Music, Music, Music

“Echo in the Canyon,” documentary by Jakob Dylan, 2019 (Netflix)

In his interview Stephen Stills babbles a bit. Ringo Starr poses before his grey high-end sports car.  Regina Spektor seems uncomfortable.  Beck pontificates.  Jakob Dylan does most of the leads befitting the host.  Brian Wilson is still overweight and Michelle Phillips is still cute.  The difficult David Crosby whips his white pony-tail over the LA back country.  Graham Nash comes off like Hugh Grant. Roger McQuinn never takes off his hat.  Tom Petty looks older and wiser.  Jackson Browne seems to be sitting in front of an old Laurel Canyon stone house.  Cat Power is just happy to be there.  Jade, Fiona Apple and Norah Jones get to sing appropriate leads.  John Sebastian, Eric Clapton and Lou Adler get straight interviews.  Neil Young is captured rocking out in a studio, but never talking to the camera.

Jammin' in the Canyon

Yeah, this is a documentary about the folk rock that came out of Laurel Canyon in the 1960s.  It is also a concert film, showing clips of modern artists doing B-sides from the Laurel Canyon folk-rock scene at an event hosted by Dylan.  If you’ve been to the legendary Laurel Canyon Country Store half-way up canyon boulevard, you know the vibe is still there.  Young ‘freak folk’ groups still live in the neighborhood. The Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, even The Association – all get some of their tunes and memories played.  There is no CSN or Joni Mitchell, which is odd - must have been a legal dispute. (C’mon, “Our House”…)  There are no songs by Frank Zappa, who lived in Laurel Canyon too (as did Canned Heat) and recited the lyrics to “We are the Brain Police” to Stills in the middle of the street.  Cool!  But Zappa was not a folkie…

The film makes the point that ‘place’ and time matter in culture, as does cross-pollination.  Ringo reveals that the Beatles were inspired by the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to do Sergeant Pepper.  One musician hopes the melody inspired by another’s song isn’t theft, and it isn’t.  In a way the film shows how the idea of cultural appropriation is many times bogus, as music, literature, film and art bleed into each other world-wide. Artists are always inspired by other artists.

Mamas and Papas and the new breed

An enjoyable documentary, especially if you lived through this time and informative, especially if you did not.

Other prior reviews on music, use the blog search box upper left:  “Laurel Canyon – the Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Historic Neighborhood,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Let Us Now Praise the Dead,” “In Search of the Blues,” “33 Revolutions Per Minute,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “Zappa Plays Zappa,” “Life – the Biography of Keith Richards,” “Daydream Sunset,” “Marie and Rosetta,” “Treme,” “Rising Tide.”

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The Cultural Marxist  

December 20, 2019

Happy Solstice!