Top 5 Music Docs | Archive

22:58And the documentary shatters that.

23:00Josh Larsen:Yeah, definitely my experience. You know, it is in a sense a cinematic shaming that is due. You know, I think the movie does that by showing us there were friends and family who stood by, if not enabled, you know, her. And I think we are included in this, Adam. That was my experience as well, even if it was just to like laugh at a punchline that, you know, a comedian maybe made about her erratic behavior. I was, you know, sounds like similar, definitely listened to her, um, pretty common even today, you know, to hear her songs being played somewhere in our house, but didn't really do a deep dive into her background or her story until I saw this documentary.

23:42Josh Larsen:And then, you know, did feel bad about not doing that, but instead just, I guess it's not even so much that I didn't do that, but that I did just accept the narrative that was being presented. Right. And I think this movie, yeah, this movie rightly challenges, um, having a relationship like that to musical artists. That's a good word. It challenges that because you see the footage of Jay Leno or whatever, making cracks on the tonight show. I don't think Jay Leno is responsible for Amy Winehouse's death. Right. I don't think the movie is suggesting that. And I can't even say that I laughed at any of those jokes when or if I saw them, but the acceptance of them and the acceptance of them to an extent that they were just harmless rather than seeing them as part of this larger narrative and the destructiveness of that.

24:32That's something the movie definitely made me realize.

24:35Josh Larsen:I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED, and every week, Snap deals a new card. Like jumping on Rihanna's private plane, or the accidental bank robber, or even the man who was swallowed by a hippo. What? Pick a card. Any card. Snap Judgment from KQED. New episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Appliance fans. I'm here at Grand Appliance where Bill just bought a premium Bosch benchmark dishwasher. Talk about your experience, Bill. My salesperson was an appliance genius. She told me about their free install offer on benchmark appliances, and it was a done deal for me.

25:23Wow, free install from the pros at Grand? That's a no-brainer. Agreed. They make it so easy. There you have it. Grand for the win. Check out GrandAppliance.com for full details.

25:35Josh Larsen:The US Open is back. That's right. Two weeks of incredible, exciting tennis. Some outrageous overreactions from players and some hot takes from people who have, let's face it, no idea what they're talking about, but it's okay because I'm here for them and you. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast, I'll be breaking down everything that happens after big matches, who's playing the best tennis, who looks like they could possibly win this tournament, the surprise runs, the heartbreaking exits, and all the drama that only the US Open can deliver. Coco looking real good. Her serve looks so much smoother than it has in the past.

26:11Josh Larsen:I was really happy to see Iga back to what she looked like a couple of years ago when she was winning dominantly. Listen, I'm going to let Venus decide when she wants to retire. I'm going to let the tournaments decide when they don't want to give her a wild card because she still puts bums in seats. She still sells and people love to see her play. You always say on this show that this is the best predictor of who will do well at the US Open. If this is a preview, then we are in for a treat. Listen to the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

26:44On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon.

26:47Josh Larsen:People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Richard Pryor. And we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archive. We're talking iconic moments in broadcast history. I'm not just a boxer. I'm educated. I can talk all week on millions of subjects. And forgotten interviews that change how we see these giants of our culture. Well, if changing the system from the ground up is revolutionary, then I'm revolutionary. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I mean, when I go on stage, I like to dress as slutty as possible because it makes me dance better for some reason.

27:25I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts.

27:39Josh Larsen:All right, number three, I have Summer of Soul. And I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time on this one. We've talked about it quite a bit on the show. It actually made, I had forgotten this until I looked it up, but it made all four of our 2021 Top 10 lists. That was a year-end show we did with Michael Phillips and Dana Stevens. And before that, we had previously given it a full review on the show as well. So in case you hadn't heard any of those conversations and aren't familiar briefly, this is Musician Questlove's rescue project, really, is how I describe it. It's a compiling of footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 that had sat largely unseen for 50 years.

28:20Josh Larsen:So this is who we're talking about here. Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The Fifth Dimension, Pop Staples and the Staples Singers, and that includes a very young Mavis Staples. As a matter of fact, there was more talk about this at our rap party for Best Music Moment. I know I had Mavis and Mahalia singing together for my pick. So the footage is great, obviously, but what really makes Summer of Soul distinct that I want to emphasize are the contemporary interviews, yes, with some of the artists, but how about those ones with regular folks who Questlove tracked down, who remember attending the festival when they were younger?

