In 2004, Sue Carpenter’s engaging memoir of running a couple pirate radio stations in the mid-to-late-1990s, 40 Watts from Nowhere, was published. About twenty years later, she’s directed a documentary of the same title based on those experiences. While it naturally covers a lot of the same ground as her book did, it’s not simply a retelling of that narrative. It draws on a lot of footage taken at the time for an unrealized documentary on the Los Angeles pirate station KBLT, which was run out of her home.

That footage includes many of the DJs and others affiliated with the operation, as well as some performances artists did for or at the station. Some pretty well known musicians appear in those guises, if fleetingly, including Mazzy Star, Mike Watt, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. More interesting, however, are the numerous interviews done with station personnel at the time and, crucially, quite a few done specifically for this new documentary. Carpenter herself is extensively interviewed both in the vintage footage and the material shot for her own film.

Carpenter had briefly overseen a pirate station in the mid-1990s in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles to more or less helm the much more well known KBLT for a while in the late 1990s before it was shut down by the FCC. KBLT specialized in broadcasting alternative music of all kinds (if primarily alternative rock, judging from the film). The memories of doing the groundwork for getting on the air, as well as the fun and sometimes rocky times putting music on it to considerable enthusiasm from adventurous locals, are entertaining on their own.

An important message that also comes through, however, is how the station helped build a community of people determined to provide something different from what mainstream media could offer, especially (though not limited to) the Silver Lake area in which KBLT was based. Although the station’s operations are the core of the film, not the music itself, there’s also much period detail of the era’s alternative rock scene, and how much different the industry was a generation ago, when physical product still ruled (and took up much of Carpenter’s living space). Some of the bands heard on and playing in support of KBLT were very obscure even by indie rock standards, and there’s also considerable footage (if in snippets) of some of them, in the kind of raw cinematic technique also evocative of the era.

KBLT was shut down by the FCC in 1998, in a dramatic scenario where Carpenter raced to the roof of the building on which the transmitter was located  when the station went off the air. I spoke with her about the film in July 2025, not long after it screened at the Roxie in San Francisco.

Why did you want to do a film of the same story you wrote about in a book?

I had no intention ever of making a movie. I thought the book was going to be the definitive account of the radio station. I wrote it shortly after the radio station was over, just because I have a horrible memory, and I needed to get everything down. And I just thought that was it.

But that book got rediscovered by “experience designers.” They design experiences at theme parks. They also have their own side business of experiential theater. They heard about three years ago that there had been a pirate station in Silver Lake, and there was a book about it. They found the book, tracked me down, and said they wanted to make it into this experience.

I helped them re-create the space, and it was right around the corner from where the radio station had been. It looked so much like the old station, because it was in the old neighborhood. I started reaching out to some of the DJs and said hey, let’s have a reunion and do a livestream with a bunch of the old DJs. So we did that – Mike Watt was a part of it, Keith Morris, like the celebrities, and a lot of the other DJs whose shows I really enjoyed. 

Through that, because I was reconnecting with all these DJs that I hadn’t seen in years, somebody just piped up and said, “You know, I’ve got twelve hours of video. You can have it if you want. I don’t know if it’s worth anything. I was just cleaning out my garage, and I was about to throw these anyway. But you can have ‘em.”

I went through the tapes, and I was shocked at what was there. He’d started shooting in the summer of 1998, which was arguably our peak. Then we had an FCC scare and went dark, and then we came back on the air. He sort of captured the arc of the story. He did a sit-down interview with me that I had no recollection of doing. He had the original engineer for the station, who I’d completely lost touch with and couldn’t track down. He had the helicopter ride that we took to sort of scout rooftops [on which to put the transmitter]. He had Sunset Junction, a big street fair [at which KBLT had a booth]. He just had like the whole arc of the story, and I figured I could flesh it out with modern interviews that tell the story completely.

I started as a print journalist, moved into radio journalism, and now I work in broadcast TV. Although I don’t do a lot of work on the broadcast side, I’ve been trained. I have done some broadcast features where I shot, edited, like did everything. I just thought I could do it. I could make a movie with what I had.

This is your first film…

First and only, ever (laughs)!

What did you want to make different about the film than what is read in the book? Not just the content, but also the approach.

To be able to see it…because we did not realize how the world as we knew it was about to end. The analog era, the “have an idea, make it happen, it doesn’t matter if it you make any money” sort of idea. The analog, the creative ‘90s. I had all this footage that showed that.

The other thing is, I was very close to my own story when I wrote 40 Watts from Nowhere the book. It really lacked a lot of self-awareness, I think. What was weird about that book is that men really seemed to like it. Women did not like it, because they read the book, and didn’t feel like they understood who I was. I feel like it was because I was guarded about who I am. I think the difference with the film is, working with the editor I worked with, she really pulled out the emotional part of the story—not just for me, but in the community, and of the era.

I didn’t think of the book as something that would have that difference between men and women readers. I can see the reaction that readers might not know as much about you as a person. But why the reaction would be so much greater for women, I don’t know. 

I think it’s because the book was billed as a memoir. It didn’t really go into me so much. It was really a memoir of the radio station. The reviewer who wrote about it for the Chicago Tribune when the book first came out, that’s how he characterized it. I feel like that was exactly accurate.

If you read memoirs, they’re really intense. Because people “go there.” And I’m just a guarded person. I wouldn’t even have known how to plumb that.

What surprised you so much when you looked at the footage that was taken in the late 1990s? Not just what you didn’t remember, but the perspectives, where you and others at the station might be thinking of the experience in a different way 25-30 years later?

Just the joy that people had. It’s not like I didn’t know at the time, or think about that in retrospect. I feel like that’s really palpable, and it really struck me. A lot of it was just the excitement of seeing it. Like you have in your mind’s eye what happened, but then to actually see it was fun. Just like, oh, this is how I remember it being.

There are a bunch of snippets of  footage of obscure regional bands who were barely filmed at all anywhere, as far as I know. Did that strike you when you put together the movie?

That was hard. Because back in the time, almost nobody did have a camera. There was a guy who has since passed away, Rush Riddle. He had an apartment down by the University of Southern California, where he used to have a lot of live shows with all of the bands that kind of lived in that area at the time, and would perform at the official clubs. But he had this space where bands could come and play, and there’s hours and hours and hours of footage of a lot of the bands from the scene that were shot. They’re not very dynamic, they’re from one angle for hours on end. But that’s all been given to USC to archive. I don’t know where that currently stands. 

Then there’s some other footage that some people shot. They put it out on youtube, and my producer tracked them down, because he’s more connected with that scene than I am. They let us use it. But it was sort of few and far between. There’s just very few people who actually have [such] footage of the band playing live.

A lot of these bands never went on to achieve anything, really. But it does sort of capture the spirit of the era through these different bands.

What was the difference between launching a station in San Francisco and then the one in Los Angeles?

I think the motive in the beginning of both stations were the same. It was just to see if I could do it and create this alternative space for the kind of music I wanted to hear. What’s weird about San Francisco is that it took off way faster than the station down in Los Angeles. It took off like from the get-go. People were finding it, tuning in, listening, and calling. 

