One of the few good things to come out of the Covid-19 outbreak was that the release date for the “All That I Can Say” film about Shannon Hood was moved up several months. The singer had recorded hundreds of hours of home videos from 1990 to 1995 which starts by showing his last day then goes back to when he started taping. It jumps from shows to many big events of that time from clips of the evening news. A few of those events included some giant fires from the Rodney King conflict, the Bill Clinton inauguration, Tanya Harding, Woodstock 94, the death of Kurt Cobain and the passing of Jerry Garcia which happened a few weeks after his daughter was born. The Blind Melon song “New Life” was about her birth. “When I’m looking into the eyes of our own baby Will it bring new life into me?” It also included lots of small events with family and friends to performances, recordings and interviews.
This Blind Melon film is a great time capsule from what should have been a much longer career ...
He was recording all these events because he didn’t have the time to sit back and take it all in. The tapes would allow him to process all the events later, it was a way to capture the fleeting moments as they were quickly passing by. I could see how one would use video as a way to decide what they may want to do moving forward in their life by processing where they had been. Someone from within the group pointed out that the generations before them wouldn’t have the option to do all these recordings due to the video camera not being widely available before. Something we perhaps don't think about in the age of camera phones. He also talked about a desire to do other things with his time besides writing songs such as making films.
Shannon also talked about a desire to do things with his time other than be a musician such as being a filmmaker. This was of course one of the reasons he was making this movie. The recordings additionally worked an outlet to capture all the fleeting moments as they were quickly passing by.
Where some other music films have the polish of being professionally produced the production here comes off as amateur but it works. I noticed more watching the second time through because perhaps someone wasn’t mic so I wouldn’t always hear part of what they had said the first time. Shannon was talking fondly about a Neil Young show he just went to and how a song like “Helpless” that was released from around 1967 still effected so much him today. The newest footage from this movie has about the same difference in time as to when that Neil Young song came out in the late 60s compared to when they were talked about it in the early 90s.
“Soup” was always a favorite album of mine growing up. I have already talked about that record too much but I really think they would have continued to go on to do a lot more great things. It incorporates instruments that few of their ilk were using at the time. The record opens and closes with big band music, banjo, kazoo, flute, mandolin. The drummer had experience in jazz so a couple his songs took it in a more diverse direction that wasn’t pursued on the first album. They were continuing to evolve with their second record just like the best bands from that time but it didn’t manage to be all that popular. 🍲 🥣 🍜 🍲 🥣 🍜 🍉
