A Mighty Wind

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-04-13 at 05:27, Dave Monroe wrote:
> The New York Times
> Sunday, April 13, 2003
> 'A Mighty Wind': 'Spinal Tap' for Folkies?
> By DAVID HAJDU
> 
> FOLK music, as Bob Dylan defined it in the mid-1960's,
> when he was extricating himself from the genre to
> pursue rock 'n' roll, is "a bunch of fat people." Four
> decades later, the writer and director Christopher
> Guest has provided an illustration to accompany that
> definition: "A Mighty Wind," a mightily cutting film
> parody of the folk scene, populated mainly by people
> who are fat  or bald or old, or cosmetically doctored
> to look so. Mr. Dylan and Mr. Guest have each made the
> same satiric point, that the world of commercialized
> acoustic music that culminated in the "folk boom" of
> the Kennedy era is a pathetic joke.


(big omission of parts of review) 


> 
> Ultimately, the greatest disappointment of "A Mighty
> Wind" is the inexplicable absence of any hint of
> politics....



yes, it is probably hard for people who didn't live through the period
to quite envision but to the late-50s pop musical ear the liberal and
mildly left sentiments in this commercial folk music seemed very very
outre (ootray).

P.