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Is anyone a fan of this series? I have a few of the DVDs myself and am interested in quite a few that are being released this year, including the two Rush releases and the one covering Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Damn The Torpedoes.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Is anyone a fan of this series? I have a few of the DVDs myself and am interested in quite a few that are being released this year, including the two Rush releases and the one covering Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Damn The Torpedoes.

Which Rush are coming, 2112 and Moving Pictures? (I'd prefer Signals and Power Windows.)

Actually yeah it is 2112 and Moving Pictures. In case anyone isn't familiar with the series, Here is the complete list of episodes so far, including everything currently on DVD and stuff coming soon.

The Zappa, Who, and Pink Floyd episodes are excellent. I was less impressed by the Hendrix and John Lennon ones.

There's an extended version of the Electric Ladyland episode I'd really like to see. They aired the Rush ep last night on VH1 Classic, and was a little disappointed they crammed two albums into one hour of discussion, but I'll reserve a more concrete judgment until I see the DVD.

Along the lines of this series, the "Wings for Wheels" doc on the 30th anniversary box set of Springsteen's Born to Run is outstanding. Apart from all of the excellent interviews, the doc breaks down the recording process, particularly for the title track. Its essentially record mixing 101; really, really interesting stuff.

I've only checked one out, but thought it was pretty good: Grateful Dead: Anthem To Beauty. It's been years, but recall it having really good sound, and particularly liked when they dissected the various instrument tracks. Are they all like that?

Yeah. That was one of the pleasant things about the one for Dark Side Of The Moon is that you hear isolated stuff you've only ever associated with the whole song.

The Steely Dan one for Aja has a hilarious sequence in which Becker and Fagan play back all of the rejected guitar solos from "Peg", each one by a different unidentified session musician, dryly mocking all of them in turn.

I found it a revelation when producer Chris Thomas pointed out that "Anarchy In The U.K." on the Sex Pistols' NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS album featured about six overdubs of guitar to achieve what history remembers as something banged out in one take in a garage somewhere.

Cash Flagg wrote:The Steely Dan one for Aja has a hilarious sequence in which Becker and Fagan play back all of the rejected guitar solos from "Peg", each one by a different unidentified session musician, dryly mocking all of them in turn.

I'd love to see this one; I've been a Dan fan from the get-go; even have singles of 'Reeling in the Years' and 'Do It Again'
Timeless, classic music, - pop, rock, jazz, bossa-nova?
Whatever you're having yourself, missus!

Several episodes of the series are currently streaming on Netflix, including the Steely Dan episode. The part where Donald Fagen busts out into "Deja Vu" when "Black Cow" starts up is hilarious.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Several episodes of the series are currently streaming on Netflix, including the Steely Dan episode. The part where Donald Fagen busts out into "Deja Vu" when "Black Cow" starts up is hilarious.

Thanks; I've since bought the Dan DVD, after initially getting to see it on a VHS recording

The one on the Band's second album is also highly recommended. So sad that every lead voice in that band will be gone soon.

hearthesilence wrote:The one on the Band's second album is also highly recommended. So sad that every lead voice in that band will be gone soon.

I think I might have that on VHS; though if there are good extras on the DVD I might buy it, as that album is one of my all-time Top 10 albums
Is Robbie Robertson seriously ill?

HA! Seriously though, I think Robbie's sung lead on only a few tunes, and to the best of my knowledge, none of them have an exalted place in the Band's catalog. (The best of them is probably "Bessie Smith," which was snuck on to The Basement Tapes.)

The Grateful Dead one is good, too. Mostly because the bulk of the interviews were done not that long after Jerry Garcia's death, so the tenor of the story took a different tone if you consider that great loss they were still fairly in the initial stages of experiencing.

It appears that the next episode in the series covers Peter Gabriel's So, which you can find on YouTube now as it already aired in the UK last month.

I find a lot of these are giant puff pieces, with editorial control by the performer. The Peter Gabriel one was like one long advert for him, and at the end after all the credits, it said "© Peter Gabriel". Clearly, participation is now at the expense of control.

I don't mind that, really. It's really always been told from the artist's perspective, so it's probably natural that it would end up that way. I think it'd only be a problem if they lowered their standards of who to choose for these projects.

peerpee wrote:I find a lot of these are giant puff pieces, with editorial control by the performer. The Peter Gabriel one was like one long advert for him, and at the end after all the credits, it said "© Peter Gabriel". Clearly, participation is now at the expense of control.

A fan never cares about such 'minor details'

Here is the episode covering The Band's self-titled album, mentioned earlier.

Primal Scream's "Screamadelica" episode is on the Screamadelica 20th Anniversary concert BD/DVD. Great episode, and really funny to see the embarrassing early 90's clips in there.

Most if not all the episodes including more recent ones are available streaming on Qello, a pretty awesome service for a decent price.

Watched Anthem to Beauty last night. I'm not the biggest Dead fan at all, in fact it took me a long time to come around on them. One of the things that turned me around was watching that again, specifically this moment of Phil Lesh talking about "Box of Rain". Throughout the piece you can tell that the surviving members and some of those closest to them were a bit more emotionally raw as it was filmed not long after Jerry Garcia's death. You see it most in that clip, and it really made me love that song even more.

The one on Phil Collins' Face Value album is probably one of my favorites. Say what you will about the undoubtedly (even to a fan such as myself) ubiquitous force of nature he was in the 80's, and even after reading his book I put into question some of the things he did that could be seen as airing too much of one's own dirty laundry, but at least for that period I can appreciate the genuine honesty and nerve he applied into making that record. It's not a straight pop, rock or R&B album, perhaps in the way some of his later work would be a combination of the three, but something reflecting musically what he called a "life in motion".