29:02Josh Larsen:And this is one of them, Musa Jackson, who went to the fest as a child. I was a little kid. I remember being with my family, walking around the park, and as far as I could see, it was just black people. This was the first time I'd ever seen so many of us. It was incredible. There are other interviews that are incredibly moving in this way and they just work as beautiful companion pieces to the brilliant music. So Summer of Soul I've got at number three. Yeah, I like that fifth dimension clip as well, just because I remember spending a fair amount of time during our review on the redemption of that band being one of the really fun, moving storylines from Summer of Soul and making connections here with other topics we're discussing.

30:00This is the second appearance of Questlove so far on your list. He pops up in the Jesus Walks performance in Block Party, and Mavis Staples appearing as well quite memorably in The Last Waltz. My number three music documentary is, well, I'll not attempt to imitate the central figure, and I'll just give you my favorite exchange, my favorite bit of dialogue from that artist in this film. Are you going to see the concert tonight? Are you going to hear it? Okay, you hear it and see it, and it's going to happen fast, and you're not going to get it all. And you might even hear the wrong words, you know?

30:39And then afterwards, I won't be able to talk to you afterwards. I got nothing to say about these songs I write. I mean, I just write them. I don't have to say anything about them. I don't write for any reason. There's no great message. I mean, if you want to tell other people that, go ahead and tell them, but I'm not going to have to answer to that. That's the infamous Bob Dylan exchange with a Time Magazine reporter in DA Pennebaker's seminal 1967 artist on tour documentary, Don't Look Back. Penny Baker followed Dylan to England. He was touring the country in 1965. And we get sort of fly on the wall footage.

31:17I'll talk more about that in a second. We get scenes of Dylan with the media interacting occasionally with with fans, maybe more at a distance. Definitely a lot of interactions with his honorage, including Joan Baez, who he was in a relationship with at the time. And the importance or the significance of this film, it's significant as a film and as a documentary of this artist and kind of setting a template for other films like it that would follow. But the relevance is heightened with the benefit of hindsight. It's this 1965 tour. By the time the movie's released, this all happens basically right after the tour ends, Dylan decides to go electric.

31:58in 1966. The folk protest icon sells his soul. In 66, he plays three electric songs at the Newport Folk Festival. And then about 10 months later, after releasing Blonde on Blonde, that's when he gets called a Judas by an angry fan in Manchester, England, because he's playing an electric set, an all-electric set. And Josh, of course, who is he playing that electric set with? Well, now you've seen The Last Waltz And you know that that band was the band, though at the time they were called the Hawks because they had just come off the road from playing with Ronnie Hawkins. That iconoclastic impulse in the Manchester scene, in Going Electric, in the dialogue I shared, that impulse to challenge expectations, but not just challenge them, to make us question what's really driving those expectations.

32:56Why do we need to put Dylan or any artist on this mantle and just hope they'll stay put and deliver what we think we need from them? It's really at the heart of Dylan's entire career in music and at the heart of this film. And why I love that exchange for the Time Reporter so much is it makes me consider how easy it would have been for Dylan. Maybe not easy for him because it's so fundamentally not who he is, but how easy it would be for most of us to get caught up in that, to play into the image that others have built for you. embrace the adulation and the grandiosity of being this folk messiah label.

33:40And it really wouldn't have even been that hard. Like he wouldn't have had to be overly eloquent and constantly state his message in interviews. He just could have kind of sat back and let others impose it on him and just not denied it. And of course he can't help himself. He has to deny it. He says emphatically, I got nothing to say about these songs I write. I mean, I just write them. I don't have anything to say about him. I don't write for any reason. He's basically saying, I owe you nothing. And I believe him. I agree with him. I didn't see this documentary until I think 2006 as part of a film spotting marathon.

34:16And it really did completely alter the way I think about artists and my own desire to put them in a box or demand of them who or what I think that they should be. I also think that Pennebaker realized something about Dylan, something that Dylan himself realized, which is the more famous he got, this whole notion of celebrity is just an absurd dance. It's all artifice. It's all performance, just as much, if not more than the performance happening on the stage. And you've got Pennebaker who's coming out of this fly-on-the-wall school of documentary. Except here he's making no attempts to work invisibly.

34:56He's showing you the strings a little bit. This isn't a case of capturing Dylan in these really private, reflective moments. No, he's going to make you aware of the camera. It's going to be noticeable. It's going to be crammed into confined spaces and jiggling about like in the back of a car one night after Dylan comes off the stage and he's in there with his manager, Albert Grossman, and other members of his honorage, and he gets a little focused on a certain word that's being thrown around about him. They've started calling you an anarchist. Who? The papers, that's the word now. Anarchist. You're awful.

35:37You're kidding. Which papers did you say there? Oh, two or three. Today, yeah. Just because you don't offer any solution. You're kidding. Where is it?

