Where have I been? Well, I’ll be honest with you… a few months ago I found a very interesting looking pickle and the thought of that pickle lodged itself in my brain right where the thought of this blog had been before. So I completely forgot about this site, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about that pickle. Then, just recently, Bonnie said to me, “Why haven’t you updated your pickle lately?” And I was all like, “Huh?” And that jarred something loose and she repeated herself, “Why haven’t you updated your blog lately?” And I thought, Oh crud, the concept of my blog in my mind was replaced with the thought of a pickle for months!
Well, with that out of the way, today I’d like to share with you three live music performances that I think are pretty much perfect.
Hey Bulldog by Fanny
Fanny was one of the very first all female rock bands. This cover of the Beatles, Hey Bulldog is super tight. They look cool as hell with that waist-length hair and the 70s vests. And what’s particularly bad-ass is their combination of feminine energy and rock and roll when there was no real precedent for it.
Gangsters by The Specials
This may be my favorite musical performance from Saturday Night Live. I’m not even a huge fan of the song, but from the moment Neville Staple joins them on stage with his tommy-gun, the band’s infectious energy and the too-small stage make for a lively, frenetic, perfect performance.
Scarborough Fair/Canticle by Simon & Garfunkel & Williams
You probably never knew that what Simon and Garfunkel were missing was Andy Williams singing along with them, but this performance shows that may have been the case. Williams voice blends gloriously with S&G to create a perfect, haunting, autumnal performance. (You can skip to 1:00 in to see the performance, although Andy Williams intro is worth a listen.)
Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I recently reconnected with an old friend I first met when I was 12 years old! His name is Gilmore and he’s been living in the Falls all his life. He’s a blast. We decided to make a movie together to exercise our creative muscles. Unfortunately neither of us have a camera. So we have to use the back-up camera on Gilmore’s Toyota Yaris to shoot the movie and that has limited our options for subject matter. As it stands now, the movie is an erotic-thriller about a guy who installs license plate frames. We just got done with the first draft. I’ll let you know how it goes.
My taste in music tends towards the obscure. I listen to a lot of new music every week, but it’s almost all from bands that don’t have much mainstream success. Recently I started listening to more top 40 this year than I have in decades. Like a lot of people over the age of…. say, 30, it often seems like modern music isn’t very good. It feels strangely low energy to me, which is weird because you think of the popular music of any era being aimed at young people, and you would think young people would want something a little more upbeat. But what do I know. The fact I’m using the term “young people” means I’m already out of the loop.
But diving back into the Top 40 has made me appreciate a lot more new music than I have in recent years. So here are some of my favorite songs/artists from the first half of 2021. All of these songs/videos have many millions of views, so there won’t be anything new here for those of you who are still plugged into the music scene. But if you checked out of pop music a while ago, hopefully you’ll find something here you like.
We’re Good by Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa has been putting out music for a few years now, but this is my first time paying her the attention she deserves. She’s a legit talent and this is a great song.
Follow You by Imagine Dragons
My understanding is that it’s pretty uncool to like Imagine Dragons. They’ve been around for a while now but I’ve ignored the top-40 stuff so completely over the past decade that I don’t really know anything about them. There’s nothing revolutionary about this song, but I still like it quite a bit. The video is pretty enjoyable as well. It features Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Build a Bitch by Bella Poarch
There’s more polish on this one track than in every song released between 1952 and 1969 combined, but it’s still a great two minute and thirty second pop song. Bella Poarch is a tiktok sensation, but this song would have been a hit in many eras. Fun video too.
Save Your Tears by The Weeknd
I’m not a big Michael Jackson fan. And not even because he was probably a child molester. I just think a lot of his music was weak-ass, corny garbage. So I’m not predisposed to like The Weeknd who is heavily influenced by MJ, but this song has grown on me. And this performance of the song from the Billboard Music awards is pretty dope.
Hey, how is everyone doing? I want to welcome my regular readers. This blog has really made a splash around Marmalade Falls. Wherever I go, whenever anything happens, someone will say, “Are you going to write about that in your blog?” And I’ll say something like, “No, Bonnie, I’m not going to write about how you dropped that plate of spaghetti in Mr. Watanabe’s lap when you were working the midnight shift at the Roller Derby Diner.” Whoops…Guess I just did!
I’m just teasing. (Hi Bonnie! Hi Mr. Watanabe!)
Today I wanted to mention one of my favorite TV shows which just came out with a new season. It’s called Nailed It! and it’s on Netflix.
