Inflicting excitement on others: eight observations on Calvin & Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

1. The two great insights of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham were that monologues are more interesting if your characters move rapidly across a wide and dangerous array of terrain, and that you can tell a compelling story using only 50 different words. Bill Watterson was powefully influenced by the first of those insights, and not at all by the second.

2. Mo, the bully who torments Calvin, later went on to be Donald Trump's Nickname Strategist Timmy Jenkins, as interviewed by Steven Colbert. In kindergarten, of course, he was not normally that articulate, but he already had promise ("Hey twinky, give me a quarter... for the Let Calvin Live Through Recess Fund"). And the self-awareness to answer Calvin's philosophical challenges to his bully role with "Because it's fun".

#401: Sundays, "Hideous Towns" (1990)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQSGLVJU8p4

The fact that one of my favorite first-wave punk songs is expressed as an attempt to start a dialogue, though, hints at the real mismatch between me and punk rock: I don't, anymore, do self-righteous anger well. I used to, and certainly there are no shortage of worthy targets: too many of the world's nations are run by rank-hungry sociopaths, too much of its land and air and water is churned through in the ruthless pursuit of short-term private economic profit, and too much of its culture is run by cowards terrified of funding anything but the latest escapist sequel to an escapist sequel that had already lost whatever spark of individuation it began with. Anger is, as Johnny Rotten observed, an energy, and some extraordinary people (I.F. Stone, Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Nader, Walter Reuther, Catherine MacKinnon, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Greg Palast, Glenn Greenwald, to name some post-WWII Americans) have clearly found it an endlessly renewable one -- but in my body it burns up too quickly, and gives off toxic pollutants. So even if I try to focus on the evils of the other, rueful awareness of my own imperfections gets in the way, or I veer off topic and find myself more interested in the good things about my allies than in the bad things I'm supposed to be fighting.

I was a low-level community organizer once, in poor areas around Boston. I was okay at it -- helped one neighborhood get streets full of horrible potholes repaired after a decade-plus of being ignored, helped another get some traffic enforcement on cars racing 50 mph through streets that were the only place their kids could play -- but the relentless earnestness and long hours made me miserable, and I doubt I could do it again any time soon. Too, I could try to be punk rock, but I would probably come out more like the Sundays' "Hideous Towns".

Calling on, inattentive

(I will refer to my sons on my blog, from here on in, as "D" and "E", although in real life their letters are in an entirely different font)

E, calling from kitchen: "D! Did you know that we're going to see our friends in Cary today?"
D, at computer: "..........."
Me, in kitchen: "E, you should stand by him and get his attention first. He gets very focused on his gaming, and isn't listening to us."
D, calling: "I don't listen to anyone when I'm at the computer!"
Me: "Wow. Maybe he did notice us. That was weirdly relevant to what we were talking about."
D, calling: "I don't have any idea what you two are saying!"

#402: Penetration, "Lovers of Outrage" (1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJjLUPBXAm4

In my Joni Mitchell write-up, I noted how the history of pop/rock music through the early 1970s had been, overwhelmingly, one in which only men had felt free to innovate. Punk rock arrived in the late 1970s, and in the usual histories, it too was a tale of white men -- or teenage boys, spiritually if not always calendrically -- blasting fresh hot air into stale, stultifying arenas (note to self: steal better cliches next time). In Britain, for example, we read that it was led by the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, the Stranglers, Gang of Four, the Jam, the Buzzcocks.

#403: Sloan, "Underwhelmed" (1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkN_qkN5JLQ

Glenn McDonald, in one sentence, described Sloan's debut single "Underwhelmed" more accurately than I can improve on: it sounds like Ozzy Osbourne and band covering a lost They Might Be Giants song. Depending on your mental image of TMBG, if you have one, that could be deceptive: they have their educational songs ("James K. Polk", "Mammal") and their absurdist songs ("Hall of Heads", "the Guitar") and their gleefully petulant children's sing-alongs ("I Should Be Allowed to Think", "Boss of Me"), none of which he or I are referencing directly. But They Might Be Giants also have a romantic streak that leads, in some of their greatest songs, to the kind of relationship and/or character portraits that an over-educated, absurdist, self-awarely petulant romantic might write ("She's an Angel", "Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", "Sleeping in the Flowers").

Sloan's public emergence came on the college-rock circuit in 1992 or 1993, depending where you live, either of which was in the post-Nirvana period of mandatory loud distorted guitars; but the Chris Murphy-penned "Underwhelmed" is exactly that TMBG sort of relationship song.

