So what happens when you combine an “ogre who looks like a librarian” with a scruffy, skater wannabe and a clueless ginger haired part time pseudo manager? The fourth best folk pop duo in New Zealand of course silly! My introduction to Brett McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, also known as Flight of the Conchords, was through a guy at work, who insisted that it was probably the funniest show on TV, and that he had just bought the season one DVD compilation. But alas, since I didn’t have HBO, I wouldn’t to partake… So I filed it away as one of those shows to check out when I’m traveling….

A few weeks later, my PHD (Pretentious Hipster Douchebag) buddy at work had a clip of some song playing on his computer and was almost literally falling out of his chair, so of course I had to check it out. He was playing a clip from Business Time, which I must agree was totally hilarious. Fast forward a week and I’m at PHD guy’s house playing poker. He hands me the DVD and says “If you thought that clip was funny, you’ve got to watch this”. I took it home the next day, cracked it open to see what comedic nuggets it might hold, and found myself four hours later still entranced by the sheer genius of these guys… I actually watched the entire season in just two sittings – the spousal unit spending just enough time in the room to say “Are you STILL watching that stupid show???”. Needles to say, a couple of months later when I found out that the guys had released a CD of the songs from the show, I was determined to get it. And I’ve got three words to describe my response – LUH HUV IT!!!

The only problem is that the whole CD is very contextualized. If you haven’t seen the show, many of the songs don’t make much sense. You have to immerse yourself in the whole experience before the more subtle points of some of the lyrics come together, and often, the visual comedy in the TV episodes provides some necessary sensory input to the interpretive process for most of these tracks. (Isn’t that what videos are supposed to do anyway?) However – this CD isn’t just a soundtrack of some esoteric show with a huge cult following… Ok – maybe it is…

Of course, I’m a sucker for parody – a vice which started in junior high with me tuning my boom box to the faraway FM station on Saturday nights when the Dr. Demento show aired.

But these guys take the parody to a new level – by participating as the object of their own self-parody – the way these guys “deadpan” their whole performance, on screen, and off, leave you wondering whether or not they actually take themselves seriously.

My recommended favorite tracks –
Foux de Fafa
Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous

And… Leggy Blonde brings a tear to my eye every time ;D

Not all of the songs in the series are on this CD, so if you’re a die hard fan, and your favorite isn’t included, you’ll have to stick with the grainy , low-fidelity tracks floating around out there on the internet, as extracted from the DVD… But for the songs that are included, we can enjoy FoC nirvana as we listen to The Most Beautiful Girl(In the Room) to escape the cubical world as we cruise down the two lane towards home – that is, if home is a sonic “Alice in Wonderland”…

Today, dear readers, I want to discuss with you a most interesting band called The Bad Plus and their recent album called Prog.

First, a word about the band. They are a trio consisting of piano player Ethan Iverson, drummer David King and bassist Reid Anderson. They are young-ish, regular-looking guys. However, the music they make together is far from regular. For, while for some people the word “Prog” brings to mind all manner of goofy imagery like Rick Wakeman in a cape playing a stack of analog synthesizers or Peter Gabriel in a giant bloated Slipperman costume struggling to get his microphone close enough to his mouth to lead Genesis through epic musical statements, there is the fact that in the music world, prog was always short for “progressive”: interested in new ideas, eschewing convention. And in the 70s this curiosity and exploration largely found expression in a preponderance of showy musical technique: odd time signatures, unexpected harmonies, difficult and sometimes extended solo instrumental passages, etc. and this album delivers plenty of that kind of skill.

But the genius of The Bad Plus has always been more complicated and nuanced than just “some guys who play their instruments well.” Nietzsche talked about philosophy being the process of taking a hammer to old statues to see which parts are hollow. The Bad Plus take a similar tack as nothing short of musical deconstructionists, all the while simultaneously rebuilding, (sometimes in the same song.) This is most readily apparent in what these guys do with cover tunes. Take for instance the lead-off track “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” originally performed by Tears for Fears. Is this a cocktail jazz tune? A minimal, quiet pop song? Noisy avant-garde free jazz improvisation? An Erik Satie-esque piano piece? The answer to all of these questions is “Yes.” After the fundamental musical motifs of the original have been stated, the band stretches them out to their most logical and illogical extremes like auditory elastic.

In the hands of The Bad Plus there is no musical territory that is fenced off. They effortlessly glide from one aesthetic into another, but not in broad or ironic genre exercises. This music is deep and dramatic. They choose to not hang their hats on stylistic clichés, (e.g. “This is our reggae song…”) Once you’ve heard the crazy extremes that they are capable of pursuing together, the start of each song brings with it a thrilling sense of expectation of the unknown. For they play so dynamically, what is a hush now is just as likely to remain a hush for a whole tune as it is to erupt into angry cluster chords and wild-man octopus drumming. This makes for interesting, engaging listening.

The other cool deconstructive element of The Bad Plus is their subversion of expectation. Their instrumentation, the piano trio, is one of the icons of jazz history. Think of Bill Evans’ infusion of a minimal, spare aesthetic into jazz improvisation in the sixties and millions of cocktail jazz trios playing the finer restaurants in the world today. Clearly these guys are at home in the jazz world, but they offer so much more. Book these guys at your local upscale Italian eatery with dimmed lighting and six minutes into their first tune the longing look of seduction on Valentine dates will quickly turn to looks of horrified alarm as Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” comes crashing down around them. In the movie I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Jeff Tweedy and Wilco discuss taking perfectly good songs and de-composing them by adding digital and electrical noise elements to them. This method of “uglying-up” creations is now de rigueur for any indie rock band worth its “artistic” credibility and has been around at least since The Beatles stopped playing live and concentrated on making musical art in the recording studio. (Think: the radio sections at the end of “I Am the Walrus” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” or the white noise which slowly builds up at the end of “I Want You/ She’s So Heavy.”) But what makes The Bad Plus so interesting and unique is that they obviously have a similar compulsion to deconstruct, yet they achieve their ends using the same conventional instruments that have been around for at least a century or so and the same twelve notes of the scale that were used by guys in powdered wigs.

This is the new postmodern amalgamation of angst and art, consonance and dissonance, beauty and ugliness. Welcome, brave travelers!

