Acting
A definitive landmark series charting the emergence and re-emergence of rock music as a global force, told through the musicians who have shaped this most enduring of genres.
"A man went looking for America.... And couldn't find it anywhere!" proclaimed the original Easy Rider poster. Four decades later filmmakers Simon Witter and Hannes Rossacher set out to see if they could find America, retracing the film's original route across the country with Easy Rider super fans Jim Leonard and Mike Kittrell, on a quest to find out how the many issues that resonated through the film had developed, for better or worse, in the interim. Along the way they met musicians, journalists, academics, seasteading idealists, drug policy experts and healers, and heard from the film's makers and extras about the dramatic genesis of the cult film that blew like a wind of change through the stilted kitsch of mainstream cinema in 1969, re-writing the rulebook on genre, drugs, music, cinematography and even the use of non-actors, holding a mirror up to the values of a changing America.
Jimi Hendrix's debut American set at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival is generally considered one of the most radical and legendary live shows ever. Virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, even though he was already an established entity in the UK, Hendrix and his two-piece Experience explode on stage, ripping through blues classics "Rock Me Baby" and Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," interpreting and electrifying Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," debuting songs from his yet-to-be-released first album and closing with the now historic sacrificing/burning of his guitar during an unhinged version of "Wild Thing" that even its writer Chip Taylor would never have imagined. Hendrix uses feedback and distortion to enhance the songs in whisper-to-scream intensity, blazing territory that had not been previously explored with as much soul-frazzled power.
A history and tribute to British Jim Marshall's amplifiers, which since then became the standard of rock'n'roll amplifiers ever since.
Documentary about notorious British and Irish wildmen Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Oliver Reed and Keith Moon and their excesses and exploits.
The Animals, thanks in large part to Eric Burdon's powerful, gritty vocals, were one of the most authentic-sounding rhythm and blues revival groups of the British Invasion. The band was also one of the few First Wave acts to make a successful transition from mainstream pop to progressive rock in the late 1960s. After becoming the top pop band in their home town Newcastle in 1962-1963, The Animals relocated to London in late 1963, where club dates and television appearances led to a record contract with British Columbia. And then came "The House of the Rising Sun".
A BBC4 Documentary on the rise and fall and resurgence of the venerable LP record, and the dynamics of marketing and consumption of music as told through artists and musicians of the classic album eras of the 60s and 70s.