I was hoping to have that repeat experience when I went down to L.A., not knowing anybody. That is not how it happened in Los Angeles at all. Which could have everything to do with me being the DJ and just doing a shitty job (laughs). I’ve always said that I was the worst DJ on my own station, which I think is very true. 

But all the people from the community came in through Brandon Quazar, just like the movie says. I’d not had anything to do with Quazar for decades when I reached out to interview him for the movie.

When it started to take off, as you hit different milestones, it sort of reinforced what I was hoping to achieve, which was be a place where people could play anything. But it was realized in a better way in Los Angeles, just because of these true music lovers who had great collections and great sensibilities. It played out way better than I ever would have expected it to.

Maybe it was a blessing it took off slowly in Los Angeles, because it gave you more time to operate under the radar. Maybe in San Francisco the hammer would have come down from the authorities much quicker.

That’s entirely possible. It was a slow burn for a while, and because of where I was located in Los Angeles, we didn’t have a lot of range. It was very much in the neighborhood itself.

How much of your motivation was music, and how much was activism, making a statement about the importance of providing alternative media?

I was very hesitant to identify myself as an activist when I started up in San Francisco. But then in Los Angeles, I think that became a bigger part of it. As the movement was growing, I was actually reporting on it myself as a freelance journalist, and sort of coming into contact with the scene in Florida, or Pete Tridish [of pirate station Radio Mutiny] in Philadelphia. It was part of my awakening.

The scene in San Francisco was very political and not musical, and in Los Angeles all the stations were about music. They weren’t about politics. Weirdly, I sort of feel like I became – not overtly, but internally, within myself, more of an activist. Like, just keep it going, we’re fighting The Man and we’re winning. That’s sort of how I felt.

But I would not have characterized myself as an activist in the same way [as] Stephen Dunifer [of the pirate station Free Radio Berkeley, interviewed in the film]. Those people were like out there, “come and get me.” I was like, “don’t get me” (laughs).

What do you think the difference was between your station and the several community and college stations in L.A., in its format and content? Some of them did offer really uncommercial material.

I feel like it probably had more of a real reason to exist in San Francisco. That’s because KUSF [the station of the University of San Francisco, which offered alternative programming until the university sold its frequency to classical music programming in 2011] switched from music programming at 6pm to community international programming in different languages at that time. So that was why I went on the air when I did, other than having a full-time job at the time too. I [felt] like it really was necessary to fill that void, because there was no other alternative radio station. Live 105 definitely was not it; that was commercial. But [to have a station] that sort of did this KUSF-style programming.

When I came down to L.A., I didn’t know anything about L.A. But I was quickly schooled in the stations that you’re talking about – KCRW [an NPR affiliate broadcasting from Santa Monica College], KXLU [a college station broadcasting from Loyola Marymount University]. Some of the DJs on KXLU were actually DJs on my station too. I feel like the M.O. that I had, like playing stuff outside the norm, was already being done by those other stations, especially by KCRW at that time.

But I had tried to be a DJ on KCRW and on KXLU, and you couldn’t. Because the policy of the college radio stations in Southern California was different from San Francisco. I had volunteered and gotten on the air both at KALX in Berkeley and at KUSF. Well, I never got on the air at KUSF, but you could get in the door. They did not have the open-door policy in Los Angeles at the college radio stations. You had to, at KXLU, be a student. And at KCRW, I still don’t understand how they had these people who had these DJ slots for decades. It’s almost impossible to get on.

But their musical selection was a little bit softer, I think. Like it was within parameters. There were no parameters at my station. You could play something completely off the rails, like Don Bolles, right? [Bolles, drummer in early L.A. punk bands like the Germs and 45 Grave, DJd on KBLT, and is shown in the film’s vintage footage airing the Golden Orchestra’s absurd “The Chocolate Cowboy” on one of his shows.] Whether you wanted to listen to that is another question.

When Mike Watt was DJing, [in the film] he plays something from a cassette by the Screamers. They were a legendary early L.A. punk band that never put out any records. Only very recently has anything come out by the Screamers that’s commercially available. That’s something cool he could offer, especially being an insider on the scene, that maybe couldn’t have gotten on college or public radio, or seldom would have. It’s one example of how the station could offer something that couldn’t have been found elsewhere. Even if you heard the Screamers elsewhere, to hear Mike Watt talk about them when he played them was a unique experience.

[When] a few years ago I brought the DJs back for that livestream reunion, Keith Morris’s concept for his show—he was like begging me to bring the station back, because he wanted to continue this concept. He’s from L.A., so in the ‘70s and in the ‘80s, he was just out on the Sunset Strip, which is where the rock clubs were. He would go to shows all time, and he had all these stories to tell. I love that. That was Watt too. Having these guys who were locals who went to become legends, that’s what they would do.

I think the sense of community as the station grew was reflected more strongly in the film than the book. Much of what community you see in the film in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles was sparked by the station, even for people who didn’t have a show there.

Yeah, but it was also happening in the music venues. I have a very specific perspective on it, because I was at the radio station from the get-go, within a month of moving down there. So my whole social circle sort of formed around my running this radio station. But I think a lot of people knew each other just from being in the bands, supporting their friends in other bands. A lot of it was happening in the clubs, at private shows in people’s houses. 

The community aspect that is more prevalent in the movie really came up in the modern interviews that I was doing. How fondly people felt about it, even thirty years later. And how connected they felt, how the station itself felt like a center for their social life. I think that’s why you’re sensing more of it coming through in the film. Also, my editor drew out the emotional part of the story.

The film vividly reflects how logistically difficult it was to run a station out of where you were living. There’s that scene that notes a lot of the station was between the toilet and your bed. That’s a lot of personal sacrifice to accommodate something that needs a lot of raw material to function, even if it’s nothing like how much was used by stations like KCRW.

I definitely marvel at it. I almost don’t even recognize myself for tolerating it. But my take on it is, [the station] started [broadcasting] 8 to 10pm. Two hours every night, seven days a week. It’s sort of like the frog in boiling water. The frog is in the warm water, the frog is fine. Then you need to keep upping the temperature, and then eventually the frog wants to jump out of the water, the frog dies.

I feel like growing the station the way that I did, it was easy in the beginning, ‘cause it was just regular hours, like when I would normally be up, and when you would be hanging out with your friends. As the station became more popular and grew out to the point where it was around the clock, that was pretty intense. I definitely don’t know how I would have been able to continue like that, to be perfectly honest. It was sad when the station was over, but on some level it was like, “make it gone, get these people out of here.”

But the reason I did it that way was there was no money to have a separate space, like a rented space. I suppose we could have talked about the financial model for that. Back then, rents were cheap and maybe we would have been able to do it. But it didn’t really occur to me at that time.

It was interesting to see that the problems of theft of records, and careless treatment of equipment, were as rife at your small pirate station as they were at established community and college radio stations.

My math on humanity is that 90% of people do the right thing. Then there’s this other group. Like one percent is hell on wheels; four percent, wish you had never met them; five percent you can deal with it. The other 90 are great. 

So I don’t feel like I ever knew who those people were who were ripping me off. If they would break something, some people would say hey, I just broke this. But I don’t necessarily think anybody said hey, I’ll get a replacement. I don’t remember that. I’m sure some people did, I just don’t remember.

