Review of I Need That Record! (2008) by Eric B — 12 Nov 2011

This short documentary is a solid, well-intentioned outline of the basic problems facing today's independent record-store owner. And someone (OK, his name is Matt Newman) had a lot of fun assembling dizzy, cut-out animations from album artwork and the like. I do have some quibbles about the film, however. Somewhere around the middle, the narrative strays too far into overall "death of the record industry" issues. A bit too much time spent on file-sharing and mp3s -- and some of the statistics are already badly out of date. I wanted a steadier focus on these wonderful record stores, their employees and patrons. And why weren't any collector nerds interviewed in depth? Instead we get soundbites from standard figures like Thurston Moore, Lenny Kaye, Ian MacKaye, Bob Gruen and Legs McNeil who always seem to turn up in this sort of film. Seeing these names, you'll also sense how slanted the content is toward indie rock and the CBGB's mindset. Record hounds go for jazz, country, doo-wop, classical, prog and more, but you would never know from this movie. It's all about Pavement fans and their requisite hipster T-shirts. Admittedly, I'm closest to that orientation myself, but I'm still interested in hearing about a wider range of music lovers.

I think the smart-ass, scripted segment with the elitist record clerk should have been scrapped (either discuss the issue seriously or just leave it out), and ironically inserting "square" clips of '50s-era television is kind of a punk-rock clichà (C) at this point. But the film does make a good case for a sadly vanishing institution.