"Sound City"....the movie.

AshX said:
...Mick Fleetwood is a great, heavy-hitting drummer and Lindsey Buckingham is a great guitar player that finger picks virtually everything. His technique is really unique and interesting....
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Yeah...I respect Lindsey as a guitar player....and Mick is just a cool drummer, and if you really dig into the Fleetwood Mac history and evolution, you get much more from them than just "Rumours".
 
I just watched the documentary.........it's OK, I suppose. I kind of wonder to what extent most of the participants were dewey eyed because the studio closed down. Did not every one of them record at other studios long before the axe fell ?
Time and passing can sometimes cause us to mythologize things in a way we just wouldn't have at the time. After all, there were lots of studios at that time.
Two things caught my attention in the documentary; one was where the engineer was cutting the 2 inch tape in order to edit. I've long respected that. I used to repair cassette tape that way but part of why I went over to digital was that precious "undo" concept. Cutting tape just wasn't for me !
The other thing was Jim Keltner's comment that the room the drums were recorded in was great but shouldn't have been any good..............because it was square.
I liked the song Lee Ving was on, the one about the wife calling. I kind of liked all the music in it though, because to me, it was incidental.


I've heard the "Rumours" album zillions of times since 1979. I still love it.
 
grimtraveller said:
Time and passing can sometimes cause us to mythologize things in a way we just wouldn't have at the time.
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I don't think they were "dewy eyed" just because it closed down. If you really look at the Sound City Studios walls....there were 2-3 periods in its history where a LOT of mega-hits came out of its doors and that made lots of money for a lot of folks.
That's not just people being nostalgic now that it's closed....IMO. :)

Also....the place WAS somewhat of a quirk...compared to the REAL million dollar studios at the time and in that area.
IOW...it shouldn't have happened at Sound City Studios....but it just did, and shit just fell into place. That's the "magic" they refer to, and what came out of there had some big impacts on other music elsewhere.


The thing I like most about "Rumours" was the bass & drum sound....it was just so huge at the time.
 
The thing that struck me was when they did a montage of a bunch of the hits that came out of that studio and I realized that they all had the same sound.
 
miroslav said:
I don't think they were "dewy eyed" just because it closed down.Also....the place WAS somewhat of a quirk...compared to the REAL million dollar studios at the time and in that area.
IOW...it shouldn't have happened at Sound City Studios....but it just did, and shit just fell into place.
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Nor do I. But did they feel the same way at the time they began using other studios ? I mean, it's pretty rare for artists to use the same studio exclusively for 10 years.

Farview said:
The thing that struck me was when they did a montage of a bunch of the hits that came out of that studio and I realized that they all had the same sound.
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Interesting. I thought Neil Young's "Southern man" was much more raw than the Buckingham Nicks stuff although I catch your drift. But wasn't there a lot of similarity in sounds in that sort of '76~'83 period anyway ? Lots of bands for example had that layered, sweet harmony guitar sound with a slight rough edge. Or kicks that "pokked" rather than "bOOfed".
miroslav said:
Also....the place WAS somewhat of a quirk...compared to the REAL million dollar studios at the time and in that area.
IOW...it shouldn't have happened at Sound City Studios....but it just did, and shit just fell into place.
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That stood out for me. It also told me that there's more, far more to getting good recordings than spending oodles on the studio.....
 
grimtraveller said:
Interesting. I thought Neil Young's "Southern man" was much more raw than the Buckingham Nicks stuff although I catch your drift. But wasn't there a lot of similarity in sounds in that sort of '76~'83 period anyway ? Lots of bands for example had that layered, sweet harmony guitar sound with a slight rough edge. Or kicks that "pokked" rather than "bOOfed".
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Obviously, the different bands would have different styles and ways of putting a song together, but the overall sound of everything was shockingly similar. Was there a lot of similarity to the sounds of bands between 76 and 83 because a large percentage of the songs we heard in that time period were coming out of this studio?

I don't think of Rick Springfield, Tom Petty, Ratt, Foreigner and Pat Benatar all in the same room musically, but when you listen to those songs back to back, they all sound the same. (the sound, not the song writing, arranging or producing)
 
Farview said:
... because a large percentage of the songs we heard in that time period were coming out of this studio?
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There's a point in the movie where someone comments how in one particular period, if you looked at the top 10 radio play songs....7 came from Sound City Studios.
So there was something going on....not sure if it was mostly the sound of the drums they were getting in that room....the Neve console and the Studer decks...or that they were recording often with that "live", one-room setup, rather than lots of individual overdubs.

As Petty comments early on....they had a hard time sounding good in there, and that the room revealed all your craop and made you really work hard, and that it was just the sound of what was going into the mics, so the room raised their performance game....so that to may have contributed to the "sameness" from band to band.
 
I thought the film did a great job of covering Sound City's history.

You really couldn't do a documentary about Sound City and not include Fleetwood mac and the other bands from that era that pretty much put that studio on the map.
 
