In every "Classic Album" TV/Radio documentary...

120. Producer or someone sits in front of a mixing desk with what is apparently the original master tapes loaded into the tape machine - or at least that's the idea - but irritatingly they don't actually describe the production process, or show how the music is mixed, or play any of it back, or anything.

I mention this because there's a documentary about Steely Dan's Aja where they do play alternative drum tracks from "Peg" while sitting at the mixing desk, and it's fascinating. The obvious audience for classic album documentaries is super-nerds, but the producers always insist on aiming them at a general audience who (in the producers' mind) don't need to know about the technical stuff.

I mean, doesn't everybody want to hear Steve Albini talk for half an hour about vintage guitar pedals? I rest my case.

121. "We wanted to get back to basics."

Ha @ 120 -- I was actually thinking about this earlier, how the financial backers of these kinds of things have to pursue a wide audience.... fundamentally at cross purposes with the lore-seeking musicians and music nerds in the audience (or doing the interviews). And so:

122. Palpable sense throughout that hours of genuinely interesting minutia and making-of stories have been left on the cutting-room floor, in favor of anecdotes which anyone remotely familiar with the band/album has already heard millions of times.

123. Band members filmed separately, often thousands of miles apart, because they cannot stand each other and have only been doing it for the money for years.

124. Palpable tension between original producer and 20-year-old assistant when the latter is required to press the spacebar on a ProTools rig.

125. Studio being used for playback scenes not the original studio, which is long gone and replaced by a mixed-use development of condos and an anchor Starbucks.

126. Band member/creative genius with a long history of "recovery" wearing shades during every interview.

125(A). Scene of band members pulling up to said Starbucks in disbelief.

"Bloody hell!... Anybody for a latte?"

125 (B) “So this is where the control room was…the drums were usually set up where that espresso machine is…oh, and the bathroom, that was the vocal booth. Let’s check it out…[snaps fingers]…wow! Still got that sound!”

Did anyone ever see BBC Four's When Albums Ruled the World or whatever it was called, and the narrative was that MTV came along and ruined the fun (somehow). And I can't remember who it was but some talking head in a very quivering voice came on at this point, to talk about how things were before MTV, saying 'looking at someone's record collection used to be like LOOKING INTO THEIR SOUL'.