35:49Josh Larsen:Anarchist. Yeah. Give me a cigarette. Give the anarchist a cigarette. Dylan kind of can't let it go, but not because I think at all that he's offended by it or takes it seriously. He's he's amused more than anything at this criticism, if you will. And I think he's really amused by the word choice, the way the way a great writer might. I love how it just lingers with him throughout that entire scene. You see the cuts and you know that he's coming back to it over some period of time. But what you get with that film is a certain inscrutability. And this goes back to what you were saying about U2.

36:30I don't think they're reflecting it quite the way Dylan is. But that inability or that lack of desire to explain themselves to other people and to let the music stand for itself, that's that's really what dylan does here so bob dylan also popping up a lot on this show i mean

36:49Josh Larsen:he's in rattle and hum and of course the last waltz too that's right all right so number two a little unusual because it's actually a recent documentary came out in 2018 but it chronicles a 1972 performance this is aretha franklin over two days making the live recording of her gospel album, Amazing Grace. This was done at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts. So the album itself, you know, made at the height of her mainstream popularity, it returned her to her church roots and ended up being her best-selling release. The film shares the album's title, Amazing Grace, and it features not only Aretha, but also gospel legend, Reverend James Cleveland, sort of the conductor of the events.

37:35Josh Larsen:And she's got the Southern California community choir as backup. There's even a sermon from Aretha Franklin's father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, which adds some familial sweetness, but also a little tension to the proceedings because you have this sense of, I don't know, I don't want to interpret what it is, but you definitely sense there's a lot there between them, even as they're happy to be in this space together. And then, of course, there are the audience slash church members who are in the pews. Now, the nice thing, usually, Adam, about having my own website where I still write reviews, larsonoffilm.com, serves as a handy archive for these top five lists, right?

38:13Josh Larsen:I often go back, see what I wrote about a movie, take some notes there, and bring those into our picks. So I thought, this will be great. Searched for Amazing Grace. This is all I found. Holy Moses, no need to desecrate this with any more words. So I was silent. You copped out. You copped out as a critic. No, I was silenced by amazing grace. I had no more. I did not want to desecrate this thing with words. So I'm going to lean on others' words here. I get it. Critic Odie Henderson, he had a four out of four star review over at RogerEbert.com on this one. He said, this film is a powerful love letter to the Black church, offering a soul-shaking introduction for the unfamiliar and a grandmotherly yank of the arm for those who know.

38:59Josh Larsen:It drags you from the theater straight into the pews. I love that. Here's some more praise. for the movie that came from listeners, I put out on social media, you know, what's your favorite music doc? The one, you have to just choose one. Which one are you going with? Kevin McLennathan over on Blue Sky? Yes, yes, I am on Blue Sky. Look at you. Kevin said this, haven't seen as many as I should, but 2018's Amazing Grace got to me in a way that no other live music doc has. A big reason might be the shots of the audience. They're not just spectators, they're participants, and they're participating in more than just and Aretha Franklin event.

39:34Josh Larsen:And one more here from Twitter slash ex Carl Friedhoff picked Amazing Grace. Aretha at her height, a fantastic backing choir and a rapt audience. So now why the delay? Why, you know, this was 72. Why did we not get it until 2018? Well, there was a technical error at the time with the footage. I should note this was shot by a crew led by director Sidney Pollack. And so that made it impossible to sync with the sound, kind of a problem for something like this. Then there were legal hurdles for many years while the tech was being fixed. Eventually, you know, that all came together so that this saw the light of day.

40:13Josh Larsen:Amazing grace, a belated treasure, but a treasure for sure. I looked at Letterboxd and I don't have this logged. And yet I know I have seen this movie or at least most of this movie back around awards season. And I know that I checked it out because everyone was raving about it. And rightfully, for all the reasons you mentioned, maybe I owe Aretha a full watch here at some point, Josh. I already said my number one. It's The Last Waltz. So I'm going to spoil things a little bit by giving you my number two, which I know is also your number one. A perfect culmination for this episode. we're going to talk about the film that largely inspired us to do the top five.

40:56Yes, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense is back in theaters, coming back to theaters, thanks to A24. Can't wait to go see this, including with my daughter, Sophie. What a thrill. How incredible is it to be able to say, I saw Stop Making Sense for the first time on the big screen. I know there are people listening who actually did see it for the first time on the big screen in 1984. I was not one of those people. To now have a chance for people to see it for the first time or to revisit it, as in our case, Josh, it's something that I am incredibly excited for, and maybe we can help get others excited as well.

