By Jed
1) Scottish Glasvegas and Norwegian Ida Maria are playing tonight, July 29 (seriously...can you believe July is almost over?) at the Henry Fonda Theatre. As you may recall, Ida Maria put on a super high energy, vaguely Police inspired, Bjork-ish-but-less-offbeat, crowd-pleasing performance at Coachella 2009, where she ended the performance sprawled on the stage, dripping with sweat. If you'd care to catch this, but would rather replace the semi-dressed mid-late 20s Coachella crowd with the overly fashion conscious teenage to early 20s crowd that seems to consistently populate shows at the Fonda, I recommend showing up. I've heard Glasvegas is pretty neat too.
Here's Ida Maria with an acoustic version of "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" and "Stella" on KEXP:
To my dismay, the embedding is disabled for Glasvegas' "Flowers and Football Tops" (here's the link), but maybe you already knew how it went (I didn't).
2) LA twins Jesse and Matt Kivel with Ben Usen and David Kitz form Princeton and, in addition to being better looking dudes than both you and I combined have released a new song "Calypso Gold" (link to the track) off their forthcoming debut Cocoon of Love. While they haven't released a video for the catchy song, I've found you a live performance from SXSW 2009:
Catch them at Pehrspace on August 29 before they get all famous.
3) Not everybody at Radio Free Silver Lake likes the Fiery Furnaces. Even I (from the enthusiastically pro-Fiery Furnaces faction) have been slightly disappointed by portions of the last few releases, but I think I like this new video for "Charmaine Champagne" off of the recently released I'm Going Away:
The Fiery Furnaces - Charmaine Champagne from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo
Except I think I like better this less current video for "Navy Nurse" off their last studio album Widow City, which looks like it's made from stock footage, but it isn't!:
4) The "making fun of hipsters" joke may have grown old, but this guy still pulls it off successfully, years after the Hipster Olympics stopped being cool to like. "Hipster Job" (that's the Biblical Job...or another ironic joke?) explains why bad things happen to good hipsters:
Thanks Rock Insider.
5) Harry Merry is playing at The Smell on August 1. Honestly, Harry Merry is kind of terrible. Like really terrible. But for some reason I keep coming back to him, as I have a feeling he's on to something that I'm not. He claims to be from Rotterdam. Here's one of his most "popular" songs, "Moody Driver":
6) If you haven't heard already, Les Lye, a Canadian legend in children's broadcasting, died last week at the age of 84. While his name is mostly unfamiliar, Mr. Lye played every adult male character on You Can't Do That on Television, including Ross, the kids' father, Barth (inventor of the Barthburger), the teacher, the German dungeon master, El Capitano (captain of the firing squad you invariably would get himself executed after being tricked by the kid to yell "Fire!"), the doctor, and the camp counselor. I didn't discover the show until about 1991, when it was being shown only in syndication, and only a few years before it stopped being broadcast entirely. Whenever I was lucky enough to catch a rebroadcast of YCDTOT, I would consider it to be a "treat" of sorts -- but never really understood why I (and everybody else who remembers the show) remembered it so fondly.
After watching a few complete episodes on youtube over the last days, I think I finally get it. Unlike most kids shows now, and much more so than kids shows then, at its best YCDTOT didn't insult kids' intelligence. Even the hokey Laugh-In style jokes were self-consciously hokey, just as the jokes on Laugh-In were for adults. Yes, the same stupid gags were repeated each episode (Opposites, trigger words, rivalry between Christine and Lisa) but the child audience understood that the jokes were intended to be stupid. Without overt crassness, profanity or violence, YCDTOT most importantly managed to be subversive of parents (and for that matter all grown-ups). Never did it depict adults as "knowing better after all", as most sit coms at the time (or even now) would. As eloquently put by this blogger, "Lye ran hard in the opposite direction, portraying adults as venal, untrustworthy martinets without a second thought." For the most part, the only attempt by YCDTOT to be "educational" was to slime every smart ass teenager who proclaimed that he or she "don't know". While the execution was consistently silly, slapstick and over the top, YCDTOT would occasionally slip in a moralizing message ("Distrust marketing", "Be Skeptical of the Motives of Others", "Doing Drugs is Like Being Slammed in the Face With a Cream Pie"), but it would do so with enough subtlety to avoid losing our collective trust.
Having said all this, the kids were fine actors, but really, few of them appeared particularly talented performers (according to IMDB, few went on to do anything after the show). It was Les Lye, who appeared in almost every sketch as one of a many varied characters (when I was a kid, I didn't realize they were all the same guy -- I really thought Ross was a member of the tv crew) who held the program together. His comic timing, vocal versatility, expressive body language, were something special, especially in the field of kids tv (the horrendously medicore Barney and Friends began in 1992). Les Lye's talent included the ability to make the kids' relatively straightforward reading of their lines funny (noted exception: I love the look of feigned surprise by each kid as he gets slimed or splashed with water). I'm sorry to hear about his passing, but am glad to have been reminded of this fabulous chapter of television for which I caught the tail end (the show ran from 1979-1990).
Check out the episode "Divorce" in which the producer and his wife get a divorce...and the wife gets half of the show!
"Marketing"
"War"
"Malls"
At this time, YCDTOT has not been released on DVD. I can't imagine why not -- I think it would sell tremendously among 20-30 somethings.
Think I'm not giving Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood fair treatment? Trust me, those are the shows I actually grew up on, and I love them both deeply. There's just something charming about the fact that YCDTOT appears to have been intended to be enjoyed pure entertainment, on the model of an adult comedy show.
If you think I've missed something, email me at RFSLJed@gmail.com, unless you want to read Part 2 of my thoughts on 1980s children's programming...
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