Floating around in Music Movie Heaven

Ok, fasten your seatbelts, this will be the first list on this blog.
And I tell you what: it offers a complete musical education.

• Seven ages of rock (BBC 2007)
• No direction home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorcese 2005)
• Beethoven, with Charles Hazlewood (BBC, 2005)
• Jazz, by Ken Burns (2001)

To be honest i didn't like all of Seven Ages. The Punk and Britpop episodes were ruined by dreadful ‘looking back’ interviews. Johnny of the Sex Pistols kept on saying that it was ‘just fun’ to… Yeah, to what really? He didn’t manage to put into words how he had actually experienced things, he just repeated the same old ‘do it yourself’ and ‘fuck it all’ ideology that happened to be fashionable in 1976. The so-called experts in additional interviews turned out to be no more than fans, just offering their admiration.

Still, it was chilling to see how their American tour ended: Johnny on his knees, performing just one song (‘no fun’ by The Stooges), ending it with a repetitive ‘no fun, no fun’, exhausted, yet half ashamed towards the audience (‘I’m a lazy bastard’). So, in spite of his lame interview, Johnny was kinda touching. This can't be said of Noel Callagher, who, bragging about charts and money, was really only annoying and boring. Yet his episode (Britpop) did contain some nice footage of The Smiths.

The episodes I liked best were Early Rock and Alternative. Early Rock links up the stories of Jimi Hendrix, king of psychedelic rock, and the british ‘white blues’ invasion of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Also, we see Jimi performing songs of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, turning them into something really Jimi-like. The Alternative episode first follows R.E.M. touring for years, right alongside their hardcore counterparts Black Flag. Eventually famous REM and upcoming Nirvana get to befriend eachother, with Michael Stipe fruitlessly trying to lift up suicidal Kurt Cobain. Not a cheerful story, but well-told, insightfull and moving.

The other three episodes covered Art Rock, Metal and Stadium Rock, all really enjoyable.

What to say about No Direction Home: it’s famous. The part I like best is where the folkies condemn Bob for turning ‘rock’, one of them actually swinging an axe at his electrical gear. Unbelievable.

The Beethoven documentary (also known as The genius of Beethoven) is partly dramatised, partly narrated by Charles Hazlewood. The fake interviews with Beethoven’s contemporaries (his brother, his mentor Haydn etc etc) are historicly quite convincing, yet accessible. This dark Beethoven story is much, much better then Hazlewood’s cheerful yet shallow film on Mozart, however more popular the latter seems to have been (according to some IMDB comments).

Then, the Ken Burns’ Jazz story, a monster-size documentary. Right from the beginning I was struck by its power to evoke historical sensations. It weaves together old footage, pictures, recordings and citations, along with expert interviews, some interviews with personally involved people who are now very old, and a narrating voice tying it all up. It made me understand much better not only jazz muzic but also, well, ‘black experience’ in America.

Pfew, now I have to rest, these strenuous memorising efforts have exhausted me. If you go see these docs, don’t forget to come back and tell me what you thought of them.