Concert films help please!

April 10, 2006 8:31 AM

Movies wanted to show before gigs.

I help run a club night, which puts on bands and DJ's, mainly noisy and odd stuff. What we have decided to do is to show movies before the night gets started, and I was opening up the offer to Metafilter to help choose the films.

What we are looking for are films with a vague musical theme, or other weird and wonderful oddities that would go down well with our crowd.

Here are my few but the more the merrier:
The Filth And The Fury
Scratch(Hip Hop Documentary)
Help!
Wattstax
Dig
Harder They Come
Dance Craze
Lenigrad Cowboys Go America
Wave Twisters

Thanks

posted by djstig to media & arts (31 comments total)

What about Microcosmos? It's just super close up bugs walking around. Might creep some people out, or look cool with loud music.
posted by mathowie at 8:37 AM on April 10, 2006

East Side Story
posted by missmerrymack at 8:39 AM on April 10, 2006

Rock 'n Roll High School
posted by maxreax at 8:40 AM on April 10, 2006

Afropunk
posted by amro at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2006

Oh yeah I've still not seen that, but thats more of a back drop type of thing. We are after films to show to people before the music gets going.
posted by djstig at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2006

djstig, you're talking about Microcosmos, and not the other suggestions, right?
posted by amro at 8:46 AM on April 10, 2006

Yes amro I was, stupid slow fingers
posted by djstig at 8:49 AM on April 10, 2006

My friend's synthpop group would open shows with Star Crash.
posted by johngoren at 9:17 AM on April 10, 2006

Not always necessarily music related, but "how-to" movies are always fun and often strange - a search for "how to" at archive.org works pretty well.
(How to survive a zombie epidemic!)
posted by soplerfo at 9:29 AM on April 10, 2006

1991: The Year that Punk Broke. Lots of prime footage from Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Ramones and yes, Nirvana.
posted by Heminator at 9:37 AM on April 10, 2006

West Way to the World
posted by drezdn at 9:41 AM on April 10, 2006

A Great Day in Turntablism
D-Styles: A Night at the Knitting Factory
Wild Style
Krush Groove
Who's the Man?
The Show
Rhyme and Reason
Streets is Watching
Fade to Black
Some Kind of Monster
Rockers
Our Latin Thing
Konkombe
posted by box at 9:45 AM on April 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
The Last Waltz
Don't Look Back
This is Spinal Tap
Fear of a Black Hat
CB4
Music is the Weapon
Scratch: All the Way Live
posted by box at 9:47 AM on April 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Gimme Shelter
Rock 'n' Roll Circus
Cocksucker Blues
Decline of Western Civilization, pts 1 and 2
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
posted by box at 9:50 AM on April 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Fugazi's Instrument would be a good choice, too. Or Lightning Bolt's The Power of Salad.
posted by macdara at 10:07 AM on April 10, 2006

Be all post-ironic and show Groove.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:12 AM on April 10, 2006

Head.
posted by klangklangston at 10:19 AM on April 10, 2006

Heavy Metal

Less Music relate but cool
Repoman
Blues Brothers

Not really music related at all, but great imagery
Metropolis
Blade Runner
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Vampire Hunter D

And just because it's something i would get a kick out of seeing
March of the Penguins
posted by quin at 10:25 AM on April 10, 2006

Also, if you want to go for a sort-of off kilter feel, consider obtaining some old cold war era Civil Defense videos. Maybe cut together with riot footage and video of kittens playing.

Because it's the kind of thing you would see in old industrial videos. (well, maybe not the kittens playing, but that would be a great/ odd addition.)
posted by quin at 10:30 AM on April 10, 2006

Downtown 81
Lost & Found Video Night Vol. 4: The All Music Edition has some amazing performances.
Breakdance Mania!
The Birth of Electronic Music
Soundtrack to Hell
Satan rir media

My 2 cents - Unless you're doing presentations, people generally don't pay attention to movies in clubs. If I wanted to watch a documentary, I'd be at home. I'd just try and stick to showing concert footage. You can get live concerts on DVD of just about any band that ever existed. But you know this. Just a suggestion, of course.
posted by hellbient at 10:33 AM on April 10, 2006

TMBG do something similar between their opening act and when they actually take the stage. Usually it's out of copyright stuff: mostly cartoons, b-grade scifi, and educational films.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:33 AM on April 10, 2006

This is definitely a job for the Prelinger Archives.
posted by jjg at 11:00 AM on April 10, 2006

I went to a CD launch party for the band Tripping Daisy once, and they played The Powers of Ten beforehand, which was awesome. It's a short, though.
posted by sugarfish at 11:01 AM on April 10, 2006

If you want to go retro, both Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo are hard to beat. Lots of break dance "fighting", cheesy lines and appearances by Ice-T.
posted by Sloben at 11:04 AM on April 10, 2006

The Forbidden Zone
Liquid Sky
Cool As Ice
Sayadian's Dr. Caligari
posted by zonkout at 11:05 AM on April 10, 2006

Urgh! A Music War
posted by zonkout at 11:07 AM on April 10, 2006

Anything reissued by Something Weird Video.
posted by zonkout at 11:08 AM on April 10, 2006

Since you already have Scratch on the list, I would totally recommend Style Wars as well. About grafitti mainly, but also more generally about hip-hop culture circa 1982.
posted by jrb223 at 11:50 AM on April 10, 2006

Trust me, Liquid Sky would be the best choice you could go with though it might make more sense just viewed in chunks.
posted by drezdn at 8:03 PM on April 10, 2006

I'll put in for Style Wars too.

Also:
Okie Noodling
A documentary on the fine art of catching fish with your bare hands, soundtracked by the Flaming Lips.

Off The Charts
Another documentary, this one about the people who write and the people who record American Song Poems.

The Directors Label music video compilations
I'll vouch for the Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry collections.

Revenge of the Robots
A tour documentary from hip-hop label DefinitiveJux. (RJD2, El-P, Mr. Lif, etc.)
posted by carsonb at 9:40 PM on April 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

A few more suggestions:

• Decasia


• Grey Gardens


• Pink Flamingos (you can't beat Divine eating dog poo!) or Female Trouble


• Some Bunuel shorts would be good clean Surrealist fun too: Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or

posted by jack_mo at 12:41 PM on April 11, 2006