Movie Review: Supersonic Sound: The Rebel Dread

Supersonic Sound: The Rebel Dread, directed by Raphael Erichson is a documentary about Don Letts. At 54 years old, the first generation London-born Jamaican DJ is a film maker and former member of band Big Audio Dynamite. In his amazing and versatile career, he is credited with bringing the dub sound to the Punk movement in the 70s while he was DJing at the Roxy in London. He made a documentary about the UK Punk rock movement called The Punk Rock Movie and has directed music videos for the likes of Elvis Costello, Franz Ferdinand, Bob Marley and Elivs alike.

I sat down with two friends to watch the doc: musician, Poor Paul and dub promoter, Mike Scrimshaw/the Faktory. Here’s what we thought about the movie:

The Good:

All the old footage and historical references were really cool. The way the intro and outro were shot was great, the graphics added some texture to the piece for sure. Also, learning the little snipits from his life was great, like the fact that the Clash put a photo of Letts squaring off against the riot police in 1976 in London on the cover of “Black Market Clash”, and the sheer girth of his impressive body of work (200 music videos, 20 films, an autobiography AND he still DJs for the BBC on Saturday nights) was great.

The Bad:

This documentary is for fans only. It was slow and dragged in a lot of parts. Most of the talking was between Don and his son Jet. He also repeats himself a lot. Poor Paul had this to say: “I feel like they’re supposing we thinking these people are a bigger deal than they are. If this was Bob Marley and his son, it would be riveting”.  Usually in documentaries they get the opinions of other influential people who were influenced by the subject and in this case there was none. And what I mean by none is: none. at. all. Jet and Don talking about growing up and that’s it.

As for Scrimshaw, he had nothing to add. Turns out I was the only one who knew who Don Letts was to begin with. Out of five stars I give it 3 and all 3 are due to the fact that it’s about Don Letts, a legend in his own right.

FYI-Don Letts is premiering his latest movie, Carnival at the festival which will be playing alongside Strummerville his Joe Strummer doc that debuted at SXSW earlier this year.

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