AshX said:
…came here to talk about an awesome documentary…instead it's a thread where Greg_L is arguing about why Fleetwood Mac sucks. Seriously, dude, if you don't' like it then let it go. I'm a 21 year old punk rocker and I grew up listening to Fleetwood Mac. Mick Fleetwood is a great, heavy-hitting drummer and Lindsey Buckingham is a great guitar player that finger picks virtually everything. His technique is really unique and interesting (as our some of his modified guitars) so to write them off as crap music of the era would be a gross exaggeration. Not to mention, Stevie Nicks can still fuckin' sing. Good songwriting is good songwriting, no matter what era or genre, and Fleetwood Mac is still selling out arenas how many decades later? If they were some horrible product of music of the era, then I highly doubt they would still be enjoying so much success years later.

All that being said, honestly who cares one way or the other? You either like it or you don't - that doesn't make your musical taste superior to anyone else's. To each their own. I'd imagine people who post on this forum are looking to have intelligent conversations and solve home recording problems instead of having to wade through four pages of a topic that has been completely derailed. Thanks, dude.
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I'd hate to but in and step into the line of fire of childish and frustration-filled, pent-up angsty bickering, but I'd have to agree. :o
 
Some of you idiots are acting as if I'm declaring law. My opinion of Fleetwood Mac is just my opinion. Fucking relax. I think they're boring shit, but I'm not demanding that anyone agree with me. Only a moron gets offended and butthurt if someone else doesn't like the same music as they do. My initial thoughts were that the movie spent too much time on that shit. I only wish it was more focused on the process and less on some of the crappy bands that rolled through there.
 
Greg_L said:
I only wish it was more focused on the process......
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Yeah....I have to agree.
They sorta teased about the special drum sound they got there and the Neve and that stuff....but then didn't really spend a heck of a lot of time talking about that in any real detail.

I think Grohl ended up making the movie more for typical artist fans....and not so much for musicians wanting to get under the hood of the whole Sound City Studios process.
I can understand that.....but yeah, I too wish there was more details about the processes used there. The movie is about "Sound City"....but he makes little effort to discover and reveal WHAT it was that made things really work in there for all those bands....regardless of the music they did.
 
I think that part of the reason documentaries like this focus on the artists that may have used the studio is that in reality, the number of people that would be interested in the process pale in comparison to those that would have liked the music.
Personally, I would've loved more about the processes and more from the actual engineers but that kind of talk would put most people to sleep. I really wasn't interested in the sweet receptionists or office managers although I recognize that a minute about them definitely had it's place.
In a way, it kind of demonstrates that the best place to get info about recording is not really in the visual media.
I'll still watch them though !
 
Greg_L said:
Some of you idiots are acting as if I'm declaring law. My opinion of Fleetwood Mac is just my opinion. Fucking relax. I think they're boring shit, but I'm not demanding that anyone agree with me. Only a moron gets offended and butthurt if someone else doesn't like the same music as they do. My initial thoughts were that the movie spent too much time on that shit. I only wish it was more focused on the process and less on some of the crappy bands that rolled through there.
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I wonder why it is that it is hard to take an opinion as just that, one persons view of something?

Over the years I find the whole Fleetwood Mac just way over done. OK, it was good, there were some decent songs, lots of air play, Mick Fleetwood struggled for a long time, so forth and so one, but not sure of the hype.

I will say, Christine McVie was one fine singer. I love her voice. Really like some of her solo work.
 
miroslav said:
Yeah....I have to agree.
They sorta teased about the special drum sound they got there and the Neve and that stuff....but then didn't really spend a heck of a lot of time talking about that in any real detail.

I think Grohl ended up making the movie more for typical artist fans....and not so much for musicians wanting to get under the hood of the whole Sound City Studios process.
I can understand that.....but yeah, I too wish there was more details about the processes used there. The movie is about "Sound City"....but he makes little effort to discover and reveal WHAT it was that made things really work in there for all those bands....regardless of the music they did.
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At the end of the day when you sit back and listen to the undertones of the "documentary" it is clearly just anther Dave Grohl rant about how much pro tools sucks and ultimately caused the end of all things good.
 
Greg_L said:
Some of you idiots are acting as if I'm declaring law. My opinion of Fleetwood Mac is just my opinion.
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DM60 said:
I wonder why it is that it is hard to take an opinion as just that, one persons view of something?
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I agree with both of those but I also think that it's not so much the opinion that fires some people up as much as the way it's stated.
If, for example, someone said "Man, your Mum/wife/girlfriend/kid is weird looking", they'd only be stating their opinion. But few would just take it like that, even though that's all it is.
And let's face it, Greg does like to be provocative by stating that anything that he doesn't like is shit and I think he knows that most human beings are going to be up in arms about being told that something they like is shit. Even if it's just one person's opinions.
That all said, sometimes, one has to look past the surface where the stuff that fights are made of reside and get to the meat of the point. The issue in this thread isn't whether or not someone who likes aggressive music in general thinks that softer thought out music is crap, but whether or not the documentary did justice to it's title......
 
Simman said:
At the end of the day when you sit back and listen to the undertones of the "documentary" it is clearly just another Dave Grohl rant about how much pro tools sucks and ultimately caused the end of all things good.
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Really ? I thought he implied the opposite, especially when he was beaming about Trent using it creatively.
 
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