Monday, January 2, 2017

Pop Culture Documentaries # 1 Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me


A slight change in personal perspectives and priorities has led me to join a couple of streaming services in the last few weeks and as a result being able to take advantage of a lot of the music related options they have to offer. This led me last night to chancing upon and watching the recently released Big Star documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me, which only had a limited cinema release in the UK.


Big Star in many respects are the ultimate in music history of a certain kind of phenomenon. A band who during their lifetime laid down nothing but pristine, immaculate musical recordings to critical acclaim but absolutely no commercial recognition before their split only to find themselves responsible for an incredibly, mushrooming cult that continues to flourish until the present day.




The film more than does them credit. Pieced together with archive footage, of which a surprising amount exists, and threaded together by a set of interviews with the main players and spectators, to tell a story that is full of melancholy, pain and anguish but ultimately leads to an ending that is strangely somewhat triumphant due to the sheer transcendent quality of the music they made. Much recommended. Oh, and Memphis, the city that spawned them is a major, uncredited player in proceedings throughout.



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