Agent Palmer

If you’re ever in need of some inspiration, documentaries can be a good place to find some. Art and artist documentaries often carry the weight of the inspiration that inspired those artists and their works.

And so here are five I’ve recently watched that may be worth your time if you’re in need of a little inspiration.

Are you Canadian? Do you know The Tragically Hip? Odds are the answer to both of those questions is probably the same, but there are some of us from south of the border and from other parts of the globe who know Canadians and have been introduced secondhand to this wonderful Canadian music treasure. Now, a four-part documentary on Amazon Prime tells the story and importance of The Tragically Hip.

My friend Chris Maier, host of the Our Liner Notes podcast, invited me on the podcast to both introduce me to The Tragically Hip and as a tribute to Gord Downie…

Every week, we get up and live through the same seven days of the week.

Sure, the days themselves are never quite the same, but the names never change. It’s no wonder, then, that those days of the week are often the basis for popular music.

Tim Minchin is many things. In 2013, the University of Western Australia gave Minchin an honorary Doctor of Letters degree for his contribution to the arts recognizing his achievements as a “composer, lyricist, actor, writer, and comedian.”

That’s a lot of things, but all of that is important, so you understand that Minchin’s first serious musical album, 2020’s Apart Together, is brilliant. It’s critical to first understand that it’s not only a long time in coming: it’s unique, bibliographic, and poetic.

Squaring the Circle is a 2022 film about the story of Hipgnosis, the designers and the album covers they created.

And while you may have never heard of Hipgnosis, or their founders Po (Aubrey Powell) and Storm (Thorgerson), you have seen their work on the album covers of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Wings, Peter Gabriel, and many many more.