Guided evolution at 130 beats per minute

Notes on seeing Simian Mobile Disco in concert at Moogfest in Durham:

1. Moogfest 2017 is the first multi-day music festival I've ever attended. Electronica is not my field, but I owed K for dragging her to see Jesca Hoop and (although she'd volunteered) Ben Folds, singer-songwriters without even the grace to have English accents. In the specific case of Simian Mobile Disco, the act she was most eager to see, I even know that I liked their 2007 album Attack Sustain Decay Release. The album has songs, with guest singers, although Simian Mobile Disco themselves are two geeky white guys standing in front of banks of switches and knobs and faders.

2. Their performance, on the other hand, was 80 minutes of voice-less improvisation. "Electronica" is as large, encompassing, and (at core) distinct a genre as "Classical", "Jazz", "Pop/ Rock", or "Hip-Hop", and the first 15 minutes or so, I spent at an intellectualized remove -- dancing all the time, sure (and happily watching K and a large portion of the crowd do the same), but while trying to decide how to process the experience. In Simian Mobile Disco's favor,

Countdown bonus: Indelicates, "Sweet Sixteen" (2008)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcM9QsZNRxM

E (my 8-year-old): "Can you play the Indelicates video with the old people? What's it called?"
Me: "'Sixteen'. Sure."
E: "It's about people who want to be 16 and act like they're 16 even though they're much older".
Me: "That's right!"
E: "Why do they want to be 16?"
Me: "Well, when you get old, your body - well, if you're unlucky you die. But even if you're lucky, it stops working the same way. You remember having the energy and ability to do things that you can't anymore."
E: "But why 16? If I was old I would wish I were 10."
Me: "That's a possible thing too".
E: "Especially if I qualify for Lincoln Academy by then."
Me: "That could be it, though. Maybe the narrator didn't."

Framed by Roger Rabid

As we mourn the loss of Roger Rabid, longtime Fox News empire-builder, we may find his achievements easy to under-estimate, because they have been so often imitated since. But his creation -- a news network that freely mixed live-action humans with sketched 2-dimensional heroes, villains, and foils, subject either to reality's rules or cartoon logic as the plot dictated -- was at the time innovative, and a technical marvel.

My favorite of his lines comes from the scene were Roger and Slick Willie have been handcuffed to an enormous national debt for eight years, and suddenly Roger slips free. "You mean you could've freed our actions from the debt at any time???", a stunned Willie inquires. Roger shakes his head, and as he struts away, leaving Willie trapped, he explains "No, not at any time. Only when it helped rich people".

#404: Ian & Sylvia, "House of Cards" (1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riM0OdxBCT8

Given my over-complicated grown-up tastes, there wasn't much in my near-term upcoming queue that followed smoothly from the hippie sing-along "Free to Be You and Me", so my next selection is another from my mom's old collection that predates my birth. Ian & Sylvia represented well mom's taste in folk music, heavy on vocal harmonies, the kind of songs you get out the autoharp and sing together while snuggling cats -- Bob Dylan songs appeared in our house only when rendered by proper singers, Simon & Garfunkel or the Chad Mitchell Trio or the Byrds or, on-topic, Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricke. (Dylan-loving friends I respect have tried repeatedly to sell me on his artful vocal expressiveness, and have failed.)

That said, Bob's "the Mighty Quinn" and "This Wheel's on Fire" are among the least interesting tracks on Ian & Sylvia's best album Nashville, most of which they wrote themselves.

Snot the difference

My ten-year-old, presumably introducing a joke: "What's the difference between a garden slug and a two-inch trail of snot?"

My eight-year-old: "1. Most garden slugs aren't two inches long. 2. Slugs are solid, snot is more liquid. 3. Garden slugs don't usually come out of your nose. 4. Snot would need to be enchanted to come alive."

Every once in awhile, I see my influence shining through *exactly*.

Baby, knit a sweater in my coupe; you make me want a...

1. My eight-year-old has correctly noted that if "sheep" is going to insist on being a plural noun, the singular ought to be "shoop". In which case there's a Salt-n-Pepa single that needs a dramatically overhauled video.

(My Facebook friend David said "I can't wait for the sequel where they teach you about chromosomes so you can clone your own shoop. 'Let's Talk About X', they'll call it". At which point I point out to the jury that

#405: the New Seekers, "Free to Be You and Me" (1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mU8gDKN5sE

If "Free to Be You and Me" were a brand new folk song, I have no idea what I would think of it. Maybe I'd be a fan. It's jolly and bops along at a pleasant pace; the group vocal harmonies, male and female and young-sounding, are nicely done; the banjo is Kermit-esque, and judging by the fact that I no longer own my Bela Fleck & the Flecktones album, being extremely talented at the banjo is a much less effective path to my heart than playing it like you're a green felt puppet.

