Colin Hanks Directs Documentary Film About The Rise And Fall of Tower Records
"In the first trailer for the Colin Hanks documentary “All Things Must Pass,” we see the events that led to the rise — and eventual fall — of iconic record store chain Tower Records. In 1999, Tower Records made $1 billion. In 2006, the company filed for bankruptcy. The documentary charts the store’s rise to prominence as an international chain to the conditions that led to its downfall. The film also features interviews with music legends like Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl. Each shares fond memories of the days when they could walk into Tower Records and immediately connect with staff, who knew everything there was to know about the latest music. Hanks directed the film, with Steven Leckart serving as writer. Glen Zipper and Nicholas Ferrall executive produced, while Sean M. Stuart produced. The film premiered at the 2015 SXSW film festival. It will debut in theaters on October 16th." View this story and more on The Wrap
The Foo Fighters Aim To Immerse Their Sound With 8 Distinct Geographic Regions
Certain musicians transcend genre, era and artistic approach. Their appeal lies within a relentless pursuit of their craft and the diligence in which they search new ground to expand their musical footprint. Luckily for we music fans, a true pioneering spirit such as the one that resides within Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters is readily available for us to watch on the upcoming HBO show - Sonic Highways.
Find out more about Bob Lefsetz and read his great write up below... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"She was that kind of lady Times are hard"
Desperation and desire. The key elements to rock stardom.
And Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham had both.
"She's back in town
And she's looking around"
From Phoenix to San Francisco to Hollywood.
That's where you had to end up. You could start anywhere. But if you
wanted to make it, you had to come to L.A. And what you found there
surprised you. No city center. No three piece suits. Just a bunch of
suburbanites just like you. And in the hallowed halls of recording
studios, in the darkness, was where not only the sound of America was
created, but the world. There was magic in studios. But it really didn't
begin until the band plugged in and started to play.
And from the hinterlands to Sound City was a very long journey. As AC/DC
once sang, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.
But not anymore. Five year olds can wail on their iPads. Record in
GarageBand and then their parents can implore the rest of us to buy the
production on iTunes. We're inundated with dreck. And the ultimate
desire is to get rich.
That used to be the byproduct. The goal was to REACH EVERYBODY!
Yup, you could be recording in an industrial park, but if you got it
right people could be singing your song not only next week, but
forevermore. Chances were slim. As were opportunities. So you made the
most of them. You only had one shot...to change the world...and your
life.
It's not about technology, but people. In the almost unwatchable last
third of this movie Trent Reznor, Josh Homme and Dave Grohl create music
utterly riveting. With one hand on his laptop, Trent's not worried
about the tech, but the sound. It always comes down to the sound.
And the songs.
Without both, you've got nothing.
We knew what Sound City was. Because we read the credits. More than
once. They were not in tiny CD type, they were big, in the center of the
gatefold, on the inner sleeve. We not only knew the studios, but the
guitar strings. Everything about the musicians and their music, because
the music touched us, because it changed our lives.
And it hasn't been that way in a very long time.
Because everybody's not shooting high enough. They don't need it enough.
There wasn't a single person in Dave Grohl's studio telling him all
that new material sucked, from Stevie Nicks to Lee Ving to Paul
McCartney. Looked like they were having fun, but you don't want to hear a
single song ever again.
Then there's "Lithium."
Nirvana was hungry. They had to get it right. The songs didn't need to
be good, they needed to be great. And some things never change. If
you're still that great, everybody will know. And if not, you're in an
endless circle jerk thinking that everybody cares, when they don't.
So you can skip the first few minutes. Until Dave pulls up at the studio.
And they tell the story of Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac.
Ooh, brings chills.
Mick Fleetwood is looking for a cheap studio.
And Keith Olsen pulls up the Buckingham Nicks album. Recorded there. At Sound City.
It's the best Fleetwood Mac song you've never heard. Better than
anything the band has done since "Rumours." But because musicians are
insane and their own worst enemies, it and the album it came from has
never been released on CD. Even though the vinyl record populated baby
boomers' dorm rooms back in the seventies, when they bought that first
Fleetwood Mac album with Stevie and Lindsey and needed MORE!
And when the sound comes out of the speakers, you TINGLE! Because it's
the essence. Music played by people who NEED IT! Buckingham and Nicks
were always gonna break through, because they were never gonna give up.
That's what it takes, more than talent, PERSEVERANCE! You pay your dues,
you get kicked around, and if you hang around long enough you make it.
You've got to be playing so long you get lucky.
And Buckingham and Nicks do. They're picked up and rescued by Mick
Fleetwood and the rest of the Mac. Look at the photos. They were so
young, so skinny, so CUTE!
They were our rock stars.
Like Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers. Who were known by everybody BEFORE
"Damn The Torpedoes" and "Refugee." It's not about everybody knowing
your name, but a track so indelible they've got to play it again and
again, that they can't forget.
And yes, these tracks were all cut on the Neve.
But they would have been hits if they were cut ANYWHERE!