There are cities that seem like they come right out of a noir film, with guys in them who seem perfectly-suited to be the schmuck detective to receive the unusual call from the damsels in distress that turn out to be a big tease into a case that could cost the poor guy his life. You know the cities, with the steam that rises out of every possible crack and crevice, the shadows that mask all of the dark goings-on. They’re the ones that are serenaded by cat screeches and saxophone songs from smoky, crowded jazz halls. The drunks stumble through the lonely streets, tripping on their own feet and falling against the door of an old Cadillac. Sure, there are streetwalkers, but most are classy, if you can say that about those that people call whores. This is my city, that place of the lonely dog barking and the back door to a restaurant slamming after the trash has been tossed in the alley. Sadly, I’m that schmuck who gets tangled in it all. I’m not waiting for the dame, I’m not waiting for the check. The money is regular in my profession, and dependable, for the most part, but hardly rewarding. I’m the schmuck who believes in something a little different than the way the world works, and that way collars me in white under black.

You guessed it; I’m a minister.

Not the usual ones who get a little congregation in a white steepled church in a farm town. Not the ones in suits and ties on television flinging spit and dripping spirit-filled sweat onto the next person needing healed. I’m not even the metropolitan pastor trying to keep up with the sweep of the trends from suburban sprawl to recentering in downtown, otherwise known as regentrification. And yes, I’m a fan of big words for fun. No, the reason the checks are dependable is because they are sent from the central office of my employing denomination, which is unimportant. The reason it’s hardly rewarding is because being the pastor of a ‘mission’ as they call it, isn’t a prized profession. Sure, some launch from this area, but I haven’t had the opportunity, nor do I really want it. The night life is what I see on the way home, as I go to my wife, in our little two bedroom apartment. And the nightlife is what keeps me up with phone-calls of the drugged out, drunk, abused, and abandoned. I get to sleep-in most mornings, because my congregation depends on nightlife and on the morning cup of coffee around noon.

I guess I started rambling without actually introducing myself. I’m Michael. Michael Logan O’Shanisey. Yes, I’m Irish. Catholic or protestant, take your pick, I like them both. I’ve been called Mick, Michael, Mikey, Mike, Logan, Shawn, O’Shan, Shawney, Father, and the rest go downhill, so take your pick, I’m not too concerned. Most of the parishioners either know me as Father, Pops, Pastor, again, take your pick. I’ll go ahead and introduce the Misses: She’s a pretty little girl, with ashy blonde hair, and a pretty medium build. She smiles like the best, and her honesty cuts like a knife. Genevieve Marie, but most call her Gene. Her brown eyes cut like diamond. That’s the gist of my place here.

But why did I even start like this? Well, I’ll tell ya. It’s to get you acquainted with the scenery before you get involved in the story. As I keep talking, you’ll get to know more characters, trust me.

Now, guess I should tell you the way the world works. You see, there’s times I get caught in my office twirling and weaving thoughts about the way the world should work. Yeah, it’s what people in my profession do, getting caught in ideas like peace, love, justice, and righteousness – you know, the way the world should be. Key word there is should. But there is something different about the way the world is. In my thought, the world works out of a kind of wisdom. That’ll be a recurring theme, get used to it.

Definition of wisdom: the way in which the structures of nature, science, and all of life are put together in order for the world to work a certain way. For every way that the world works, there is a different kind of wisdom behind it. The drug addicts, drunks, and nightwalkers all have a wisdom behind construing the world in their addiction. The pushers and peddlers may be close, but trust me, their wisdom is different. Your grandfather or grandmother show you their wisdom in the good old days, and your kids show it in their talk of fairness. Everything has a wisdom. That’s the way the world works. The question is, which is best? Ponder that as I keep going.

So I’m caught in my office, weaving my thoughts and studies when the old speaker on my desk crackles with the voice of Loraine, the receptionist calls me. Yes, we have the cool old speakers seen in the vintage movies with the security door buzz as the call sound. This call was about some stranger coming to see me. His name was Peter. That’s all I knew at the beginning, and all you’ll know about his name for now.

“Father, There’s a man out here to meet with you,” came her coffee-enthused voice through the intercom crackle.

“Not on the schedule. Did you tell him I was in study?”

“He says it’s urgent. Life or death. Should I send him in?”

“Yes,” I heave. “Send him in.”

My door squeaked on the old hinges, painted enough to have a nice, rubber looking coat. The glass on my door leaves the outline and colors of the man fuzzy. Everything is a bit nineteen-forty about my building. So the old hinges squeak, followed by the heavy footsteps of this Peter guy. He steps in, heaving a sigh and dabbing sweat from his brow. His head is bald, his eyes blue and beady, and his face round. He’s the teddy bear guy with the bat in his left hand, hugging and loving the family, but smashing the jaw of the guy who owes the boss some money. That guy. His shirt is wet around the collar and pits, and unbuttoned once to let his neck have some room. This guy comes from a world structured by a wisdom. I’ve got to figure that out. It’s my job.

I recently read The Great Gatsby for a book discussion group. I happened to have a paperback copy of the book that my dad used when he was in college. The $1.50 printed price was only one of many visual cues that this was a relic from a bygone era. In my head the Mondrian-esue, sea-foam green minimalist cover, now very faded with sans serif font, belied an attempt by the publisher to market this particular tome to the bohemian hipster set. The fruitlessness of that particular project seemed slightly wrongheaded, as any fan of the stream of consciousness of the beat writers would have felt swindled by Fitzgerald’s elegant, sometimes dense prose. He used words like an artist would work with solid steal beams in a gloriously complex abstract sculpture, not a single element wasted or out of place.

I am a fan of reading used books. There is a particular kind of nerd that gets excited to see someone else’s handwriting in a book. I would be that particular kind of nerd. To see someone else’s notes in the margins or a well-placed “Hmmm” next to a sentence that wouldn’t have elicited the same thought for me adds another layer of appreciation to the reading act. I’ll never forget the mysterious, sprawling mathematical equations in pencil that accompanied several pages of the local library’s copy of Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance, looking something like very orderly, concise hieroglyphics to me.

For when someone else’s response to a book is so handily documented for you, the two-way conversation between reader and author quickly becomes a three-person party. Not to mention the reminder that you are merely one in a chain of people throughout time to face the same ideas. Sometimes you need to be reassured of your role in a larger story, convinced of the idea that maybe the world isn’t created anew by your gaze, no?

