Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

lewisdhead

Following on from the Stone Roses doc, Big Star have a doc released soon. It is to get a European cinema release, how widespread it will be, I couldn't say. Big fan of this band, they never got the commercial success they arguably deserved. Any fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r1jfYCmGMec

delbertgrady

I first saw the trailer on You Tube a few months ago. It looks absolutely magnificent. They put out a soundtrack on vinyl for Record Store Day, which is like an alternate "greatest hits", with different versions of their most well-known material. I saw them in the Red Box years ago. Alex and Jody signed an LP for me afterwards.

notnumber

looks interesting ..reminds me of the anvil story..cept they where ****e.
There is alot of bands who where great but unappreciated at the time..not to harp on about whipping boy but..

DerekDGoldfish

Really excellent band, thier first two albums are probably both in my top 10 most played albums. I assume somewhere like the IFI or Lighthouse will have it on.

G.K.

Delighted it's getting a European release. My favourite band.

delbertgrady wrote: »

I first saw the trailer on You Tube a few months ago. It looks absolutely magnificent. They put out a soundtrack on vinyl for Record Store Day, which is like an alternate "greatest hits", with different versions of their most well-known material. I saw them in the Red Box years ago. Alex and Jody signed an LP for me afterwards.

Went to the Third Orchestrated performance at the Barbican last year. Sadly Alex had passed on by that point, but I ran into Jody a few minutes before the gig started and he took time to sign my ticket because my pen wasn't working on anything else. Great guy.

delbertgrady

This was on last night as part of the One Two One Two festival in the Lighthouse. I thought it was good, at times exceptional, but ultimately, slightly disappointing.
Obviously, the volume of archive photos and footage is terrific, most of the contributors are excellent, and there is something really great about hearing those songs loud in the cinema, but the film could have done with some serious editing.
Too much time is spent on Alex's post-Big Star days. Yes, I know they want to convey how he dismissed his own legacy and effectively shunned his past, but it could have been done in two minutes. We don't need to see endless footage of him on local television in the 1980s.
Also, at one point it suddenly seemed to take a bizarre detour and become a mini-documentary about Jim Dickinson. Dickinson had appeared throughout the film in archive footage, and then, post-Radio City, here was his widow showing us around their home and talking at length about him. I actually found myself thinking, "Eh... can we get back to the band?".
The pedant in me also didn't like the fact that it wasn't made clear that Third/Sister Lovers wasn't initially released in 1974, and that the Rykodisc CD version from the 1990s was regarded as the most "accurate" version. It also would have been nice to mention that Rykodisc also eventually issued Chris Bell's recordings on CD, with the famous photo (you know, the one David Bell talks about) as the cover image, just to copperfasten the idea that they began to be truly appreciated twenty years after their time.
Overall, it was well worth seeing, but I just felt it could have done with being fine-tuned a bit more to raise it to the level of a truly great documentary.

Hippo

My band (a very very long time ago) used to play Jesus Christ and Hey Little Child. Looking forward to seeing this.