Where were you during the Super Bowl? Large sectors of less-than football-obsessed people in town were drawn away from the Big Game by various offerings on day four of SBIFF. “They have Tom Brady,” quipped Michael Albright, the festival’s program director, at the Lobero yesterday, around the time of the Bowl’s second quarter. “We’ve got David Crosby and Aretha Franklin at the Lobero Theatre!”
To back up a bit, Albright was referring to the double-header of music documentaries at the Lobero, as part of the “Cinesonic” sidebar of music-oriented docs he created when joining the festival eight years ago. Both of Sunday’s offerings — David Crosby: Remember My Name, and the revived live filming of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 gospel recording, Amazing Grace — were excellent, in their own special ways. “Croz,” now 76 and in the house for the screening, spoke volumes in his film while telling his tale and trying to make sense and amends for his famously boorish behavior over his long career; Aretha said nothing, yet spoke ecstatic volumes with her unparalleled soul queenly vocal powers as a singer.
Added site and city-based intrigue made for a natural byproduct of the surprisingly candid and self-revelatory Crosby doc. After all, he spent time growing up in the area (and as he repeatedly boasts “got kicked out of every school here”), has lived in the Santa Ynez Valley with his wife, Jan, and family for many years, and started his long association with the Lobero at age 17. Most recently, he brought his fine group of gifted musicians half his age, Lighthouse, to a concert at the Lobero last year, demonstrating Crosby’s remarkable late-breaking revival of creative energies.