Great World of Sound: A Film Every Unsigned Musician Should See

By JASON HARPER

What: Great World of Sound, directed by Craig Zorbel

Why: Because IT could happen to you. Also, the movie’s hilarious, deeply touching, and has both fantastic and fantastically awful music.

The movie opens with an LP being spraypainted gold. Shortly after, a car pulls up to an empty strip mall. A guy gets out and breaks his cheap brown leather belt adjusting his shirt tail. Martin (Pat Healy) is a dead ringer for the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie in this video: a naive, short-sleeved-and-necktied pauper with dreams bigger than his financial means. Minutes later, his belt repaired with a black binder clip, he’s being grilled by Layton (Robert Longstreet) a cross-necklace-wearing, Hasselhoff-coiffed sleaze who works as henchman and treasurer for Shank (John Baker), the even sleazier owner of the “record company” Great World of Sound, which, having relocated from (read: fled) Chicago, has just set up shop — spraypainted and framed gold records and all — in Charlotte, North Carolina.