Posted on 05/04/2003 10:36:15 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Can popular music be so hokey that it somehow does a cool 360-degree spin and becomes radical? As a young teen who never missed an installment of "Hootenanny," the early-'60s folk music series, I approached boy-girl groups like the New Christy Minstrels and the Serendipity Singers as straight-on as they approached me. There was nothing to read between their lines of wholesome cheer--at least not until Barry McGuire left the Minstrels and became Mr. "Eve of Destruction."
But seeing the Minstrels and Serendpitys reborn as the New Main Street Singers in "A Mighty Wind," Christopher Guest's winking valentine to those much-abused folkies who sang about farm animals and wanderin' while indulging in mirror moves as practiced as Led Zep's, I was struck by how daring a concept the group singing thing has become.
In this age of irony, the very idea of a septet of folk singers belting out songs in grinning unison, in carefully rehearsed arrangements and with rhythmic fortitude, defies convention as much as Bob Dylan did when he plugged in. Never mind that what the Main Streeters sing is laughable, or that Guest makes them out to be dizzy color-coordinated cultists. The performances stir you with their energy and insistent optimism--and color. At least they do in the concert sequences in the film, which have a kinky naturalism that the studio versions on the "Mighty Wind" CD lacks.
Following up his deadpan docudramas "Best in Show" (about dog contests) and "Waiting for Guffman" (about a backwater theater troupe), Guest imagines a concert tribute to a legendary and now deceased record label head. The show, broadcast live on public television, reunites after more than three decades the Folksmen (Guest and his "Spinal Tap" cronies Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, all of whom play and sing) and the star-crossed Mitch & Mickey (Eugene Levy as you've never seen or heard him and his matchless "SCTV" partner Catherine O'Hara).
One of the movie's running jokes is that the Folksmen and Mitch & Mickey consider the New Main Street Singers, the third act on the bill, contemptibly commercial, but pander to the audience no less cloyingly themselves. But it's worth noting that at a time when a pre-"Fiddler on the Roof" Theodore Bikel could draw an ovation on "Hootenanny" by playing guitar and harmonica simultaneously, audiences were starved for entertainment values, as dumb or shmaltzy as they could be. They loved it when the men and women in a band like the Minstrels acted like they had stepped out of "Oklahoma!" and when the baritone singer in a male trio hit those ridiculous low notes and when song lyrics were funny.
OK, I fess up: As a young teen who still hadn't discovered Dylan, the Beatles or "Shindig," I loved it. Even though I knew there wasn't something quite right about four grown men singing about Froggy goin' a courtin', the warm harmonies and strumming guitars and upbeat tone of the Brothers Four made the wrongness of it OK. And though I have long since parted with my Brothers Four and Chad Mitchell Trio and Limelighters albums, I have a suspicion that their entertainment values would still get to me, running past my need for deeper meaning and emotion. Through the veil of humor, they certainly did in "A Mighty Wind."
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
In my case it's the pseudo-Polynesian "Exotica" music of Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and Arthur Lyman among others from the late-50s / early 60s. I've always enjoyed it but never admitted to it until I was much older. I still go crazy anytime I hear "Quiet Village" !
I'm also still into a lot of mambo and bossa nova from the same time period. Maybe it's the warm weather-sound that does it, I'm not sure.
I too wasn't quite as impressed with 'Best in Show..' but Guffman is a classic!
That being said, "I'd like to see Crabville in the autumn..."
I amazed that a studio will give him 10-15 million dollars with a totally adlibbed script and no huge 'stars' and let him do his thing-but he is that good..
"And I keep singin the liberal well-intenioned Blues..."
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