Brilliantly simple and simply brilliant.
That's my take on "Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came To Dingle," the recently-aired documentary about Amy Winehouse's performance at the tiny St. James Church in remote Dingle (the western most point in Ireland) in 2006.
While there's amazing footage of her intimate, unplugged gig for 80 lucky punters, the interviews with Amy and local organisers were for me, the best thing about this doco gem.
This was Amy before Back to Black mega-stardom. Throughout the interview segments, she's relaxed, charming and basically, a right laugh. Someone you'd love to call a friend or best mate, especially if you love music. God, her record collection must have been amazing.
Her musical education began with Kylie and Madonna, moved onto R&B and hip and hop, included a bit grunge, and always, always, a huge amount of jazz.
She waxes lyrical about gospel and jazz "hall of famers" such as Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughn, Diana Washington, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk. There's also footage of modern jazz legend, Carleen Anderson singing a beautiful "Don't Look Back in Anger" (yes, the Oasis song) cover.
Amy was equally enamored by the drama queen power pop tunes sung by 60s girl groups, The Shangri-Las, The Ronettes and The Crystals. She of course, had drama queen tendencies of her own. As revealed in the film, marathon binge drinking sessions, listening to the Shangri-Las on repeat and eating KFC for days was one of her post "romance gone bad" coping mechanism" strategies.
For me, this was close to a perfect music doco. The length was just right (just under an hour), the live music bits were moving, poignant, and bloody beautiful and Amy was candid, open, honest and being herself. In addition, it highlighted terrific, and often very funny stories from the gig organisers, and best of all there were no weighty, lofty, ernest "state of the rock nation-like" commentaries from "rock legend" talking heads.
More info here on the BBC site
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