41:37There's a Jonathan Demme quote about Stop Making Sense. I think I referenced back when we talked about it during that eight from 84 review, he said something about shooting live music. This probably isn't true, but I think this is the purest form of filmmaking. There are these artists doing that. And we're here to team up with that and capture that in the way that best suits the music being played. No pun intended there on the suits, I'm sure from Jonathan Demme. Now, if you'd never seen Stop Making Sense or maybe didn't know a lot about the band or Jonathan Demme, you might be inclined to hear that quote and think that the director is saying, it's my job as a filmmaker just to capture that.

42:16They're amazing artists. They're performing. I'll render that as unobtrusively as possible. I'll capture it and get out of the way and just let talking heads be talking heads. Arguably, that's the Scorsese approach to The Last Waltz. I mean, the most artistic flourishes seem to come really in the staged numbers. And it's hard to really discern the directing choices, the shots and editing decisions in, I think, the live performances themselves. But Jonathan Demme really does team up. He comes up with a way to capture this that best suits the music being played. It is truly an artistic collaboration in its entirety, in its totality, but then song to song.

43:03think about how they present Psycho Killer. I've talked about it before. I think my number three Jonathan Demme scene, this is a song ostensibly from the point of view of an alienated, homicidal man. So how do we get it? David Byrne, alone, on stage, guitar in boombox, deliriously deranged.

43:25Josh Larsen:Hi, I got a tape I want to play.

43:37This lonely man, so lonely that for the first minute of that performance, you're not even sure as a viewer that there are really people in the audience. This is like a performance that could be taking place only in his demented mind. He's eventually then joined one by one by the rest of the band. And then it culminates like the last waltz. It culminates in this joyous celebration of community. We see it in a number like Making Flippy Floppy, where Demi showcases the entire stage and groups of performers. And there's scarcely a shot of an individual to be found in that number. It's all just so intentional.

44:16And on top of it, the music is incredible as well. Making Flippy Floppy, trying to do my best. Lock the door, we're still the beast.

44:29Josh Larsen:To your point about Demi, and yes, this stopped making sense. My number one, to your point about Demi's presence here as a director, you know, looking up what I wrote when I reviewed it, I said, while a strong pair of directorial hands can be a good thing, not getting in the way requires a certain artfulness as well. And I think that's exactly the balance that Demi strikes. This is one, Adam, if people are going to theaters to see it, I hope we can take some credit for it because we've been talking a ton about this, this movie. I mean, we mentioned some of these, but we did it as a part of our eight from 84 series.

45:04Josh Larsen:That was in 2020. We did in 2017, our top five films of 84, you had it at number three. I had it at number two, and then it showed up on both of our top five, Jonathan Demi moments lists when we honored the director after his passing, that was 2017. So if listeners want more on this movie, they can go to any of those conversations. Interestingly, I think of this as Demi, going back to what you were just talking about, Demi establishing David Byrne as the auteur. And not just, you know, this inspired composer of these really manic, but also melodic new wave pop songs, but an inventive installation artist.

45:45Josh Larsen:And I think a stage presence you can only call alarming. and perhaps that's, you know, never more so than when he dons that big suit for Girlfriend is Better.

46:07Josh Larsen:So you've heard enough from me in recent years on Stop Making Sense. I'm going to give one more thought from Criterion curator Ashley Clark. Ashley wrote about this after seeing it recently and it's re-released. So he's one of those folks who went and checked it out on Twitter slash X. Ashley is underscore Ash underscore Clark. I've seen Stop Making Sense a million times, but never on a screen as big as the Bam Brooklyn Harvey. It's no news flash to call it one of the best concert films ever made. But in all its lavish drama and escalating tension writ so large, you can remove that concert qualifier.

46:42Josh Larsen:So, yeah, obviously, I agree. This thing just breaks the boundaries of the music documentary in many ways. At the same time, it's the best one I've ever seen. So it's my number one. Those are our top five music documentaries. I know I've got a few honorable mentions. I'll set you up with a couple of picks from listeners. Josh, Jared in Astoria, New York City wrote in and said, this is GWAR. I loved this documentary. It made me weep uncontrollably, which is probably why I loved it. If you're a GWAR fan, and Josh, I know you are, you probably already saw this. If you're not a GWAR fan, but you're GWAR adjacent, comics, horror, wrestling, punk, and metal, you should see this.

