Sound City

This popped up in my Amazon feed yesterday. I'd heard great things about it so I checked it out. I'm a Dave Grohl fan and I can nerd out to recording processes, so it was a no-brainer.

It's a two hour doc about a famed recording studio in Cali called Sound City. Truthfully, I didn't know about all the records it was responsible for other than Smells Like Teen Spirit (which sounds incredible). Turns out Sound City was a dump, but it had a fabled Neve mixing board and a live room that had magical acoustic properties. I won't really spoil the details, but it's neat stuff.

Dave does a good job telling the story of the owners, employees, and artists. The audio mix is great (of course) and overall it's just really down-to-earth and captivating.

If you like music you'll like this film. Plain and simple.

The Sunshine Makers

Just watched this on Netflix. I love documentaries, and some of the best ones I watch are about things I'm not even interested in. Like baseball, cricket, or drugs. The Sunshine Makers was very well done.

I have a soft spot for the 60's, especially the hippie movement and the Summer of Love etc. Maybe it's just cuz all the chicks were so hot back then. I dunno. But you could get away with a lot more. A freer time, no doubt. The 60's was when international drug smuggling was sexy and all you got was a slap on the wrist if you got caught. Good times.

This story is so crazy in scope it's hard to believe. But man, these cats were really on to something big back in the day. The doc is cool because almost all the main players involved are still around and willing to talk about their capers and exploits over forty years ago. Lots of great archival footage, reenactment, and contemporary interviews weave together to tell this fantastic tale of drug creation and distribution on a truly global scale. Or dare I say cosmic scale.

If you like the 60's, drugs, and pulling a fast one over on the cops...dig this, brotha!