OK, so I put on a Journeymen CD this evening and read all the messages in all the threads on A Mighty Wind. I bought the soundtrack album and the DVD, and I like them both. I stacked firewood the other day to the soundtrack, and I have to admit that I really liked the music - and I hated myself for liking it.

I guess I have to confess to being a folk music whore. I have had backstage passes to Peter, Paul and Mary more times than I can count, and I knew all the lyrics to all their songs (and I knew the sources/original versions of most of the songs they recorded). I still get misty every time I hear "Four Strong Winds," and I memorized "Today" to impress chicks, even though I claimed I didn't like the song myself. I loved that folk-pop music of the sixties, and I still do. I don't sing that stuff in public any more, but I find it's great accompaniment for physical labor or tedious bookwork. Ever try to get something done while you're listening to a Child ballad? I suppose it's a horrible thing to say, but I think we can all use a good dose of bouncy music mixed with smarminess.

I can't imagine seeing this movie on a big screen. This one seems to be made for DVD. I gather they didn't have the entire "concert" on the big screen, and it's a hoot. It's an incomplete experience to see the movie without the concert. The movie itself is a perfect parody of the "making of" documentaries that are so common on DVD's, so your really do need to see what they're supposed to be making.

I spent most of the movie trying to figure out who was a parody of whom. I suppose the dead promoter/manager was Albert Grossman or Milt Okun. On the surface, it was easy to tag The New Main Street Singers as the New Christy Minstrels, and Mitch & Mickey as Ian and Sylvia, and the Folksmen as any number of macho male folktrios - but other memories came out as I watched the movie. The most notable was the smarmy activist sentimentality of one of the Folksmen, a ringer for Peter Yarrow. Was the transvestite bass singer supposed to be Noel Paul Stookey (and Mary Travers in his/her female alter ego)?

I couldn't figure out who the Eugene Levy character was, but I really found him interesting. Remember how "cool" it was back then to have some sort of psychological problem? Heck, there was something wrong with you if there wasn't something wrong with you. Actually, I knew somebody from that era who was exactly like the Levy character, except that he was more of a guru than a musician - my wife's first husband, an aging New Age hippie wannabe who was 20 years older than his wife.

...but that's another story.

-Joe Offer-