Pick It Up! – Ska in the ’90s
Pick It Up! – Ska in the ’90s is a 2019 documentary about the four-year window in which American ska music was popular in the 1990s. Taylor Morden’s love letter to […]
Tag Archives: music
Been So Long: My Life and Music
The autobiography of Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen is now out in paperback, a book so beautiful it quite literally attracts butterflies. Been So Long charts the musician’s journey from […]
My Name Is Albert Ayler
Kasper Collin’s 2005 documentary spotlights the eponymous saxophonist whose freeform playing in the 1960s rocked the jazz world back on its formal heels. People talk about rock bands being crazy […]
Art Blakey: The Jazz Messenger
Two years before his death, this 1988 documentary spotlights one of the world’s greatest drummers and bandleaders. Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley’s fly-on-the-wall style avoids the usual retrospective approach by […]
Boney M. at Boisdale
On the day of Britain’s exit from one European institution we went to see another, legendary German hit machine Boney M., credited with bringing steel drums to disco music. With […]
Jazz Odyssey: Jazz on a Summer’s Day
One of the earliest concert movies, Jazz on a Summer’s Day captures the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and proves that audience members obnoxiously photographing concerts that are being filmed is not a […]
Jazz Odyssey: Round Midnight
This 1986 drama stars saxophone giant Dexter Gordon as a drug-addled saxophonist in 1950s Paris. Named after a Thelonious Monk composition, based on the life of Bud Powell and featuring […]
Jazz Odyssey: Bird
This is a 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker (Forest Whitaker) directed by one-liner comedian and arch nemesis of Tim Westwood, Clint Eastwood. Bird fits in the Elephant Man/Gandhi category of […]
Jazz Odyssey: The Miles Davis Story
Produced for the 10th anniversary of his death, this 2001 documentary recalls the many milestones in the life and works of trumpeter Miles Davis, the jazziest jazz ever got and […]
Jazz Odyssey: All Night Long
Welcome to Jazz Odyssey, a week of jazz-related film reviews because this blog isn’t nearly alienating enough as it is. No spoilers but these include a thriller, a documentary, a […]
