Top 5 Music Docs | Archive

0:03Speaker 1:What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?

0:06Speaker 2:You're not interested in art?

0:07Speaker 3:No.

0:08Speaker 2:Well, look, we're going to do this thing.

0:09Speaker 3:We're going to have a conversation.

0:13Speaker 4:Hey, film spotters.

0:14Speaker 1:As we were thinking about this archive episode and what we should drop into the feed, a couple things were on our minds. First, Oasis, don't look back in anger. The New documentary out September 11th, which is the chronicle of the band's reunion, Josh, for their 2025 tour.

0:34Speaker 4:Well, that's coming out.

0:36Speaker 1:That's also what was the inspiration for the recent movie deathmatch episode that we had in the film spotting feed, pitting the two greatest concert films of all time against each other, Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz. So we thought, well, what's in the archive that's relevant today?

0:56Speaker 4:To these movies.

0:59Speaker 1:And we thought about our last Waltz episode, talked about it for its 45th anniversary in 2023. As part of that show, we did our top five music documentaries. That's what we're dusting off here.

1:12Speaker 5:We did. And both of those titles that Movie Deathmatch consider made our list. Not shocking that that happened. Also looking at mine, I won't give it away, but A crossover, let's just say, for me, with our movie tattoos we would get. Yes. That were both, I think, inching ever closer towards actually getting at some point. But yeah, one of my picks here, also one of my movie tattoos. We'll see if listeners can place that as they listen to our picks here going ahead.

1:44Speaker 3:Yeah.

1:45Speaker 1:A reminder that you can access the Film Spotting Archive and episodes and segments like this at your fingertips by becoming a family member at Learn more at filmspottingfamily.com. Here is our top five music docs.

2:01Speaker 6:You start a conversation, you can't even finish it.

2:05Speaker 1:You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything. Let's get into this week's topic, Josh, with The Last Waltz and Robbie Robertson's unfortunate passing. And of course, as we mentioned, Stop Making Sense, returning to theaters. We thought it was time to share. our top five music documentaries. We did consider at first maybe just doing specifically concert films like The Last Waltz, like Stop Making Sense, decided to broaden it a little bit, open it up to any documentary that is about music, is about musicians. I'm sure between our lists, we'll cover a few of the different ways documentarians have approached this subject matter. It was tough eventually to weed it down to just five.

2:49Speaker 5:I think I did end up leaning mostly towards concert docs. There's one definitely on my list that wouldn't have made it if I was super strict about that. And a couple of them do take forays away from the stage. But, you know, you need that even in a concert doc, even in something like The Last Waltz, we see how you have these other elements that bring some context, some background information. And maybe some other opportunities for artistic flourishes that the filmmaker is otherwise restricted to what's happening on the stage, right? And how they can capture that. And by broadening it, yeah, we're maybe opening the door to some ways that filmmakers put their own stamp on the genre.

3:28Speaker 4:Let's dive in. What's your number five?

3:29Speaker 6:All right.

3:30Speaker 2:My number five is Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

3:33Speaker 5:Now, before he joined the ranks of comedy's problematic figures, that's where he is now.

3:39Speaker 2:Totally, totally get that.

3:40Speaker 5:Dave Chappelle put together this concert in Brooklyn, and I described it in my 2006 review, perhaps ironically, now in hindsight, but I described it as inflammatory yet inclusive. So that last quality, it might have fallen away in your sense when it comes to Chappelle, but as a musical document, it still applies to this music documentary, Dave Chappelle's Block Party. And he even describes it, in the film as the concert I've always wanted to see. So this includes artists like Mo Steph, Erykah Badu, Kanye West, The Roots, and a reunion at the time.

4:20Speaker 2:Of the Fugees.

4:20Speaker 4:You have something in your throat there?

4:22Speaker 5:Yeah, Kanye, you know, he's more of an issue than Chappelle at the moment, right? Yes.