Don't forget, the even bigger "Rumours" was cut up north, at the Record Plant. Studios aren't everything.
But people are.
It was a different era. We were all paying attention. And if you got it
right, you were as big and rich as anybody in the world. And you only
answered to yourself. THAT'S why everybody wanted to be a rock star, the
FREEDOM!
And it was hard work.
But it was worth it.
But then MTV made it more about looks than music. And the Internet blew
the system apart. And if you don't think this is a good thing, you're
never going to make it.
We need more documentaries like this. That illustrate how it once was. It's like discovering a Dead Sea Scroll.
The arc is bad. It's two movies in one. The story of a studio and the
story of a board. Great moviemakers, like great writers, know it can
only be about one thing. Add too much, even if it's great on its own,
and you muddy the waters, you ruin it. An expert knows sometimes you've
got to leave the best things out.
But when they show what it was like back in the seventies, with the
girls and the dope and the hope, all tied together by the music, you
just want to crank it.
And you realize you can't make it. That it's only the special few who deserve our accolades.
And this movie features more than one.
And when the soundtrack blasts, you say THAT'S IT!
P.S. The "Sound City" movie is totally free at the above link. Not sure
if that was Dave's intention or a programming glitch, but put on your
headphones and ENJOY!"
Dave Grohl is a man of many talents, now you can also add film director.
"It’s no secret that Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has been working on his directorial debut, a documentary about Sound City Studios, the now-defunct Los Angeles studio whose mixing console he now owns. The place was quite literally a hit factory from its’s opening in 1970 to it’s closure in 2011. Artists ranging from Tom Petty and Neil Young to Metallica and Rage Against the Machine (not to mention Nirvana, who recorded Nevermind there) graced the halls and boards of the studio.
While there have already been a handful of outtakes from the film with artists ranging from REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin to Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy talking about their first musical memories, the full trailer of the film went up online today. It looks like a feel good movie, and not just one about the studio. The trailer looks like a testament to music made the way it used to be – in a shabby, run-down-looking analog studio with character instead of by machines.
Sound City will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month and will be released in February. Presumably, news will come out soon about the soundtrack, since people ranging from Corey Taylor to member of Ratt have been jamming with him earlier this year. Check out the trailer after the jump."
We are amused to no end when folks talk on how there is no good music anymore or how rock n' roll is dead. Clearly they are a bit jaded or like many have had a hard time finding new music that they can get into. Luckily we are living in a time with a boundless amounts of great music, ya just have to know what rock to look under.
This is no easy task, as everywhere you turn, social media is popping up in new and different ways beckoning you to listen to this, sign up for that and most of all participate in some new site that will change the way you listen to music. Well, supposedly that is what their advertising is trying to make happen. We check out many of these resources to see what the skinny might be, but our top routes for finding new bands is to listen to internet radio stations, spelunk on spotify and itunes, get referrals from friends and certainly most important, get out to shows to see bands live.
Dive into the article below from Billboard magazine and read up one of the most diehard music fans and true originators in modern music today. Down to earth individuals such as Dave Grohl only come along every so often so do yourself a favor and go see them live. The Foo Fighters live show is damn near incendiary and proves that pure talent, enthusiasm and great song writing, clearly are the true school of rock.
Oh yeah Dave, please bring back PROBOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"After 17 years spent lurking on the fringes of rock superstardom, Foo Fighters
now find themselves, in many ways, leading the charge for a
resurgent modern rock scene. 2011 was reaffirming year for the Foos
on many fronts, driven by the success of the band's critically-lauded seventh studio album, "Wasting Light" -- and the blowout global tour and six Grammy noms, including Album of the Year, that followed.
Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters killing it a Lollapalooza in 2011
As
he reflects on what he calls "the best year of his life," the Foos'
Dave Grohl weighs in with Billboard on the health of rock'n'roll,
what's wrong with the music business, and why these "five dorks"
might just actually represent something bigger than just a simple
band.
Congrats on a hell of a year.
Grohl:
It's been a good one, 2011 was very good to me. I was at a New
Year's Eve party and someone asked me how was my year, and I said I
honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life, and I
actually meant it.
You and the Foos were in the thick of it all year, so what's your take on the health of rock?
There's
always gonna be rock'n'roll bands, there's always gonna be kids
that love rock'n'roll records, and there will always be rock'n'roll.
I travel all over the world and play music, and it's easy to think
rock'n'roll has gone away when you're in a country like America. We
just got back from a trip Down Under, we did a tour of Australia and
New Zealand where we were pulling 40,000-50,000 people a night,
selling out stadiums. To me, that means rock'n'roll is alive and
well. The thing that will never go away is that connection you make
with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real
people making music. You make that human connection with a song
like "Let It Be" or "Long and Winding Road" or a song like "Bohemian
Rhapsody" or "Roxanne," any of those songs. They sound like people
making music.
In America, rock'n'roll isn't in
the forefront of the mainstream as it is the rest of the world.
