Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

hyped garbage

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

While we do get to hear from a number of musicians (Billy Gibbons, J. Mascis, Peter Frampton), this doc is mostly about music gearheads. The subject of pedals and the sounds they produce should be of interest to anyone who listens to rock, but I have 2 problems with the film.First problem - It is too much of a geek-fest for the average viewer. I am a lifelong lover of this music, but it was too geeky for me. All the gadgets and their sounds - or, tones, as is pointed out - gets to be too much. 90 minutes on this narrow a subject is simply too specific.Bigger problem - We get almost no context. As a fan of Dinosaur Jr., Wolfmother, ZZ, and JSBX, I was in full buy-in mode when these musicians spoke. But as a non-gearhead, the geek-speak from everyone else was too much. I understand the difficulty of securing song rights for an independent film like this, but without the music the movie has missed out on its whole reason to exist.Rock n roll has a deep and rich history with fuzz and distortion, going back to the early 50's. We get none of it. Talk of Hendrix and other assorted forebears, but no Sound. If you dig music history, fuzzed-out rock, and the electronics end of sound, then you may like this. I wanted to like it, but was unable.

I'm surprised that there aren't more reviews of this movie as, though it's certainly a low- budget/amateur production, it rarely fails to be interesting. Ostensibly about fuzz pedals - the rectangular electronic boxes guitarists use to add "fuzz" (a distorted tone) to their sound, it quickly reveals itself as a socio-cultural study. The viewer might be expecting simply a basic explanation of the fuzzbox and interviews with popular guitarists interspersed with a history of the device (popularized by Hendrix, etc.). However, this film has deeper ambitions as it examines the motivations not only of those attracted to these tools, but also the inspirations and character of the creators of the devices. It is these designers that are the focus of the film. The virtual flip side of the "cool", popular guitarist with a strong image on stage, this crew is a decidedly uncool misfit group of gearhead geeks and hippie/drug burnouts. The well-known guitarists that are interviewed are much closer in character to the effects designers than movie stars: Dinosaur Jr.s J. Mascis displays his Fuzzbox collection sitting unused in his closet, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons entertains with tales of chaining effects together, and Shellac's Steve Albini is a major electronics nut himself, known for running a studio and collecting obscure microphones (to be fair, however, Albini appears to be one of the few electronics people who actually considers music/sound when utilizing electronics - the film shows many boutique pedal designers are simply operating using a hit or miss, I'll-try-anything- once method). In the end, no-one is spared. Many pedal purchasers are shown to be either crass manipulators, buying a "boutique" (homemade by one or two people) pedal solely with the purpose of reselling it for 300%+ on ebay or poor players looking for a magic fix to their crappy playing. The guitarists reveal their basement/boy roots, geeking out over the effects box art, transistors used within, or even the knobs. The effects box creator guys - and they are all guys, basically - don't appear to be motivated by either money or fame. It's unclear if some of the cloners (those who copy the schematics of popular devices) are even musicians or know about how electronics affect sound themselves. They reveal too much about what the effect means to them simply by naming them: Electric Mistress. Fuzz. Box. Screamer. Etc. Albini displays some of the attitude that may have enabled him to rise above these roots when he is asked about one particularly rare pedal: "Oh, I'd miss it if it were lost, but I wouldn't miss it as much as, say, my penis".