Oh, Play That Thing!

[January 3rd, 2007] This month's best concert isn't happening in the hallowed halls of Berbati's Pan or the prettified environs of the Doug Fir. Instead, it's in the basement of the Portland Art Museum—and some of it happened in 1967. It's Reel Music, the Northwest Film Center festival presented in the museum's Whitsell Auditorium. In just the first week, the lineup of documentaries travels from a devastated New Orleans to a groovy London. That's a lot of territory to cover, so we harnessed our stable of music writers, weaned them from their diet of afterparties and cigarettes, and asked them to identify five standout movies from the festival's first eight days. Here's what they found.

The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose

On the Easy Rider soundtrack, the Holy Modal Rounders memorably warble through "If You Want to Be a Bird," a flight of acoustic, psychedelic whimsy that nevertheless closes with a sobering warning: "When you come down, land on your feet." Bound to Lose is the wild, fascinating tale of how one of the Rounders did, and one didn't. When the band relocated to Portland from NYC in the early '70s, as the film shows, it spelled the dissolution of the partnership between Rounder founders Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber. The bookish Stampfel stayed behind, kicked speed and raised a family, while the gonzo Weber relished in the Northwest's high-quality heroin and cheap living. Reunited here, they make a natural musical—and comic—duo, albeit a sometimes frighteningly dysfunctional one. The film's anticlimax is Weber's notorious no-show at a mooted 40th anniversary concert at the Crystal Ballroom in 2003. JEFF ROSENBERG. 7 pm Friday, Jan. 5; 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 7.

New Orleans: Music in Exile

Veteran documentarian Robert Mugge (Saxophone Colossus) deploys his trademark combination of cool understatement, poetic juxtaposition and unaffected Southern storytelling to show the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Crescent City's music culture. Filmed just 60 days after Katrina, Mugge's prosaic camera style captures the stories of New Orleans music luminaries—including Cyril Neville, Kermit Ruffins, Marcia Ball, Theresa Anderson and ReBirth Brass Band, among others—both at home and in exile in safe havens such as Houston, Memphis, Lafayette and Austin. The up-close-and-personal experiences of a downtrodden Eddie Bo (wearing a surgical mask to cover the stench of black mold, sewage and death), Irma "It's Raining" Thomas combing through the dust and ruins of her storm-devastated nightclub, and Dr. John performing "Home Sweet Home" will move, shake and (in upbeat moments) rattle and roll you. TIM DUROCHE. 4 pm Saturday, Jan. 6.

Tonite Let's All Make Love in London

One of a series of Peter Whitehead films screening during Reel Music, this 1967 doc offers an inside look at models, musicians, artists and other members of mod London's swinging "it" crowd (think Austin Powers, but for real). Painted naked ladies, spacey photographers and eyeliner-clad women offer timely insights throughout the film—though the sound quality of the interviews is sometimes shabby. A young David Hockney paints himself as a bit of an artsy spoiled brat, while an extremely pouty-lipped, back-in-the-day Mick Jagger comes off as a surprisingly thoughtful, discerning young man. Whitehead, refreshingly, stays pretty much completely out of the way (rarely even interjecting to identify his subjects), which allows the scene's figureheads to speak for themselves—and do they ever. AMY MCCULLOUGH. 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 7.

Keith Jarrett: The Art of Improvisation

Mike Dibb brings 40 years of estimable documentary artistry (The Miles Davis Story, Edward Said: The Last Interview) to bear in this first-ever doc on jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. A veritable big-name marquee attraction in a music generally suffering from a lack of household names, Jarrett is a fascinating, infuriatingly enigmatic talent who pioneered a unique career at the crossroads of jazz, proto-fusion, classical and elegiac near-New Age solo piano. Slyly asserting a "comprovisational" approach that avoids typical chronological storytelling, Dibb reinforces a jazz-like nonlinearity and a subtle balance of archival and contemporary live performance with talking-head interviews. Best of all is the phenomenal and all-too-brief film of Jarrett's groundbreaking '70s trio with Paul Motian and Charlie Haden and candid interviews—with producer/ECM record-label head Manfred Eicher, Chick Corea, Gary Burton and Dewey Redman, to name a few—that are spiced and tempered with a great sense of wonder and warm recollection. TIM DUROCHE. 7 pm Monday, Jan. 8.

Rural Rock and Roll

At its core, rock and roll is futile, and the people of Humboldt County, Calif., know that better than anyone else. Rural Rock and Roll visits the pracvtice spaces, house parties, lone bar venue and even the speakeasy of Arcata and Eureka, Calif.—towns relatively isolated on the Northern California coast. Its most fascinating discovery is not that rock music exists there but that it's content to stay there, entertaining friends and helping residents blow off steam after work. Though repetitious use of particular songs may make you feel like you've seen some of the Humboldt bands as many times as a county resident, you'll nonetheless mourn in the epilogue for those groups' fates. JASON SIMMS. 9 pm Friday, Jan. 12.