4:26Speaker 2:Way more.

4:27Speaker 5:So I get that as well, but still, watching revisiting clips of this and some of these performances, I have to highlight his rendition of Jesus Walks with John Legend and a marching.

4:44Speaker 6:Band.

5:03Speaker 5:So I think that lineup speaks for itself, but What makes this distinct for me is also Chappelle as this giddy host who's just so over the moon that this thing has come together, as ramshackle as it is. And he's doing interviews with the stars, of course, but he's also hanging out in this neighborhood. I think of this interview with a couple of ancient hippies who happen to live on the same block and really have no idea what's going on. The whole thing is loose. There's a sense of camaraderie to it. And I think some of that probably comes from the director here, Michelle Gondry. No stranger to ramshackle dreams, he did Be Kind, Rewind, The Science of Sleep, and then, you know, a bit more polished, I would say, a great one, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So yeah, this pick comes with some caveats.

5:49Speaker 5:Chappelle and West totally understand if people just don't want to make time for either of them these days, but still as a document of a more promising time for both of them, as well as just a different sort of concert doc in general, I'm going to start my list with Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

6:04Speaker 1:That is a wonderful performance from Kanye that you singled out. And also, thank you, Ramshackle Dreams is going to be the name of my next band.

6:12Speaker 2:All right, you got it. It's all yours.

6:14Speaker 4:Well said.

6:15Speaker 1:My number five music documentary is from director Sam Jones, who has come up this year on the show with another revealing making of an album documentary. He's the director of Jason Isbell, Running With Our Eyes Closed. My pick is I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. the chronicle of the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the band Wilco. And in the trailer, you hear music critic and fellow podcaster slash radio host on WBEZ, Greg Cott, say, it's not a VH1 behind the music story. It's not a drugs groupie celebrity kind of story at all. This band's story is the music. And he is so right. Just today, rewatching clips reminded me how incredible the album that this film documents the making of is. For people who don't feel the same way about the music that I do, is the documentary still compelling?

7:12Speaker 4:I don't know, but it should be.

7:14Speaker 1:It isn't a drugs or groupies or celebrity kind of story, but there's plenty of drama. You've got a fairly established band. This is their fourth album, I believe. It's a fairly, up to this point, straight-ahead kind of alt-rock band. And here they're taking a huge musical swing. That's enough of a decent narrative through line. Add in the fact that they are taking this ambitious step and their label hates it. And they hate it so much they cut them from the label. Only to end up eventually signing. The band eventually signs with the subsidiary of their previous label. They're both subsidiaries of the same unit.

7:58Speaker 5:So.

7:59Speaker 1:As the joke goes, they basically got paid twice to make the same album that one of the groups rejected. And if that's not enough, two of the key creative forces in the group, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, are not seeing eye to eye at all. And that results in Bennett, during the making of this movie, Bennett being expelled from the band. So you have all this tension and conflict. which you can see is taking its toll on Tweety, but there are no major fireworks either that I recall. It all sort of unfolds very plaintively, like Wilco and their music. Not all of their music, mind you, but especially some of the songs on this album, and a song like the opening track, the opening track of this movie. The opening credits is one of my favorite parts of this film, where you have this kind of grungily beautiful.

8:57Speaker 1:Two-minute black and white sequence. The whole film is in black and white. It's Tweety driving through Chicago, going to rehearsal, wherever the band is playing or recording. And most of it, you're just seeing his point of view of the city. You're not really aware of that until much later into the montage that it's him driving. But you're getting his perspective. And the song that's playing over this is the album's first track and the movie's title track, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart But it's not the funkier, eclectic album version. It's this acoustic version, sounds more like a demo of just Tweety and his guitar. And you would almost think it's this earnest love song, except for that undertow of pain and aggression in the declaration, I am trying to break your heart.

9:53Speaker 6:I am trying to break your heart. I'm trying to.

