While ‘Sputnik Discusses’ was obviously created to fuel discussion amongst all registered members of the website, I think that I have under-stated its ability to provide – and spread – information between users. Last week’s ‘Anticipation in 2015’ column proved that, with many readers unaware that a particular artist was going to (possibly) be releasing an album this year, until informed of it during the discussion. I guess this opens up further possibilities for column topics; a theory that will hopefully be confirmed this week.

Plus, there is a link of sorts between the two column editions courtesy of Dave Grohl and his merry band of Foo Fighters.

As referenced last week, Grohl’s ‘Sonic Highways’ series of documentaries piqued my interest. While a few of the episode-closing tunes – and therefore the LP itself – may have disappointed to some extent, the documentaries themselves were interesting, if imperfect. Not much earlier last year, I was also entertained by two other documentary films on music; Grohl’s ‘Sound City’ and ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ concerning Sixto Rodriguez. In both cases, the topics weren’t ones that I would normally search out, yet the end-product was both fascinating and informative. I just had to ask myself the question as to why I had not taken the time to view more music documentaries.

While some documentaries may admittedly be nothing more than glorified concert footage and musicians shooting the breeze, those that are well-made and conscientiously explanatory can be a treasure trove of information. Furthermore, they can – and arguably should – result in a viewer listening to any related music in a different light. One example from ‘Sonic Highways’ was the way in which Grohl derived his lyrics concerning whichever city he was detailing. If I had heard the lyric “They’re singing like a bluebird in the round” without viewing the Nashville-inspired episode, I would have disregarded it as nonsense, not a reference to the city’s rite of passage café.

And there’s so many music documentaries out there… ‘Before the Music Dies’, ‘Woodstock’, ‘The Story of Anvil’, etc, etc, etc… Furthermore, they don’t have to be genuine motion pictures, since there are also a few that can be made as television episodes; The ‘Classic Albums’ series and the 11 part ‘Metal Evolution’ series are two that immediately come to mind. Why the hell haven’t I seen any of these? At least I’ve watched ‘This Is Spinal Tap’… Does that count?

So, the discussion points should be obvious concerning this topic: What are some of your favourite music documentaries that you can recommend to fellow Sputnik members? And as an extension, has there ever been a fascinating tidbit of information that you learned from a music documentary that made your opinion of a piece of music significantly change? For the sake of eliminating redundancy, we all already know that the ‘Some Kind of Monster’ documentary made ‘St.Anger’ even worse!

As they say at the end of those dreaded English essays: DISCUSS….. But please, Lars doesn’t want to hear your “psycho babble horsehit”.