Standing in front of a packed crowd at the IFC Center last night before the SXSW-presented New York City premiere of his doc Of All The Things, Jody Lambert contemplated his good fortune. “To have Janet Pierson introduce the movie, to be part of Stranger Than Fiction, to have John Pierson send you an email…it’s kind of like Bonertown, USA.”

To say that there were boners all around might be an exaggeration, but Lambert’s goofy, feel-good film definitely pleased the crowd. Jody’s father Dennis Lambert is the songwriter and/or producer of dozens of mainstream pop-rock hits, from “Baby Come Back” (after the screening, Lambert noted that its use in Swiffer commercials has been “very lucrative”) to “Ain’t No Woman” to (my personal favorite) “Do The Freddie.” After spending twenty-plus years writing hits for other artists, eventually Lambert moved down to Boca Raton to start a new life with a new wife and daughter, and a new career as a real estate agent. But “Bags and Things”, the solo album that Lambert released in the early 70s which flopped in the States, is a huge hit in the Phillippines, and Things follows Lambert as he embarks on a tour of that country performing the songs from that album which have apparently become the standard soundtrack for Filipinos in love.

Although the filmmaker is not on camera much, Things plays very much like a love letter from a son to this father. But when the tour hits its peak with a Valentines Day concert in a giant stadium, the doc turns into a concert film for awhile, offering us the chance to contemplate a very specific sort of American pop song. Lambert’s music is a fusion of early 20th century standards, Motown, and British Invasion rock, all wrapped up in the the various inflections (disco, country, funk, white bread radio rock, etc) of whatever performer the song was written for. As hits singles and threads in our American “cultural fabric”, as Lambert puts it, these play like some of the least passionate songs of all time, and could in fact be held up as shining examples of What Went Wrong when the music subcultures of the 50s went mainstream. (A spectacular example is “We Built This City,” a song written because Grace Slick wanted a hit on MTV, which is apparently cursed: not only was it voted the worst of all time by BLENDER, but it spectacularly comes back to haunt Dennis while on tour.) But somehow, when performed by 60 year-old Lambert for hordes of screaming Filipino fans, both his solo material and the songs we associate with their famous recordings really feel like personal compositions. One almost wishes that the invisible hands behind the milquetoast superhits of the 70s would tour more often.

A select crowd in New York will get a first-hand glimpse at the Dennis Lambert experience tonight; he’s playing a showcase at Joe’s Pub, but it’s already sold out. Of All The Things will screen at AFI in LA next month.