10:19Speaker 1:That's actually at the center of this film. And also this excitement, this excitement around the fact that they are doing something new, that they are being more adventurous with their music. And fortunately, Josh, things work out in the end. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot ends up being their most successful album to date. It's the one that most critics look back on and still hail as a masterpiece and one of the best of that period. And I feel that way as well, which is also a reason why I love I'm Trying to Break Your Heart so much.

10:53Speaker 2:Love that album. Love Wilco.

10:54Speaker 5:And this was next up on my homework list that I unfortunately didn't get to. So can't comment myself, but it makes me think I did hear from one of my favorite music writers, Eric Danielson. He writes actually for the Columbia Daily Tribune, and he was suggesting this to me saying, you got to catch up with this one if you can before making your list.

11:15Speaker 2:And Found his note here.

11:16Speaker 5:He just said it's one of the great creative process docs I've ever seen. And Eric's seen way more of these documentaries than I have. So I believe him and I believe you. All right. At number four, I don't know, maybe should have asked this question at the top, but it seems to me that it's right that this list is going to lend itself more to personal.

11:36Speaker 2:Taste, maybe.

11:37Speaker 5:Just the fact that music is being the main ingredient. I feel like that's where I was drawn to maybe giving some leeway to the documentaries simply because I loved the music so much. And so this is a personal one at number four, Rattle and Hum, 1988, U2. It's personal because.

12:01Speaker 2:This is not a beloved music doc.

12:03Speaker 5:I know it's had that reputation pretty much since it came out and has stayed that way, especially for U2 detractors. But for me personally, to have this movie come out in 88, there was no way it wasn't going to be formative. I mean, this is when I was just seriously getting into music, really choosing what I was going to spend my hard-earned lawn mowing money on. What tapes am I going to buy, Adam? And so I would actually buy something like R.E.M. 's Green album or U2' s Joshua Tree, some of the first music I actually owned.

12:34Speaker 5:And so Rattle and Hum, you know, not only the album follow-up to Joshua Tree, but This music documentary of that tour, of the Joshua Tree Tour across America, chronicled the band's performances and collaborations as well with the likes of Bob Dylan, B.B. King, the New Voices of Freedom Gospel Choir, also gave us one of the great U2 songs, Desire.

13:17Speaker 2:What's this film about?

13:21Speaker 3:Sort of a musical journey, really.

13:23Speaker 5:You know?

13:26Speaker 2:That's good.

13:27Speaker 5:Now, you can tell from the lack of an answer there and really the lack of participation, the band was in a bit of a smug face. And that was one of the complaints about the movie overall, that that was kind of just coming off of them and coming off of the screen. And probably because of that, Rattle and Hum barely cracked Rolling Stones. One of the articles I tracked down to help me formulate this list was Rolling Stones' 70 Greatest Music Documentaries. And again, I think it might be the last title on that list. It's definitely near the end, but Tim Grierson did offer this defense in his blurb on it. At the time of its release, this documentary of U2' s Joshua Tree Tour was lambasted for its overly reverent, self-important tone. Now, with hindsight, Rattle and Hum can be seen properly as an honest portrait of the Irish quartet. whose holy quest was to change the world through rock and roll. Allow the band's piousness and Americana obsessions to turn you off, and you'll miss an intriguing look at a band adjusting to a global superstar status they haven't relinquished since. So that's Tim Grierson.

14:31Speaker 5:And I'd also argue, you know, that in retrospect, looking at it now, you know, Rattle and Hum captures what was so essential and exciting about Octoon Baby. and then the Zoo TV tour. That was just a few years later. And you see a band here in Railroad and Hum in desperate need of reassessment and reinvention. The artistic talent is there. But yeah, you can see they've hit a wall with who they were. And we get them busting through that wall and that process starting here, but eventually busting through with Octoon Baby. So Aside from the great music, you know, a concert doc on a band this big is going to need some iconic visuals. And I think we get that here from the director, Phil Joano, and cinematographers Robert Brinkman and Jordan Cronenweth. They mix black and white and color film footage, and visually they're really continuing in the vein of Anton Corbain's photos for Joshua Tree. Cronenweth, incidentally, he worked on the likes of Blade Runner and The Talking Heads concert doc Stop Making Sense, which might just come up later, but For now, I've got Rattle on Helmet number four.