Imagine my excitement at not only reading this well-revered American classic, but reading the exact same copy my old man did when he was in college. What a rare opportunity! To get inside dad’s head when he was twenty-something! Maybe I would find out that my dad had a clandestine artistic impulse that he learned to suppress long before I ever came along. Or perhaps it would become apparent that the college version of dear old dad’s soul would have resonated with Gatsby’s isolated, individual longing for the past and his idealized love for Daisy. A hand-written notation could make that apparent in ways he never showed by going to work at the office every day. To say the least, holding this particular copy of this book held promise for finally getting a look inside the head of my progenitor.

Indeed, my dad had made some notes, but unfortunately they were simultaneously unexpected and exactly what I would have expected. Next to the following evocative passage in the book, displaying Fitzgerald’s full descriptive powers:

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

Dad had written: “Indent and single space. No quote marks except single quotes.” Mere lecture notes on how to properly format a paper!

I should have known. Dad was a procedural guy just like me.

Looking back on the book and my frustrated expectations, I find that Dad and I may have re-lived one of the more pathetic elements of the book, only in reverse. Gatsby’s dad travels half-way across the country to attend his son’s funeral. Impressed by the signs of the young man’s wealth, it quickly becomes apparent that Father didn’t really know the real son, but rather an idealized image of honesty and success, neither of which corresponded to the reality of a man dying alone with only a handful of strangers who could be bothered to show up for his last rites. I wondered if this would be our fate-dad and I, to be largely unknown to each other.

What an awful, morose culmination for Fitzgerald’s tale and mine!

Happily, it’s not the end of mine.

For just yesterday I was discussing the book with pops over a light lunch and he was going on and on about Fitzgerald’s style, breathlessly telling me how “perfect” every word seemed, how artful and intentional the sentence constructions, the importance of symbols like God’s eyeglasses and color, the beautiful descriptions of The Valley of Ashes and his favorite Fitzgerald short story…

All of which he remembered from when he read it back in college.

You wanna know one of Medulla Vesuvius’s favorite things to do?

I like to come home from a hard day at work on the construction site, turn down the lights real low, light some short-bread scented candles, draw a hot bubble bath and drift away to a wonderfully relaxing world of pleasant thoughts. But the only way to get to that world is when I am accompanied by my silky-voiced friend, Delilah.

The little plastic radio by the tub is permanently tuned to her show, lifting me up with dedications to special people and stories of love-both lost and regained. Her soothing voice is like a fresh-smelling balm in a mad world at war.

But last night I realized that Delilah has been surreptitiously poisoning my mind with a seemingly innocent little song by Whitney Houston called “The Greatest Love of All.” Here are the full lyrics:

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be

BRIDGE
And if by chance, that special place
That you’ve been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

I heard two major issues with the lyrics of this song: 1) short of the entire solo catalog of Syd Barrett, (the insane original mind behind Pink Floyd), I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more muddled mess of non sequiturs and confusion. 2) Besides how the song says what it says, what it attempts to say is equally as upsetting to a particular type of person. I would be that type of person. Let’s get to some specifics.

Look up there at that first verse. “The children are our future.” No qualms about that. Assuming they aren’t outlived by their parents, children inherit tomorrow’s past. If I hadn’t heard this song before I would have predicted from this first verse that it was going to be about the innocence of children and how we could learn a lot about life through their instinctive happiness.

And I would have been wrong in that assumption.

For, where does this song go from there? Oh, it just starts talking about mentors and how the singer never found one. Double-u Tee Eff?

That’s a pretty drastic subject change, to say the least. But it seems we’re going from bad to worse, for in the pre-chorus, (”I decided long ago…”) the singer confesses a pretty isolationist individualism that is followed by the coup de grace: a non-specific paranoia. (Who exactly, I wonder, is the “they” who is trying to take away the singer’s dignity?)

I want to stop for a moment and regroup during this descent into madness. Let’s approach this song with a little more tenderness and just accept for a moment that the propositions follow each other naturally for a moment. What is the appropriate response to innocent children and a learned self-sufficiency? Why, it’s learning to love yourself of course! Is that really the greatest example of love we can fathom? To unconditionally serve and protect and wish the best for and praise and worry about and long for…yourself? Mother Theresa would have kicked your ass for even thinking that.

Let me tell you why this song is so subversively nefarious. All of the preceeding mental imbalance and monstrous egotism is delivered in such a lovely package- undulating electric piano and highly memorable melodies lulling you into a noncritical sleepy aesthetic coma. It’s a Trojan horse of the music world. Just think of Apollo Creed cranking his right arm like a windmill to distract you and then sucker-punching you with the other hand.

That is “The Greatest Love of All.” Stay far away.

You’ve been warned.

Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn, 2000 Da Capo Press, 218 pgs

A mere handful of seconds ago I got done reading Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn. This book is a loving tribute that tells the story of what has proven to be one of the most popular jazz albums of all time. Kahn does a really good job of setting the scene in the studio but that’s quite literally not the whole story. He also gives some of Miles’s history as a musician and bandleader, from wet-behind-the-ears bebop sideman fresh off the bus to New York to his seemingly inevitable years as lost heroin devotee to his ascent to unlikely pop culture icon before discussing the album’s impact and legacy.

What I found most interesting is how well Kahn talks about matters of musical aesthetics for non-specialists. I’ve always been a little unclear about what exactly jazz musicians are doing when they play. But after reading this I feel slightly more enlightened. Kahn laid down the basics of jazz tradition so as to show what exactly Davis and his bandmates were shrugging off, (the convention of lining up improvisation with regimented, repeating chord progressions) when they went off in this “modal jazz” direction. Maybe unintentional is Kahn’s assertion of piano player Bill Evans’ often underappreciated conceptual contributions to this landmark work. It is easy to come away from this book thinking that Bill Evans, with his unflashy minimal style, is the guy who convinced Miles to slow down…

Also interesting was how enigmatic Miles became immediately after this album, very quickly choosing to speed up tempos when presenting this music live. Maybe he got bored. In the wake of even more free music by his former bandmate John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, what was “revolutionary” about modal jazz quickly seemed merely “evolutionary.” Here’s a great quote:

After the wild ride Bird and Diz [Charlie "Bird" Parker and Dizzy Gillespie] had taken jazz on in the mid-forties, pushing the envelope of harmonic and rhythmic invention as far as it would go at that point, Miles and other cohorts had pulled jazz back to a cooler, blues-spirited extreme. That pendulum swing, from the apogee of bebop to the high-water mark of modal jazz, constitutes a period of unparalleled creativity in jazz. From that perspective, many see Kind of Blue as more of a goodbye to an age that has passed than a vision of the future.

