The Elephant 6 Recording Company, 2022, dir. Chad Stockfleth. Sound Unseen screening at St. Anthony Main, Saturday, November 12.

I know very little about the indie record label Elephant 6, but back in the day I did enjoy Neutral Milk Hotel’s legendary album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. That’s the full extent of my knowledge of that label’s releases, but despite that I went with my pal Mike and his wife, Tammy, and stepson Jackson to see the film at the Sound Unseen music and movie festival last Saturday. It’s great to check out stuff you wouldn’t normally hit on your own.

The movie, simply titled The Elephant 6 Recording Company, apparently took 10 years to make, and in my mind I wish that other rock documentarians would look at it and notice how well it works as a silly, fun, appreciative look at this record label and its many successes. There is no narrative slammed onto the story, such as it is, but a lot of music, good interviews in weird places, art design, great covers and 45s, a look at strange equipment and a lot of time spent in the run-down homes people crashed in back when they were young and didn’t mind falling asleep drunk under a leaky sink in a laundry room. It’s fabulous, entertaining and made me want to look up more of the music they released. What more do you want in a rock doc?

Nothing! And that’s all I need to say about The Elephant 6 Recording Company, because I don’t think rock documentaries hold up well to criticism. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re different. But back when I worked at the Trylon, I would sometimes take a shift of the regular Sound Unseen monthly screening. I did this in order to help out, but honestly I grabbed the gig because I absolutely loved projecting them. People freak out over rock documentaries! I mean, they just go nuts and they are so very, very happy. Rock documentaries aren’t about just seeing a movie. In fact, it’s hardly about learning something new. Usually, documentaries are there to give you information about something you never knew before, or to deepen your understanding of something, like a writer or a political movement, or the making of a favorite film. I’m sure the directors of rock documentaries might feel they’re providing the same service. From what I’ve seen, they typically don’t, their movies being no more than serviceable. You have exceptions–people tell me Peter Jackson’s Beatles doc enlightened even the most thorough Fab Four fan, and The Elephant 6 movie had a ton of great stuff, though I really knew nothing about it. For the most part, however, rock docs are about getting together in a place with other fans of the same band or, in this case, label, and sharing your love for the music. That’s fucking it. And it’s so magical. It doesn’t matter that the movie is almost following the same recipe–a few talking heads, still pictures of the band recording, playing, being cool, being drunk, and then hopefully great footage of live concerts through the years and you have an auditorium that is bouncing off the walls with joy.

These shows typically used to sell out, and I screened films covering the Kinks, Alice Cooper, Mott the Hoople, Ginger Baker, Rick Springfield and many, many more. At every one of these screenings folks would gather before the flick to show off the memorabilia they’d brought, and talk about this show or that they’d enjoyed years back (or recently), proudly display their worn concert shirt, and then head into the movie and just scream and have a blast. Afterwards, they were the definition of ebullient. Years ago, after the Mott the Hoople doc, I had shooed everyone out, locked up, and was taking out the trash out when I passed four older men who were animated as hell, air guitaring and drumming and carrying on. When I came back from dumping the trash, they were still frenzied, until one guy shouted, “We gotta get the band back together!” and they all cheered. That just made my night. It probably made my year.

It wasn’t quite that frenzied at the Elephant 6 screening, in part because I think the energy for Mott the Hoople is decidedly different for the label that brought us The Apples in Stereo. But it did make me think I should try to figure out a way to be more involved with Sound Unseen, because working with movies is not always about showing off movies you think are great, but bringing joy to people regardless of whether or not you like the film or not (this is the story of White Christmas every year at the Heights, to be honest). In the case of rock documentaries, there is a special kind of joy I do think emanates more from people’s love of music than any other art. I know of no other cinematic confection that does this to the degree that music documentaries do–and I don’t particularly enjoy them, myself. In fact, I typically dislike them thoroughly. But the way the world is now, I think I need to be in the presence of these happy people, and their manic energy, the way some folks need booze or edibles.