Sure you gotta a lot of docs out there on bands, on musical genres, even an Album about a Song Remaining the Same. But rarely do you get a deep-dive into a piece of hardware: the Neve 8028 mixing console that was the heart and soul of so many great album recordings through the L.A. studio Sound City. The place wasn’t fancy, but it treated everybody like family, and yeah, there’s a lot of good music out of there over decades. No small feat. This is Dave Grohl’s mostly decent way in documenting the artists, the recordings, and the feelings all wrapped up into the place.
Late 60s, two guys Skeeter and Gottfried in Van Nuys start a music studio, with the foresight to invest in a good mixing board. From Neil Young to Rick Springfield to Nirvana to Slipknot and a lot of gold and platinum records in between. It’s a pretty decent look at the ups and downs through the decades of music technologies and a little look into the artists that recorded there. Even Barry Manilow? They recorded everything. And despite not exactly being the most clean upkept place, Damn. That board recorded some musical magic. Consistently.
Say whatever you will about Dave Grohl. Musically? He can play. Nirvana was a hugely popular and influential band, mainly because of their album Nevermind recorded at, yes, Sound City. So this is his tribute to that place, and in that, it’s pretty good. Grohl spent a lot of time and effort to document and interview many of bigger artists that recorded there from the 70s through the early 2000s. Pro Tools and digital recordings were the death of a lot of analog recording studios. Things changed, man. Damn. But this is also a good reason to get a lot of big musicians over to your place and reminisce and jam some new tunes the old way, on a piece of analog music history. So kudos to you for that at least, Dave. Foo? FOO?!? wahtevers. At least you get off the drumkit. sometimes. But he did capture a pretty cool piece of musical history here from a good angle. Plus put out the album Sound City: Real to Reel of the produced jam sessions. Neat!
