Indeed it is. I am glad you are a fan of Times Ain't Like They Used To Be. This is a rare documentary that doesn't need a narrator explaining anything and allows the performances to do it all by themselves and you can still learn a lot about the music from that particular era.
is that not sad or what? The newer DVDs are a missed opportunity to get it right...I still have my MPI DVDs and that's what I watch...I also own the 2 DVD set of both AHDN and Help! for the extras ...also the huge mega Help! box for the cool extra conents...
A lot of great music docs mentioned here. I won't list my favorites that have already been mentioned but here are two that i really enjoy. Tom Dowd and the Language Of Music Lucero - Dreaming In America Love all the Classic Albums docs. I see they're on Netflix now. I'll rewatch most of them over and over.
You see me laughin Heartworn Highways The Miles Davis Story A film about Jimi Hendrix Fela Kuti-Music is the weapon
I really enjoy the documentary disc in no-man's "mixtaped" set, great companion to the live show on the main disc.
Beach Boys: An American Band was a fine show. Beatles Anthology would be my pick for the best overall rock documentary ever made. When we were working on Motown 40 about 10 years ago, the producers assured me it would be of that level of quality. I wish it had been... To date, that's never come out on home video, and it was only shown once on ABC. For every minute that got into the show, there was an hour of material that stayed on the shelf. A 10-hour documentary on Motown would be incredible, provided they pulled out all the stops, spent a lot of money, and told the full truth.
I loved the Liev Schrieber narrated 10 hour Rock & Roll documentary that aired on PBS back in '95. I wish it'd be released on DVD.
Its followup Global Metal is really good too. Sam Dunn is def the go-to guy for quality doc's about metal/hard rock music.
Tom Petty - Runnin' Down a Dream The Band - The Last Waltz Dylan - Don't Look Back and No Direction Home The Beatles Anthology
The Traveling Wilburys documentary 'The Real Buddy Holly Story' another vote for 'No Direction Home' (Dylan) The Who - 'Maximum R&B' 'Getting The Knack' 'Badfinger' (directed by Gary Katz) 'So Wrong They're Right' (aka '8-Track Mind') and a couple biopics that really nail it: 'Ray' & 'Cadillac Records'
I haven't seen this yet, but now I want to. I like documentaries with no narration, that are able to tell the story with the music and existing footage. I think that filmmakers consider it more of a challenge to make a movie like that, as opposed to taking the easy way out and writing some voice-over for someone to read. At least that's how I feel (I've made a couple verite music documentaries). My favorites are the old festival movies. The first one that inspired me to do it was Gimme Shelter, which I saw on TV when I was a high school sophomore. Recently I wrote a letter to Albert Maysles to thank him for inspiring me. He wrote a email back saying he appreciated being appreciated. I want to bring up one great documentary that isn't mentioned often: Murray Lerner's "Festival," which features the 1963-65 Newport Folk Festivals. It's beautifully put together and it has many top-notch performers as well as lots of forgotten-but-interesting entities. They had technical limitations compared to just a few years later (I'm pretty sure the cameras had no zoom lenses) but still were able to make a great movie about the newport Folk Festival. I've watched it lots of times.
It could easily be expanded to 10 hours long. I think producer/director Malcolm Leo is semi-retired these days, but at the least, they could get all the footage back and redo it all for HD. All the documentary stuff was shot on 16mm (by the great DP John Toll), so it would still look fine. Beatles Anthology is another one they could do an amazing job on. I think you could expand that out to a 22-episode 1-hour series and still barely scratch the surface. But the more the years go on, the smaller the audience gets for stuff like this.
I like documentaries in general, even if they are on someone I am neutral or only modestly impressed with, but Hail Hail rock And Roll is still my all time favorite. Ones on the really really obscure people like Jandek or GG Allin are sometimes worth watching.
I recently saw "Hitmakers: The Teens That Stole Pop Music" focusing on the Brill Building era. Nice doc with a good mix of then-new and archival interview footage. It's amazing to consider how much they achieved in an era generally considered a fallow period in rock. Like the best documentaries, it's no whitewash; the decision of sell out to Colpix proves ill-fated, and two marriages within the Aldon Music family unravel. The three-part Punk Britannia series was lots of fun, too; Johnny Rotten is just as entertaining and full of himself as ever, and I'm convinced that Viv Albertine has a picture of Dorian Gray hidden in her attic.
