All the Labor, A DVD Documentary on The Gourds

The story of the Austin, Texas, country rock group The Gourds is a story of a band that has spent considerably more than a decade together and has remained an underground thing. The fame of Nashville or top indie-alt billing is probably never to be theirs, yet they keep on. Fact is, they are too good for some music marketing channels today, maybe. The story is told well and exhaustively on the DVD film documentary All the Labor (MVD Visual 6044D). You get 96 minutes of the film, plus another 109 minutes of bonus, alts, extras.

There is a wealth of performance footage captured over different times in their history, some insightful narrative by the band members, and an overall look at the nonconformity and talent that make up the band. Suppose "The Band" started their career in 1999? In a way that is the fate of the Gourds. The music scene is no longer so open that rock and roots and talent can give you the sort of attention the Band got in their heyday.

But the Gourds seem unphased. They have multiple songwriters who are very good and keep producing. Their vocal mix is unparalleled. Musically they put together just what is needed for the songs--whether a folksy accordion, mandolin, ukulele, fiddle, electric and/or acoustic guitars, Fender bass, drums. They go from alt rock jamband hardness to yodelling country archaism in one set and they make it all seem like inevitability, though certainly none of it is.

They are funny, earthy guys and the love for what they do comes through strongly. It's a great story and it is told very well indeed. It may make you into a Gourds fan if you aren't already. So watch it and get that music in your head!

Oil City Confidential, The Story of Dr. Feelgood, DVD

Canvey Island, England, a combination of industrial oil refineries, seedy coastal resort hovels and working-class neighborhood dwellings. It was and is the home for the roots rocking proto-punk band Dr. Feelgood. It forms an important backdrop for the story of the rise and fall of the band, as portrayed in the Julien Temple film Oil City Confidential (Cadiz DVD 125), now out on enhanced DVD with added interview footage.

What's really captivating about the film is the stunning footage of an industrial rust belt world, the life history of the band members growing up there, the articulate-funny candor of surviving band members and locals, perhaps especially guitarist Wilco Johnson, and the band performance footage integrated into the whole.

The group may not be remembered today so much but that is a mistake. They gave the British music scene a hard roots jolt and paved the way for groups like the Sex Pistols and Clash, but were a real power entity in their own right. The thing that grabs me about the film is that it brings a world alive in brilliant ways--even if you don't know or even don't think you care about the Dr. Feelgood history. It won't matter because in the end you will, but in the process you'll be subjected to documentary creative film making at its very best!

The Story of Mudhoney: I'm Now, DVD

Rock documentaries of course can be anything from great to awful. It helps if the subject matter, the artists, are extraordinarily interesting people in their own right. That's true, I found, of the members of Mudhoney. But it also helps if the documentary makers have a sensitivity to what they are addressing. Ryan Short and Adam Pease have that. Put the two together and you have the documentary DVD The Story of Mudhoney: I'm Now (King of Hearts 03).

This is the band that was fundamental in the foundation of the Seattle rock craze known as grunge. The music was and is interesting, the history of the scene is interesting. We experience Mudhoney's climb to success, their initial status as avatars of underground music, the major label grab and how it effected the band, their adjustment to (eventual) moderate obscurity with legendary status intact. All that is part of the documentary.

The members of the band and the people involved in their careers--producers, label execs, etc., manage to say very interesting, smart things in this doc. And there's enough of the music live (and otherwise) to get you in the mode of the band.

In short--excellent documentary, one of the very best on a "punk" band I've seen. Interesting, definitely.

Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements, DVD

What is it about a rock band that can get the attention, devotion, even adulation of music fans, fellow musicians and important critics and yet have, comparatively speaking, a small commercial impact? Film maker Gordon Bechard asks this question about the Replacements on Color Me Obsessed (MVD 2-DVD 5533D). What emerges from the nearly two-hour film and many extras is a full picture of a moment in the rock underground.