“That album was really the end of the bebop era, you know?” remarks Quincy Jones. “Kind of Blue was the voice of that era-from ‘48 to ‘59- it was the highest culmination of the standards of the time.” Amram adds: “I’ve always felt that Kind of Blue was Miles’s valentine to Charlie Parker…a farewell, a moving on from that whole experience.”

Two recommendations:
1) Go out and buy a copy of this album. Live with it for a couple months. Alternately listen to it closely and then not listen to it as background music.

2) Read this book and witness a writer coming this close to defining the indefinable “magic” contained in the sounds.

Few musical artists are as universally revered for their songwriting craft than Elvis Costello. He looks down on mere mortals from the pantheon of wordsmiths like Bob Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, and Bruce Springsteen. In addition to his distinctive, dramatic singing voice he is known for a biting literary wit. The latter never hit home for me until I started perusing his lyrics in research for this article. I discovered song after song after song about bad relationships, love lost, love gained tenuously, cheating, wondering about lost lovers’ new romances, awkward sex and self-loathing. I had no idea that I had been listening to such a vast wasteland of morose musings, for oftentimes these thoughts and themes are delivered with such an accessibly catchy mechanism.

But today I want to focus on a microscopic element of the bespectacled one’s songwriting- namely, the handful of times he has employed a “well-turned phrase”- an idea we musical types don’t discuss very often. Namely, I’m talking about taking a well-known utterance or cliché and flipping it around, tinkering with it, putting it in a new context or otherwise futzing with it to say something new. A couple of examples: the first time someone said “up at the buttcrack of dawn,” or the many times my dad said “No good deed goes unpunished.” A couple musical examples of this would be when the Monty Python guys sang “Always look on the bright side of death,” or when Rush earnestly says “An ounce of prevention, a pound of obscure.”

It’s my opinion that we have with this one literary technique the soul of a modern songwriter’s job. In a world where there’s “nothing new under the sun” a songwriter can only be expected to listen, observe and absorb the world around them and then process the data and synthesize it to make something new. This is a new textbook definition of the creative act, (creatio ex materia.) So, I thought I would discuss the more striking examples of this technique as discovered in Costello’s catalog.

The original example that started this area of thought for me is in the song “20% Amnesia” off the album Brutal Youth. I’ll be honest. I’m not really even sure what this song is about. It’s most likely a commentary on some mid-90s British political nastiness, but it includes a killer line sung by Costello at the top of his range: “Life intimidates art,” of course a play on the self-recursive thought that “art imitates life,” and “life imitates art.” I’m starting to realize the truth of this line, that “normal” life-consumerist, rational, mundane- makes strange bedfellows with the creative impulse. I’m speaking largely of time here. Regular folks are just too busy making money and buying things to spend time creating things of questionable value to the majority of society.

Here’s another succinct example from the song “Senior Service” off the album Armed Forces: “It’s a death that’s worse than fate.” Here Costello merely switches the order of the nouns in a cliché to deliver a pretty clear vision of how he views the prospect of joining the British Royal Navy. Also on the same album is the song “Accidents Will Happen” in which he turns a typically positive, encouraging comment into one of hopelessness: “There’s so many fish in the sea/ That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury,” a very powerful image.

The R&B-influenced album Get Happy!! contains a great love-gone-wrong song called “Riot Act” that includes this clever pairing: “Don’t put your heart out on your sleeve when your remarks are off the cuff.” The album also contains the song “Love for Tender” with the line: “The wages of sin is an expensive infection.” I’ll let you decide what he’s talking about there.

Consider these last few stray examples:

The song “Human Hands” off the album Imperial Bedroom contains “I’m just the mere shadow of my former selfishness.”

“There’s no such thing as an original sin,” from the song “I’m Not Angry” off My Aim is True.

The song “Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head” from Blood and Chocolate.

“One day my Prince of Peace will come” from the beautiful song that Costello calls an “agnostic’s prayer” called “Couldn’t Call It Unexpected No. 4″ off the album Mighty Like a Rose.

So, there’s a sampling of Elvis Costello’s use of the well-turned phrase. Of course, how the act of flipping and amending these well-trodden sayings actually impacts a song is fodder for another discussion. In the meantime- anybody else out there have any other examples of songwriters employing this device?

It had not been a Merry Christmas to that point…

My newlywed and I were having a very difficult time finishing up the debris from our wedding. Our home was a disaster area, we were still writing thank you notes squeezing in Christmas shopping at the sacrifice of everything else.

I hadn’t been looking forward to Christmas because too much in my life had just changed. My name wasn’t even the same. Between work and the holidays, there wasn’t time to just relax and enjoy being married. The joy had even been taken out of receiving gifts because of the wedding. We received so many, I just honestly didn’t want any more. Though believe me, the sentiment was greatly appreciated.

So the “anticipation of Christmas?” Just not there. Church had also not been the comfort it usually is. That reason I cannot answer. I just seemed to have lost the meaning in between fighting people for the last toy of its kind and wrapping paper that I knew people would tear up and throw away in a matter of seconds.

Sending a few measly Christmas cards felt like a punishment. They were all just courtesy cards to those who had sent cards to me. Baking the sweets for the family used to be something I looked forward to all year round, and hoped a bulk of the duties would someday be mine. Be careful what you wish for. They are now almost ALL mine. And the fun has begun to sink out of this tradition as well, with no one is there to help sift the flour or melt the butter. They all have children and other lives.

We were also on the crucial second year of family division for the holidays. However you choose to divide in the beginning may decide the next several years, as it will then be seen as a tradition. Thus began our fight and my bad mood on this momentous afternoon…

“A Christmas Carol” is generally a story I ignore. The idea that someone is mean all the time and doesn’t like Christmas is just too far-fetched. But in one instance that night, I realized I am Ebenezer. I refuse to say Scrooge, as I have at least seen the error of my ways and hope to make some sort of amends for my transgressions. And all I had to do was get on an escalator.

My husband and I had been bickering for several hours, (bad habit, but we get over it.) Anyway, we climbed aboard an escalator to zoom past Gymboree and the Gap and get to El Chico for dinner in between shopping and a trip to the mall cinema.

