Most Greek houses at Dartmouth have at least fifty members and, unlike affinity houses, IM sports teams, and publications, the members of frats and sororities are rarely united by specific interests, passions, or tastes. As our houses are cornucopias of political philosophies, intellectual specialties, and highly variable degrees of ignorance and expertise on the stuff we think about, there are few, if any, topics of conversation on which all or even most members could hold forth. Sitting around the TV, for instance, most guys in my house could shoot the shit with some fluency about 1) Entourage, and how much it sucks now, 2) Intro-level Economics, 3) the suffocating vice-grip the patriarchal hegemony exerts on us all, 4) why you would have peed there when the bathroom was right over there, and 5) music. And my house is not exemplary in this sense among Greek organizations or, indeed, aggregations of people in general: conversations on specialized topics are necessarily limited and can only go so deep. But the last casual interest I’ve adumbrated—music—really is perhaps the most catholic one at Dartmouth. Almost everyone I’ve met here can banter about the trivia of at least one genre of music and, more remarkably, certain bands and moments in music have the ability to conversationally dovetail people on campus who would otherwise have nothing else to talk about. Two such “moments” that unite music lovers at Dartmouth are The Last Waltz (1978) and Stop Making Sense (1984), the concert films of the bands The Band and the Talking Heads, respectively. Songs from either are instantly recognizable at parties anywhere on campus. Facebook groups—substantial Facebook groups—fete both. And bits of trivia about either are swapped like trading cards in many conversations by many different dudes and chicks on this campus. Why?

The ecumenical appeal of these two films can be parsed in some obvious ways, of course. Each has been applauded by critics as the ne plus ultra of the concert-film genre. Neither is an obscure cult flick—SMS was directed by Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) and TLW by Martin Scorsese (lots of famous stuff)—but both have cult appeal in the form of quotable soundbites and the unpolished appearance that attends any film of a live event. Dartmouth students are savvy about music in general and proud of a sort of good taste (e.g. socially conscious rap, sub-mainstream rock, and canonical classic rock) to which these two flicks cater. Stop Making Sense is weird but accessible, artsy and trippy, but eminently listenable. Phi Delt’s Keeper of Tunes CJ Ryan ’08 considers it “a redefinition of sound” that “filled the void of good music” at the time. There is almost a narrative to the concert—it begins with frontman David Byrne and a boom box on stage and the ensemble metastasizes over the course of the playlist to encompass backup singers, bizarre set pieces, and an array of props. The movie itself is a crescendo. The Last Waltz feels more like footage of a group of guys jamming in their garage, with some of their buddies coming over to join them after school. The garage, however, is San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, and the friends are Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Jodi Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and a few other musical luminaries. However, while SMS does feel like a grand, stage-directed absurdist play, TLW comes off as much more down-to-earth than epic despite its star power, largely because between songs are spliced clips of the band members joking, reminiscing, rambling, and drunkenly giggling about their years together like wistful grownups at a college reunion.

There are more than two concert films that can claim to be artistically tremendous and musically extraordinary, though. Woodstock, Message to Love, The Song Remains the Same (Led Zeppelin), Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones), Ziggy Stardust—The Motion Picture (David Bowie), and the evocative MTV: Unplugged recordings of Clapton, Alice in Chains, and Nirvana all scintillate in their own ways—they are major concerts of major bands—and yet none command the recognition or adulation at Dartmouth that SMS and TLW do. The reason for this popularity could be simple: someone saw one of the movies, TiVo’ed it, and blitzed out about it, or something like that. But I think SMS and TLW are set apart from the concert film genre in manifold ways and, though they are about as dissimilar as two concert movies can be, they attract us and our friends for many of the same reasons.

