Went to see "A Prairie Home Companion: The Movie" yesterday, which I enjoyed much more than "Prairie Home Companion: The Radio Show." What I liked most was the band. It's the same band from the radio show - piano, bass, guitar, drums, sax/fiddle and occasional sit-ins. But it's an old-fashioned band. They play songs, they back up singers, they play underscoring... there's no act. They just play.

These days, most bands you see are acts. In addition to their songs, they have costumes, poses, attitudes, lifestyles, choreography, props, videos, etc. It's what people expect to see when they go to a concert. It's how money gets made in the music business. It's how people become stars.

Being a cranky idealist of sorts I find most of this stuff to be a layer of toxic sludge obscuring (at best) or replacing (more often) any actual music that might be present, but that's just me. Plenty of other people like it, so there must be something there.

It's not that I mind some theatricality, some stagecraft. I don't need the band to stand in one place and sing with their eyes closed like folksingers delivering a 200-year old murder ballad. I don't need them to come across like amateurs who just happen to be on stage. But it was refreshing to see (going back to PHC) people just playing music like it's a job they like and they're good at. Not art, not business, not therapy, not teenaged angst, just music.