Customer Reviews

Fuzz: The Sound That Revolutionized the World

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This film is worth seeing if only for Bjorn Juhl and David Main's apprearances. Actually the whole cast of characters are extremely interesting, I enjoyed it. I thought it would be the history of the fuzz pedal and chronicle it's existance from the 1st Gibson fuzztone through the tonebenders, fuzzfaces, big muff's ETC, but what really takes place is a seemingly random sequence of interviews with pedalmakers and players. I'm glad someone made this film and that I bought it.

This is a fun and entertaining movie about guitar effects pedals though mostly FUZZ boxes. While I do really like the movie and have watched it several time it suffers greatly from poor editing and planning. It would have been better to have interviews of the participants followed by demonstrations of his products. It really would have been nice if there was a bonus clip where they showed all the pedal demos one after another.

This a very well-constructed video that is mostly interviews with pedal builders/designers but also provides demonstrations of most of the pedals discussed. There are also several interviews with musicians who use the different products. The DVD is very entertaining and I highly recommend the video to any guitar effects pedal nerd.

I can attest to how these small (usually) boxes that make strange sounds can be very alluring and almost addicting. So it's no surprise that someone decided to make a DVD of these otherworldly devices.

This DVD is not a chronological history of fuzz tones. Instead it is a string of interviews with musicians, fuzz designers and other denizens of the music business. The director demonstrates some of the pedals, sometimes in an odd outfit of shorts and dress shoes, though the clips do not always correspond to the pedals being discussed.

But don't let any of that deter you from checking this thing out. The only thing more fun than this DVD is plugging in and playing one of these things. THe Fuzz tone sound is one of the first and most fun of the effects pedals. Garage bands in the 60's wore out thousands of Gibson Maestro, Univox and Mosrite fuzzes. And, Hendrix forever popularized the Fuzz Face. Many of the current fuzzes are variations of these originals, though some attempt to go way beyond these classic sounds.

One of the interviewees, Jack Waterson, owner of Future Music, L.A., puts in all into perspective when he says that the design of these boxes is not high end engineering but alchemy and that musicians should rely on practice and discipline to achieve their unique sound. But, there is no denying that the disturbing sound of fuzz tones are crazy fun and have been undermining the sound of popular music for the past 40 plus years.

This is an incoherent and unfocused documentary on guitar pedals. There are a lot of 'kinda sorta' related interviews patched together with abrupt and frequent topic changes. Lots of interesting people do make an appearance (a little bit of Billy Gibbons WHO CURIOUSLY DOES NOT PLAY ANY GUITAR ON THE VIDEO, Electro Harmonix, Analogman, etc.). There isn't much demo'ing of the pedals, its mainly snippets of disjointed conversations among pedal makers and random musicians. It doesn't focus on any one topic (history, technology, evoloution of fuzz pedals), it is literally random interviews patched together. This was interesting for me ONLY because I am so hardcore about guitar pedals, but this movie could have been made SO much better. I would have loved to have had an explanation of the circuit, the story of the evolution of the fuzz/overdrive sound (with old clips of ppl like Hendrix or Clapton playing them), and more extensive demo'ing of pedals. Instead, there are a lot of quirky & useless conversations (like Mike Matthews introducing all the foreign women who assemble his Electro Harmonix stuff). I wouldnt advise putting forth a lot of time, effort or money to get a copy of this.

If you are into pedals as I am, you will be wanting to lay your hands on this. I wish they would do another one of just Mike Matthews telling his stories. I like that it shows who some of the so called boutique pedal builders are, how they started and just how small an operation some of the actually are. I hope there will be more documentaries on all sorts of equipment. This is a fun little DVD.

I was surprized that this did not suck and that it was a pretty good movie only problem i have is it seems someone is a electro harmonix fan and there in this movie more than others that deserve to be there and there was a lack of some classic fuzz pedals. other than that its great