As anyone who has even seen a Good Charlotte show can tell you, predictability is the bane of any concert. Where SMS and TLW truly transcend the genre is in the variety of the performances they showcase. Most concert films rely on the fandom alone of viewers to drive film sales. A Led Zep junkie will love The Song Remains the Same because it is a video of Led Zeppelin playing beloved Led Zeppelin songs. There is no aleatory thrill in watching what will unfold on stage: Led Zeppelin songs followed by more Led Zeppelin songs. The Talking Heads and The Band however, do not have the same infinite well of fan obsession to draw from as Led Zeppelin or the Stones, and had they followed the same straightforward approach of simply filming a concert and throwing in a few random interstitial dream sequences, their films would remain niche affairs only popular among already existing fans of the bands.

The films avoid this by bringing to bear a wonderful desultoriness. In TLW, this stems from the fact that most of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame is on hand to perform with The Band. The songs, then, range from Ronnie Hawkins singing “Who Do You Love?” with his outboard-motor growl and full rodeo-MC regalia, to the gospel-singer-backed “The Weight.” Scorsese sequences the performances masterfully so that the set reaches a sort of climax halfway at “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Dry Your Eyes,” which together comprise the type of upbeat requiem that urges “remember the good times”—the keystone of The Band’s last performance together ever. CJ Ryan elaborates: “This concert truly symbolizes the end of an era, where good music was modern and encountered around every corner, instead of out of some nostalgia that was produced from the current rot that is modern music. Besides, what's not to like about a smashed Van Morrison singing Irish lullabies with [The Band bassist] Rick Danko?”

Where TLW stirs with the momentousness of valediction, SMS was an affirmation that the Talking Heads, rather than bowing out, had truly arrived, in their most singular and mature form. The unpredictability and variety here shine in the choreographed chaos of the Heads’ concert. Every atom on stage is perpetually in motion, from the video-projected stage backdrop to dynamo David Byrne’s drug-catalyzed body. Here, as in TLW, the lineup of players on stage is also in flux (including a song by female-fronted Talking Heads side project, the Tom Tom Club), with even the band’s equipment being wheeled on and off stage, as in a Broadway musical. SMS is, as the cliché goes, ultimately about the music, but it is the unabashed theatricality of the performance that makes it sui generis.

While the artistic merits of the films, as well as the cross-genre appeal of the music therein, recommend them many times over to music lovers of all persuasions, what has really caused SMS and TLW to germinate so robustly here in Hanover’s music consciousness is the social experience of watching either movie. TLW is prefaced with a black-screen frontispiece: “This film should be played loud.” True, but more to the point, these films should be played with friends. A concert film, like a concert, has little dialogue and many opportunities to engage its audience. There is no plot development to be missed on account of obnoxious talkers, and each song invites conversation—“Did you know that Eric Clapton asked to join The Band and was denied?” “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Van Morrison,” “I read that David Byrne left the stage here to go do blow.” We know we like the music so we share enthusiasm in talking about why that is. Presenting obscure knowledge of the subject doesn’t seem like grandstanding here, and the cachet allure of these bands, both of them better known for their influence and talent than pure mainstream fame, makes us all the more eager to become acquainted with them. I would be an irresponsible journalist if I did not also point out that drugs are rumored to heighten the viewing experience of both films. TLW proves popular for post-pong winding-down situations: the boozy ramblings of band members during the interview portions become much funnier, and the hit-single-studded set list prompts plenty of “I LOVE this song!” moments. There were clearly a number of other, harder drugs that went into SMS at probably every level of production, and that film, much like the universe, purportedly requires heavy drug use to make sense of it.

Another epochal musician (Madonna) once mused, “Music makes the people come together/Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel.” Pretty much all of us here at the College except me fall more into the former camp than the latter, but we can be a disparate bunch nonetheless. Still, we all really do like music and we really do like to chat with each other about the wide world outside the Bubble, when we are able. So do yourself a favor: if you haven’t, see these movies and make it a bonding thing. Because in the real world, the twenty-fifth volume of Now That’s What I Call Music! is what people are listening to.