You had some pretty high-profile artists who were interviewed at the station. Jesus & Mary Chain, the Dandy Warhols, Spiritualized – this is aside from local underground music celebrities like Mike Watt, Keith Morris, and Don Bolles, who I think would have been easier to get on the air. What did those artists think of coming to the station? Did they have a good idea of what the station was and its audience, or were maybe thinking it was a more commercial or had a bigger range than it did?

I so rarely met these bands when they came in. It wasn’t like I was told, hey, Dandy Warhols are coming in. People would just bring people in. I know the guy from Rancid, back when they were a thing, they were there. There was a ton of bands. I just recently found out that Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star was actually at the station with Jason Pierce from Spiritualized. I had no idea. I literally found this out within the last six months.

Jesus and Mary Chain, I’m not sure what they were told. I think they were supposed to go to a more mainstream station. But I think some of them sort of liked the idea of coming in to a place that was a little bit more underground. ‘Cause it felt more authentic, it felt more real. It would be sort of like, going into a commercial station, you sort of have to be on, and on your best behavior. But coming in to a place like our station, they could just be whatever. It wasn’t being recorded to your knowledge. It was just, you came in, you did your thing, you left.

I think most of them knew that they were coming in to a pirate radio station. The one artist that I remember who came in who really didn’t understand why we needed to exist was Wayne Coyne from Flaming Lips. I remember having a conversation with him, and he really challenged me on like, why? He was the one artist who I don’t think got it. Which is weird, considering that he’s like a far-out kind of guy.

I know someone who was on KUSF in the early 1980s who felt like some of the touring artists being interviewed actually didn’t know where they were because their schedule was so hectic and they were being told do go here and there doing interviews between concerts, Some of them thought KUSF was going to be a much bigger station than it was, and didn’t realize it had a small range and was a tiny couple of rooms in the middle of a college campus with tons of other unrelated things going on. Did you have reactions like that with the musicians who came to the station?

It was clearly in a house. I think they were aware of where they were. But I think it’s the same thing. Like, we were slotted into a schedule among many places that they were supposed to be. 

When you had the benefit for the station when it was operating, that was cool to build support for and awareness of the station. But were you thinking at the time, that’s great to build visibility for the station, but at the same time make it more likely you’ll get busted?

Yeah, that was such a clusterfuck of emotions. Because it was super exciting to be doing a show that was out in public that had that lineup, that was getting media attention. It was sort of like that double-edged sword of you want to attract the right people, not the wrong people. But obviously that is not in your control. If you’re going to be public like that, if you’re going to advertise that, if you’re going to have people talking about it, you don’t know who’s gonna be hearing it. And just showing up as a fan, versus showing up as, “we’re gonna shut you down.”

Luckily, that isn’t what happened. We got some very high-profile media in ’97, that’s when it started. That’s when I think we sort of got put on the FCC’s radar. Through the media, not necessarily because of the show. It was the media that came out of the show.

Do you think it was a source of satisfaction to the bands at the benefit concert done for the station, and who went on air at the station, to be feeling like they didn’t have to be doing this for promotion, but they wanted to because they believed in what stations like yours were doing? Because as a well known name, like Mazzy Star and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they could promote something that really needs promotion, even more than KXLU or KALX?

I don’t think Mazzy Star really knew that — when I talked to her [Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval] after the [benefit] show, I don’t think she really…it was [like], “show up, appear at this time.” I don’t necessarily think that she was presented with this as a benefit for a pirate radio station, are you on board? I think her people did. I don’t think she necessarily knew.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, making this movie brought up the debate about, who got more out of them coming by the station? I feel like we got more out of it, because it upped our profile and our credibility. This is hindsight for a lot of the DJs and their very punk ethos. They’re like, “Oh, no, they got so much more out of it. Because we were so cool.” (laughs)

I agree the station got more out of it, though I guess it could have been said, “The Red Hot Chili Peppers are so big they don’t need to do this, but doing it made them seem cooler and more underground.” 

[People] also accused us of selling out. We wouldn’t normally play their music on our station. That wasn’t what a lot of the DJs would have been playing.

I’m still wondering how Mazzy Star got on the benefit if they didn’t know what it was for or what the station did. They weren’t as big as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but they were pretty well known and on a big major label, Capitol. Capitol’s headquarters [the famous circular Capitol building] is about five miles or less from where the station was.

Yeah. Laurel Stearns, who’s in the film and was a DJ, she has magical powers. She’s just a very beloved person that can make things happens. I mean, lord knows what she said. But she was friends with Mazzy Star’s manager.

It seems like something someone managed to sneak through. They’d been on Capitol for a while, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of publicity the label would go after, or even approve, because they wouldn’t have wanted to be associated with a pirate radio station.

That’s why I think it was done with outside management, not having to do with the label at all.

One of the most effective scenes in the film was when the station had a booth at Sunset Junction, and you were literally being drowned out by the sound coming out of the speakers in a nearby booth from the commercial dance music station Groove Radio. It’s almost a literal representation of stations with tiny signals like yours being drowned out by big commercial ones. Not just the signal range, but the different message that smaller stations have from commercial ones.

I felt really lucky when I saw that whole sequence. It was like yeah, this is like, you actually see it. That was the whole point of the movie – you can see it. It’s like the whole thing in journalism, show don’t tell. So this whole movie was about showing it.

Your line in the movie about getting drowned out by Groove Radio was, “We’re battling this huge radio station. We’re just battling to be heard.” It’s aside from just battling to exist. Even if you had a license, because of your small range and the nature of your music, you’d be battling to get an audience.

I feel like Don Bolles’s favorite thing to say about the station is, “KBLT, the station with more DJs than listeners.” Which probably was true. I don’t honestly know how many listeners we ever had at one time. But everybody seemed to know about it who lived in the neighborhood. How often they tuned in, I’m not sure. We weren’t part of Nielsen.

In the movie there’s a sense of, the bigger you got, the more likely you knew the hammer would be coming down. If you could have operated for at least another year or two, are there things you would have liked to have been able to do with the station?

I feel like at the time, when we got busted, the station was firing on all cylinders, and that’s how I would have wanted it to continue. I would have moved it out of my house. That’s probably the only thing that I would change. But I wouldn’t change the way I programmed it, which was to say that I did not program it. I just had an open door policy, and tried to let as many people come in and DJ as I could.

How is how you went through almost thirty years ago relevant to today, when the means for programming music and public affairs is much different than it was then, with podcasts, streaming, and other things now possible? In some ways the outlets are infinite compared to what existed then.

When you look at it through the modern day lense, it seems like a really ludicrous thing to have done. There is human curated radio being done the way that we used to do it, online everywhere. So there’s a lot of real DJing, like real low-power community radio happening, enabled by the Internet.

What I really enjoyed about my station, and I think would still have a lot of value in the present day, is just the community nature of it. Just a group of people who come together to do something that everybody cares about. I’m disappointed in My Spotify, because I feel like every time that I just want to listen to something, just check it out, which I might not even ever want to hear again, it messes with my algorithm. That’s not cool.

There’s just so many options now. Which is a good thing, but I do like the local and community aspect of a terrestrial radio station, and the effort of that, and the effort of listening to it and the effort of doing it. I like effort-ful things.