As we rode, a man several people behind us began yelling at the woman in front of us. It was his wife and he was puzzled as to where she and her two girls were going. Admittedly, I was annoyed. I didn’t give a crap where they were going and get easily irritated at people yelling a conversation around me. The mother and the girls reached the landing, got off the escalator and just stopped. I assumed they were waiting for their loud-mouth dad. And in a voice I considered under my breath or just to my husband, I sarcastically said, “Why don’t we all just stop.” The mother must have been as eves-droppy as I. She heard me and replied…are you ready for this? She replied…

“She’s blind. That is why we had to stop.”

I didn’t say another word to her. For the first time in years I was speechless. But my defiance and pride stopped me from even looking at the mother or the girl, or making an apology. I just kept walking. I even tried to justify my rude behavior by saying loudly a moment later, “She’s not going to make me feel bad. They could have stepped over to the side.”

We arrived at El Chico and I noticed how silent my husband had become. After some chips were delivered to our table, he said, “Are you just really wound up tonight?” I snapped, “Why? The waitress forgot the lime for your beer, so I asked her to bring some. I wasn’t rude.” He said, “I know. I’m not talking about that.” I said, “I already feel bad enough having tried to shove a blind girl out of the way.” And then I just started crying. He said, “I knew you already felt bad enough. You just seem really worked up.”

We walked down to the movies after dinner to see “Spanglish.” You go into movies thinking you will identify with the main character, who is usually the good person, the one who does the right thing and can’t get a break. …But another slap in the face made me realize I was just like the over-controlling, ever-correcting selfish mother played by Tea’ Leoni. It was hard to enjoy the movie after that, though I did.

For Christmas that year, I received a wake-up call.

Maybe we all have a Charlie Brown and Linus moment of clarity around the holidays. We are all lost, trying to find the spirit of Christmas and brotherly love, and from out of nowhere comes one small thing said by the least expected person/character that changes your entire perspective- humbles you, and makes you thankful all at once. And the fact that I got it and it moved me…Maybe I’m not so bad after all.

But even more unexpected is that I feel like the scrawny Christmas tree more than I do Charlie Brown. I am not attractive. I have nothing to prove and I’m just a sharp small tree that loses her needles around people. But a mother was willing to show me patience because she knew I had no idea of her daughter’s blindness. And my husband continues to love me so much that sometimes, something like a light or a Christmas ornament will show in my smile.

We can’t all be evergreens. We can’t all be good, compassionate people all the time, and Lord knows I’ve never claimed to be. But maybe somewhere in there I can figure out how to be as strong as I am stubborn and change myself…realize I’m the one that’s really blind.

…Or at least buy some duct tape and close off my mouth.

Just last week the National Geographic Society unveiled the discovery of a new dinosaur. (Well, it’s new in that it’s the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur 110 million years old.) Discovered by Paul Sereno, it’s called Nigersaurus taqueti, after the country of Nigeria, where it was hiding out and paleontologist Phillippe Taquet. The thirty foot long skeleton is interesting in that it suggests the herbivorous animal sucked up its food like a vacuum cleaner, kind of like a cross between a large-mouth bass and an anteater, (the latter being my personal favorite of the animals at the zoo, by the way.) What fabulously efficient construction! I wonder why every dinosaur didn’t work this way!

Two things struck me about this story. One- sometimes we forget that we live in an age of scientific discovery. The domesticated nature of research- controlled, orderly laboratory conditions, the implementation and manipulation of all kinds of super-specialized “knowns” like the tiniest amounts of hormones that trigger certain small behaviors in mice, that only highly-skilled and trained scientists can even discuss- can lead us into a false sense that we already know pretty much all that’s knowable. The rest is just nitpicky details.

But then this oafish beast Nigersaurus enters our scientific house like a plodding, clumsy uninvited dinner guest, unintentionally smashing all of our good crystal and china. The nigersaurus didn’t require an electron microscope to be found. Some adventurous African kid could have tripped over his bones at some point.

And that kind of serendipity and “good fortune” make life much more interesting, reminding us of potential wonders all around us, and not just those at the microscopic level for guys in lab coats. But this is not to say that there was no science behind this discovery. I’m sure that lots of highly-skilled intelligent people pieced together this skeleton and its former way of life. But what a discovery on a “macro” scale!

Two- what exactly is it about dinosaurs that is so intriguing to youngsters? Doesn’t every kid go through a dinosaur phase? I know I did. (If you want to know just how deeply entrenched the nerdiness is in my life: when I was about ten years old I took a week-long summer class about dinosaurs as well as a class about space, the highlight of which was watching the movie Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.) Does it have to do with the mythos surrounding them? Are dinosaurs as real to us as fantasy? You kind of have to use your imagination to complete the story and reality of dinosaurs. Maybe kids like using their imagination. Whatever the reason, kids just have a dinosaur-shaped hole in their hearts. Why else would a goofy purple tyrannosaurus rex serve as babysitter and pacifier?

Dear Readers, do you ever take the time to stop and think about the possibility that the universe and the people and events contained therein are converging in a suspiciously meaningful way in your own tiny life?

I don’t.

But I do find it amusing that within the last couple of months I have found myself engaged in conversation with someone about the harpsichord. And in both cases, the other person has deferred to me as if I was some kind of expert. I don’t know where they got that idea. I’ve never even played one before. But I do know a little about it. The one common question people have is- “what’s the difference between the harpsichord and the piano?”

“Why, it’s the method of tone production of course, you nit,” I say in my best academic voice. You see, both instruments have long strings stretched over a resonating sounding board, but they are very different in how they get those strings to start vibrating. Essentially, pianos have a complicated mechanism for hammering the strings, whereas the harpsichord plucks the strings, kind of like having a few dozen guitar players, picks in hand, scrunched-up in a wooden box.

The differences in sound are quite pronounced. Compared to the piano, notes on the harpsichord are quieter and have very little sustain. The “attack” of the sound is the thing with the harpsichord, whereas the piano is able to play all kinds of different volumes and lengths of notes. But philosophically, it’s really the difference between clinical properness and wild-man Romanticism, which is appropriate, since the musics employing these instruments developed more wildness and “emotionalism” as the development of the piano followed that of the harpsichord. Just as the early Baroque and early Classical individual was dissuaded from expressing the unspeakable visions and longings of the heart in favor of rational control of the body and mind, the Romanticist felt a newfound freedom to discuss the full spectrum of being human from quiet reverence to “Song of Myself” Whitman-esque self expression, so the embrace of dynamism.