The premise of Nailed It is that they bring on three non-bakers and have them attempt to recreate extravagant baked goods.
There’s no mean-spiritedness in the show. The purpose of the show isn’t to make fun of their failures, but to celebrate their attempts at trying to do something they’re not good at.
The show is hosted by Nicole Byer, a comedian who was made for this job. She is joined by famous chocolatier Jacque Torres. Nicole is a loud, crazy, boisterous, nut-job and it’s been fun over the course of five seasons watching Jacque get pulled into her world.
The show itself plays with the TV format quite frequently. It’s just a goofy show. There’s never a serious moment.
And sometimes that’s what you need. Maybe you’re going through a break-up, or someone you know is dying, or you’re just overwhelmed by life and you just need to avoid negativity. You don’t want to turn on Law and Order: SVU and the first thing you hear is, “Was there enough ejaculate on the dead four-year-old to get a full DNA profile?”
Nailed It is comfort TV when you need it. But it’s also just an enjoyable show in its own right, whether you need a break from the world or not.
When I was growing up in Marmalade Falls, we only got two channels on television. One was a local public access channel. The other was the Dumont Network, which officially went off the air in 1956, but was—for some reason—still broadcasting to the Falls into the early 90s. I’m not sure about the science of why it worked like that. I think the theory is that we have “thick air” due to the dust from the sandpaper factory, and it just takes a lot longer for the broadcast waves to reach our antennas.
Of course, we don’t have antennas these days. Cable came to Marmalade Falls in 2012 when Doc Jensen dug the trenches and laid the wires so he could broadcast NCIS: New Orleans at the pub. Since that point, Mom has had the 2500-channel Jensen Cable+++ package and we’ve never looked back.
Watching tv is fun as all hell. I know lots of smart people don’t own TVs and instead they do crossword puzzles or something, but I’m not that sophisticated. I love the tube.
So I needed to have a system for making tv watching as rewarding as possible. Here is my sytem…
No Binging
I never watch more than one episode of a given show per day. Anticipation is a gift. Burning through a show you really like over the course of a day and a half completely negates the excitement and anticipation that happens at the end of a really great episode of television. I’m not suggesting you wait a week between episodes like you used to have to when everything was on broadcast television (although I think that’s not a completely bad idea—some of my most satisfying television watching experiences involved waiting a week and losing my shit wondering what’s going to happen next on Lost or Breaking Bad or Captain N: The Game Master or what-have-you). I’m just suggesting waiting a day between episodes. I’ve been doing this for a couple years now and it’s really added to my enjoyment of shows. Why not stretch something you enjoy over the course of a couple weeks or a month rather than burning through it in a couple days?
Categorize Your Shows
Split the shows you watch into two categories:
Concentrated Watches
Distracted Watches
In the Concentrated Watch category are all the shows where you are rewarded for giving your full attention to the show. For me, this category consists of mostly comedies and dramas—narrative shows that tell a story.
The Distracted Watch category is for everything else: reality TV, sports, game shows, cooking shows, rewatches of shows I’ve seen before. These are shows that you don’t lose too much by not being completely engaged while you’re watching. As long as you catch the major beats, you won’t be missing much.
Now, when you watch something in the Distracted Watch category, try to do something else that’s at least somewhat productive. Knit. Clean. Exercise. Practice card tricks. Do some mindless work. Stretch. Whittle. Draw. Juggle. In this way, even though you’re watching garbage, you’re still making headway on something that’s not completely meaningless.I’m not suggesting you multi-task by surfing the internet while you watch TV, then you’re just doing two unproductive activities simultaneously. Instead, work on some craft or skill. So then you won’t end the night feeling bad because you just watched four hours of shit. You’ll feel like you got to watch your show and you worked on something that might be beneficial to you—even if it’s only in a small way—as you go through life.
When it comes to your Concentrated Watch shows, this is what I recommend…
Active Watching
This is something I’ve just started doing recently. When I’m watching a show from the Concentrated Watch list, I get rid of all distractions. No phone, no computer, and none of the other things I might engage with during my Distracted Watch shows. It’s just me and the tv. And I watch in a very particular way. I watch the way this woman watches this episode of Breaking Bad.
This is Ellie. She’s my favorite “reactor” on youtube. When she watches something, she watches it with her full attention. Her eyes dart over the screen. She jumps, she laughs, she cries, she cringes. Of course, reaction videos on youtube have become somewhat performative (if they weren’t always that way). But her reactions still feel genuine.
