Check Out "It Might Get Loud"

It Might Get Loud is a pretty cool documentary if you are a music nerd. At last years Toronto International Film Festival, I checked out a press screening of the movie with my colleague (and unabashed music nerd) Johnny Hockin. It looks at three guitar players from three different eras: Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. Each musician has an interesting story to tell. Page emerged out of a musical era of acoustic hippie folk songs that soon bled into acid rock. Page of course would become the dominant guitar player of the 1970's, shredding with Led Zeppelin and recording some of the most iconic guitar riffs of all time. Then you have The Edge who arrived on the scene in the early 1980's with U2 and crafted a guitar sound, laced with echo and effects, that was truly his own. Finally you have Jack White, the vocalist/guitarist from the White Stripes, who brings an old-school style of blues guitar. White, who favors a warts-and-all approach to recording and embraces the chaos of loud, spontaneous angry music is a veritable dinosaur in an era of endless overdubs, electronic music and producers who are just as well known as the musicians. The film explores how they found their sound; their relationship with their music and their love affair with the guitar. Ultimately the movie builds to a summit of sorts where all three assemble in one room with some lights, a lot of cameras and three guitars.

I recently produced an interview with The Dead Weather and White, when asked if his time with Page influenced the blues rock on their debut album, conceded that well before he ever actually sat down in a room with him, Page's influence was all over his work. The doc is directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also directed An Inconvenient Truth (and, interestingly directed the pilot of the new Melrose Place series) and will hit theatres in a limited release this Friday.

Music nerd heaven.