What were the biggest challenges in the transition from writing about a subject to doing a film about it, many years later?

The biggest challenges were finding more archival footage and photos, tracking certain people down, convincing people to let me use some of their images in the film. And that just because I’m making a movie doesn’t mean that I have a ton of money and that I can afford to buy everything that we’re using. Financially it’s also really been unfun. I thought that I could make this for a lot less than it’s turned out to be.

Also, digitizing things that didn’t need to be digitized, or trying to make the footage, or using AI to make the footage look better. Which introduced all these like hallucinations. That was an expensive thing to learn that didn’t work. We subtracted all that footage out after we had to put in. So it was a very steep learning curve on many levels.

Are there any interesting stories that didn’t fit into the film?

There were certain things that were cut together that we didn’t use that were in the very first version. For the cleanliness of storytelling, we didn’t talk about being busted by the FCC, and then going back on the air. Just on holidays, when we thought the FCC wasn’t gonna be in the office. That was just too confusing to tell. We had cut together a sequence like that. And our signature campaign, like out in the community, like trying to get people to sign up and say we want this station, that we were gonna send in to the FCC somehow to like prove that we deserved to be on the air, like that would have done anything.

Once in a while, I wish I could bring the station back. It makes me sad that back in 2000, Congress was like, if you’ve ever run a pirate radio station, you can’t have a legit license. Because I feel like people now would have a lot of appreciation for it again. I know a lot of the DJs would like to do this again, and I just am in a different stage where I could never do this. Also the penalties for being a pirate are so much worse than they were back when I was doing it. 

What are the plans for screening and distributing the film?

We’re still waiting to hear back from about fifteen different film festivals. We are gonna be screening at Long Island Music Hall of Fame, their first music documentary film festival on August 8. We’re going to Cleveland in September. I was just accepted into an Atlanta film festival. 

Then distribution, which is really more important, we have offers. But I haven’t accepted any of them yet. I’m still considering them. Ideally, we want to be placed with a streamer, and then have another company who could do physical media. Then we’re looking at doing a soundtrack. None of that has been decided yet. There’s offers on the table, but no deals have been signed.

The past few years, there have been just enough rock films to fill out a Top Ten list, and that’s only by slotting in a few movies from the previous year and non-rock documentaries that are nonetheless of interest to me (and hopefully some other rock fans). That’s the case again in 2017, with entries ranging from big stars to sidemen, and rock journalists to a real-life rock’n’roll high school of sorts. (The three films here released before 2017 are noted as such in the reviews.)

If there’s any trend—other than a heartening one toward subjects, such as Native Americans in rock, that likely would been considered too obscure to fund even a decade ago—it’s the increased availability of documentaries primarily or only on streaming services like Netflix or AmazonPrime. For those of us too cheap to pay for them in our home, that means catching up on some of them at homes of friends who can access them, as I did while house-cat-sitting during Thanksgiving. We can complain about these not being available on DVD, but then again, watching a movie always requires some sort of first-world expense or hardware, whether it’s paying for a ticket at a festival screening or having a home DVD player and television (and the electricity to run them).

1. Horn From the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story. There’s nothing structurally unusual about this documentary about the harmonica player, singer, and leader of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Nor are there notable surprises for viewers familiar with the basics of his career. And you know, that’s fine. What you get is what music documentaries should deliver at their core: a comprehensive, straightforward, mostly chronologically sequenced overview of a notable musician, with plenty of interviews with close relatives and people who played and worked with him. And the number of interviews the filmmakers landed is impressive, including just about everyone notable who’s still around: Elvin Bishop, Elektra Records chief Jac Holzman, drummer Sam Lay, Butterfield’s ex-wife Kathy, his brother, two sons, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Joe Boyd (about the Butterfield Band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival), David Sanborn, Happy Traum, Mark Naftalin, and Nick Gravenites among them.

Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of film footage from the Butterfield Blues Band in their prime in general, though this documentary includes excerpts from their performances at Newport, Monterey, and Woodstock, as well as some silent home movies dating back to the early ‘60s. Some little known bits of interest to serious fans pop up, like the actual location of the striking cover for the East-West LP, shot at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, or that a young Steve Martin shared the bill with Butterfield when the band played the Golden Bear in Southern California. Some of the more colorful memories from the interviews include Geoff Muldaur on Albert Grossman starting a fight with Alan Lomax after the folklorist gave Butterfield’s band a demeaning introduction at Newport (“that’s what a manager should do”).

Another observes that whatever Muddy Waters would have written, Paul Butterfield lived. Unfortunately that included a long decline over the last decade or so of his life, involving serious substance abuse and health problems, and the breakup of his family. But the bulk of the movie is on his better days in the 1960s and early 1970s, even though it doesn’t take the overt stance, as I do, that his most interesting music by far was made in the mid-’60s on his first two albums, when both Bishop and Mike Bloomfield were guitarists in his group. I don’t think Butterfield was a great singer or composer of note either, or at least as good in the non-harmonica playing/bandleader departments as the film’s general tone espouses. But his life deserves this worthy commemoration, though I was a little disappointed there wasn’t an excerpt from his stranger-than-fiction 1966 appearance on the show To Tell the Truth, which you can see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HSEDBeeDHg.

2. Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story. If you know a lot about David Bowie in the first half of the 1970s, there won’t be a whole lot that’s unfamiliar in this well-constructed, straightforward documentary of his primary guitarist during those years, Mick Ronson. Still, it’s fun to see and hear quite a few of his associates talking about him, including producer Tony Visconti, Angie Bowie, Rick Wakeman, Lou Reed (represented by archive footage), David Bowie (though seen in archive footage and heard in voiceover), Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson, and Ronson himself (also, naturally, represented by archive footage, particularly a pretty extensive interview from not long before his 1993 death). There are also some key voices missing, such as producer Ken Scott, manager Tony DeFries, and the other Spiders from Mars. His work with musicians other than Bowie is also covered, though not in great depth; likewise his unsuccessful solo career, the film not really addressing its failure due to Ronson’s weaknesses as a frontman/singer/songwriter. There is, however, plenty of footage of Bowie from his glam era as compensation. And if you want at least one perspective that’s unfamiliar, it turns out Ronson hated the Velvet Underground, though his co-production (with Bowie) of Reed’s Transformer was crucial to that record’s success. A DVD version (which I haven’t yet seen) of this has been released with extra features.

3. Long Strange Trip. Not yet available on DVD, but streaming on Amazon Prime (and given a limited release in theaters), Long Strange Trip is a four-hour documentary on the Grateful Dead. Is that too much, or not enough? That depends on how much of a Deadhead you are. Whatever your interest in the band, the movie’s strengths are interviews with all of the founding members save Pigpen (Jerry Garcia represented, of course, by archival clips and recordings), as well as a wealth of footage from throughout their career. With so many Dead fanatics, one’s reluctant to declare that even Deadheads will see some material they’ve don’t know existed. But that seems likely given the abundance of home movies, good-quality color performance clips dating back to the mid-1960s, and excerpts of an unreleased documentary on their 1970 European tour. You seldom see a complete song, but that might be grist for another project.

