Tuneful docs to fill the concert void
With events big and small alike cancelled and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stockpiling toilet paper and barricading yourself in your home seems like a better choice than setting foot outside. (Just kidding about the toilet paper; definitely don’t do that.) Here are a few music-related movies you can stream to fill the concert void while you’re self-isolating.
MISS AMERICANA
(2020; available on Netflix)
It might be a vanity project carefully crafted to engender sympathy for its subject, but Miss Americana is worth watching even if you think you can’t stand Taylor Swift. Director Lana Wilson gives us a peek behind the curtain at Swift’s songwriting process and lets us observe her political awakening. More potently, she shows in vivid detail what it’s like to be one of the most famous—and mercilessly scrutinized—women in the world in the 21st century. Spoiler alert: it kind of sucks a lot of the time, but you do get to hang out with Brendon Urie and the guys from Queer Eye, so it’s clearly not all bad. This should be required viewing for anyone who still harbours a shred of respect for Kanye West.
(2013; available on Sundance Now) Sometimes it’s the backing vocals that make the entire song. Sure, the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is great in its own right, but try to imagine it without the impassioned wailing of Merry Clayton. You can’t, probably—and it’s equally likely that you have no idea who Clayton is. That’s the point of this doc from Morgan Neville (who later made us all mourn the loss of Fred Rogers— and our collective innocence—with Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). Neville gives the ironically unsung heroes of rock ’n’ roll their well-earned turn in the spotlight, with the likes of Mick Jagger, Sting, Bette Midler, Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen enthusiastically singing their praises. I guarantee you will never hear “Sweet Home Alabama” quite the same way after watching this.
ANVIL!: THE STORY OF ANVIL
(2008; available on DocumentaryHeaven.com)
Everyone loves a good underdog story, and there’s something particularly compelling about a tale of someone who almost made it but then, well, didn’t. This is certainly the case with Toronto heavy-metal band Anvil, whose career high was playing in front of tens of thousands of Japanese metalheads as part of the touring Super Rock festival in 1984. After that, precisely nothing happened for these guys. That makes it all the more poignant when members of Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax pop up to cite Anvil as an important contemporary and influence. Naturally, there’s an attempt at a comeback—which only really took off after this doc was released. In his review of Anvil!, Straight movie critic said of director Sacha Gervasi that he “has a keen eye for unintended comedy and the big-screen drama inherent in lovable, foul-mouthed lunkheads who have stuck together, sometimes to the exclusion of their generally supportive wives and families, in order to stay hell-bent for leather—and Depends”.
BEWARE OF MR. BAKER
(2012; available on YouTube)
The two main takeaways here are that Ginger Baker (who died last fall) was an unrepentant asshole, and that he was one of the best drummers to ever grace a stage with his powerful and inventive prowess. How combative was he? Ask director Jay Bulger, who got punched in the face for his troubles. For my money, the best bit is the interview with Baker’s former Cream bandmate Eric Clapton, who took great pains to ensure that the drummer would definitely, absolutely not by any means be a part of his next project, the supergroup Blind Faith. This conviction lasted until the day of Blind Faith’s first rehearsal, when guess who showed up, ready to play? The fact that Baker remained blithely convinced that his relationship with Clapton was one of the great friendships of his life is both amusing and cringe-inducingly awkward.
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TIME
(2013; available on iTunes)
You don’t have to have seen the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis to appreciate Another Day, Another Time...but you should probably watch it anyway. In that film, Oscar Isaac plays a cat-loving fictional singer-songwriter on the Greenwich Village folk scene of the ’60s. Turns out that, in real life, Isaac is a pretty talented singer and guitarist, talents that he puts on display in the T-Bone Burnett–produced concert documented here, alongside actual folkies past and present, including the Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, Rhiannon Giddens, the Milk Carton Kids, Keb’ Mo’, Marcus Mumford, Patti Smith, Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, and Willie Watson.
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
(2012; available on Amazon Prime) In the early ’70s, Detroit singersongwriter Sixto Rodriguez seemed to be poised on the verge of greatness, with his gritty tales of life on Detroit’s mean streets earning him a record deal and the attention of big-time producers. After a couple of LPs that failed to sell, however, he dropped out of music altogether and went back to working as a manual labourer—completely unaware that in South Africa, his songs were being taken up as anthems of resistance among an entire generation opposed to that country’s restrictive apartheid regime. When some fans from Cape Town tracked him down in the late ’90s, he toured South Africa like a conquering folk-rock idol. By the time director Malik Bendjelloul catches up with him in the early 2010s, Rodriguez is back in the Motor City, still doing back-breaking labour and living in the same humble house he had called home for four decades. Searching for Sugar Man is a portrait of a man who seems to be as unfazed by his failures as he is by his successes. He’s a deeply odd character, but damn it, those songs are fucking beautiful.
ECHO IN THE CANYON
(2018; available on Netflix)
Jakob Dylan and director Andrew Slater do their best to document the music scene of a very specific place and time, namely Laurel Canyon between 1965 and ’67. This narrow scope means there are a few conspicuous absences—presumably Joni Mitchell will get mentioned in the sequel—but interviews with the likes of Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Michelle Phillips are enlightening, and electrifying archival footage of the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield is enough to convince you that something was indeed happening there. Footage of the Wallflowers frontman running through era-appropriate classics in-studio and on-stage with Beck, Cat Power, Fiona Apple, and Regina Spektor is less essential, but we’ll cut him some slack because he’s Bob Dylan’s kid.
LAST DAYS HERE
(2011; available on YouTube)
Bobby Liebling is a pioneer of doom metal. His band, Pentagram, formed in 1971 with the implied goal of becoming America’s heavier-thanheaven answer to Black Sabbath. Unfortunately, Liebling is also a hopeless screwup. Well, not quite hopeless: hope is pretty much all the erstwhile frontman has left by the time filmmakers Don Argott and Demian Fenton catch up with him. The 50-something Liebling is hooked on heroin and crack and is living in his parents’ basement. His determination to rise—and rock— again is a case study in human resilience, and it suggests that rock ’n’ roll can, literally, be a lifesaver.