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Editorial Reviews
Review
An elegy for a vanishing subculture...a lively, bittersweet film that examines - with caustic humor, brutal candor, and, ultimately, great affection - why roughly 3,000 indie record stores have closed across the nation over the past decade. --Johnathan Perry, Boston Globe
Toller's film is a tour-de-force, instructing without being didactic, plucking the heart strings without being maudlin, and presenting the burgeoning crisis in music retail as a palatable, human story. --Ben Richardson, San Francisco Bay Bridged
I Need That Record! has taken a snapshot of the downward spiral of the music retail business as sales hit an all time low and offers us a look at the heartbreak and frustration that comes along with the world of iTunes, corporate radio, and chain stores. --Jason Schueppert, Ghettoblaster Magazine
Toller's film is a tour-de-force, instructing without being didactic, plucking the heart strings without being maudlin, and presenting the burgeoning crisis in music retail as a palatable, human story. --Ben Richardson, San Francisco Bay Bridged
I Need That Record! has taken a snapshot of the downward spiral of the music retail business as sales hit an all time low and offers us a look at the heartbreak and frustration that comes along with the world of iTunes, corporate radio, and chain stores. --Jason Schueppert, Ghettoblaster Magazine
Product Description
Guerilla filmmaker Brendan Toller unleashes I NEED THAT RECORD! THE DEATH (OR POSSIBLE SURVIVAL) OF THE INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE, "an elegy for a vanishing subculture...a lively, bittersweet film that examines - with caustic humor, brutal candor, and, ultimately, great affection - why roughly 3,000 indie record stores have closed across the nation over the past decade," (Johnathan Perry, Boston Globe). A tour-de-force tale of greed, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, downloading, and technological shifts in the music industry told through candid interviews, crestfallen record store owners, startling statistics, and eye-popping animation. Fat cats or our favorite record stores? You decide. Featuring- IAN MACKAYE, NOAM CHOMSKY, MIKE WATT, THURSTON MOORE, LENNY KAYE (Patti Smith), CHRIS FRANTZ (Talking Heads), GLENN BRANCA, PATTERSON HOOD (Drive By Truckers), PAT CARNEY (Black Keys) , LEGS MCNEIL, BOB GRUEN, BP HELIUM, and many indie record stores across the U.S.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By J. Jessup
Format:Amazon Instant Video
I am a vinyl junkie and visit my local indy record stores every chance I get. I had really expected a lot more from the producers of this documentary about the demise of locally owned music stores. They are so incredibily passionate it was easy to get caught up in the tide of it.
However it is so sadly and pathetically one sided that it felt incomplete despite the obvious research. There was a sense that the creators cherry picked information to bolster everything they hate about corporate America...but they never interviewed a single person or group from that side to give this important documentary more nuance and context.
Furthermore the guilt for the demise of indy stores can be easily blamed on the faceless evil corporations named in this film but one of the most glaring ommissions was the so called "music fans" themselves. Interviewing angry people as a store is closing and you are filming was a little transparent and manipulative. There should have been interviews with so called music fans to find out WHY they shop at the big box stores or download songs illegally and they should have been asked how they could reconcile doing that at the peril of the indies. The corporations are not the only guilty party in this devastating scenario.
This film only scratched the upper surface of the issue and it will be good as a discussion STARTER but it could have been so much better if the producers would have set aside their obvious bias and really presented a more well rounded and balanced view on the business of music.
However it is so sadly and pathetically one sided that it felt incomplete despite the obvious research. There was a sense that the creators cherry picked information to bolster everything they hate about corporate America...but they never interviewed a single person or group from that side to give this important documentary more nuance and context.
Furthermore the guilt for the demise of indy stores can be easily blamed on the faceless evil corporations named in this film but one of the most glaring ommissions was the so called "music fans" themselves. Interviewing angry people as a store is closing and you are filming was a little transparent and manipulative. There should have been interviews with so called music fans to find out WHY they shop at the big box stores or download songs illegally and they should have been asked how they could reconcile doing that at the peril of the indies. The corporations are not the only guilty party in this devastating scenario.
This film only scratched the upper surface of the issue and it will be good as a discussion STARTER but it could have been so much better if the producers would have set aside their obvious bias and really presented a more well rounded and balanced view on the business of music.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By btoller
Format:DVD
DVD REVIEW: I NEED THAT RECORD! Mint! Inspired, moving study of the decline and fall of America's independent music stores...
Brendan Toller's engaging essay-film is a direct response to an unexpected extinction event of the past decade: 3,000 independent record stores have closed down in the USA alone.
By launching a two-pronged attack on the problem - meeting record store employees and customers in situ, and analysing the backstory of the wholesale restructuring of the American music industry since the 1980s - he manages to provide a rounded and quietly impassioned elegy for the kind of self-supporting yet fragile communities which independent stores bring into being.
