Rating: 
Summary: Captivating
Review: It was about midnight in a hotel room on a business trip that I was flipping channels and came across this documentary and was immediately sucked in. It's just a fascinating story about an off-beat topic that most people have never heard about. I was so fascinated by it that I researched the PBS site until I found the producers name and contacted him to see when it would be on DVD (I never do that!). Well, that was about a year ago, here it is, and I can't wait to see it with all the extras. If you are a fan of oddball documentaries in the vein of 'American Movie', 'The Checker King', or 'Cane Toads', then this one is for you.
Rating:
Summary: God Bless NRBQ!
Review: Saw this film before NRBQ took the stage at a Brookln venue called North Six for what was billed as 'NRBQ and the song poem experiment'. I had no idea what to expect.....Brilliant! Had to buy a copy immediately. If your a songwriter you need to watch this. The band did a couple of tunes from the film as well( nice work on 'Richard Nixon" PJ). Funny as hell, touching and sometimes painful to watch this doc is well worth owning if just for the 'America Sings' program found in the DVD extras. Who are these people?!
Rating:
Summary: God Bless NRBQ!
Review: Saw this film before NRBQ took the stage at a Brookln venue called North Six for what was billed as 'NRBQ and the song poem experiment'. I had no idea what to expect.....Brilliant! Had to buy a copy immediately. If your a songwriter you need to watch this. The band did a couple of tunes from the film as well( nice work on 'Richard Nixon" PJ). Funny as hell, touching and sometimes painful to watch this doc is well worth owning if just for the 'America Sings' program found in the DVD extras. Who are these people?!
Rating:
Summary: Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers And More!
Review: This is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. I have been a fan of song-poems for years, and this movie is the best explanation and analysis of the phenomena that I have ever seen. This film chronicles the important characters in American song-poem history, such as Rodd Keith and Ramsey Kearney (singer of perhaps the most famous of all song-poems, which he graciously apologizes for...), and such technical details as the functioning of the Mellotron and overdubbing techniques.
I have read the book "Songs in the Key of Z" (and highly recommend it), but this film best captures not only the humorous qualities of this musical genre, but also the human side of these aspiring songwriters. It's easy to laugh at a song like "Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers," "I am a Ginseng Digger," or "Chicken Insurrection," but when you see the people who labored over these misdirected masterpieces, it definitely makes you empathetic to their plight. Particularly brilliant in this film are the interview segments, which highlight these songwriters and the people who actually make the music. Be sure to watch the film with commentary off and then once again with it on to get some additional insight from the filmmakers, and whatever you do, make sure you watch the extras to see the entire live set by the Iowa Mountain Tour (as painful as this may to be), and the discussion of the song-poem classic "The Moon Men," a song with perhaps the most complex yet unfathomable rhyme scheme and meter of any song ever recorded.
This is a wonderful film, and I absolutely recommend it to any audience: it is captivating, humanizing, and uplifting to see the human spirit of these people struggle against obscurity.
Rating:
Summary: Like a car crash...you cant look away
Review: Truly amazing. I caught the last half of this on PBS & was hooked. You kinda feel sorry for some of the "talent" on this disc. Too bad Simon from American Idol wasn't on hand. Some great music & some really bad ones. But the stories of the artist involved are whats worth watching.
Rating:
Summary: Like a car crash...you cant look away
Review: Truly amazing. I caught the last half of this on PBS & was hooked. You kinda feel sorry for some of the "talent" on this disc. Too bad Simon from American Idol wasn't on hand. Some great music & some really bad ones. But the stories of the artist involved are whats worth watching.
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