This is The Shield Around the K, a documentary about K Records, the historic indie label from Olympia, Washington. I was never that familiar with Beat Happening or the other K Records bands, but this documentary confirms they’re not at all for me. It’s great that the label and many of the bands made a lasting impact on music, affected a lot of notable musicians, and are still around today making people happy. But watching this doc, I couldn’t help but hate almost every song played in it. It was so strange to listen to all these overly serious academic-types talk about the history of these bands when their end product sounds so bad to me. It’s like the Pool Jumpers trailer come to life.
While watching, I kept wondering how bad their B-sides and unreleased music must be (if there even is any), because it seems like they all thought every musical idea was a good one. Yeah, they’re probably smarter people on average, their ideas were/are progressive, and they were happy just doing it for themselves and the few that enjoyed it. So again, cool. But I’d much rather listen to the most violent, misogynistic, homophobic and ignorant rapper around if he actually sounds good, rather than smarmy intellectuals who happen to own some instruments.
PS. The one cool part in this is a piece of a Fugazi performance. It’s in part 6 and is bad ass.
reblogging so I remember to watch this later