Along the way, Toller interviews various leftfield rock icons, including Fugazi/Dischord's Ian Mackaye (brutally realistic), Thurston Moore and Chris Frantz (genially articulate), Mike Watt (incoherent), Legs McNeil (cynical) and Glenn Branca (cantankerous). Lenny Kaye explains how he actually met Patti Smith while they were both browsing in their local indie record booth, and there's the unspoken reminder of how many groups have formed through in-store notices.
But the real heroes and heroines of the story are the store owners and staff, who are painted as tireless Canutes, embattled against an oceanic sea-change in the business of selling entertainment. He begins at Record Express, the Connecticut neighbourhood record emporium that Toller used to frequent. Owner Ian is clearing his racks and sweeping up, forced out due to rent hikes and dwindling business, as he explains over choked-back tears. Meanwhile, the charismatically combative Malcolm from another CT store, Danbury's Trash American Style, explains how a local print-shop owner has just elbowed them out of a 20-year lease, while his customers mourn its passing: "It's like when your best friend's moved away to a far away land, and you can't buy a plane ticket to go there," says one. It's more than just the closure of a record store, it's the dismantling of an unofficial but tangible underground society. "A part of the culture," insists Toller, "that can't easily be regained."
How did this come to pass? Toller's argument begins with President Clinton's deregulation of radio station ownership in 1996, which led to Clear Channel owning one in 10 radio stations in the US, blanketing them with homogenised playlists. Wal-Mart, he goes on to say, has become the US's biggest record retailer, with one in every five CDs sold there.
Cumulative factors such as MTV, loss-leading CD prices by big-box retailers, even the legendary superciliousness of indie-shop staff are cited as factors, along with the inevitable role of the internet. Noting that `entrepre-nerd' Michael Robertson only owned six CDs at the time he set up the controversial [...], the film acutely observes the way download culture, with its defensive firewalls of legal protection and enforcement, has promoted a widespread antagonistic attitude to record labels rather than the kind of loyalty that might have characterised earlier generations of music lovers. With digital becoming the dominant delivery model, the prospects for future record collectors is, as Thurston Moore puts it, a "lonely and boring" experience rather than one involving community and fellowship. Theoretical heavyweight Noam Chomsky is roped in to point out the similarities with the way supermarkets sucked up the customer-base of small grocery stores. "The system is designed for isolating people," he says.
Toller has worked hard to structure his film to maximise the impact of his story, and the analytical sections are seamlessly woven in among the talking heads. Matt Newman's animations provide appropriately cut'n'paste counterpoints to the footage, and a post-punk soundtrack throbs throughout (the title track, by The Tweeds, is a celebratory slice of 1980 disc-junky power-pop).
The film's subtitle is `The Death (Or Possible Survival) Of The Independent Record Store'. It might have been useful to have gleaned, from shops that are surviving, how to keep heads above water. As it is, I Need That Record! is about more than just the death of the record store. It laments the passing of a state of mind.
DVD: 5 stars
Extras: 4 stars
-- Rob Young UNCUT Magazine, August 2010
Brendan Toller's engaging essay-film is a direct response to an unexpected extinction event of the past decade: 3,000 independent record stores have closed down in the USA alone.
By launching a two-pronged attack on the problem - meeting record store employees and customers in situ, and analysing the backstory of the wholesale restructuring of the American music industry since the 1980s - he manages to provide a rounded and quietly impassioned elegy for the kind of self-supporting yet fragile communities which independent stores bring into being.
Along the way, Toller interviews various leftfield rock icons, including Fugazi/Dischord's Ian Mackaye (brutally realistic), Thurston Moore and Chris Frantz (genially articulate), Mike Watt (incoherent), Legs McNeil (cynical) and Glenn Branca (cantankerous). Lenny Kaye explains how he actually met Patti Smith while they were both browsing in their local indie record booth, and there's the unspoken reminder of how many groups have formed through in-store notices.
But the real heroes and heroines of the story are the store owners and staff, who are painted as tireless Canutes, embattled against an oceanic sea-change in the business of selling entertainment. He begins at Record Express, the Connecticut neighbourhood record emporium that Toller used to frequent. Owner Ian is clearing his racks and sweeping up, forced out due to rent hikes and dwindling business, as he explains over choked-back tears. Meanwhile, the charismatically combative Malcolm from another CT store, Danbury's Trash American Style, explains how a local print-shop owner has just elbowed them out of a 20-year lease, while his customers mourn its passing: "It's like when your best friend's moved away to a far away land, and you can't buy a plane ticket to go there," says one. It's more than just the closure of a record store, it's the dismantling of an unofficial but tangible underground society. "A part of the culture," insists Toller, "that can't easily be regained."
How did this come to pass? Toller's argument begins with President Clinton's deregulation of radio station ownership in 1996, which led to Clear Channel owning one in 10 radio stations in the US, blanketing them with homogenised playlists. Wal-Mart, he goes on to say, has become the US's biggest record retailer, with one in every five CDs sold there.
