Two documentaries about musicians and their music. It Might Get Loud focuses on three very different guitar masters, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (The White Stripes). They all have their focuses, they all have their strengths, and they all get together and learn some guitar slinger tricks off each other. It's a remarkable in-depth look at their very different approaches. Page can play anything technically very competently and then stirs in some soul to make it come out right, while The Edge strips down music to its fundamentals and builds it back up with technology. White, on the other hand, attacks his instrument and we get to listen to it bite back. (In many respects this reminds me of some of the ways in which different physicists approach their work.) It's a fascinating blend of one-at-a-time interviews, retrospectives, and three-way jam sessions.
On to The Wrecking Crew, it's a story of the music business in the 1960s and how it naturally just morphed into having a running set of studio musicians who bridged the gap between the faceless backup orchestra members in 1950s music and the DIY rock stars of the mid-1970s onward. Also an interesting story, one that TWC's unofficial and semi-anonymous members deserve to finally have told.
I'll give The Wrecking Crew 3 out of four stars, while It Might Get Loud digs deeper and earns 3.5 stars. Both are highly recommended and well worth your time. You can read more about them respectively here and here over at Rotten Tomatoes.
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