15:42Speaker 2:What's the film about?

15:43Speaker 4:It's a musical.

15:48Speaker 1:That inarticulateness that you see, that perhaps willful inability to articulate what their music's about and what they're trying to do as a band, that will connect nicely to an upcoming pick of mine. And the other thing I'll say about that desire scene is even though they are performing for the camera, the vibe is they're rehearsing. It's not in front of any kind of audience. And yet there is Bono in all of his glory. He's not just standing there singing. He is giving it.

16:21Speaker 4:Every second, every ounce of insouciance. He is just glorious, isn't he?

16:28Speaker 2:It's incredible.

16:29Speaker 5:And just, yeah, how young they look too is, it.

16:34Speaker 2:Makes you feel not so young. I'll just say that.

16:36Speaker 3:Sure.

16:37Speaker 1:Well, for my number four, I'll start by saying the Oscars, as we often bemoan, don't usually get it right, somewhat notoriously when it comes to best documentary feature. But in 2016, they did. This film won the best documentary Oscar, beat out, among other films, Joshua Oppenheimer's very good The Look of Silence and another very good music documentary, Liz Garbus' What Happened, Miss Simone. Definitely recommend that if you haven't seen it. But this film is Amy. directed by Asif Kapadia, who came onto my radar in 2010 when he made Senna, which was one of my top 10 films of that year.

17:17Speaker 1:Another documentary about a legendary artist, you could say, who died tragically, died too young, Formula One driver Ayrton Senna. He was 34. Amy Winehouse was just 27. And the same approach I loved in Senna is the one he takes with Amy. It's not so uncommon now, but it felt very new and vital to me in 2010, and it was certainly a departure from most documentaries I had seen, and certainly most music documentaries I had seen. This is one that relies completely on archival footage to produce what he has called quote-unquote true fiction. So he's acknowledging that even though it's a documentary, he's of course telling a story, there is a narrative, there is a construct to this, but It is all actual footage. It's home movies. It's performance footage. It's behind-the-scenes recording.

18:10Speaker 4:It's friends. It's family members. It's Amy.

18:12Speaker 1:It's everyone just shooting footage that he was able to get his hands on. And they're shooting at a time when smartphones weren't ubiquitous, and yet he had this incredible trove to cull together. And another choice he makes is to let her lyrics tell the story. Literally, the lyrics often appear on screen, handwritten, and it feels like you're getting access to her innermost thoughts. You're reading her diary. And that, of course, supports the overall confessional nature of the music.

18:41Speaker 6:She would tell me stories about Blake and this tempestuous, extreme relationship. That first day she wrote Back to.

18:50Speaker 4:Black, all the lyrics and the melody in two or three hours.

19:10Speaker 1:I have to admit, in 2006, I think it was when she broke out with the Back to Black album, I didn't get the Amy Winehouse phenomenon, but I also didn't devote any energy to trying to get it. It was just sort of popular music. I heard the songs on the radio. I could appreciate it as catchy, but that was kind of it. I don't know about you, Josh. Then I watched this documentary about 10 years later, and without anyone in the film, because there are no talking heads, without anyone pronouncing it or contextualizing her greatness for you, you just witness it.

19:49Speaker 4:And it's undeniable.

19:51Speaker 1:It's undeniable that she had and was a singular voice. You mentioned the Rolling Stone top 70 music docs, which I also took a look at. Vulture did a top 50. Our friend Noel Murray wrote that piece, and he had Amy at number 20 He said, what's most heartbreaking about Amy is that all its previously unseen footage shows a complex young woman that the public never really got to know because it was easier both for the singer and the tabloids to sell a simpler story of reckless self-indulgence.

