Docstars: an ode to the magical energy of music movies

Posted On Sep 18, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

Music documentaries

Ever frisked the classic rock film drinking competition? Drummer described as’ bedrock’? One digit. Steel guitar on the wall of a swanky residence studio forgetting a landscaped back garden the size of Kent? One finger each. Septuagenarian in a paisley shirt wearing glass indoors? Shot. Story about ruining an expensive automobile with Keith Moon, killing an unknown but promising young folk singer? Down your imbibe. Bassist dies from heroin overdose? First one to booze everything in the flat wins.

This week learns the liberation of Daniel Roher’s new programme about The Band called Once Were Brothers, and it’s a classic of the use. The Band’s story has it all. Years of slogging for an’ overnight’ success. Flickers of genius fanned into kindles in rural seclusion. Riches, bad booze, worse doses, totalled classic vehicles, dominance strifes and precede lifelong indignation. It’s a riveting, tempestuou and ultimately distressing legend of prestige, fortune and misfortune, yet somehow it feels as cosy and cozy as a Mock The Week marathon on Dave.

Why? Perhaps because the trajectory of any classic stone clique with enough drama in their legend to make a documentary worthwhile is so standardised and familiar that they work in the same way as any genre-based comfort cinema. Just as you’re happy to watch yet another bunch of horny teenagers who’ve never heard of portable phone chargers hacked down to one survivor by an immortal, teleporting sociopath in a marginally different disguise, there’s something comforting about watching another group of mutton-chopped yokels prepare rare sorcery in obscurity, inferno a road to instant magnificence, burn out in three books flat on gunpowders and paranoia, divided up over royalty disputes, lose all their money divorcing supermodels and placing full achievements of their bust solo triple hypothesi books on top of the Sphynx, have an awkward reunion for charge grounds and then gradually die from organ disappointments in their early 50 s. In reality, one of the main reasons we can watch programmes about hugely successful cliques without seething with envy is the knowledge that, had we followed that career path ourselves, our quirkies weren’t too great of living to be in the documentary.

Music documentaries ‘Searching For Sugar Man’ won an Oscar in 2013. Credit: Alamy

Of course, the stone docs that garner the most acclaim are the ones that set out to break the rise-fall-reunion routine of the legendary accomplishments. The ones which focus on music’s gritty undergrowth rather than its loom oaks. 2012 ’s Searching For Sugar Man won its Oscar precise because its hero wasn’t sat in an expensive studio reminiscing about jamming with Bo Diddley at their Hall Of Fame inauguration. The Devil and Daniel Johnson was a moving insight into the thin line between talent and imbalance. Anvil !, for all its Tapness, is a far more accurate and fascinating depiction of the average long-term career in music, and the degrees of delusion it requires to maintain the effort, than any number of Led Zeppelin flicks filled with tales you’ve read a dozen times already.

The almost-famous narratives might be shorter on ego disagreements, extravagance and Beatle cameos, but they’re more compelling for their unpredictability. Some of “the worlds largest” acclaimed music documentaries of recent years have shone the spotlight on faces and figures that fascinate accurately because you haven’t heard of them. The storied fleshes tootling away on organ or belting out villain truth patronage vocals just out of shot. Films like 2008 ’s insight into’ 60 s studio founders The Wrecking Crew and 2013 ’s 20 Feet From Stardom, which focused on the unknown backing vocalists for the likes of the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, brim with fly-on-the-wall mystique, expose the workings of an often inhuman and unforgiving industry and pay overdue respect to a huge and unrecognised subsidizing assigned, while at the same time being far better relatable than watching another millionaire sat in front of a mixing desk slagging off Allen Klein. The’ prestige is hell’ narrative feels far less human than the starry-eyed chase.

Music documentaries ‘Dig !’ focused on the struggle between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Credit: Alamy

It’s why what you might call’ Struggle Docs’ are among the most celebrated- films like Wilco’s I Am Trying To Break Your Heart from 2002, detecting the band’s agitated recording of their breakthrough album’ Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’, 2004 ’s battle of Portland flick Dig! or Penelope Spheeris’ Decline Of Western Civilisation trilogy, which spotlight the waifs, strays and languishes- successful and otherwise- of LA’s punk and glam metal places through the ages. This is what acquires Once Were Friend’ distinct crossover undertaking- a uncommon example of bit players striking it big on their own terms, then watching on helplessly as success tugged at their digres inaccuracies until the whole thing disentangled. Simply keep your glass surpassed up for all the car wrecks.

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