Earlier this year, my friend Amanda and I ambled down to the Gateway Film Center on the Ohio State campus to see Sound City, the Dave-Grohl-directed ode to a Los Angeles recording studio and its history. Gateway’s a great place to see a movie because all the people there are half my age (and two-thirds of Amanda’s) and plus you can order a double shot of vodka there. Good times.
As documentaries go, Sound City is pretty okay-ish. If you have a decent background in rock history, you’ll shake your head at some of it — as an example, a major percentage of the film is devoted to Fleetwood Mac’s decision to record their Buckingham/Nicks reboot record there, but the facts that the Mac hated the place and that they consciously chose the Record Plant for the considerably better Rumours is conveniently forgotten. But there’s plenty of interesting footage and interviews and performance footage.
Still, the longer I sat there with my vodka in hand, the more something bothered me — and it wasn’t until I was firing up the 993 to exit the parking garage (after a sobering interval, mais bien sur) that I realized what that something was.
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