After having my fourth conversation in a week about the provincial pathos of the local music scene, I agreed tonight with Movie Dan that someone needs to make a “Waiting for Guffman”/”Spinal Tap”/”American Movie” film about the South Coast scene around Detroit Bar. What a cast: The skinny, fashionable boys in the mediocre bands, the pretty girls who sleep with them, and the armies of not-quites who end up sleeping with each other instead after the insiders reject them. What a scene: The sadness of an elite hierarchy of rock gods fifty miles south of the real thing. What a golden phrase for the whole mess: “The Costa Mesa 500”. What a lot of beer Detroit sells with this genius marketing strategy.

And of course, the people who don’t give a fuck, or as Dan said don’t even give a fuck about giving a fuck, who are just cranking out music on their own terms.

I imagine it set as the last gig of some local hot-boys-in-tight-pants band, hair dripping into their eyes. They’d lost their clothing company sponsorship maybe, or one of them got in a real band in L.A., so this was their last big hometown hurrah. They think it’s “The Last Waltz”, but you know it’s “A Mighty Wind”.

That scene deserves a good long hard sarcastic razor-born look. Some of the music is good, but every time I’m in with that bunch again I keep thinking “What the HELL are you guys going on about? You’re not all that! If you are, what the fuck are you doing in Costa Mesa?”