Old hippies just play on.
(2017) Music Documentary (Paladin) Lee Aronsohn, George “Tode” Cahill, Lynn “Flatbush” Poyer, Kevin “CW” Millburn, Will “Wilbur” Luckey, Rob “Poonah” Galloway, Chris “Cemeto” Doyle, Bill “Das” Makepeace, Greg “Sloth” Sparre, Chris “Spoons” Daniel, Tamara Lester, Chuck Morris, Sam Bush, Julie Luckey, Steve “Spike” Clark, Olivia “Speedy” Luckey, Mary Jane Makepeace, Bill Payne, Scarlett Rivers. Directed by Lee Aronsohn
There is a time in our lives which we inevitably link with certain musical styles and sounds. It might be the psychedelic noise of the 60s, the arena rock of the 70s, the new wave of the 80s, the grunge of the 90s or…well, you get the idea. We identify with the music and the era.
In Boulder, Colorado in the early to mid-70s, particularly around the University of Colorado campus, the sound was heavily folk influenced with a kind of hippie aesthetic. Most symbolic of these bands was a group called Magic Music, who had enough facial hair to make a Muslim smile in satisfaction and an affinity for flannel shirts which would make the grunge generation scratch their heads and say “I thought that was our thing.”
Spoiler alert: the band never made it big, despite being hugely popular in Colorado and coming close on several occasions. Their unwillingness to bend on artistic matters as well as some self-torpedoing due to drugs, attitude or a distinct lack of business sense kept them from going to the next step. They broke up in 1975 with no records to their name.
One of their biggest fans was TV producer/writer/creator Lee Aronsohn who was attending CU as a sex and drugs major. He went on to success in his field but over the years the music he heard as a young man stayed in his head. He wondered what happened to the band that so inspired him in his youth. Only one of them remained in the Boulder era; Chris Daniels who continued to play music there with a new band. Through him, Aronsohn was put in contact with the remaining members of the band (Lynn Poyer tragically passed away in 2011) and soon a new idea germinated; to get the band to reunite onstage, playing a one night stand at the 800 seat Boulder Theater. To everyone’s surprise, the show sold out.
These are mostly interviews with the band members, former managers, girlfriends, wives, exes and fans. There isn’t any video footage of the band actually playing extant but there are quite a few still photos around and to Aronsohn’s delight some unreleased demos of the band in their heyday were found and used on the soundtrack. The demos accompany the stills, several of which have been animated into motion. That was a pretty nifty effect but as the story moves from the band’s past to the band’s present, those sorts of animations disappear from the film and I for one missed them.
The band utilized some sweet harmonies (think America and Pure Prairie League) with some fairly standard but lovely folk rock (along the lines of Buffalo Springfield and James Taylor). The music is extremely dated largely due to the lyrics which were of the tree-hugging variety (the band at one time lived in school buses in the Rocky Mountain wilderness) with a generous helping of hippie “love is everything” type sweetness. Maybe a better secondary title for the film would be Smell the Patchouli!!
Which reminds me: why do non-fiction book authors and documentary filmmakers find it necessary to title their works with unnecessary and often unwieldy secondary titles? Every time I see a colon in a title I feel a sense of rage. Do these authors and filmmakers think that this kind of titling makes their work sound more academic? Knock it off, y’all. It just makes you sound pretentious.
Mini-rant aside, the filmmaking is pretty solid here. Yes, there are plenty of talking heads but for the most part the band members are charming and sweet-natured. While there were some rifts within the band, for the most part a lot of water has gone under the bridge; after all, there were more than forty years between live concert appearances. 40 years an bring an awful lot of perspective even to the most angry and bitter of feelings.
This is very much a niche film. Most people outside of Colorado and not of a certain age group will have never heard of the band and even those that do, not all of them are going to be all that interested in taking a stroll down memory lane. Still, the band’s reunion does have a pretty good emotional punch and if seeing retired hippie chicks undulating in time to the music is your thing, then there’s reason enough to go catch this in and of itself.
REASONS TO GO: The reunion scenes are pretty sweet. Early on I like what Aronsohn did with the motion stills.
REASONS TO STAY: This is really intended for a niche audience.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and plenty of drug references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Aronsohn has been responsible for such hit TV shows as Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/4/18: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Searching for Sugar Man
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Andre the Giant
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