REVIEW: Echo In the Canyon [2019]

You always brought your guitar. It started with Jacques Demy‘s Model Shop. Director Andrew Slater saw it, thought about the era depicted (it was released in 1968), and got that Laurel Canyon sound—where so many of the folk-to-rock transitional bands lived—stuck in his brain. This shouldn’t be surprising considering Demy recruited Spirit to create a soundtrack (what should be their third album) that captured this exact vibe before the film’s box office failure made it so the material wouldn’t see the light of day until 2005. One thing apparently led…

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INTERVIEW: John Ridley, writer/director of Jimi: All Is By My Side

After all the talk from last year’s TIFF centered around the eventually Oscar-winning Best Picture 12 Years a Slave, you can’t blame yourself for forgetting its Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley brought another film he both wrote and directed. Jimi: All Is By My Side flew under the radar and was mired by a media blitz intent on focusing around the fact it didn’t acquire the rights to any of its titular subject Jimi Hendrix‘s music. What it did have, however, was a uniquely arresting visual and aural style that looked…

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REVIEW: Beware of Mr. Baker [2012]

“Go on with the interview. Stop trying to be an intellectual dickhead.” My first thought when researching the documentary Beware of Mr. Baker was acknowledging I really don’t know anything about music. Facts about this legendary, unpredictable, and difficult drummer—Ginger Baker—being in Cream surprised me since I always associated the band with Eric Clapton. Not only was the group’s guitar virtuoso not the main singer, though, he wasn’t even a credited songwriter as bassist Jack Bruce and lyricist Pete Brown held the honor. Even more, it was actually Baker who…

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