The book and the canal

Two things I took in today:

∙NoisePop screened a pretty good film about twenty-plus years of music from Tucson, Ariz., in the somewhat cramped and uncomfortable space at Artists' Television Access on Valencia Street this afternoon. With the filmmaker present (and Jonathan Richman in the house!), the High and Dry screening drew a crowd of about 35 attendees, many of whom seemed to know most of the people in the film.

High and Dry may have been made by someone too close to its subject. To my eyes, it buried the lede by failing to acknowledge soon enough, or strongly enough, the obvious truth about Tucson: it's a cheap town to live in, where people can do whatever they please as if no one's looking; therefore the insular arts scene thrives in unique ways that are impossible elsewhere. This should've been stated in the first minute of the movie. Instead, the film begins with a lot of talk about a bygone punk-rock scene of the late 70s and early 80s, disclosing very little that an outsider would care about. In fact, several of the bands aren't really that worth talking about much -- does anyone really care why Machines of Loving Grace disintegrated, especially when it's the same old story anyway? -- and some others aren't quite framed as especially unique, or especially emblematic of Tucson's circumstance.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of good footage, and Rainer Ptacek emerges as a central character worth memorializing. The editing is taut, and the pacing is pleasantly quick, although the finished product is a little long. High and Dry is a love letter to the bands in the filmmaker's hometown, and probably looks awfully different to Tucsonans than it does to the rest of us.

∙I read "My Crowd", a piece by the inventor of the flash mob found in the March 2006 Harper's, at Simple Pleasures Café way out on Balboa Street in the 121. I recommend spending a little time reading the whole thing -- it's a hoot -- but if you only have a few moments I suggest the second half of Part 3, entitled "Subject Population." (In case you're new to this whole idea, flash mobs are events in which large groups of people, recruited by stealthy missives and word-of-mouth, briefly convene in public and do something farcical, then disperse within about ten minutes.) I'm going to throw out the word "post-Gladwellian" with something resembling a straight face here.

∙Something I didn't do today: Join Google Romance, "a psychographic matchmaking service." Oh man. The end is nigh.


FMFM: Reincarnation of a Lovebird, on which Charles Mingus re-records some of his most notable works with worthwhile results. Usually that strategy only results in a waste of time, but Mingus re-thinks some of his best pieces here. That "Pithecanthropus Erectus" is really something.