England is another country where rock bands are hugely successful:
You hear them on the radio, they have hits and play stadiums, and
it's almost like it's bigger than it's ever been. But for whatever
reason, here in America there's not as much focus on rock'n'roll
bands. I don't know what it is, but it's one of the few countries in
the world where rock'n'roll is not huge.
Is this discussion something you've had with the band and your team?
No.
One of the reasons why we're still a band and we still make albums
and we're still successful is we don't pay attention to any of that.
We have our own studio, our own label, and we do everything on our
own terms. To us the most important thing is we're satisfied within
the band, and once we finish making a record we give it to the rest
of the world. But we've always lived within this beautiful bubble
that is the Foo Fighters. You can't pop it, you can't change what we
do, because we try to keep it entirely real and pure. We've seen
lots of trends come and go -- nu metal, skinny ties -- and we just
kept our heads down and done our thing for so long that none of
that really matters, and ultimately what happens is we end up making
albums people connect to because they're real records.
"Right now, the current musical climate is not unlike it was back in
1991, right before Nirvana got popular"
But
no, it's never been an issue. For years, usually about once a year,
you have a rock band that comes out and says, "We're gonna save
rock'n'roll," and then you'll read an article asking, "Is Rock
Dead?" It's never gone away in my world. Ask the guys in AC/DC
whether they think rock'n'roll is dead.
Because
you have things like "American Idol" and you've got radio stations
that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget
there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that
rock. For the fans, I don't think it's gone away at all. I don't
know too many people that give up listening to rock'n'roll. It's
seems to be fucking alive and well.
When
you come out of your "bubble" and deliver these massive hits,
does it surprise you that radio gets behind it and people respond
the way they do?
You have to
understand, we're a really simple band. We think we suck and we try
really hard to make good records and we practice. We don't feel like
the biggest, best band in the world. We just feel like the same
five dorks that were touring in a van 17 years ago, that hasn't
changed. But there was a time about 10 years ago when we would get
asked to come play an awards show or a radio festival or something
like that and we'd show up and be the only rock band. Here we're on a
bill with pop artists like Pussycat Dolls or some new rapper and
then we get up and beat the shit out of our instruments. And I
started wondering, "Why are we even here?" I wondered if they just
needed a "rock band" -- "Who's a rock band? Call the Foo
Fighters." Then I started thinking maybe we actually represent
something to people, maybe when they hear the name "Foo Fighters"
they just think rock'n'roll, and I thought, "Wow, that's cool." Then
over the years playing shows I'd look out at the audience and see
kids with Nirvana shirts and their parents with Foo Fighters shirts
-- which seems upside down -- and I'd see moustaches and kids at
their first rock concert. Our audience became so diverse I thought,
"Man, they just want to see a rock show." Go see Bruce Springsteen.
Go see Tom Petty, AC/DC, Roger Waters, any of these people. Go see
Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. I went to see Soungarden four or five
months ago; I didn't stand in the VIP section, I ran down and got
crushed in front of the stage and danced around sweaty with a bunch
of people I didn't know for an hour and 45 minutes.
I
don't think there's anything wrong with rock at all. It's
overlooked. And right now, the current musical climate is not unlike
it was back in 1991, right before Nirvana [Grohl's former band] got
popular. The late '80s was full of over-produced pop that kids had
nothing to grab hold of -- they had no way of connecting to this
hair metal band singing about fucking strippers in a limousine on
Sunset Boulevard. Who can relate to that? Then you had a bunch of
formulaic pop songstress bullshit, and music was boring. And then a
bunch of bands with dirty kids got on MTV and rock'n'roll became
huge again. And I feel like that's about to happen. Something's got
to give. It can't be song contests on television for the rest of
our lives. It can't be the same playlists on every radio station
for the rest of our lives. It can't be music made entirely by
computers with people talking over it the rest of our lives. It
can't go that way, it just won't.
I feel like as
a musician and a part of this rock'n'roll scene, I have a
responsibility to make shit real, to not think about all of that
other bullshit, not think about making music for money or promoting
music for fashion, the contests. My responsibility is to make shit
that's real. Once you start doing the right thing, it will get
better.
Someone asked me recently, "What do you
think the problem with the music industry is?" I said, take the
Adele record, for example. It's an amazing record and everybody's so
shocked that it's such a phenomenon. I'm not. You know why that
record's huge? Because it's fucking good and it's real. When you
have an artist singing about something real and she's incredibly
talented, it deserves all the rewards it gets, it's a great record.
Now imagine if all records were that good. Do you think only one of
them would sell? Fuck no! All of them would. If all records were
that good the music business would be on fire, but they're not. A
lot of people are promoting records that are just
throw-it-against-the-wall-see-if-it-sticks meaningless bullshit.
Everybody has the responsibility to do the right thing and promote
artists that mean something."
Its really hard not to like Dave Grohl as he seems to be such a humble individual through and through. Not only is he a one man band but his side projects and diggin' on motorcycles make him all right in our book.