Cumulative factors such as MTV, loss-leading CD prices by big-box retailers, even the legendary superciliousness of indie-shop staff are cited as factors, along with the inevitable role of the internet. Noting that `entrepre-nerd' Michael Robertson only owned six CDs at the time he set up the controversial [...], the film acutely observes the way download culture, with its defensive firewalls of legal protection and enforcement, has promoted a widespread antagonistic attitude to record labels rather than the kind of loyalty that might have characterised earlier generations of music lovers. With digital becoming the dominant delivery model, the prospects for future record collectors is, as Thurston Moore puts it, a "lonely and boring" experience rather than one involving community and fellowship. Theoretical heavyweight Noam Chomsky is roped in to point out the similarities with the way supermarkets sucked up the customer-base of small grocery stores. "The system is designed for isolating people," he says.
Toller has worked hard to structure his film to maximise the impact of his story, and the analytical sections are seamlessly woven in among the talking heads. Matt Newman's animations provide appropriately cut'n'paste counterpoints to the footage, and a post-punk soundtrack throbs throughout (the title track, by The Tweeds, is a celebratory slice of 1980 disc-junky power-pop).
The film's subtitle is `The Death (Or Possible Survival) Of The Independent Record Store'. It might have been useful to have gleaned, from shops that are surviving, how to keep heads above water. As it is, I Need That Record! is about more than just the death of the record store. It laments the passing of a state of mind.
DVD: 5 stars
Extras: 4 stars
-- Rob Young UNCUT Magazine, August 2010
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I love music. I don't kind-of like music, don't enjoy music, don't have an interest in music. Music, for me, equals life. Period. I hate being out in public, can't stand being around people, would much, much, much rather be sitting at home with my headphones clamped over my ears... but I have relished every second of my life that was spent in a record store, and there have been many. Why was being 19 the best year of my life? Because that was the year I had the opportunity to manage an independent all-metal/hard rock record store in the sleepy community of Lawton, Oklahoma. How did I survive high school? Easy answer: the indie record shops that thrived in every Bahnhof (train station) in every small city in West Germany, where I lived at the time. How do I get the bulk of my music now? At a place that I consider to be the heart and soul of my current hometown of Austin, Texas--Encore Records on Anderson Lane. So when I found out about this independently produced documentary on the mass extermination of indie record stores across the USA, I had to watch it as soon as possible. In any documentary, the filmmaker will present the story in his own way, with his prejudices, his opinions, and a focus on subjects that he feels personally connected to. Brendan Toller--who is the sole writer, director, and editor of 'I Need That Record!'--concentrates on a small area of the USA, spending most of the film shifting between Connecticut, Washington DC, and various parts of Ohio. The film follows the owners of a few different stores that had become institutions in their respective communities, chronicling each store's final days then catching up with the owners a few months later to see how their lives had changed. It also paints a broad-stroke portrait of the music industry, offering examples of possible culprits--such as the rise and fall of MTV, the rise and fall of Napster coupled with the rise and continuing rise both of iTunes and of music downloading in general, and the manner in which corporate greed has corrupted major record labels and all commercial radio stations over the years--without actually pointing a specific finger at any specific target. Anyone who has spent time in an indie record store will enjoy the footage of the various store owners, because, let's face it, there's a certain type of person behind the counter at an indie record store, so we all have a feeling of instant comfort inside the walls of any and all such places. The celebrity interviews are well-chosen and well-placed, and this DVD is worth the cost just for the passionate insights provided by Ian MacKaye, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Legs McNeil, Lenny Kaye, Glenn Branca, Patterson Hood, Pat Carney (Black Keys), BP Helium (Of Montreal), and--interestingly, in a very, very good way--Noam Chomsky. The film runs a little under half an hour, but the DVD is packed with well over 2 hours of extras, including full interviews with those listed above. If you have ever "needed" a record, you need to own a copy of this film.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not very balanced, but still worth a viewing for record shop fans
"I Need That Record!" is a moderately interesting documentary about independent music stores, and their difficulties of late in the marketplace. Read more
Published 23 months ago by T. Scarillo
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lost Focus
Sorry to say that this is a disappointing effort here. Why was so much time spent on major labels? This was supposed to be about independent record stores. Read more
Published on March 22, 2011 by David E. Hintz
1.0 out of 5 stars
Garbage. Sheer, Utter Garbage
This movie is a pretentious load of patronizing piddle and poppycock. You have got to be kidding me. Read more
Published on January 14, 2011 by David Chris Dalton
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the...
I don't know about you, but in recent years I have become addicted to collecting vinyl records. And the reason is simple: some of the music that was recorded on vinyl will never... Read more
Published on December 6, 2010 by Carlos E. Velasquez
4.0 out of 5 stars
records
Ive been a guitarist and a music listener for more years then I can remember.This is a very,very good look at what is happening to all the small indi stores. Read more
Published on December 2, 2010 by Edwin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't blame the artists
I don't mind people beating up on record companies, but I don't think it's right to ridicule the artists who were making music in the 60's, 70's and 80's, and sold alot of... Read more
Published on November 24, 2010 by MozartFX
