L' écho de Laurel Canyon

Unless you really want to see Jakob Dylan's monotonous voice singing all the classic 60's songs, then you're better off fast forwarding every time he's on screen and just watching the archival stuff. Better yet, find someone else to make this movie about the scene and not have a lame concert of knock offs. It has some merit though, it'll make you go back and re-listen to all that great music by the original artists!

Sorry but it seems like there wasn't enough good footage available so they decided to give Jakob Dylan the starring role, even though he wasn't born until 1969. This was a very disappointing movie, as I thought it would have way more story telling about what Laurel Canyon must have been like in the 60's. There was some of that, but generally speaking, I feel like I was sold a bill of goods here...

Film was interesting strictly from an anecdotal point of view. Some interesting tidbits, archival footage and new versions of the old songs. Jakob Dylan was too fawning and not enough probing with his questions and the group session with Beck, Regina Spektor and Cat Power added nothing to the proceedings. As a result the doc lost some of it's focus at time. Also, can someone tell me how the song 12:30 (Young Girls Coming To the Canyon)! was not included either in the film or over the closing credits. I mean, come on!

If I hadn't read so many rave reviews I might not have been disappointed. But I did, and I was. The only person who shoud be unabashedly in love with this movie is John Hall.

Put it this way. If you're the sort of person who believes older is always better and the sequel never equals the original, Echo In The Canyon will not change your mind.

The celebrity cast speaks for itself. There is the heartbreaking charm of Tom Petty and suprising late in life wisdom from David Crosby. But the film seems to be about a group of young performers trying to capture what it was like, based in part on the movie Model Shop. Seriously. It could be worse; someday people will study City Of Industry or Miracle Mile as realistic documents of what L.A. was like.

There are brief snippets of vintage performances and some are thrilling. Like Buffalo Springfield doing a seque from For What It's Worth to Mr. Soul. But the movie works it's way toward a tribute concert and unfortunately, none of the rehearsals or performances can match, let alone improve on, the originals. And that makes the whole thing kind of melancholy.

This is a story of what happened in Laurel Canyon in the 60's and it is a must for any lovers of the music coming out of the west coast that fits in well with the documentary about the Wrecking Crew. But in order to hear the amazing stories about the cross pollination, you have to put up with Jakob Dylan, who not only seems to have no chemistry with the people he is interviewing, to the point where you get the idea that the questions were coming from offscreen, but seems to think we need to hear his take on the songs. I thought it was amazingly self indulgent. I don't know if this was done because the producers couldn't get the original songs, did not have enough original interview material or if Jakob thinks he is better than them, but I'm not interested in his music making process. I want the stories not recreations.