20:22Speaker 1:And one of the feelings I came away with, and I know others have expressed this similarly, you'll hear a word that will often come up after people experience this film. You come away feeling a certain complicity in.

20:33Speaker 4:It all, even if, of course.

20:35Speaker 1:you were never directly or even really indirectly involved in exploiting her. You're just very aware of the narrative that was created around her and how easy it was for me as an individual simply to accept that. And the documentary shatters that.

20:54Speaker 5:Yeah, definitely my experience. It is, in a sense, a cinematic shaming that is due. I think the movie does that by showing us their there were friends and family who stood by, if not enabled, you know, her. And I think we are included in.

21:12Speaker 3:This, Adam.

21:12Speaker 2:That was my experience as well.

21:13Speaker 5: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, it sounds like similar, definitely listened to her 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. 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.

21:48Speaker 1:Right.

21:48Speaker 5:And I think this movie, yeah, this movie rightly challenges having a relationship like that to musical artists.

21:56Speaker 4:That's a good word.

21:57Speaker 1: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. 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, that's something the movie definitely made me realize.

22:30Speaker 5: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.

23:12Speaker 2:So this is who we're talking about here.

23:13Speaker 5: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 wrap 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 Mavis? the festival when they were younger. And this is one of them, Musa Jackson, who went to the fest as a child.

23:58Speaker 4:I was a little kid.

24:00Speaker 3: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.

24:17Speaker 6:It was incredible.

24:19Speaker 5: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.

24:32Speaker 1: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. This 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.

25:22Speaker 4:Are you going to see the concert tonight? Are you going to hear it?

25:24Speaker 2:Okay.

25:24Speaker 1: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? And 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.

25:45Speaker 1:That's the infamous Bob Dylan exchange with a Time Magazine reporter in D.A. Pennebaker's seminal 1967 artist on tour documentary, Don't Look Back. Pennebaker followed Dylan to England. He was touring the country in 1965, and we get sort of fly-on-the-wall footage. I'll talk more about that in a second. We get scenes of Dylan with the media interacting with occasionally 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.

26:26Speaker 4:And the importance or.

26:27Speaker 1: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. In 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.

27:47Speaker 1:Why 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 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. And it really wouldn't have even been that hard.

28:34Speaker 1:Like he wouldn't have had to be overly eloquent to 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 them. I don't write for any reason. He's basically saying, I owe you nothing.

29:00Speaker 4:And I believe him. I agree with him.

29:01Speaker 1:I didn't see this documentary until I think 2006 as part of a film spotting marathon. And it 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.

29:32Speaker 4:It's all artifice.

29:33Speaker 1: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. He'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 entourage. And he gets a little focused on a certain word that's being thrown around about him.

30:21Speaker 4:They've started calling you an anarchist.

30:23Speaker 5:Who?

30:23Speaker 4:Papers, that's the word now.

30:25Speaker 3:Anarchist.

30:27Speaker 1:No problem.

30:27Speaker 3:You're kidding.

30:28Speaker 4:Which papers did you see there?

30:29Speaker 5:Oh, two or three.

30:31Speaker 2:An anarchist.

30:33Speaker 4:Just because you don't offer any solution.

30:35Speaker 5:You're kidding.

30:37Speaker 1:Of course.

30:44Speaker 5:An anarchist.

30:45Speaker 3:Yeah.

30:45Speaker 6:Give me a cigarette.

30:46Speaker 2:Give the anarchist a cigarette.

30:48Speaker 1: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 amused more than anything at this criticism, if you will, and I think he's really amused by the word choice, 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.

31:21Speaker 1:I don't think they're reflecting it quite the way Dylan is, but that, that inability or that lack of desire to explain themselves to other people and to let the music stand for itself.

