Made in Sheffield
(Plexifilm)

Drive Well, Sleep Carefully: On the Road with Death Cab for Cutie
(Plexifilm)

The ultimate signifier of the rock-n-roll documentary—bigger than platinum discs, 48-channel mixing boards, and self-obsession— is the guitar. But now that rock 'n' roll can officially be described as a genre-specific subset of pop music (as opposed to the defining paradigm through which all expression must be filtered), the guitar may be losing its significance—not just as an instrument, but as a prop.

A good case in point is Made in Sheffield, a documentary about the birth of electronic pop in the North of England. The cover of the DVD, taken from a key cutaway in the movie, shows an angry young man hurling a Stratocaster (I think) off a bridge. The background prop of choice in these interviews—with former members of bands like Cabaret Voltaire, ABC, Heaven 17, the Extras, Artery, and the Human League, among others—is, obviously, the synthesizer. The few guitars you see all seem to come with disclaimers about how the musicians couldn't, or wouldn't, learn to play them.

"We wanted to kill off rock 'n' roll," says Ian Craig Marsh (the Future, the Human League, Heaven 17). It's the boilerplate punk sentiment, which is fitting given the key years of this musical era (1976–82). But unlike their punk contemporaries, who provided a crucial inspiration, the Sheffielders didn't use rock to destroy rock. The key sources of inspiration here were Eno and Kraftwerk, not Iggy or the Dolls. And while their earliest work is bathed in pretension, the textures, sounds, and experimental energies of these bands are thrilling to discover, particularly when you stop to consider how far they had to go to become the pop stars many of them eventually became.

The dialogue cycle between rock and non-rock continues to spin. And while it's hardly as revolutionary as the music it chronicles (talking heads, live footage, album art, repeat), Made in Sheffield presents a strong case that the impulse toward rebellion has never been limited to rock 'n' roll. It also proves that the survivors of a musical moment as intentionally weird as this one are prone to the same romance and nostalgia as any aging rocker.

By contrast, the rock-n-roll spirit is alive and well in Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, another conventional music film (road shots, live shows, talking heads, repeat) about an unconventional group of musicians. While the subjects of Made in Sheffield go on and on about trying to find a new language, the members of Death Cab for Cutie, followed around by 16mm cameras as they tour America in support of Transatlanticism, do their best to prove that you can live the dream and still be serious, responsible, humble people. The fact that both of these DVDs can be released by the same company, at roughly the same time, is a refreshing reminder that—though the latter appears to be more sustainable, and the former has the trappings of cult legend—neither way is better, or more "real."

It's just a question of which record you feel like putting on right now. ■