Rating: NNN
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Rock critics have overlooked the history of dance music for most of the last 30 years, and while there are a few documentaries out there that give a good overall view of how the culture progressed and grew into such a huge underground movement, its early origins are still shrouded in mystery and misinformation.
Maestro will disappoint you if you’re looking for the big picture of dance music, and will probably confuse you if you don’t already have a decent grounding in the basic history. For those of us nerds who’ve spent too much of our lives looking for the real story, there isn’t any new earth-shattering information here, but the disc does succeed as an emotionally stirring look at the early days of the NYC underground.
The DVD version of the film includes new (and extremely rare) footage of the Paradise Garage, and the bonus disc fills in many of the gaps, particularly about the relation between the Chicago and NYC scenes. It’s not a perfect film by far, but it’s obviously a labour of love, and paints a vivid picture of how important these clubs were.
