SCREENING NOVEMBER 12 at 7:15 PM
Dan Donahue of the band Great Lakes will be in attendance for a post screening Q&A
About the film
The Elephant 6 Recording Co is the intimate and inspiring inside story of a unique 1990s musical scene born of a circle of misfit friends in small college towns in the South.
Around 1985 a group of Ruston, Louisiana area high schoolers began experimenting with whatever random instruments and gear they could lay their hands on. Their musical coming of age coincided with the new consumer availability of 4 track home recording technology and cassette tapes. Sharing like-minded sensibilities, influenced by past sounds and psychedelia, and with little to distract them, their efforts to create whole new musical worlds became the bands the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples In Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel.
As they ambitiously matured their orchestral and engineering visions, they moved to other small college towns: Denver, Colorado and Athens, Georgia. Charting their artistic growth, the story hones closely to the founding members’ essential values and aesthetic sensibility, capturing the spontaneity of a multi disciplinary artistic scene in Athens that thrived in a bygone era of low rent and communal living. While the collective grew to a natural breaking point, its founding members overcame obstacles and remained closely bonded, reuniting for tours and still collaborating today.
The Elephant 6 Recording Co not only provides insights into a revolutionary era of popular independent music in America but also celebrates an enduring DIY spirit in music-making that continues to this day.