All this without a single second of music or any interview footage or even images of the band. It is a kind of music reception history documentary. That it works fully is a testament to Bechard's vision and the extraordinary impact the Replacements had (have) on people.

In the process the story of the band's career from first demo to breakup is told in successive interviews from first-hand obsessors--those who were a part of the scene from producers and record execs to floor-level fans.

A picture emerges of four musically modest young men who somehow transcended their limitations at the same time as they succumbed to them--and in the course of their heyday captured in song and sound the alienation of people who don't quite fit in, who disfunction yet create a kind of art that has absolutely no pretensions to being art, and comes out of their dysfunctional stance.

It's one of the very best rockumentaries I have seen. You leave the film with clear feelings about why this band, why people in this generation needed the Replacements, why rock needs a band like this, with rawness, balls, yet very immediate sensitivity about the life around them, to regenerate the scene.

Dexter Romweber, "Two Headed Cow," Musical Documentary DVD

Dexter Romweber came to notice as the Silvertone guitar-wielding, attitude-laced vocalist for the rockabilly-thrash outfit The Flat Duo Jets, a sometimes duo, sometimes trio gathering of guitar, drums and bass. Tony Gayton directed Two-Headed Cow, a fine documentary of the ups and downs of Dexter Romweber's life and music. It's now out on DVD (MVD Visual 5259D) and I took a look this past weekend.

It's a quilt of interviews, live footage, band banter, and interviews that tell poignantly the story of an underground rocker who hit the edge of fame and fortune and didn't quite get there, then psychically melted down for a time, only to re-emerge to try and resurrect his life. Dexter is a very intelligent cat and his narrative account of the situation he found himself in is moving.

What's not exactly standard with music DVDs is the fact that Two Headed Cow works exceptionally well as a documentary. It's a story filmed over 18 years, bringing home the personal difficulties of talent facing a brutal world. In the end you come away with a feeling that you have experienced first-hand Dexter's 18 years of struggle and triumph, struggle and failure, struggle and re-emergence from total burn-out. It's a heroic story in its own way, and a very absorbing film. Recommended.

Neil Young DVD: Here We Are in the Years, Neil Young's Music Box

Neil Young has gained great success at the same time as he has followed his own muse. Rock, folk, country, electronic and otherwise, he has never been content to rest within a particular style. For more than 40 years he has exemplified the artist-as-seeker, the human musical force who can and does recreate his musical identity with every new album.

There's a new two-hour documentary DVD that captures pretty well the many influences and stylistic forces at play in Neil's long career. Here We Are In the Years: Neil Young's Music Box (Sexy Intellectual SIDVD 565) is a more-or-less chronological look at Neil Young's music biography from his teen years in Canada through the '90s. Interviews with friends and associates, some concert footage, and discussions by music journalists spice the narrative. This is an independent production coming out of England, so we do not get much in the way of personal commentary by Neil Young himself, and that is a bit of a pity.

However what we do get is an in-depth look at the various influences that have acted upon Neil's musical sensibility and in turn his creative response to them. One factor that emerges clearly is that Neil Young's early years in Canada helped shaped him in ways that perhaps an artist in England or the US might not have experienced. So for example Neil was influenced by the British instrumental group the Shadows as much or more so than some of the instrumental groups that were enjoying success in the US at the time. That he also apparently highly appreciated the Tex-Mex Fireballs group is another interesting factor that would perhaps not be typical of a budding musician in the Northeast USA. At any rate the documentary gives a detailed look at Young's exposure to Roy Orbison, the US and Canadian folk scene, the British Invasion and his dual allegiance to the melodic Beatles and harder rocking Stones, and on from there.

Anyone with a serious interest in Neil Young's music would find this DVD illuminating. The lack of commentary from Young himself does detract a bit from the impact of the discussion, but in no way seriously impedes a rather insightful look inside the creative mind of one of rock's masterbuilders. Recommended.