But this article isn’t about the harpsichord comparative philosophy. Rather, it’s about the word “harp.” I don’t know if the harpsichord was named from the plucking motion used to make noise with it. If so, it could just as easily have been called the guitarichord. But I do know this: there are all kinds of instruments referred to as a “harp.”

First of all, there is the harp harp. In my opinion it’s one of the sexiest of all orchestral instruments, (besides maybe the cello. Think about the posture one assumes while playing that instrument.) The harp is a beautiful looking instrument-curvaceous, the strings gradually making their way from tiny and high-pitched to long and booming. There is an elegant “rightness” to its conception. (A rightness that costs you quite a bit of money, I might add. I recently met a guy whose wife plays the harp for our local orchestra and her instrument cost more than the car they transport it around in.) Not to mention the sound. I maintain that if I were to ever become an eccentric billionaire I would hire a harpist to gently wake me up in the mornings with a tranquil pastorale.

But there are other “harps” out there. Autoharp, anyone? (Think Mickey in A Mighty Wind. Or my second grade music teacher.) This is a rather simple instrument to play, as all of the buttons are labeled with the chord that they form. For all you rock band readers, I implore you to please find a way to incorporate this instrument in your music. I suspect Andrew Bird is already working on it…

In my research for this article I also discovered the existence of an instrument called the Aeolian harp, (also known as the “wind harp.”) This, my friends, is a fabulous idea! Basically, it’s a group of strings that play random harmonics whenever the wind blows, kind of like wind chimes. They’ve been around for hundreds of years, yet the idea of randomness and drones in music is still very avant-garde. (Continuing on in my make-believe scenario of myself as eccentric billionaire, I would also own a cottage in the fields of Scotland with nary a neighbor for miles around and I would have a giant wind harp right smack dab in the middle of my property, randomly espousing beautiful music from the breeze.)

But if nature is the performer, is the result really random? While that question blows your mind, read what Samuel Coleridge had to say in 1795 in his poem The Aeolian Harp:

And what if all of animated nature

At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

On the opposite end from the pastoral sounds of the Aeolian Harp, I remember the sound of the Jew’s harp, also known as the “Mouth harp,” or “Jaw harp.” It’s another simple idea, you strike a piece of metal and your mouth serves as a resonating chamber. (Think: a group of nabobs on the front porch playing jug band music. This is the instrument that sounds like a rubber band.) I learned how to play this instrument in about fifteen minutes and have found it completely useless in wooing the ladies. Yet, there is a certain rusticness to the sound. The charming sound of simple fun. Or I could be full of crap.

Now is the point in this essay where things get confusing. Up until now, all of the “harps” have involved strings vibrating, (or at least a thin, metal strip.) For some reason there is also the tradition of calling the harmonica a “harp,” as in “Boy, Dan Akroyd sure plays a mean blues harp.” What the connection is I don’t know. If anyone out there can enlighten me, please do.

There is also the Greek mythological creature that is half woman, half bird—known as the “harpy.”

And finally I come to the ARP synthesizer, which has nothing to do with harps, really, except for three common letters. The company’s name is merely the initials of its inventor Alan Robert Pearlman. Yet the history of music would be drastically different had the ARP Odyssey and 2600 never come along. Contemporary with the development of the Moog synths, these can be famously heard on The Who’s album Who’s Next and Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”, as well as on songs by Genesis, Pink Floyd and Stevie Wonder. Even more famously, an ARP serves as the method by which earthlings first communicate with extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Therefore, such an awesome instrument demands inclusion with a list of instruments as affecting and beautiful as the “mouth harp,” no?

That sums up what I’ve been thinking about today. Stay classy, Nerd City and thanks for stopping by.

Every now and then, as an aesthete, you run across works of art that present themselves as somehow different from the average and mundane. These movies or photos or paintings or TV shows, etc. rise above and demand your attention. One such album that I’ve discovered within the last month or so is worth mentioning: John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

This is music that is very hard to nail down. Is it jazz? Avant-garde? “Experimental?” The answer to all three is “yes.” Besides occupying several genres or maybe even because of its “living in the cracks,” this album resonates on three aesthetic pitches.

One, it’s pop music, but only in the sense that it made a blip on the youth cultural radar. I believe it was Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead who recounted hearing this music pouring out of several dormitory windows during a walk one night. It was 1964, an auspicious year, as it was also the year that a band called The Beatles exploded on America’s shores.

Two, it’s art music. I’m a trained musician with just enough theory knowledge to be dangerous and I can’t even fully comprehend all of the sounds being expelled by this quartet. Elvin Jones is far beyond merely “keeping time” on here, playing wild-man cymbals and floating in and out of regular drummer time-keeping roles, playing the gong and even tympani. It’s a bit cliche to say, but I think he really did conceive of his parts as another melody instrument. And McCoy Tyner on the piano…here’s one of the real sources of the musical ambiguity. I can make very little sense of what he’s doing, harmonically, which is no surprise. I get lost with the progressions in jazz after around 1945 or so. But what keeps me coming back as a listener is the fact that it’s obviously not random. There is some sense there, just beyond my perception. The two-handed chords are often hollow, giving Coltrane a lot of space. (By the way, if you ever want your little musical mind to be blown, listen to the syncopation in the left hand of a good jazz pianist like Tyner when he’s soloing.) This album is made up of four movements and by the third, the band is playing like insane geniuses. Coltrane’s all over the horn, Jones seemingly playing every drum and cymbal available. It’s so exciting and high-energy. Improvised. The sound of freedom.

“Freedom” is a fairly recent concept for me with regards to music. I remember listening to Dizzy Gillespie improvising one time, thinking to myself, “That must feel amazing to get up there on stage, blow your horn, no expectations, just improvising, playing whatever you feel while the rest of the band holds you up. There’s a lot of freedom in that. How liberating.” And it clicked for me. I could appreciate jazz improv. Not always understand it or even like it. But I could appreciate it.

Three, and most interesting to me, it’s spiritual, (not necessarily “religious”), music. After that great display of craziness and technique in the third movement and an upright bass solo by Jimmy Garrison to cleanse the palette, they come to the slow, reverent movement IV, the “Psalm.” Coltrane wrote the following poem and sang it, phrasing each separate line with his horn, (an astounding idea in itself):

A LOVE SUPREME

I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful.