31:34Speaker 4:That's, that's really what Dylan does here.

31:37Speaker 5:So Bob Dylan also popping up a lot on this show. I mean, he's in rattle and hum and of course the last waltz too.

31:44Speaker 2:That's right. All right.

31:45Speaker 5:So number two, A little unusual because it's actually a recent documentary. It 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.

32:16Speaker 5: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. 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, larsonandfilm.com, serves as a handy archive for these top five lists, right?

33:04Speaker 5: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.

33:21Speaker 2:So I was silenced.

33:22Speaker 4:You copped out. You copped out as a critic.

33:24Speaker 2:No, I was silenced by Amazing Grace.

33:28Speaker 5:I had no more. I did not want to desecrate this thing with words. So I'm going to lean on others' words here.

33:34Speaker 4:I get it.

33:34Speaker 5: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. It drags you from the theater straight into the pews.

33:52Speaker 4:I love that.

33:53Speaker 5: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?

33:59Speaker 2:The one.

34:00Speaker 5:You have to just choose one. Which one are you going with? Kevin McLenathan over on Blue Sky. Yes, yes, I am on Blue Sky.

34:07Speaker 2:Look at you.

34:08Speaker 5: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 an Aretha Franklin event.

34:25Speaker 2:And one more.

34:26Speaker 5:Here from Twitter slash X, 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. Amazing Grace, a belated treasure, but a treasure for sure.

35:08Speaker 1: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. 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. Yes, 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.

35:59Speaker 5:What a.

36:00Speaker 2:thrill.

36:00Speaker 1: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. There's a Jonathan Demme quote about Stop Making Sense. I think I referenced back when we talked about it during that 8 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.

37:08Speaker 1:They'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 of 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.

37:40Speaker 1: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.

37:54Speaker 4:Think about how they.

37:55Speaker 1:Present psycho killer i've talked about it before i think my number three jonathan demi scene this is a song ostensibly from the point of view of an alienated homicidal man so how do we get it david burn alone on stage guitar and boombox deliriously.

38:15Speaker 4:Deranged hi i got a tape i want to play.

38:28Speaker 1:This 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 Foppy, where Demi showcases the entire stage groups of performers.

38:58Speaker 1:And there's scarcely a shot of an individual to be found in that number. It's all just so intentional. And on top of it, the music is incredible as well.

39:20Speaker 5: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.

39:40Speaker 2:This is one, Adam, if.

39:42Speaker 5: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 part of our 8 from 84 series that was in 2020 we did in 2017 our top 5 films of 84 you had it at number 3 I had it at number 2 and then it showed up on both of our top 5 Jonathan Demi moments lists when we honored the director after his passing that was 2017 so I 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.

40:36Speaker 5: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. 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 newsflash 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. 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.

41:45Speaker 1: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 Jarrett 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. If 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.

42:34Speaker 1: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. All 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?

43:01Speaker 4:Any other titles that you want to sneak in?

43:03Speaker 5: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. Miss 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.

43:35Speaker 5:Quite good.

43:37Speaker 1:I love this genre, so indulge me here for a second with a few titles. The 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.

44:13Speaker 1: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. Scorsese, 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 in 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. 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 You got to talk about the measles 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

45:18Speaker 1: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.

45:41Speaker 4:Lyrics, Josh.

45:42Speaker 5:I've heard a lot of support for that one, actually. Saw that one come up in social media quite a bit.

45:46Speaker 4:It's been a beast, and it's sucked a lot of me into it.

45:56Speaker 1:Those were our top five music documentaries from September 2023. Access to the Film Spotting Archive, just one of the benefits of being a Film Spotting Family member, plus bonus shows, weekly newsletter, early access to.

46:09Speaker 4:Events, and more. Learn more at filmspottingfamily.com. Thanks for listening.

46:14Speaker 3:This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

46:17Speaker 1:Goodbye.

46:25Speaker 6:Thank you.