Difficult Music

We did end up seeing A Mighty Wind on Saturday. If I could describe the movie in one word it’d be “comfortable.” It was also hilarious and gentle and…folksy. It’s not going to redefine the parameters of modern comedic cinema, but that’s not what I expected it to do. For me, it’s more than enough to see a movie populated by people (actors and characters) that I really, really, really like. I spent the whole 90 minutes just staring at the screen in admiration: “Wow, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy are so good together. Gee, Harry Shearer’s bass playing is sure coming along. Can I take some of what Fred Willard’s been taking? Can Christopher Guest just make one of these every six months?” The movie left us obscenely cheery for the rest of the weekend. Even the Fifth Avenue Theatre didn’t seem like such an evil place afterward.

I can’t stop listening to “Nine Feet Underground” by Caravan. Twenty minute progressive rock epics get a bad rap for being 20-minute progressive rock epics, but Nine Feet… achieves the impossible by being light, breezy and subtle—a country drive in a Jaguar E-type rather than a lightspeed journey into the Horsehead Nebula. Although it’s dated as hell, it wears its stripey flares and sideburns with a slightly smirking dignity. The belter thinks it sounds like porno music (I'm not sure what porno music sounds like—I only watch G-rated movies like A Mighty Wind). To me it sounds like England and the soundtrack to an older generation’s perfect youth.