A couple months ago I started watching tv like this. Not every show. Just my Concentrated Watch shows. I tried it as an experiment. I was sick of watching shows and then remembering almost nothing from them because I wasn’t really paying attention. I figured if I tried to actively watch the shows, I would find them more affecting and memorable. And it worked. I began to watch as if someone was watching me watch and I wanted them to experience the show through me, and it made the whole viewing experience better. And while it felt a little artificial to be so engaged in the shows at first, now it doesn’t. Now it just feels like how I watch the shows. I’ve trained myself to take the shows in completely.
By splitting my shows up into those that will serve as “background” while I work on something more productive or those to which I’ll devote 100% of my attention, TV has become much more enjoyable. And I never feel like I’m waisting my time. I’m either progressing on some task/craft or skill or I’m letting myself be drawn into a good story. I consider those both to be good uses of my time.
One of the best things about returning to Marmalade Falls is being able to listen to Dandy Doug’s Moonlight Music Show every night from 12-4am. Dandy Doug has been doing the show for over 50 years and has a great ear for music. (He also does this weather reports in his hysterical character, Mike Wetterman, the Microscopic Weatherman. Who, as the name suggests, is a weatherman who is microscopic. He speaks in this really high pitched voice. It’s hilarious. “Oh no!” he says, “The rain is up to my waist!” But that just means a light drizzle because he’s microscopic. It actually can get very confusing. But when the Blizzard of ’86 came through and the school roof collapsed, it was “Mike Wetterman’s” squeaky voice that brought us solace as he provided the weather updates and reported on the progress of the search for corpses in the snow.)
Here are some of my favorite songs from 2020 that I heard on the Moonlight Music Show…
Favorite Vocal Harmonies – Dirty Projectors
The Dirty Projectors put out 5 EPs this year. The first four highlighted different aspects of the band’s style: folk, soul, bossa nova, and glitchy orchestral music. The 5th EP was a combination of styles. Dirty Projectors don’t always have the most lush harmonies, but they’re often the most interesting.
The first song below, No Studying, is one I’ve been grooving to lately. The harmonies cut through in the chorus. Below that song are a couple other favorites from earlier in the year.
Favorite Bop – Pull the Chute by Tijuana Panthers
At some point every evening I like to take 15 or 20 minutes and have a little dance party. The best songs to dance to by yourself are those with a bopping beat to them. You don’t want to slow dance with yourself, you weirdo. One of my favorite songs to bop to this year was Pull the Chute by the Tijuana Panthers. They’re known for their garage/surf music, although I don’t know if this song would fall into that category. For me it just falls into the category of songs to jump around to.
“Have you met my mother? She’s got good cooking but boy she can leave a bad taste in my mouth.”
Favorite Pop-Punk – PUP
They’re the best band doing it these days. Their “This Place Sucks Ass” EP which came out in October was great. Here’s the opening track.
They also had my favorite drumming of the year, Zack Mykula’s part on the song Anaphylaxis.
Favorite Psychedelia – Shadow Show
These ladies channel the 60s garage-psychedlic sound beautifully on their debut LP, Silhouettes.
Favorite Clever Lyrics – Cheekface
I don’t like funny songs, per se, but I do appreciate clever/interesting lyrics. Cheekface’s songs are pretty much only clever/interesting lyrics strung together with a catchy chorus thrown in.
“I am eating like it’s Thanksgiving, but without the gratitude.”
“Venmo me when you get home so I know you are safe.”
“I am young, dumb and full of… psychiatric medication.”
My Most Listened to Song of 2020
Just for mathematical reasons, my most listened-to song of any year is almost always going to come from the previous year. In 2020 that song was Just My Luck by Ages and Ages, a choral-pop band from Portland. The verses have a lilting, up and down, stream of conscious quality that I always found very soothing. Enough so that, according to my Apple Music play count, this was my most listened to song of 2020.
My name is Andy. Welcome to my blog about the things in my life that have brought me joy. Those things might include books, movies, music, food, or perhaps something that struck my funny bone just right. There’s so much in the world to be delighted by, and it seems a shame to me to not make note of those things.
Marmalade Falls is the town I grew up in, and the one I’ve returned to in order to live with—and help out—my recently widowed mother. (RIP Gerald Mittens)
They say things move just a little bit slower in Marmalade Falls. In all likelihood, this is at least in part due to our ranking as, “the most obese small town in America.” But I like to think that it’s because we remember to take the time to appreciate the little things around us. That’s what I intend to do with this site. Welcome!
Dispatches from Marmalade Falls 