7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is the unlikely breeding ground for some of America's most influential music. At its heart is Rick Hall, who founded FAME Studios, which gave birth to the 'Muscle Shoals Sound' and 'The Swampers'. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Gregg Allman, Clarence Carter, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Bono and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals' magnetism, mystery, and why it remains influential today.
Starring: Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys, Bono, Steve Winwood, Jimmy CliffMusic | 100% |
Documentary | 62% |
Biography | 10% |
History | 2% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Muscle Shoals is a small Alabama town on the banks of the Tennessee River. It's also the name of a musical style that you've almost certainly heard without realizing it, because the "Muscle Shoals sound" is the underpinning for so many classic rock and soul hits that the list is breathtaking. The story of Motown is well-known, and most people have at least heard of Memphis' Stax Records and Chess Studios in Chicago, which was the subject of the film Cadillac Records. Muscle Shoals's influence arguably reaches further and wider than any of these, but it remained unchronicled until director Greg "Freddy" Camalier embarked on the four-year project that became the first release of his fledgling company, Ear Goggles Productions. After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, the film was acquired by Magnolia Pictures, which released it to theaters in September and is now offering it on Blu-ray. In the meantime, the film picked up a Grammy nomination and a Golden Reel nomination from the sound editors guild for its impressive soundtrack. No one really knows why Muscle Shoals, a town of 8000 surrounded by even smaller towns, many accessible only by dirt roads, generated so much musical talent and inspiration. Camalier includes suggestions from various interview subjects about the spirts of the area's original Native American inhabitants, the nearby river's mystical power, "fields of energy" and even practical analysis of the cross-cultural ferment among musical styles (gospel, hillybilly, bluegrass). In the end, though, the mystery remains, along with the cosmic joke that some of the greatest classics of American R&B—including Aretha Franklin's "Respect", Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally", Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman"—had their distinctively funky instrumentation supplied by an anonymous band of studio players from Muscle Shoals, nearly all of whom were, as one record executive put it, "mighty pale".
♪ Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers ♬
Shot on Red by Anthony Arendt, the virtual camera operator on Avatar, Muscle Shoals features spectacular location photography intended to make the town and its riverside environs as inviting and mysterious as possible. This footage has been skillfully interwoven with the contemporary interviews, which have been shot all over the country, sometimes in hotel rooms, sometimes in storied locations like the Electric Ladyland Studio in New York City, and of course at the FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio where so much musical history was made. A 16mm Swedish documentary provides historical footage of Hall and the Swampers at work, and vintage photographs and album covers have been collected from diverse sources and scanned at high quality. Digitally edited and color-corrected on a digital intermediate, the results as presented on Magnolia's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray are excellent. In the contemporary sequences, detail and sharpness are superb, whether one is looking at ripe cotton buds, a field of bright yellow sunflowers or the craggy and expressive face of Rick Hall telling one of his many yarns. The vintage film and home movies look about as good as can be expected, and the photographs translate to the screen with astonishing clarity—a tribute, among other things, to the Blu-ray's solid blacks and fine delineations of shades of gray. The greens of the surrounding countryside and the various shades of the interview locales (shades of red and orange seem to be a favorite color choice) provide visual stimulation and variety. Muscle Shoals may not sound like an inherently visual film, but Camalier's commentary makes it clear that he went to great lengths to frame shots and capture material that would make the film as interesting to watch as it is to hear. The average bitrate of 17.99 Mbps is low by Magnolia's standards, but the numerous talking head shots no doubt made the compressionist's job easier, and in any case Red footage compresses well. Artifacts were not an issue.
In an ironic twist, a film that celebrates the glory days of vinyl records and analog recording has a superb digital soundtrack, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. The track has the usual front-oriented quality of a documentary, but because it is so heavily dominated by musical selections, the sense of stereo separation is much stronger than one usual encounters in such mixes. While the voices of the interview subjects remain firmly anchored to the center, the songs they're discussing ring out from the front left and right with a clarity and focus you may never have heard before. Since bass and bass drums were an important component of the Muscle Shoals sound, the low frequency extension is deep but tightly focused; there is no subsonic rumbling here. The rear channels have been subtly employed to "open up" the original stereo recordings, but without calling attention to themselves. Some of the outdoor scenes, especially those involving the Tennessee River and nearby swamp lands, have sounds of rushing water subtly woven into the background. All of this mixing has been done with a careful eye and ear toward the film's dramatic momentum, so that the soundtrack keeps pulling the story of Muscle Shoals forward, until the credit scroll, which is accompanied by the full-length version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", which immortalized the town and the Swampers in its lyrics.
Rick Hall's story is unique, and so is that of the Swampers and all the musicians who created the Muscle Shoals sound. Camalier's documentary has been advertised, understandably, with the names of the famous musicians being interviewed, but the most memorable characters are the ones you meet for the first time: the musicians, songwriters and producers who did it not for money and fame (though some earned a good living and a few, like Spooner Oldham, even became well-known, at least among their peers), but for love of the music itself. Muscle Shoals can't explain why so many of them came from this one tiny region in Alabama, but the film is a fitting testament to their accomplishments. Highly recommended.
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