually, their 3rd album was their artistic peak and should've been explored in more depth," blah blah

The Kids Are Alright is a stone classic, but few documentaries since have adopted that film’s approach of allowing the performances to tell the story (although Instrument and Milford Graves: Full Mantis came pretty close). Amazing Journey is more informative, but also a disappointing missed opportunity. The 2012 Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? is arguably the most effective Who documentary in terms of digging into the friction behind the personalities and the personalities behind the friction, and is vastly more substantial than the typical Classic Albums episode. (It’s also unavailable in any physical format or on any streaming service.)

I mean, SotL kind of actively make fun of how boring their music is, otherwise a beautiful swelling track wouldn't be titled "Dungtitled (in A minor)" or "December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface." If you don't like ambient music, that's fine, but also I don't have much to say to you about anything.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, 10 March 2022 5:24 AM (yesterday)

See? Controversial.

Yeah I don't really like ambient music. But it's such a useless term really. SAW II is one of my favourite albums ever. I own heaps of drone. But by and large, I'll leave ambient to the yoga studios.

sotl are funny bcuz we all went so hard for them on the noize board for some reason and they are yah just 2 long violin notes for 10 mins lol

Yeah so people are always like "OMG the sound of an orchestra tuning up, so romantic!" and I grew up playing in orchestras, and it's just a fucking orchestra tuning up.
Maybe as a cellist SOTL are just too close to that for me.

Their first(?) album as I recall had a bit more grit to it. After that everything I've heard is pleasant at best.

I could see calling all ambient music boring, but I feel like even within the boringness of ambient, SotL's boringness stands out.

Watched Walk Hard last night, thanks for the recommendation. It walks the line (see what I did there?) between really dumb and really fun.

I love SotL and think y'all are fools.

Well that's not nice

Oh well! I'll take "enjoys simple-minded emotionally manipulative ambient music" over "nice" any day.