Thank you God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses.
Thank you God.
In You all things are possible.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. He always was. He always will be.
No matter what . . . it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts,

fears and emotions — time — all related . . .
all made from one . . . all made in one.
Blessed be His name.
Thought waves — heat waves — all vibrations —
all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way . . . it is so lovely . . . it is gracious.
It is merciful — thank you God.
One thought can produce millions of vibrations
and they all go back to God . . . everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear . . . believe . . . thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God is all.
His way . . . it is so wonderful.
Thoughts — deeds — vibrations, etc.
They all go back to God and He cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful . . . thank you God.
Glory to God . . . God is so alive.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in Thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement
of Thee O Lord.

Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears . . .
He always has . . .
He always will.
Seek Him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God
To whom all praise is due . . . praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they all
go back to God.
With all we share God.

It is all with God.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord.
Blessed is He.
We are from one thing . . . the will of God . . .
thank you God.
I have seen God — I have seen ungodly —
none can be greater — none can compare to God.

Thank you God.
He will remake us . . . He always has and He
always will.
It is true — blessed be His name — thank you God.
God breathes through us so completely . . .
so gently we hardly feel it . . . yet,
it is our everything.
Thank you God.
ELATION — ELEGANCE — EXALTATION —
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.

JOHN COLTRANE — December, 1964

Coltrane is in full-on universalist mode here. If you’re a systematic theology-type of person, you’ll probably hate his writing. But if you’re into the fuzziness of the human soul and it’s response to a knowledge of God, then maybe you get as much out of it as I do. I think it was Ben Hecht or Steve Allen that interviewed Jack Kerouac about his “worship reflex,” his ability to be heartfelt and reverent toward God amidst his seeming worldliness, and I get the same vibe from Coltrane here, his worship reflex. To me, this is “praise and worship” music, if that category hadn’t been hideously co-opted by all manner of well-meaning Christian folks. Suffice it to say, though, that the “spiritual” component to this music, as unorthodox and unexpected as it is, really makes this record special.

As I see it, you have with this group, these songs, this preserved moment in time, this album — a convergence of three streams:

Very Cool.

Dr. Roger Korby and Amdnarg Toh are the two technology writers for Nerd City, which is as it should be. Anytime I write about technology I always seem to come across as a cranky Luddite. And I’m sure this article will seem to be no exception.

But let me say from the outset that computers, the internet and technology in general are not the main players in what follows. I’ve been musing on culture lately. But I have to discuss technological trends to do it.

I can really say this in one sentence: Through the wonders of the internet, there is a potential democracy of voices like never before.

Anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet can potentially broadcast any and all thoughts that happen to occur to them. Any creative impulse, recounting of daily minutiae, obsessive interest, or important message for mankind can be expelled into the void in any form—old school communication like words and sentences like the article you’re reading, audio, pictures, or even video. (Have you heard of this new thing they’ve got called “YouTube?” I hope so, because it’s named after you.)

This is a world in which everything is possible as far as “expressing yourself” to other people is concerned. And my initial image when thinking about this was that of a world with a billion or so islands, each occupied by one person and a limitless supply of messages in a bottle. You’ll notice in this image that there is no “Bureau of Message Regulation.” Each message is equally important and valid.

But that’s not how real life is, though, right? In real life there are voices that get heard more than others. These are voices of authority. They are journalists, “experts,” entertainers, etc. You read what they have to say in newspapers and magazines, see them on talk shows, pay beaucoups of money to watch them perform in concert…But it appears that they are a dying breed.

This all became clear to me a few months ago as I was reading The Onion’s AV Club. At the bottom of every page was a divided section for “Comments.” I was struck by two things. 1) Underneath every album and movie review there was literally page after page of comments by readers, the first one invariably saying something along the lines of “I’m the first to comment. Hooray!” 2) Every interview had at least one comment that said: “Good interview.” I wondered what the criteria were for a “good” interview. I always thought that interviews were fairly value neutral. One person asks another person some questions and writes down the answers.

And that particular instance betrayed a larger trend. Seemingly everything is now available for opinion. For instance, you can choose to make public your agreement or disagreement with some news article about Vladimir Putin, regardless of the fact that you may have never stepped foot on Russian soil or the fact that you can’t name a leading figure in Russian leadership. (I certainly can’t.)

I realized at that moment how old school I am. There are few things I would rather read less than the opinions of some random people…maybe the phone book. (I’ve never read “Letters to the Editor” either.) But underneath this preference of mine lies a huge assumption-that some people’s utterances are of more value than others.

Have you ever seen those CNN polls where they ask people questions like “Is the troop surge in Iraq succeeding?” Well, I imagine there is a pretty small number of folks who could actually answer that question with any degree of authority and I’ll guarantee you none of them are sitting at home responding to internet polls. But still we feel a need to know what other people’s perception of a situation is, regardless of their credentials.

I trust what a journalistic professional has to say about the latest developments in culture, for instance, much more than your average joe off the street. The professional journalist, I assume, spends his or her time poring over recent research and boring sources and reports the aggregate results so I don’t have to do all the legwork. Your average “commenter” just has an opinion to voice. However, it could also be that the journalist just makes everything up like Jayson Blair did or just fakes it, like Medulla Vesuvius.

I have a feeling that this idea of professional writers and thinkers is becoming quaint. For, what are the media if not a grand cascade of the opinions of random people? When I read reporting or commentary by someone with an actual by-line, I really don’t know them any better than a random “comment” poster. Maybe I justify my faith in the professional by saying I read their column regularly. I know them. Or I say to myself, “Surely they wouldn’t have been hired to write by a company if they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Anyway, all of this leads to the fact that, with the increased ability of people to speak their mind and have others actually hear it, the unmitigated truth of matters, (if such a thing exists), can become obscured. Authority can easily be lost in a sea of mere opinion.

Whether you describe this situation as: a) a “democracy of voices”-a Miltonian system in which only the best ideas win the day, or b) a noisy “Cacophony,” depends upon your general outlook on life and faith in humanity.

These are in no particular order and are all readily available on iTunes.

