The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72796 Message #1260526
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
31-Aug-04 - 05:48 AM
Thread Name: Sidmouth on BBC Four
Subject: RE: Sidmouth on BBC Four
On that BBC message board I linked to, someone compared this with the classic documentary "Jazz on a Summer's Day", about a long ago Jazz Festival in Newport, back in 1959.
A review of of it, in this link, is full of phrases that could have been about the Sidmouth programme:
"Part concert documentary, part pop-cultural time capsule... with an approach as deceptively relaxed, even impulsive, as the music itself... sidesteps more formal documentary conventions such as narrative voiceovers to wander purposefully from festival stage to boarding-house jam sessions...rich color footage of the performances and the celebratory mood of the concertgoers. In the process, he documents... a notably golden moment in its development."
And as the review indicates, a lot of people were pissed off at the way lots of good music and great musicians were squeezed out by the "irrelevant" stuff. Nothing really changes...