Both of these DVDs feature cameos by David Cross.

Before going into an interview-fueled narrative in and around a multi-band show he performed in at Coney Island a while back, Ted Leo is warmly introduced by the comedian at a small club in New Jersey. Cross tells the story of how he had gone to the legendary Brownie’s a few years before to catch a headlining act and found his ass kicked by Leo and his band, who were the openers. “We became pen pals,” Cross says, and after watching the DVD, whether or not Cross is joking, it’s easy to see Leo becoming pen pals with any of his fans.

            Cross also appears in “Watery Hands,” probably the funniest Superchunk selection on their complete-video-oeuvre-with-extras collection, Crowding Up Your Visual Field. Jeanine Garofolo is featured with Cross as obliviously pretentious and inane rock video co-directors—the band is caught dancing on a pie, swapping heads with dogs, etc.

            What else do these bands/DVDs have in common? Watching them back to back, with their honestly-given insights about fun and creativity and artistic responsibility, confirms that rock and roll isn’t merely how the cake-eaters fancy themselves as outlaws—to paraphrase Madonna. Ted Leo and Superchunk are Everyman Rock, just smarter than what the term usually implies.

            Leo is well known for his topical craving for substance, political awareness and participation, and adherence to DIY management. Whilst the Chapel Hill band Superchunk was rewarded with obsessive fans due to its devotion to playing it straight and still being artistically interesting. (Superchunk has rewarded fans back with its self-financed and amazing record label, Merge, home to some of the very best rock and pop music around, including the Magnetic Fields and Lambchop.)

            “Celtically challenged” Leo’s affiliation with New Jersey, where normal gets so normal it’s creepy, shadows the beginning of the performance film. As he burns and peels on the Coney Island boardwalk, he shares that as he’s aging he’s very careful with his diet, takes vitamins, and stretches constantly—a behavior modification essential to his harsh touring schedule. Clad in his tight brown polo shirt, he jams solo through a delightful version of Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town”), and then talks about his love of urban areas that balance “decay with glitz, cultural clashes, and echoes of by-gone eras.”

            Leo’s music could use some air—the riffs are so constant, the beat so bashing, the lyrical observations so consistently shot out, that they can choke out the joyful memories of bands like the Jam and the Specials and others they’re meant to evoke. Maybe this is explained by Leo’s confession of having to drive the tour van a lot (“The rest of the band don’t really have licenses”), always taking care of business, and never having time to strum his guitar. This intense busy-ness could have contributed to what actually ended up hurting his vocal chords, making the set on this DVD a little less vocally ambitious than it could have been (no “Under the Hedge” here). Listening to the perhaps Tonio K.-inspired “Ballad of the Sin Eater,” where he tries ranting and raving a little bit more and crooning a lot less, I find myself attracted more to the song, trusting that the lyrics will be as sharp when I have a chance to make them out.

            Leo claims to love first wave punk for its “broad appeal—there’s a place for that, it's not just for 15 year olds with unfocused rage,” he says. (This attitude is refreshing when contrasted with that of artists like James Mercer of the Shins, who seems to try to sound much younger and more pop-inclined than he probably is, and made comment in a Pitchfork interview about how unfortunate it was having “guys in their 30s singing along with the lyrics to my songs.” Ahem.) "Those bands from that era still appeal to me now that I’m 32," Leo says, "as much as they did when I was 16."

            Watching Leo perform before a weird backdrop at Coney Island, I noticed a painted keyboard that reminded me of Cursive’s album cover for The Ugly Organ. Then I began to think about Cursive’s Tim Kasher, and his admission of being raised Catholic, and Leo’s own Catholic Worker-style mix of lyrical mysticism with active participation in community. And how the former is admittedly a drunken slut to deal with his doubt, and the latter just wants to perform “works”—in the words of the Ramones he just wants to have something to do.

            Why do I find the fecund self-loathing of Kasher’s work so compelling, and Leo’s so resistible? Leo claims he wrote “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” as a tribute to bands like the Specials, who weren’t afraid to mix politics with infectious music, but his own music is so tight-assed it’s often sterile—“Rude Boys” itself reminds me more of the white boy rock of 999 or the Members, “all right” New Wave bands with consciousness to their music and could kick out a great hook or two, but probably changed nobody’s lives. Unlike the Specials, an urban, multi-cultural collective that weren’t afraid to confess their own vices and mistakes as they tore at encroaching Thatcherism and corporate brainwashing, Leo plays crisply written singer-songwriter neo-rock with a “big heart.”

            Leo admits he loves the "thoughtful" responses he gets from people. "Don’t put that cross on you," he sings, and at the end of the DVD talks about how important it is to maintain the ethics of independence. Yet his musical heroes were all fireflies, burned by the sun in a day, Saint Sebastians beautiful by their own instantly martyred youth.

            And then, in an outtake sequence on the disc filmed during the city’s 2003 blackout, he and the Pharmacists play on, as New Yorkers walk past, hiking for miles home—the band’s equipment hooked up to a Starbucks van.

            There’s the rub: If we need new entertainment as we start to suffer from the effects of the deserved fall of western civilization, the best that could be hoped for would be intelligent, hopeful, positive music, its mind clear and its intentions sincere. Even if it needs electricity borrowed from an unlikely source to help it be heard.

            I never listened to Superchunk before this DVD. All the “cool people" loved ’em (and all else from Chapel Hill), so that put me off forever. I guess they sounded a little like the Pixies at the beginning when I may have overheard them, and perhaps remind one of other intelligent American indie heartland bands, but I regret never giving them a chance—as I know now I would have learned to love them.

            “Pull the string, and I come untied,” leader Mac sings in what I think is the band’s best video, featuring a wonderful cameo by the actress who played Natalie on the deliciously cast and scripted short-lived TV series “Sports Night.” (Drummer Jon confesses on one of the many audio tracks accompanying the videos how much he loved that show as he describes being surprised by actress Sabrina Lloyd popping up at the beginning of “Untied.”) Superchunk’s music is full of things coming apart, or as shown in the video, potentially hazardous situations we gleefully sink our teeth into—as the band members clench their teeth around firecrackers and light them.

            (The shot of bass player Laura fearfully biting one, her eyes wincing as the flame sputters—though the gunpowder was removed—may be my one of my favorite rock video images, ever.)

            Superchunk's songs reflect mostly the 90s-era and perhaps timeless college-age comedy and drama of Chapel Hill student existences and growing up, and sounds like group house summer fun, punk rock scene vegetarian potlucks, hungover laments and boasts, long drives in borrowed cars to nowhere special, midnight camping with pals near graveyards, quick sex in your tiny bedroom off the kitchen, forty-ouncer in a bag on the porch, just paid the rent and the slightly dangerous girlfriend is coming over for a big night.

            There is a seriousness behind some of the topics of the songs, usually of a relational nature, but it isn't until the final track, "Art Class (Song For Yayoi Kusama)," with its Talking Heads-style stacking of philosophical phrases drawn from Duchamp, and its overshadowing from recent tragic events (chronicled in the road trip movie also included on the DVD, Quest For Sleep), that the band's philosophy blooms clear and fully poignant.  "Bare-assed and beautiful," Mac sings, "why so serious when it's only your life that's at stake?"

            Both of these DVDs are recommended to fans of quality, sincere, questioning new rock and roll.