For all its length, this movie is not a history that covers all the key bases, and doesn’t progress in a linear manner through their career and albums, a la the Beatles’ Anthology. That’s in keeping with the Dead’s nonchalantly “whatever happens” attitude toward much of their lives. But it does mean some events and recordings (the film makes the point that they didn’t see commercially available albums as cornerstones of their work) that even some diehards would consider essential aren’t covered. Tom Constanten, a brief but important member in the late ‘60s, isn’t even mentioned. Nor is Mickey Hart’s extended absence for a few years in the early ‘70s, let alone how his father’s mishandling of the Dead’s management contributed to that. And some of the laudatory comments by committed Dead fans (Al Franken among them) about the relative merits of obscure concert versions of the same song, and the religiously ecstatic experiences of losing oneself in the Deadhead world, will seem weird and borderline-creepy to the unconverted, not to mention tedious at times.

Some key surviving associates and family are also notable by their absence, but the non-member interviewees do often offer illuminating comments and memories. Among them are Warner Brothers executive Joe Smith, early Garcia girlfriend Barbara Meier (who reentered his life near its end, though longterm girlfriend Mountain Girl is a notable absentee), lyricist John Perry Barlow, engineer Dennis Leonard, and tour manager Sam Cutler. There’s also publicist/biographer Dennis McNally, who refreshingly acknowledges that the obsessive tape trading among Deadheads probably doubled or tripled the band’s audience. McNally’s book on the Grateful Dead is the best source for further investigation into the numerous recordings and events this documentary doesn’t fit into its four hours, which do tell many of the most important tales of the band. But it probably won’t convince the undevoted (such as, I admit, myself) to reevaluate and elevate their significance.

4. Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. Given a theatrical release and now available on Netflix, this is a 100-minute film on one of the most famous jazz musicians. Yes, this list is nominally a rock list, but I do make room for some other music documentaries of note, and Coltrane did influence some major rock stars. Two of them, Carlos Santana and Doors drummer John Densmore, are interviewed here, though they (and Coltrane’s influence on rock) are not a primary focus of the movie. Instead, it’s a fairly conventional overview of his life, music, and impact, including a good number of fine archive clips, including one from when he was still in Miles Davis’s group. A lot of people who were around Coltrane are not around at this point, but there are useful comments from a number of interviewees, including several of Coltrane’s sons and daughters, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson, and Wayne Shorter. Bill Clinton even testifies to Coltrane’s importance, with Denzel Washington adding some narration from Coltrane’s writings.

Of Coltrane’s albums, only A Love Supreme (and, in less depth, Giant Steps) get substantial coverage. For that reason, some Coltrane fans might feel a little unsatisfied, or certainly that an additional hour or so would have given a more complete record of his achievements. Given that this is probably targeted toward a more general audience, however, this does a decent job of representing his musical evolution and touching on his most significant achievements. A small note which is not a criticism: as long as Santana and Densmore were interviewed (and their comments are relevant and expressed well), it might have also been neat to have a bit from Roger McGuinn about Coltrane’s substantial influence on the Byrds’ most celebrated psychedelic song, “Eight Miles High.”

5. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World. Native Americans have played notable roles in rock since its beginnings in the mid-to-late 1950s, when Link Wray was one of the most innovative early rock guitarists. This documentary covers some of the most notable Native Americans in rock (though some of them were only partially Native American), particularly Robbie Robertson of the Band, guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Redbone, and Jimi Hendrix (one of the figures whose ancestry was less than half Native American). Any film that gives some mainstream exposure to Wray and Sainte-Marie is worthwhile in my book, but that doesn’t mean this is an ideal survey. Some of the figures covered, like early bluesman Charley Patton and jazz singer Mildred Bailey, were active in non-rock styles that might have been influential on rock, but weren’t rock per se. There is more to say about some, maybe most, of the spotlighted musicians than this film fits in; the segment on Redbone doesn’t give much of a sense of their sound beyond their big hit “Come and Get Your Love.” It’s a matter of personal taste, but I wasn’t interested in the metal and hip-hop artists covered, even if it brought the story more up to date.

Some viewers might feel it’s inappropriate to judge a film on what it doesn’t do rather than what’s there, but I wish this project could have been a series with full episodes on outstanding musicians, rather than a single feature that mixed them together. Within the movie itself, the focus sometimes wavers and rambles, with an occasional sense that they’re building up some performers’ Native American connections to make sure the end result reaches feature length. Some critics and friends did like the film more than I did, and increasing awareness of Wray, Sainte-Marie, and Davis in particular makes this a worthy effort in some key respects.

6. On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone. Sly Stone superfan Michael Rubenstone spent years trying to interview the legendarily eccentric and reclusive Sly for a documentary he was trying to make on the soul star. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that he didn’t get the interview; Sly has barely appeared in public for many years. But along the way, Rubenstone did speak to a lot of people who knew and worked with Sly, including Freddie Stone, Cynthia Robinson, Jerry Martini, Gregg Errico, and ex-manager David Kapralik. While the absence of comments from Sly makes this an incomplete picture, it’s nonetheless an interesting film, also drawing upon (if in brief bits) quite a few mesmerizing vintage performance/interview clips from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Rubenstone’s fandom is a bit creepily obsessive, but then if he wasn’t so besotted with the band, a project like this would probably have never gotten done. It almost didn’t get done anyway, as most of the footage is from more than ten years ago. Rubenstone gave up for almost a decade, getting especially discouraged after paying thousands of dollars for a Sly interview that never took place after the filmmaker was endlessly (if predictably) put off with shaky explanations. For that and quite a few other reasons, Sly does not come off as the most admirable of characters, inexplicably sabotaging his career when he seemed to have everything going for him. At least the strength of Stone’s music comes through, both from the vintage footage and the comments of his collaborators. This film is still flying way below the radar, having only played at a few festivals and special events (I saw it at the San Francisco Museum of the African Diaspora), though hopefully it will get wider distribution and eventual DVD release.

7. The Everly Brothers, Harmonies from Heaven (Eagle Vision DVD, 2016). This two-DVD release devotes one disc to an hour-long BBC documentary (with some additional interview material in the bonus features), and another to a live 1968 performance at a Sydney nightclub that was broadcast on Australian TV. You could easily make a good two-hour documentary on the Everlys instead of a sixty-minute one, and while there are some good interviews and vintage footage, there are also significant problems. There are too many talking heads, even if some of them are very relevant (both Everlys, a son of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant) or noted big fans who got to work with them (Art Garfunkel, Keith Richards, Graham Nash, Albert Lee). Some of them are not relevant, like Tim Rice and some producers, musicians, and critics who aren’t as famous or interesting. There are a wealth of excerpts from cool ‘50s and ‘60s clips which would be great to see in full, but are frustratingly short.