47:23If you're not into any of that stuff, but you want an incredible documentary about art and friendship, you should see this. Thank you, Jared, for that recommendation. He says it's available on Shudder. Not sure where else. And then we got this from Lynn Brown, who is a sustainer for WJCT 89.9 in Jacksonville, where David Luckin and Matt Shaw do a whole lot for music. Shout out David and Matt. My hope for your show on music documentaries would include Standing in the Shadows of Motown, 20 Feet from Stardom, Searching for Sugar Man, and Summer of Soul. Each documentary is an excellent representation of some of the unsung artists who created the soundtrack of my life and many others.

47:59All docs I've seen, all good ones. Of course, Summer of Soul made your list an honorable mention for me. I also really did go for Searching for Sugar Man when that documentary was released. What about you, Josh? Any other titles that you want to sneak in?

48:13Josh Larsen:Yeah, I'll hit you with three quick ones, all recent ones. But Beyonce's Homecoming, you know, watching that on Netflix, that's pretty much why I was convinced we had to put out the cash and catch her Renaissance tour this summer. A Ms. Sharon Jones is from 2015, a documentary from Barbara Koppel about the career and the cancer struggles of the now late soul singer. And speaking of Jonathan Demme, a nice chaser for Stop Making Sense. When you get home, check out his 2016 doc, Justin Timberlake and the Tennessee Kids. Quite good. I love this genre. So indulge me here for a second with a few titles.

48:50The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, The Metal Years, came out in 1988. And I'm happy to see in looking at a lot of lists, ranks quite highly and people look back on it quite fondly, I think appropriately so. As someone who, at the time it was released, was very much trying to emulate the hair metal artists that were depicted in this film, despite the fact that it's really a cautionary tale, or on some level is a cautionary tale, about their excess and self-destructiveness. Of course, I didn't get any of that when I was a kid who wanted to grow my hair out and wear makeup like them, but I do recommend that film.

49:30Scorsese, of course, is someone who's made some other really good music documentaries. George Harrison living in the material world. The Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder review back in 2019. In 2005, No Direction Home, tie it back to Dylan and the band and The Last Waltz. In No Direction Home, that's where you can see the footage of the guy yelling Judas, that infamous Manchester show with the band, then known as the Hawks, backing up Dylan. And Brett Morgan, of course, has made a couple really good ones in the past seven to eight years in Cobain, Montage of Heck, and the David Bowie documentary from last year, Moon Age Daydream.

50:08You got to talk about the mazels in Gimme Shelter. I love Todd Haynes' Velvet Underground doc that came out a few years ago. LCD Sound Systems version, I guess, of The Last Waltz, Shut Up and Play the Hits. And if you haven't watched The History of the Eagles on Netflix, I don't know what you're doing. I don't care how you feel about the Eagles. Watch The History of the Eagles and Metallica, Some Kind of Monster. That also is a fascinating document of that group trying to record an album while they're completely disintegrating as egos and friends within that group. and they've got their therapist sitting there quite notoriously, not only trying to help manage all that tension, but also suggesting song lyrics, Josh.

50:51Josh Larsen:I've heard a lot of support for that one, actually. Saw that one come up in social media quite a bit. It's been a beast, and it's sucked a lot of me into it.

51:05Those were our top five music documentaries from September 2023. Access to the Film Spotting Archive. Just one of the benefits of being a FilmSpottingFamily member, plus bonus shows, weekly newsletter, early access to events, and more. Learn more at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

51:38Some people use ChatGPT to answer questions. Others use it to get real work done. With ChatGPT Work, you bring the goal, plus real inputs like briefs, notes, files, feedback, data, and project plans. It can help turn them into an analysis, tracker, deck outline, prototype, or workflow you can review and keep shaping. You stay in control, giving direction and choosing the final output. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro Plans. There are exciting things happening at your local CVS. Shop new Extra Big Deals with Extra Care every two weeks.

52:17No coupon needed. Plus, get access to exclusive sale prices, personalized deals, and more as a member. Extra Care is the way to save at CVS. Join for free, online, or in-store and start saving. Visit your local CVS store or cvs.com slash extra big deals for this week's deals.

52:39Josh Larsen:Okay, laundry stinks, literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear. Not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re-wearable or filthy they are. Or just use Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real-life stinks and stains. So even if you don't do laundry the, quote, right way, Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean, it is from the number one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. Number one claim based on total wash loads sold. Today, we tip our wrench to Rock Auto customer Noah.

53:19Josh Larsen:My first car was a 2001 Dodge Neon with a blue wing, and it happened to match my high school sweetheart, who's now my wife, her black 2005. So my uncle has been in the industry for well over 25 years. He recommended Rock Auto immediately to buy my first set of brakes. I would recommend Rock Auto just because it's simple. It's easy to find the parts you're looking for. It's all at a good price