We’ve laughed at Metallica’s ‘Some Kind of Monster’. We’ve lost ourselves with the help of Mogwai in ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’. Now admittedly, the Zidane piece wasn’t a music documentary but it was a fascinating piece of art.
These journeys were more or less what we expected.
‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’, by Jon Spira, had potential which is why I travelled to Edinburgh last year for a rare screening.
Let’s start by looking at what Wikipedia has to say about it.
Anyone Can Play Guitar is a documentary film made by Jon Spira, examining the music scene in Oxford over the period starting 1978, but focusing on 1984–2007. The film takes its name from the Radiohead song of the same name. Through over 300 hours of interviews with band members and other key people in the Oxford music community, distilled down to one and a half hours, the film examines the roles of community, the music industry, and luck in a band gaining commercial success.
Narrated by Stewart Lee, it features interviews and concert footage of several bands that have been nationally and internationally successful (Radiohead, Supergrass, Foals), as well as some that had moderate success (e.g. The Candyskins, Ride, Swervedriver), and many more that were not commercially successful.
Emerging from the Cameo Picturehouse Cinema a short time later, I found myself taken back by the genuine, heartfelt emotion that resonated from everyone’s stories in the film.
I’ve watched a lot of music documentaries. Probably more than is healthy for any sane person. So I was prepared for a variety of outcomes.
Creating a truly engaging music documentary or alternative film experience is not for the faint of heart.
No matter how much your passion is fuelled by your subject matter, there’s still a high degree of skill and hard work involved to pull it all together.
Check out the trailer…
Please do consider buying it on DVD and supporting his work.
And if you have seen it already, there’s always Dustball over on Spotify.