Also, the commentary is often overcontextualized, drifting into general observations about early rock’n’roll, radio, and Nashville that are both unnecessary and take away time from more specific discussion of the Everlys. Although most of their early hits are discussed, their post-early-’60s career—which included quite a few good records, even if most of them weren’t commercially successful—is almost dismissed, barely getting mentioned. Don Everly does look a bit frail in his interview segments (Phil is represented by 2010 interviews done before his death), but he’s wholly articulate, and there seems no reason why more in-depth commentary from him wasn’t used. (Here’s one zinger he offers on his relationship with Phil: “We never got along. He was different than I. He was a Republican, I was a Democrat. I couldn’t believe he was voting for Republicans, I just couldn’t believe it. I was a complete Democrat. I was just a leftist.”) Rock’n’Roll Odyssey, a 1984 PBS special on the Everlys, did a better job, and is more highly recommended than this documentary, although it has performance footage from numerous sources (again, it must be said, brief) not tapped for the PBS doc.

The second disc is quite good, and better than you might expect given it’s from a half-dozen or so years after the Everlys stopped landing American hits. Don does talk too much between songs, and some of the comic bits are kind of dumb. But the duo and their backing band rock pretty hard, on a set including many of their early hits, even if a few of them are truncated or kind of rushed. It’s a little odd and unfortunate that even at this stage they were mostly an oldies act, but they do put it in a couple of their better country-rock-flavored late-’60s songs, “Bowling Green” and “Kentucky.”

8. Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul. Documentaries that are only or primarily available online have become a trend in music docs. This one from Netflix on Joe Cocker is another, though in common with other such items that have made my lists, the production’s as good as what you’ll see in standard theatrical releases. Unlike a good number of documentaries on music and other subjects these days, it doesn’t take an obtuse or arty approach, instead just digging into a straightforward chronological survey of the singer’s life and career. That’s generally good news, and it does work here, alternating judiciously placed Cocker archive concert and interview footage with interviews with those who worked closely with him and knew him well. Among those interviewed with valuable observations are longtime Cocker keyboardist Chris Stainton, A&M Records executive Jerry Moss, producer Glyn Johns, Rita Coolidge (a backup singer on his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour), Jimmy Webb, brother Vic Cocker, wife Pam Cocker, and manager Michael Lang.

However, through no fault of the filmmakers, the last half of the movie isn’t nearly as interesting as the earlier part. True, there are very few music documentaries where the second half is more interesting than the first half, given how many artists peak early in their career, if their career lasts more than ten years. But a lot of momentum’s lost after the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, and even more after the 1970s, with all of Cocker’s finest work coming in the first few years of his recordings. It is sad, if instructive, to hear the many tales of his alcoholic excess, though just a bit cheering that he straightened out, relatively speaking, in his latter years. If there’s a villain in this piece, it’s manager Dee Anthony, whose insistence (according to some interviewed here) that Cocker do the lengthy, unprofitable, and exhausting Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour when he could have used a rest contributed to his early burnout.

9. The Resurrection of Victor Jara. This film was actually first screened in 2015, but to my knowledge it didn’t make it to San Francisco until I saw it in February 2017, and then screened just once in a small space during a festival. A legend in Chile, folksinger Jara is most known in North America for having been executed in 1973 after a military coup in that country. In part sparked by this, Phil Ochs organized a benefit for the Friends of Chile in May 1974, at which he, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Melanie, Dave Van Ronk, and others performed. These events are covered in this documentary, but its focus is on Jara’s life as a whole, including his music and its influence from the mid-’60s to the early ‘70s, and how his memory was honored in Chile over the last few decades.

Actually, its focus was too diffuse for me; I felt I didn’t get a full grasp on his pre-musical career, how he came to be one of Chile’s most popular musicians, and the political activism of his life and songs. There are a good number of vintage clips, if usually brief and fuzzy, and some of his musical peers are interviewed, as well as American admirers like Guthrie and Judy Collins. It’s of value to most music fans interested in the relation between music and social activism, and a reminder that as bad as things are in many parts of the world now (including the US), they were really bad in the US-supported 1973 Chilean coup, where artists such as Jara were tortured and killed.

10. The High School That Rocked! You might think it a stretch to make a film, even a short, about the rock concerts at a suburban high school. Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, however, wasn’t a typical such place, at least in terms of the acts it managed to book in the mid-1960s. Unbelievably, the Beau Brummels, Animals, Remains, Yardbirds (the Jeff Beck-Jimmy Page lineup), the Rascals, the Doors, Cream, Phil Ochs, Sly & the Family Stone, and Buddy Miles all played there within about four years in 1965-69. Although it’s not in wide circulation, this 27-minute documentary is well-paced and well made, emphasizing comments by students that don’t get overlong, trivial, or overstay their welcome. Their memories of the concerts and fleeting interactions with the stars (the class president even inviting the Yardbirds back to his home after the concert) are enhanced by plenty of vintage photos of the concerts, newspaper clippings, and local radio charts.

How exactly did a high school, even from a fairly well off area, get so many plum acts? It was in large part due to students Dick Sandhaus and Paul Gambaccini (later a noted rock critic), who managed to make connections, particularly through rising talent agent Frank Barsalona, that secured some stars. One student, Charlie Karp, even ended up joining Buddy Miles’s band after his group backed Miles when the drummer played the school. He’s one of the students interviewed for this short, which has played some festivals, and is certainly worthy of screenings on public television.

11. Free to Rock (PSB Records, DVD). There will probably never be another documentary that gives roughly equal attention to Billy Joel and the Plastic People of the Universe. This 55-minute one does, however, by virtue of its unusual subject, examining how rock and roll helped bring down the regimes behind the Iron Curtain, especially in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. There are interesting interviews (usually conducted in English without translation) with Soviet rockers of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, as well as some vintage film clips (though these are pretty brief) of those musicians in action. Rock musicians in other Eastern Bloc countries are also interviewed, discussed, and seen, including Czechoslovakia’s Plastic People of the Universe, whose way-underground Zappa/Velvet Underground-influenced sounds were crucial to the dissident movement that eventually overthrew the country’s rulers.

Also covered are the Western stars who played behind the Iron Curtain before the Berlin Wall and the Soviet regime fell, including the Beach Boys, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Elton John, Billy Joel, and heavy metal acts like the Scorpions. Also interviewed are heavyweight politicians like Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, and even former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, though the musicians struggling to function and express themselves under these regimes are the most thought-provoking.

There’s the sense that much more could be said about the complex factors both driving the music being made in these regions and the social changes they ignited. (Some of these are explicated in the two-hour bonus disc, mostly of extended interviews, though in common with many such extras, they tend to be drawn out and drag after a while.) It can also be said that some of the music by the Soviet and Eastern bloc bands, as admirable as it was to have performed it under such repressive conditions, isn’t very good—and that some of the Western stars who managed to play in those countries before the early 1990s weren’t exactly the greatest the rest of the world had to offer. But even if it’s a bit of rush to document such massive movements in less than an hour, it’s still a worthy overview.