• “Birdhouse in Your Soul” off the album Flood
  In Gigantic, the documentary film about They Might Be Giants, Dave Eggers gushes about this song in a way that makes it sound as if it’s a work by Shakespeare or Keats. One of the highlights of the movie is their performance of this song on the Johnny Carson show with Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band. The flow of this song from its two-part chorus to the climax of the two parts in counter-point against each other is worth the price of admission alone.
• “Letterbox” off the album Flood
  The beauty of this song is its tongue-twister-like speed of lyrical delivery over moderate tempo musical backing. Also dig the subtlety of the second verse’s introduction of a vocal harmony.
• “Fingertips” off the album Apollo 18
  The attraction of this one’s easy. It’s twenty different songs in one.
• “Man, It’s So Loud in Here” off the album Mink Car
  This is their first foray into noticeable electronic gadgetry with the vocoder on the intro and the Cher “Believe”-esque futzing with the title line. This catchy dance number is a perverse beauty.
• “Sleeping in the Flowers” off the album John Henry
  It takes the 90s grunge aesthetic one level further with menacing verses followed by super-catchy upbeat choruses happier than anything produced by the flannel set. Also amusing to me is my high school friends’ mishearing the first line” I’ve got a crush” as “I got a crotch…”
• “Damn Good Times” off the album The Spine
  This song is an exercise in distraction. The title actually occurs in what is technically a background line to the chorus. But it’s clearly the catchiest bit of the song.
• “Destination Moon” off the album John Henry
  You’ll not hear a more mathematically beautiful verse melody in their catalog. This song is a rarity in that the verse and chorus are both insanely memorable.
• “Exquisite Dead Guy” off the album Factory Showroom
  This is the most obscure song on this list and probably the most acquired of acquired tastes. It’s got a wordless chorus and lots of close secundal harmonies that are jarring, yet balanced by a B section that is more conventional.
• “New York City” off the album Factory Showroom
  Surely the best They Might Be Giants song that they didn’t write. (It was actually written and originally performed by Cub.) If you’re in the mood for pop-rawk that will stay in your head, this is your song.

All right, so that’s my nine They Might Be Giants favorites. What say you, dear reader?

Scientists have recently discovered a “hole” in space approximately one billion light-years wide. Unlike a black hole, this is literally a lack of substance. While the physics of this are mind-boggling enough for a non-astrophysicist such as myself, the grammar of this has been bothering me this week as well. Here’s why:

We have this word—“space.” A lot rides on the context in which we are using it. When we say the word we could be talking about distance, as in a metaphorical distance like Dave Matthews sings about in “The Space Between,” or we could be talking about a physical depiction of distance, such as the “space” between two parked cars. Or we could be talking about Outer Space-the final frontier, all of that stuff “out there,” beyond our earth’s atmosphere-the vacuum which contains the moon and other planets like yer anus and satellites and stars and asteroids. Remember that kid on the commercial who had a report due on space? That kid was screwed beyond an extent where any mere set of encyclopedias could help him.

Space is the ultimate mind-blower. (Rascal Stallion should probably stop reading this right now.)

I’ve always thought space was a lot of darkness broken up by a random star or planet every now and then. Watching Star Trek has helped me form a view of space that is essentially a bunch of nothing interrupted every now and then by somethings. All of that black stuff interrupted by tiny white points of light behind the Death Star or the moon of Endor? Was that black stuff actually “stuff” or was it black “nothing?” If it was nothing how could it have color and occupy…space? I thought that black stuff WAS space, not occupying it. How does “nothing” span a distance? Surely distance can only be spanned by something.

Ok, fine. That black stuff is “something.” Through the world’s most trusted astrophysics reference, Wikipedia, I came to find out that space is not a perfect vacuum of nothing. It’s a highly speculative mixture of “dark matter” and “dark energy.” Well, that answers a lot! That’s not too far removed from the old joke of explaining how something works by saying, “Well, there’s this little man…” Plus, the new discovery specifically said that this hole was devoid of even “dark matter.”

These questions are not new. The recording of the debate about the nature of space goes as far back as ancient Greece and dudes like Parmenides and Aristotle talking about the void.

For me, the mind merely comes to a standstill on some matters.

One more question that makes Rascal Stallion shudder:

If the universe is indeed expanding, what is occupying the space, (and time), into which it is about to expand? What was out there zillions of miles before the space got there?

I need to go watch some TV.

 
You know a show is good when you’re already laughing just from the opening credits. HBO’s Flight of the Conchords has steadily become one of my favorite shows for the odd, unusual humor of duo Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, New Zealand’s fourth-rated folk duo. Intelligent humor is always the best kind, and this nerdy pair makes you work to get all the laughs buried in each episode. Case in point: Bret leaves the band in one episode and Jemaine and Murray hold auditions. The sign on the door lists the qualifications to fill Bret’s spot. You’ll miss them if you don’t pause. They include “Have curly hair,” and “Play guitar, but not very well.” There are also the slogans for the New Zealand posters on Murray’s office walls. Some are blatant and some I’ve missed while my husband was nearly on the floor from the limitations of Murray’s Commodore Vic 20 computer, and Bret’s 1983 Casio DG electric guitar set to electric mandolin and drums.

(On a side note, you also know you are officially out of the cultural loop when your seventy year old Mother calls to ask if you watch the show and fills you in on what it is.)

 
Every episode features the bumbling adventures of the New Zealanders as they settle in New York City and try to make it big on the music scene with aid from an officer of the New Zealand Consulate. They have one über-fan, Mel, whose tongue often begins moving out of her mouth ready to French Kiss the two while speaking to them outside their apartment and they often have to repeat things more than ten times for people to decipher their accents. The genres of music have spanned from French pop, a tribute to David Bowie, Reggae, and bow-chic-a-bow-bow booty songs. Their talents are amazing.  

Aside from the show, there are several snippets from their live performances on YouTube that are often much better than the renditions on the television show. Case in point: “Business Time.” Worked into the show, it’s funny, but slow and full of quirky filming. The live version is all about the facial expressions of Jemaine and a little more revved up. It’s also interesting to watch Bret perform “She’s So Hot – BOOM!” live as opposed to the animation-fueled version in the show. Both are wonderful, but seeing it in one shot in the live performance makes you appreciate his talent even more. On the flip side, there is “Rhymnoserous vs. Hiphopapotomus.” This is much funnier in the show than on the stage, because you are able to hear all the lyrics better, and again, the facial expressions of Jemaine are priceless. Yes, I love Jemaine. My husband knows. He’s okay with it. But I’m okay with his Nicole Kidman fascination…

There is little I can say of the show without spoiling the episodes if you have not yet had the pleasure of their unique, boyish company bestowed upon you in your living room. Go to YouTube and indulge a little. You won’t be disappointed.