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A friend just forwarded me a link for this Fred Frith documentary.

There's some short clips of this on Youtube:

Step Across the Border (1990)

and here:

Morning Song

and:

here


It's looks and sounds great. Anybody seen the whole thing?

Nice one. This is going to be Sunday afternoon viewing for me. Once I'm done with Big.

Thanks for this. I got to see him open for Henry Kaiser once, and have a few of his records. Cool stuff.

Great player and a genuinely nice guy; I got to run sound (and have dinner) with him last trip thru Denver. Go see him solo sometime if you can.

Frank

Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

Netflix has this. That's where I got it from, years after buying the soundtrack. Lots of good stuff on it, some of the bonus stuff on the DVD is really cool as well. Fred Frith is a really cool musician, the Massacre album is one of the few Laswell related things I still will put on. By all accounts I have heard he is a real nice guy as well.

There is an interesting bit on Youtube somewhere of him giving a talk about some of his techniques, he demonstrates how he uses stuff like string and wire and paintbrushes and stuff to get cool sounds out of the guitar.

projectMalamute wrote:There is an interesting bit on Youtube somewhere of him giving a talk about some of his techniques, he demonstrates how he uses stuff like string and wire and paintbrushes and stuff to get cool sounds out of the guitar.

Yeah, the reverb workshop is neat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skd_70BINEQ

I watched this last night on DVD. It is actually available:

Step Across the Border

It's totally exhilarating. The beautiful photography that enhances the phenomenal music that Frith makes all over the world, with host of creative improvisational musicians. Words fail me really. I'll be certainly watching it again and definitely need to track down some of Iva Bittová. She's a mesmeric performer.

10/10! Easily one of the best music documentaries.

I own this DVD, and it was fun to see a younger Fred Frith on video a few nights before seeing him live. This was less than three years ago, if memory serves. Anyhow, he's still pretty much as arresting live as he is in that video.
I recall the soundtrack having some, but not all the Frith music used in the film, as well as stuff exclusive to the soundtrack, but not in a cheeky film-music-is-good-but-soundtrack-sucks kinda way.

Fred Frith is really fucking good, Skeleton Crew and Art Bears are awesome, and this inspiring documentary is very well done.