12. Ticket to Write. A documentary on rock criticism from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s (with a technical release date of 2016, though I saw it at a film festival in early 2017), this as expected focuses on interviews with rock journalists of the era. These include such well known ones as Ben Fong-Torres, Ed Ward, John Morthland, Sandy Pearlman, Gene Sculatti, Ira Robbins, and Jaan Uhelszki (with some too young to have been writing then, like Mike Stax of Ugly Things, providing some historical context). Its strengths are that some good stories are told, like the one about hookers descending upon a rock critics convention in the early 1970s, only to realize that guys getting paid $25 per review (if they were lucky) were not exactly prime targets. As a film, it has problems. The narration is overbearing; the sound quality of the interviews erratic; and the background music sometimes doesn’t sit comfortably in the mix of a talking head-heavy documentary. I also found some of the premises baffling, such as championing the Dictators as a turning point of sorts in reviving rock from the doldrums in the mid-1970s. And MTV is too conveniently pinpointed as a villain that killed the golden age of rock criticism, though there’s been plenty of rock writing since the early 1980s, even if there may never again be publications with the reach and influence of Rolling Stone, Creem, and Trouser Press. Barely any UK writers are involved, which means this is really an overview, if a flawed one, of US rock criticism of the era.

Interesting rock documentaries continue to appear, but there aren’t as many of them as there are notable rock history books, or rock reissues. In part that’s because a film is much harder to finance, complete, and distribute than a book or album. The movies on this list range from superb to adequate, but I did have to take some liberties to push the list to ten items, including listing a few 2015 releases I didn’t see until this past year; putting on a DVD that’s been out for more than half a decade, but didn’t get released in the US until 2016; and even ending the list with a doc about an actor who made a few poorly received records. DVD labels are noted when the films are available in that format.

1. Bang: The Bert Berns Story. Although his name isn’t especially well known to most rock fans, Berns was an important and colorful figure in 1960s rock and soul. He wrote and/or produced numerous classic hits, from “Twist and Shout” and “Hang on Sloopy” to “Here Comes the Night” and “Brown Eyed Girl.” Co-directed by his son Brett, this fast-paced documentary has insightful, often funny, and often sad comments by an amazing assortment of people he worked with or influenced, including his widow, Solomon Burke, Ron Isley, Ben E. King, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, one of Bert’s Mafia buddies, and, in a coup, Van Morrison, who is surprisingly forthright and detailed in his recollections. Indeed, almost everybody of note is represented (though some by archive interview clips rather than ones done specifically for this feature). Neil Diamond is the most notable absentee, and the McCoys’ Rick Derringer and Lulu would have been nice to have too, but considering you can never have everyone, the batting average is amazingly high. My only complaint is one that speaks well of the quality of the film and the fascination of its subject: I wish there were more comments from many of the interviewees, which hopefully might be included on the DVD edition (scheduled for spring release).

2. Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years (Capitol). I was skeptical that Ron Howard’s documentary on the Beatles’ live performances (centering on the 1963-66 Beatlemania era) was overhyped, and/or wouldn’t offer much that hadn’t been covered elsewhere. Its position on this list lets you know quickly that my suspicions weren’t confirmed. No, it doesn’t have a great deal of footage that hasn’t been previously unearthed, though there are some rare or unfamiliar clips (and some of the familiar ones are in color instead of black and white, and occasionally use shots not in the standard versions). It is odd that a few (not many) of the clips are in notably inferior quality to how they appear on some official and unofficial releases, almost making you wonder if they were deliberately fuzzed-up to look older.

But the film puts their story as a popular live act together smoothly, in a fashion so entertaining as to be time well spent even for snobs like me who’ve already seen a great deal of it. The done-for-the-doc interview inserts with Paul McCartney are succinct and insightful, his best quote being about Brian Epstein: “It was clear he had a vision of us that was beyond the vision we had of ourselves.” If the ones with Ringo Starr aren’t as notable, they’re still worthwhile. A dozen or so others interviewed in the film (usually with no direct association with the ‘60s Beatles)—including Elvis Costello and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as non-celebrities like Ed Freeman, a roadie on their final US tour—offer observations that are more interesting than you might expect. Crucially, those are kept—unlike in so many other documentaries—brief and to the point, with none of them getting more time then they merit, even if they’re famous.

If you were able to see this in theaters, a half-hour short of the Beatles’ 1965 concert at Shea Stadium followed the main feature. This too exceeded my expectations, as the image quality was visibly cleaned-up from copies of the TV documentary for which the footage was shot that are in circulation. Also, this half-hour (unlike the hour-long original TV documentary) focuses solely on the Beatles’ performance, and doesn’t have voiceover narration that obscured parts of a few of the songs.

Unfortunately the Shea Stadium short isn’t on the DVD, even on the two-disc special edition. That special edition does have more than 100 minutes of bonus material on the second disc. None of it’s too extraordinary, but it does have complete clips of five different songs from various sources in 1963-65, along with several short mini-docs on their songwriting, Liverpool, shooting A Day’s Night, and their visits to Australia and Japan, among other subjects. Some of the people interviewed for this range from insiders like Peter Asher to figures not often heard from, like Ronnie Spector and Leslie Whitehead, who filmed the first sound clip of the Beatles (doing “Some Other Guy” in the Cavern in August 1962).

3. Gimme Danger. I’m not a Stooges fan, which is about the most unpopular opinion a rock critic can offer. But I liked this documentary, which might put me back in the graces of all those readers who were about to unsubscribe from this blog after reading the previous sentence. Although there isn’t much footage from the band’s prime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, esteemed director Jim Jarmusch does a fine job in combining what archive clips are available (mostly silent, other than for their 21^st-century reunions) with a wealth of photos and, most crucially, a lot of first-hand interviews with the surviving Stooges. Well, the ones that were surviving when filming was done; drummer Scott Asheton and saxophonist Steve Mackay have since passed on.

The lion’s share of the interviews are done with Iggy Pop, a great asset to the filmmaker, as he’s a good storyteller (my favorite being how Moe Howard of the Three Stooges was asked for permission to use the name “the Stooges”). The effects of the stroke Scott Asheton suffered a few years before his death are evident, yet though he speaks slowly, he’s quite articulate. Guitarist James Williamson, one of the minority of vintage Stooges to enjoy good health and relative wealth in his middle age, amusingly recalls how delusional the Stooges were in thinking what they were doing could be popular. In fact they were doing what they liked, not necessarily what the masses liked—a crucial difference.

It’s true, as some have pointed out, that a few surviving voices who played interesting roles in the Stooges’ story aren’t heard from, like Elektra Records chief Jac Holzman, John Cale (who produced their first LP), manager-for-a-time Tony Defries, and David Bowie. It’s also true that the Raw Power album, and Bowie’s role in it, should have been covered with more clarity and depth. It’s a still a good achievement that avoids the pitfalls of many docs on musicians of the era, such as spending too much time on reunions or figures from later generations and/or rock critics babbling about how great these guys were.

4. Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words. Since an artist isn’t (and can’t be) the most objective judge of his or her own work, I wondered how effective this documentary-of-sorts would be upon learning that it relied almost wholly on interview material with Zappa. It’s not only interview material, as some vintage performance footage is mixed in, but the extensive interviews are only with Frank. My wariness to the contrary, it does work pretty well, in large part because Zappa was a very well spoken and entertaining interview subject. That’s not to say I, or most anyone (even Zappa fanatics), would agree with everything he says. His putdowns of people who only like his early music with the Mothers of Invention (a group that includes me) are on the snide side, and his critiques of American cultural and political priorities can be unfair and narrow-minded.

