A few music docs
2025-11-16 16:41:28.99277+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
We have a month of Netflix right now because we wanted to watch The Greatest Night In Pop, the documentary about the making of We Are The World, which we've watched twice. Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen's sessions never get old, and both times through I've laughed at Stevie Wonder showing Bob Dylan how to do his lines.
Discovery on Netflix sucks, but we'd seen something about The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a short documentary about Orin O'Brien, the first woman hired to perform with the New York Philharmonic, back in 1966, so went to search for that, and right next to that in the search results was It's Only Life After All, a documentary about the Indigo Girls.
The Orin O'Brien film was a wonderful little piece, O'Brien came from a show biz family, and picked up the double bass to be a supporting character rather than a star, and the whole film had a nice soundtrack and was a great little wander through her life as she interacted with students and dealt with moving out of her apartment and the issues of retirement and winding down her life.
We had started watching a few other Netflix music documentaries, ABBA: Against The Odds, and Springsteen on Broadway, both of which we abandoned a little bit in. So when we started the two hours with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, I didn't necessarily expect that we'd make it all the way through. Especially since this was definitely not a concert film.
But it was two hours spent taking me back to the late '80s and '90s, to Little Five Points in Atlanta, hanging out with two people who believe a better culture is possible, and Charlene and I were both wrapt.
And hell yeah I'm gonna take Closer to Fine to the next first Friday "bring something to share" gathering at Randy's house...