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LINDA RONSTADT: The Sound of My Voice

Every year, I take a look at the Tribeca Film Festival programming guide and find a few films which stand out as “must-see.” It’s a sure bet that a documentary about one of my favorite vocalists would be on the list.

LINDA RONSTADT: The Sound of My Voice, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman allows Ronstadt to tell the story of her life in her own voice. As I mentioned in my review of Rocketman (which yes, is a feature, so not exactly the same), autobiographies on screen can provide a mixed result in terms of my overall satisfaction. The Sound of My Voice did end up tipping in the favorable column however. Allow me to elaborate.

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It’s a Fyre, Y’All (Netflix Documentary Edition)

I remember almost as if it were yesterday. It was late April 2017 – as I am apt to do on any given day, I found myself thumbing through my multiple social media accounts, check checking up on the latest news.

I don’t recall exactly at what time, but suddenly my various feeds were inundated with a slew of posts talking about the disaster that was taking place down in the Bahamas; something called the “Frye” Festival? Yeah, I thought it was a festival sponsored by one of my favorite leather goods brands. My bad.

Of course I was soon corrected – it was the FYRE Festival which, pun intended, was going up in flames. Posts containing real-time photos of cheese sandwiches and disaster relief tents filled my head. What exactly was going on? Who is involved/responsible for this mess? Well in a matter of days, most of my “burning” questions would be answered. In the immediate wake of this story dropping, I am (almost) embarrassed to say that I was filled with a great deal of bemusement. My fascination with the events of the Fyre Festival were punctuated by moments when, while chatting with friends, I would find myself crying with laughter at the poor folks who got duped into paying for a “luxury festival experience” on a (not) private island in The Bahamas.

The Netflix original documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, looks back on those harrowing days as well as the calamitous lead up to the event which reverberated through social media for days.

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The Public Image is Rotten (2018)

I entered The Public Image is Rotten, a portrait of Sex Pistols’ frontman Johnny Rotten (John Lydon), not knowing exactly what to expect. Frankly, it is how I approach all musical documentaries – I feel like the less one knows about the subject the better. In the past, this exercise has served me well – that is watching documentaries on folks I may not know and whose music I cannot pretend to listen to. It is a fun project, a musical journey of sorts in which I venture into a musical arena I may not have otherwise explored.

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