Music Documentaries

[Ive always been a dreamer]

A DVD called Legends of the Canyon: Classic Artists (2009) is going to be released on August 31st. Sounds really interesting, although there is no mention of the Eagles. Hmmm! Anyway, you can preorder on [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Legends-Canyon-Classic-David-Crosby/dp/B003NOGNX8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1281531733&sr=8-1[/ame].

[Brooke]

Cool! It reminds me of the book about Laurel Canyon. I think I need it!

[Freypower]

I cannot understand how something like that could exclude the Eagles and yet include America.

[WS82Classics]

Some of my personal favourite, non "History of the Eagles" documentaries:

"Beware of Mr. Baker"
"George Harrison: Living in the Material World"
"Lambert & Stamp"
"Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers--Runnin' Down a Dream"
"When You're Strange: A Film about the Doors"
"Who is Harry Nilsson, and Why is Everybody Talkin' about Him?"

I've seen a couple on Jimi Hendrix documentaries I really liked, but the names totally escape me right now.

[MortSahlFan]

I love "Classic Albums" - they really get into the music, it's the best program for music.

I've seen a lot of ones about The Doors. Crossfire Hurricane is a good Stones one. Pink Floyd has a lot, including a non-classic albums "Making of Wish You Were Here" "The Wall" (as well as "Classic Albums: Dark Side")

I just saw some on Netflix, on Janis Joplin (good), Keith Richards (ok). The Beatles have a lot of stuff.

I loved Roger Waters new Wall movie. Part movie, part documentary, part concert.

There's also a couple of good Supertramp ones.

Anything upcoming?

[Jonny Come Lately]

I love "Classic Albums" - they really get into the music, it's the best program for music.

I've seen a lot of ones about The Doors. Crossfire Hurricane is a good Stones one. Pink Floyd has a lot, including a non-classic albums "Making of Wish You Were Here" "The Wall" (as well as "Classic Albums: Dark Side")

I just saw some on Netflix, on Janis Joplin (good), Keith Richards (ok). The Beatles have a lot of stuff.

I loved Roger Waters new Wall movie. Part movie, part documentary, part concert.

There's also a couple of good Supertramp ones.

Anything upcoming?

Couldn't agree more about the Classic Albums series! I saw the Dark Side episode a while back and absolutely loved it, superb stuff. I loved how they went through the album track by track and went into such detail about the making of each song. I'm really glad they did it while Rick was still around. I really liked the Wish You Were Here documentary too. I remember seeing one for Meddle on YouTube once too.There was another Pink Floyd one I enjoyed (can't remember the name... I think Richard E Grant was the narrator. It was a bit too biased towards Gilmour's side, but still good).

Another one I remember really enjoying from the Classic Albums series was the episode for Deep Purple's Machine Head. Seeing Jon Lord playing the slowed down and full speed versions of Highway Star's organ solo was brilliant! I didn't see the whole thing because I was too tired at the time, but if it comes on again I will definitely watch it. On a similar theme, I saw a hard rock/heavy metal documentary called Heavy Metal Britannia (I think) a while back, which was great. Although the title was heavy metal it had just as much from hard/heavy rock as actual metal - there was quite a bit of Purple and a bit of Led Zeppelin in there.

I guess The History of the Eagles is probably a bit of an obvious choice for us on The Border, but seriously, that shouldn't cloud the fact that it is a superb rockumentary. It does such a fantastic job of telling the band's story in a way that seems to work just as well for more casual fans as well as the hardcores (my Dad, who likes the Eagles but doesn't know the band or music as well as I do, absolutely loves it). It really is a standout of the genre.

On the reverse side, the worst music documentary I've ever seen was something called 'Discovering Dire Straits'. There was a Pink Floyd episode in this series which was decent enough if hardly earth shattering for a big fan like me, so I watched this out of curiosity. Unfortunately, it completely missed the point, to the extent that I could barely recognise the band they were talking about as Dire Straits. It suggested that the videos for Tunnel Of Love and Romeo And Juliet were a major factor in the band's success (I could have understood this argument for Walk Of Life and especially Money For Nothing, but neither of those songs were true hits so I don't see why the videos were so important in those cases). More attention was given over to this than to Mark Knopfler's guitar work, which is a huge and lasting part of the band's appeal. Given the programme was only half an hour long too much time was wasted talking about how disappointing On Every Street was (I can't argue with that, but classic songs like Telegraph Road and Private Investigations were not deemed worthy of mention), and pointlessly contrasted them with the emerging grunge bands, which seem to me to have appealed to a very different audience. I was kind of annoyed after seeing it because the people involved with it just didn't seem to understand what it was that made Dire Straits a great band.

[NightMistBlue]

A DVD called Legends of the Canyon: Classic Artists (2009) is going to be released on August 31st. Sounds really interesting, although there is no mention of the Eagles. Hmmm! Anyway, you can preorder on http://www.amazon.com/Legends-Canyon...1531733&sr=8-1.

That was a good one, done by Henry Diltz and featuring interviews with a lot of his famous friends (Stephen Stills, Crosby, Van Dyke Parks) and non-famous, as well as the charming Henry himself. It doesn't attempt to be a serious, structured, thorough documentary - it's really just Henry showing some of his home movies, telling some stories, etc. Quite similar to "Under the Covers" except it's more about the milieu of Laurel Canyon in its heady heyday.

[Freypower]

For what it's worth I recommend the Genesis documentary Together & Apart...