The lyrics are ... uncomplicated. "There's a land that I see/ where the children are free/ and I say it ain't far/ to this land from where we are". Now, it's a children's song, but my kids have never shown much interest in children's music, so I'd probably fail to adjust much for that. It's also direct enough to be a national anthem, were it interested in anything as artificial as nations, but there are no national anthems in my countdown. It could also strike me as hippie-dippy sloganeering, and I could start parodying it almost without noticing ("There's a shop that's very nice/ where the children are half-price....", perhaps, or modifying "Take my hand, come along/ Lend your voice to my song" into "Use the wi-fi on the street/ give a share to my tweet").

#406: Adam Schmitt, "Elizabeth Einstein" (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdxyXJqgvNI

We have another case where there's the artist's usual style, and then there's the song in question. Adam Schmitt's album World So Bright is, in general, an excellent collection of "power-pop". That's a species of indie-pop premised, I believe, on the idea that since the Beatles' Help! was an immensely charming record that everyone loved in 1965, and inspired dozens of soundalikes to record hits of their own, music inspired by it should still be loved by everybody today.

This is not, in my view, a completely silly premise.

Left tenant Sanders

I discovered the other day that it's still easy to annoy me, 3+ months into Donald Trump's presidency, by saying "Bernie Sanders would have won". Or at least by saying it really condescendingly; I might react better if it were said in other ways, but it doesn't appear I'll find out. The first problem with this claim is, of course, that we'll never know; our reality lends itself poorly to controlled tests involving experimental Earth and control Earth. But the other problem is that I *believe* the claim to be preposterously wrong. I think Bernie would have been crushed, solidly losing the popular as well as the electoral vote. Since my own politics are by American standards far left and anti-corporate, and basically share Sanders's goals, I think this delusion is harmful.

The case for "Bernie would have won" is, I admit, simple.

#407: Emma Pollock, "Hug the Harbour" (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEPPnANgO4Q

Emma Pollock used to be co-leader of the indie pop band the Delgados, who released five interesting and tuneful records, each with some directionless songs here and there, but also occasional bursts of spectacular inspiration -- one of their songs by Alun Woodward will show up later on this countdown. After 2004 they stopped making records, devoting more of their time to record production (especially drummer Paul Savage) and running their own record label (especially bassist Stewart Henderson). When the band broke up, she could have fallen back on her honors degree in Laser Physics and Optical Electronics. Instead, she applied her scientific and technical skills to audio engineering, Pro Tools, and making albums full of precise, measured, careful, and often-lovely songs under her own name.

Concerts, lies, and memeing gone ape

The specific meme that prompted me to post my old Mary Timony concert review was one that dominated my Facebook feed for two days before slowing down. Its basic form: list ten bands/ artists. Declare "I have seen these ten bands -- but I'm lying about one of them". I don't understand why it was *quite* such a hit, but it had real charm. It was a chance to learn about your friends' musical tastes (if for some lame reason your friends don't write interminable blogs about their musical tastes), and let them re-live favorite concert memories for you. Some people also got into the guessing aspect, the "How well do I know this person?".

Some people, I gather, found it aggravating, and posted pictures of Batman slapping Robin and yelling that he didn't care what concerts Robin had seen. (I think this was from a late 1977 comic, when Robin was wearing safety pins and affecting a Cockney accent.) Me, what I liked best were watching the more affectionate variations get spun. Such as:

#408: Papas Fritas, "Hey Hey You Say" (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ3BOfapvU4

The keyboard sets up a high synthetic run of 16th-notes, exact in their equal distances from each other; they strike me as the kind of sound I've seen reviews describe as "glassy", which I suppose means it's okay to pour wine on the synthesizer while it plays, but not to sing a loud, vibrato-heavy high C. An equally precise tambourine enters to match the pace, along with a slender bass line, not that different in feel from the one on "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes". Kick drums enter, tugging along human vocals: long drawn-out cries of "Yeeeeeeaaaaaah-ohhhhh". The verses play at the tension between rigid, pulsing music and a bounding enthusiasm: Tony Goddess's high, eager syncopated monotone singing joined, midway into every thought, by Keith Gendel and Shivika Asthana's roving harmonies. One of my beliefs about playlist-making is that transitions of mood should be disguised by song-to-song commonalities; here Modest Mouse's ominous beat for dancing has segued into a related ominous beat for twitching, and we've gone from one unreliable narrator (or several in a row, actually) to another -- unless you genuinely believe Goddess's chorus assertion that "Man on the telephone will never let me", and that would be easier if he ever finished the sentence.

That transition of mood, though: admittedly it's most obvious if you watch the video.