Much of the time, however, his observations are right-on, and funny, if often delivered with a deadpan sarcasm that carries a hint of smugness. The breadth of archival interviews drawn upon by director Thorsten Schütte is breathtaking, ranging from the late 1960s to very shortly before his death. To break up all the talk, there are also quite a few vintage performance clips spanning the same period (throwing in some of his now-famous 1963 appearance “playing” a bicycle on the Steve Allen Show), some of which I had no idea existed, let alone actually seen. The rare archival material alone makes this worth seeing for the Zappa fan. But its presentation of Zappa as an iconoclastic cynic constantly puncturing holes in American hypocrisy also makes this worthwhile for anyone interested in popular culture.

5. The Peter Green Story: Man of the World (MVD Visual). I’ve written about this 2009 documentary before, giving it a lengthy full-length review in issue #1 (spring 2012) of Flashback magazine. So what’s a 2009 documentary doing here? Well, besides performing the all-important function of filling out a Top Ten list so that it will actually contain ten items, this excellent two-hour documentary on the mysterious original Fleetwood Mac frontman seems to have finally been issued in the US in 2016. There’s no date on the back cover, but the unexpected appearance of a promo copy at my door in late 2016 seems to indicate that’s when it came out here.

There are plenty of excerpts from vintage Mac clips and, more importantly, interviews with almost all of the key surviving players in the drama. That includes not just a been-through-the-grinder Green himself, but also Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and, most remarkably, Jeremy Spencer, at one time considered to have been as much of a casualty of the era as Green was. To its credit, the documentary neither sensationalizes nor soft-pedals Green’s problems (which are evident enough, truth to tell, in the rambling, not-too-coherent interviews he gave specifically for this film). There are also interviews with associates like producer Mike Vernon, John Mayall, Carlos Santana (who credits Green as a key influence, way beyond Santana having covered “Black Magic Woman”), ex-girlfriend Sandra Elsdon (an inspiration for “Black Magic Woman,” though her name is misspelled as Elsen here), and controversial ex-Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Adams.

Note that in a rare case of underselling the product, the back cover incorrectly lists the running time as 90 minutes. Actually it’s two full hours, not even including the DVD extras, which are as marginal and inessential as many such items are. I might have ranked this #4 or #3 on this list, incidentally, had it not been already available for years outside the US, and not that hard to find through unofficial channels in the US.

The next three entries are 2015 releases that I didn’t see until the past year:

6. Keith Richards: Under the Influence (Netflix, 2015). Only available through Netflix, this documentary mixes scenes of Richards working on his 2015 solo album Crosseyed Heart with archive footage/photos and interviews in which he discusses his influences. Guess which part is most interesting?

7. Watch the Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (Netflix, 2015). Even if you’re not a Deadhead, you’ll probably be able to sit through this Netflix documentary. I know that remark will offend Deadheads, but I mean it as genuine praise, given how hard it can be for the unconverted to take Grateful Dead-related projects in greater than limited doses. Weir was not the most famous or colorful member of the Dead (Jerry Garcia was), but as second guitarist and second banana of sorts, he made major contributions to the band. Spanning his whole career, but jumping back and forth from the past to the present (as is the unfortunate wont of many documentaries these days), the best parts are those in which he tells interesting stories of the band’s rise and fall, with the help of good archive clips. There are the expected less enlightening sections on his recent projects and settlement into contented family life. But in the interviews with Weir that form the heart of the film, he comes across as a likable humble fellow, and doesn’t flinch from recounting some of the excesses and consequences of his band’s lifestyle.

8. All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records (FilmRise, 2015). I have the feeling I’m going to be in the minority in this assessment, but I found the premise of this documentary, at least as I perceived it—that Tower was a great institution whose passing should be lamented—baffling. Tower Records was a chain, and not somewhere I’d buy records unless I couldn’t find what I was looking for anywhere else. The prices were usually higher than they were in the best indie stores, and the selection missing a lot of specialized items you could find in those best indie stores. The staff were usually indifferent, and the atmosphere antiseptic. Sure, living in the Bay Area, I had access to a great many more quality indie stores than I could have patronized almost anywhere else in the world. But my attitude was: why should I go to Tower, when I can support better non-chain stores? And my Tower experience is not limited to the Bay Area; I visited numerous other cities that had Towers. This film romanticizes Tower as a great place oozing with character, which I simply did not find to be the case, even given I didn’t go to one until the early 1980s (as I didn’t grow up in California, where Towers were initially based).

Getting beyond my grumblings and into the film itself, it’s an adequate history of the formation of a chain that eventually grew to monstrous global proportions from its relatively modest beginnings in Sacramento. There are plenty of interviews with founder Russ Solomon and key staff members, as well as some testimonials from famous musicians, though the best stories seem to come from the 1970s and its most famous store on Sunset Boulevard. (There are no interviews with disgruntled employees who, dissatisfied with crummy working conditions, routinely stole a lot of product, according to what an ex-employee told me.) The business-oriented sections on expansion, operation setup, and financial glories and problems that led to its early twenty-first-century demise will, I think, not be of too much interest to general music fans, though record industry insiders (who will probably comprise a good percentage of those interested in viewing this film) might find them absorbing. There are colorful anecdotes here and there about relatively wild and crazy times during the store’s multi-decade run as a successful enterprise. I feel these might resonate more strongly with those who grew up with Tower in the 1960s and 1970s, or for whom Tower was the only place to access a wide selection of product, than for music enthusiasts who’ve gone out of their way to look for records in many outlets.

9. 50 Years with Peter Paul and Mary (MVD Visual). An unspectacular 80-minute documentary that aired on PBS, this makes the list not just to help push it to ten entries, but also because it has some good vintage film clips of the trio in the ‘60s. Some of these are rarely seen (such as their performance of their Gene McCarthy campaign song “If You Love Your Country,” only issued on a rare 45), and there are some brief but interesting vintage interview segments too. Otherwise this gives rather bare outlines of their career, including latter-day interviews with Mary Travers, Noel Stookey, and Peter Yarrow, as well as a few with friends, family, and associates. About half of this is devoted to their post-early-‘70s years, and while their intentions remained as noble as ever, the music frankly wasn’t nearly as interesting. If you’re looking for some penetrating coverage of their career arc—like more about manager Albert Grossman, their studio recordings, and their role in popularizing Bob Dylan songs—there’s disappointingly little about such matters here. Nor will you find it in the recent coffee table book Peter Paul and Mary: Fifty Years in Music and Life, sadly.

10. For the Love of Spock (Gravitas Ventures). Even as someone who’s more a fan of the original Star Trek series than a Trekkie, I couldn’t say I found out a lot about Leonard Nimoy that I didn’t know in this documentary of the man who played Spock. It was directed by his son Adam, and so has some details about his family that aren’t familiar to the average Star Trek viewer, ranging from interesting stories of his long years of pre-Star Trek struggle to mundane reconnections with relatives in the final years of his life. Still, it’s a reasonably entertaining ride through his career and off-screen experiences, including interviews with fellow Star Trek cast members that are both expected and among the more worthwhile parts of the film. How does this qualify for a rock documentary list, you’re asking? Well, Nimoy did make some infamous records in his croaking voice, some of which skirted novelty—like his tribute to a famous hobbit in “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,” which he’s seen performing on TV here. In the absence of another obvious #10 pick, that’s enough to put this film on the bottom of this list.