AMERICA’S LOST BAND Documentary to Stream on PBS

America’s Lost Band, the documentary short adaptation that was inspired by the 2004 New York Fringe Festival hit, All Good Things, will start streaming on PBS platforms on April 8 after its television premiere on April 7 on Connecticut’s PBS station, CPTV.

The film’s title is taken from the quote by former Rolling Stone music editor, Mark Kemp, in Paste Magazine: “Had these Boston bad boys stuck it out beyond their 1966 debut, we might TODAY be calling them—and not the Stones—the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band.  As it is The Remains most certainly are America’s greatest lost band.”

The documentary's genesis was the viewing of All Good Things at the 2004 New York Fringe Festival by two-time Directors Guild winner, Michael Stich, who firmly believed that the story of The Remains deserved to be told on film. The show went on to become a hit with both audiences and critics.

America’s Lost Band premiered at the Boston Film Festival in 2008 as a feature-length documentary, then screened at the Nashville Film Festival and others on the festival circuit, generating similar favorable praise.  But licensing issues related to the first part of the film—primarily Beatles footage/visuals—delayed distribution all these years.

The focus of the documentary short adaptation is The Remains’ return to Los Angeles 40 years after they last appeared there as the opening act for the Beatles at Dodger Stadium (and 40 years after The Remains broke up right at the end of that Beatles tour).  

The film is ultimately about what happens when a band with special chemistry nears stardom but ends up not realizing its dreams—and the surprising and refreshing way the band members deal with that near-miss decades later.