AUSTIN, Tx. (Top40 Charts) - Many South by Southwest
Music Festival panels had a doom-and-gloom tenor this year, and music-related documentaries at the Film Festival part of the annual Austin, Texas, gathering continued the anti-record-biz theme.
Reel after reel followed musicians' trials and tribulations, from limos, coke, and American Bandstand to shady record deals, bankruptcies, and rehab -- only to find true happiness when finally cast free from major-label shackles. If this bumpy story arc rings a bell, remember it's been chronicled a time or two on VH1's Behind the Music.
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns is a history of They Might Be Giants (the Johns are John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the band's longtime leaders). A two-hour film with concert footage and interviews with college-friendly pundits like Frank Black, Sarah Vowell, and Dave Eggers, Gigantic is hyperbolic when describing the group's place in rock's annals. ("Don't Let's Start" wasn't that seminal, okay?)
But, Gigantic relays spot-on the recurring milestones of mid-'90s "alternative" signings: a large underground following, a few minor modern-rock hits, an unceremonious dropping from the label. The band and this film, however, have a rosier ending than most, concluding just a few weeks back when the band scored a GRAMMY? Award for their theme to Malcolm in the Middle.
Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew (all music docs apparently have two-part names) reveals the jazz musician's lengthy career, highly acclaimed yet aborted repeatedly due to fallout from an early, restrictive record deal. Scott, who has Kallmann's syndrome (his voice never changed as an adult), is an ethereal, emotive singer with a lengthy series of recordings since the '40s. Two of these are considered some of the world's great jazz albums, yet the sought-after records both were recalled due to legal entanglements.
Again, hope springs eternal: Scott became able to sign with Warner Bros. in the past decade and finally flourish. (Yeah, it's a major, but he seems happy.) Interest in Scott has risen recently, with the singer stealing the show in Ethan Hawke's directorial debut, Chelsea Walls, also featured in the festival.
Then there's the happy-endingless Into the Night: The Benny Mardones Story. The very definition of one-hit wonder, Mardones' name is little-known, yet his "Into the Night" was a 1980 smash that's still one of radio's most-played tracks. (It's this one: "If you could fly/I'd pick you up/I'd take you into the night/And give you love?")
Mardones' haunting tale soars through appearances at stadiums and on The Dinah Shore Show, through a drug-addled incident that made him a pariah at his label. But the craggy, mullet-haired singer does have a rabid following today -- based entirely in his hometown of Syracuse, New York, where he's a local superstar. Produced and directed, oddly enough, by Go-Kart Records founder Greg Ross, this affecting film has two endings: the original triumphant conclusion, followed by a heartbreaking update shot just a few weeks before the festival.
Other music-related films included Money for Nothing, a critical look at the music business featuring Ani DiFranco, Chuck D., and other challengers to the system, and Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly.
