The answer, my friend, still blowing in the 'Wind' ("A Mighty Wind" review)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | May 4, 2003 | LLOYD SACHS ENTERTAINMENT CRITIC

[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."

[Slings and Arrows]

Trailer and music samples may be found here.

[Garden Island]

When it comes to love of exotica, I am too, also an island. One of my friends actually thought my Martin Denny record was a Christmas album when I played it for him-sheees! My wife says she's getting tired of it- but she likes tikis and mai tais too, so she's willing to put up with it. Some of the Phillipino old timers here in Kauai still listen to exotica.
Sometimes, when conditions are perfect, when the cool trade winds greet the puffy orange clouds over bali hai at sunset, with Les Baxter on the cd player, and with my icy wet Tiki mug leering menacingly back at me-the Polynesia that never existed can indeed exist.

[Katya]

I also had read that this stuff was primarily produced by the legions of red diaper babies....

[Slings and Arrows]

"Remember the Great Folk Music Scare of the 50's? That **** almost caught on!"
--Martin Mull

[Riverman94610]

Folk music was very chic among the upper middle class liberals in the early Sixties.They considered rock and roll to be mindless pap and thus the huge cultural earthquake when Dylan went rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
The Folkies never forgave him for"selling out"but it signaled the death throes of the whole Folk music movement.
Riverman

[IncPen]

Dylan at some point along the way disparaged 'folk' music as being 'music for fat people'; Garrison Keillor has made a career out of that which Dylan mocked

While alot of that old stuff isn't THAT bad, IMHO, Dylan had a point. You do have to be a careful shopper in the music store

[tet68]

when Dylan went rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

I was there, the boos were loud and long but we stayed anyway.
Got to sit in a circle of 8 or 10 and listen to Lemon Jefferson, Son House singing Make me a pallet on your floor,
Death Letter and more ,played dulcimore with Richard Farina it was awesome.
Then went to war and things were forever different.

[ewing]

Exactly, one only has to volunteer for any kind of small town community theatre to know how dead on the movie is..and the amazing part is that most of the lines are ad libbed on set!

[Cathryn Crawford]

ping

[Scenic Sounds]

Ain't clarity beautiful?! ;-)