Synopsis
A documentary that reveals how a forgotten record by the Incredible Bongo Band helped cement the foundation of hip hop when DJ Herc extended its percussion by playing them back to back, creating an anthem on the streets of the Bronx.
SampleThis
2013 Directed by Dan Forrer
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One time, probably while stoned, I was told an extremely elaborate and interwoven story about the Beatles, The Beach Boys, Roman Polanski, The Wrecking Crew, Charles Manson and the Dakota building. It didn't really make much sense or go anywhere but it was kinda cool and featured a ton of people I've always been interested in. That's exactly like what this documentary is.
The first thing I heard when I started this was Gene Simmons voice and I was like "Strike one!". Next came Afrika Bambaataa who has recently been dismissed as the head of the Zulu Nation because of serious sexual abuse allegations, "Strike two". Then it claims that the Incredible Bongo Band's track Apache is the most important…
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There are two documentaries wrestling for screen time here. One is a respectful retelling of how a cynically made novelty record helped inspire a cultural movement. The other is a boring-as-all-shit history lesson that casts its narrative net too far and wide to the point of over-reaching.
I was looking for an engaging documentary to show my students but if I played them this, they'd probably stab me repeatedly about the face and neck.
Unfocussed, uneven and uncool.
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There are good breakbeats, great breakbeats and then there is Apache. The Incredible Bongo Band - although never really an official band, more a group of session players – inadvertently laid down foundations for the music element of hip-hop culture that went on to embrace it. For some bizarre reason, Gene Simmons is given the job of narrating his way through tenuous links from Robert Kennedy and Charles Manson to Kool Herc and Amy Winehouse. With Simmons coming out with statements like "I am looking forward to the death of rap," a few months back, times must’ve been really hard when he was offered this gig.
The success of the band and Michael Viner, the man who brought the musicians…
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This is one pendantic motherfuckin' documentary. The first half hour is complete bullshit. Do I care if the bass player for the Incredible Bongo Band fucked some of the Manson girls? No. I do not.
Eventually they get around to how Kool Herc discovered Apache and it became the national anthem of hip-hop. I would have loved the hell out of this documentary if it were about that..in fact that is what I thought I was getting into here.
But no.
We get a brief look at early hip-hop, and then we get back to the boring stuff about the band's second album and how it was promoted. Yawn.
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This is the movie version of a Wikipedia hole or long, meandering conversation with a friend. It's all over the place, and you constantly find yourself wondering how you got onto the topic of underwater basket weaving, but in the end you have to admit that you enjoyed yourself, and learned some things along the way.
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"Sample This" is a documentary about a colossally influential piece of music; 1973's "Apache" by Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band - a band of session musicians put together to record songs to supplement a b-movie soundtrack.
It would be fascinating stuff, but the execution is pretty uneven and overblown and the narration is poorly written. The narrator is none other than KISS' Gene Simmons (!) which only adds to the overblowing.
The pseudo-celeb producer behind the band, Michael Viner, is too much of a dodgy sounding enigma to be the main character on whom we spend so much time in this documentary - and it kinda sounds like his story is sugar coated with too many questions left unanswered or… -
This is what happens when you make a documentary about a great subject that doesn't have a good story to go with it.
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The most sampled break in music history gets a well deserved documentary from Dan Forrer who in Sample This covers nearly every angle of how the Incredible Bongo Band’s forgotten record was made. Forrer digs deep into the research and reveals everything from how producer Michael Viner came up with the idea, how the band was brought together, history on all the players and most importantly, how the little record that could was discovered and, nearly overnight, became a sensation.
Forrer digs up old band members, musical luminaries and Gene Simmons to narrate this trip through music history.
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Hot marketing take: This needs to be re-released under a different name. The title is objectively bad, come on.
Cheezy, cheery, slick narration and framing. But underneath it's an exhaustively researched, multidisciplinary exegesis on a single topic: "Apache". Along the way, RFK appears, and it's convincingly argued that he played an indirect yet important role in getting this particular song made. Mostly by getting killed.
A well-thought-out tapestry of a story backed by deep fieldwork
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Great documentary about a band that I hadn't heard of until very recently. Fascinating and a times tragic story. The music is brill too.
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This traces roots of the song Apache. I always find music and song stories interesting so I found it to be a fun movie. It’s always enjoyable to hear about the beginnings of hip hop.