Good Viewing

How right

it was that Bill Monroe, the "Moses" of bluegrass, lived to see this fine film.

Using mostly archival film clips, some going back to the 1920s, the film helps us understand the origins and development of bluegrass. It's as much a history of 20th century southern America as it is about the music. It's also a good companion to the book, IN THE COUNTRY OF COUNTRY, by Nicholas Dawidoff.

The film's main fault is that it's only 95 minutes long. This forces the director to make editing choices that I wish had been done differently. Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, for example, get only seconds of discussion. Had the movie been twice as long, it'd have been ten times as good. Still, enjoyable and indispensable.

This is a biography of Leonard Cohen, a very complicated person. A Buddhist monk, for example, and back on the road at age 74 after his life savings were swindled by his financial advisor.

The movie has Cohen reflecting on his life between performance of his songs in concert by other musicians. In a few cases, I'd have chosen other songs and other performers. Still, I think you'll enjoy this movie once you're about 20 minutes into it.

Be sure to go into the DVD's special features for the song by Perla Batalla, worth the cost of the DVD all by itself.

Filmed as if a documentary on a heavy metal band called "Spinal Tap," this movie forever punctures the posturing, pomposity and puerility of that silly genre.

I don't include this DVD for the concert, but for the bonus features that give us plenty of

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris.

With two of my favorite musicians working together, expectations couldn't help but be high. Needn't have worried. Not only are these two artists giving their best, but they're backed by a band second to none.

I do wish Knopfler had extended himself more on guitar, as he did in the Soundstage version of these concerts. He's too much a gentleman, I guess, to hog the show. When he does take the lead, the excitement audibly goes up, and when he's done you're certain he stopped too soon.

This is a marvelous concert, and my all-time favorite. Be sure to play it through your stereo, not just from the TV and, as my dear wife says when I ask to crank up the volume, "Shake the walls!"

If given only two hours to describe the world's greatest rock and roll band -- obviously not possible -- no one could do it better than this.

"Live," the memoir by Keith Richards, prompted me to look for the Rolling Stones on video. Of the five films I watched this weekend, "Crossfire Hurricane" was by bar the best.

How did it happen that a lout (Richards) and a fop (Jagger) would write so many great songs? Not that they had a need to express themselves. No, their manager told them the band couldn't succeed if they kept singing songs written by others.

And what songs they wrote. "Satisfaction." "Paint It Black." "Sympathy for the Devil." "Gimme Shelter." "Street Fighting Man." "Under Cover of the Night." "Start Me Up." "Brown Sugar." "Tumbling Dice." And, of course, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I like It)." These are just my favorites that come to mind; so many more.

Speaking of the Rolling Stones, the song "Brown Sugar" was inspired by their premier backup singer, Claudia Lennear.

"20 Feet..." looks back to the role backup singers played in rock. We spend a little time with some of the best: Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, then and now. (If the film has any faults, it's to remind us of the perishability of youthful beauty.)

We learn of their struggle, some with as much talent as the stars, to break into solo careers, and how hard that is to do, requiring, at the least, luck, ego, good material, good producers, and then more luck.

Tom Dowd is one of the most influential people in American music we've never heard of.

This documentary will be enjoyable in learning a bit about old recording technology and seeing archival footage and interviews with musicians you probably like.

We learn about Glass the person. His youth, his marriages, most important how he writes his music.

Remarkably likable and complex, we would welcome him into our lives even if he weren't such a great composer.

If this 60 Minutes report doesn't bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat, you may want to submit your resignation from the human race.

If nothing else -- and there is so much else -- it should dispel forever the image of the people in "darkest Africa" having little in common with us in the west. How I admire their courage, their refusal to succumb to despair in the face of poverty and war.

A unique film, letting me wallow in my loves of both music and working with wood. We follow the building of a Steinway grand piano, serial number L1037, in its New York City factory over the course of almost a full year.

We meet some of its workers. They may never have sat in Carnegie Hall, but their dedication to their craft is obvious. They work in a throwback to factories before robotics and automation.

Also fascinating are the many and lengthy Extras: profiles of some of the guest musicians, and performances by them on Steinway pianos.

Enjoyable, well done documentary of a legendary recording studio and the people who lived and worked there. (I confess to finding the two receptionists much more interesting than the musicians.)

The last half hour or so, when Paul McCartney is introduced, would have been better in a bonus feature.

This film will be a lot of fun, maybe indispensable, for fans of Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, less famous musicians, and most of all, the process of making and recording music in studios.

I've got only the 2-DVD set (a 4-DVD set was also produced), but it's enough to convince me I misjudged Berry's talent. There's m

uch more to the man than a writer of simple rock and roll songs.

The first disc has Berry recounting his life story (as of the mid-80s anyway; he's still alive and performing in 2013, his 87th year) along with a full-length concert that is sometimes awful (Julian Lennon) but sometimes terrific (Eric Clapton).

Now we understand what Keith Richards meant when he said he finally got a good band behind Berry.

But it's not until we see the hour-plus "Making of" on disc 2 that we begin to get some insight into Berry. And it's not good. A very complex man.

MUSCLE SHOALS, Greg Camalier, 2012

I'd have edited out the Rolling Stones. Also Traffic, a band I never much liked. But that's just whining and should be ignored.

The editing and cinematography are wonderful. But what's jaw-dropping is the story of how this little town in Alabama ("four or five traffic lights") came to be where so many great musicians went to create their songs and albums.

I never knew, until seeing the film, that Aretha Franklin had already been signed to Columbia Records for five years -- without a single hit (!)-- when she came to Muscle Shoals. And there her first single (of many) was the timeless "I Never Loved a Man."

Let's all raise a glass to Rick Hall. An iconic American hero in the Horatio Alger mold, it would never have happened without him.

This is a 6-episode series from BBC, essentially a "Music Appreciation" course in six hours.

The first two episodes, on early music (from 32000 BC to 1650), aren't of much interest to me. But then, with episode 3 (1650 to 1750), we learn of music we enjoy today (Bach, anyone?), and the series then never loses steam.

Bad news, it inexplicably doesn't seem possible to buy the series anywhere. As of this writing, in November 2015, it doesn't appear at either the Amazon or BBC websites.

Good news, the entire series is available at YouTube, again as of this writing. Watch it, even download it, while it's still there.

More good news, kind of: there is a book of the same title by Goodall, and it's well worth the read. But it doesn't have the visuals we get in the video.

Goodall is articulate, musical and witty. His aim is to help us non-musicians enjoy and understand music, and he succeeds better than anything I've seen before. Frankly, I doubt anyone will ever try a project like this again.