MLT Club Member David Herrick
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Going beyond what I merely admire about MLT, what truly inspires me is their relentless positivity. We see it in their songs, in their music videos, in their spoken-word videos, in the back stories they write to accompany their posts, and of course in the personal replies they write to each of us in the discussion forums.
It’s not just Mona and Lisa, but Rudi and Michaela too. The whole family is a remarkably cohesive and incorruptibly joyful unit that genuinely seems to get a kick out of knowing that what they do creates a happier and more uplifting environment for everyone who samples what they have to offer.
For myself personally, they have inspired me to learn to play the ukulele, which is my first stringed instrument. I’m still rather ham-handed, but I’ve learned enough to drop the jaw of my year-ago self who could never have imagined that I could do it. And I owe it all to sitting in front of my computer one day and watching Lisa reach around and pick up her uke and start playing the intro to “I Don’t Know Birds That Well”.
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I grew up believing that a poem was defined as a composition written with a regular rhythm and rhyme scheme. I found that to be a really impressive skill that I strove to emulate.
Eventually an English teacher colleague of mine poo-pooed this apparently sad notion and seemed to take pride in his claim that poetry is a status accorded by the readers, not by the author, based on their subjective assessment of the quality of the writing. (He didn’t have an answer when I asked him if it necessarily followed that if you describe yourself as a poet then you must be a narcissist.)
So under that broad definition of poetry, then sure, anyone who writes anything can be considered a poet if a lot of people are impressed by it. I find the lyrics of many of MLT’s songs to be worthy of deep contemplation outside of any musical context, so I’m happy to call them poets in this sense. And since their phrasings are typically strong on rhythm and rhyme, they could be considered poets by my more objective definition as well.
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It looks like we 70’s kids have this thread all to ourselves, so…
I was about a year too young for the Banana Splits, but I was a huge fan of all the Krofft Brothers shows that came after: H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost, etc. They made the early 70’s a great time to be a kid.
I just found out that the Kroffts are from Canada, eh? (Montreal.)
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I nearly sent MLT this exact message a few weeks ago when I was teaching myself the chords to this song, but then I listened to it closely and convinced myself that they do something different at that point in the first verse that they don’t repeat again later, and I think D# (D sharp) is indeed the chord they play just for one beat at the first “e” in “forever”.
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Agreed, Jacki. But of course, it was planned from the beginning for music to be a big part of the Partridge Family formula (just like the Monkees), whereas the Brady Bunch music was more of an afterthought several years into the show’s run.
As for great TV theme songs, my favorite is the theme from “The Greatest American Hero”. I don’t know if you got that show in Canada, given the title.
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Hey, Jung.
It was just an audio album, and I couldn’t tell who sang what, but it involved both the boys and the girls. (The middle boy was Peter, by the way.)
Why not get your affairs in order, take a few deep breaths, and give it a listen? (EVERYTHING is on YouTube now!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woo-C7XsQWs
This album also featured their, uh, interpretations of “Ben” by The Jackson Five and “Saturday in the Park” by Chicago.
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I actually learned about the Beatles from my YOUNGER brother, who had presumably been clued in by his high school friends.
Other than a passing mention in the noun song from “Schoolhouse Rock”, the only time I remember hearing about the Beatles in my childhood was when I read somewhere that they had come along in the 1960’s and completely changed the nature of pop music. Given my very limited knowledge of music history at the time, I assumed that meant that they had transformed the doo-wop songs I loved into the disco songs I hated. So naturally my curiosity zeroed out.
In retrospect, I did hear a lot of Beatles tunes as a kid, but mostly just in instrumental form on the easy-listening radio station that my parents always had on. Oh, and there was a cringe-inducing version of “Love Me Do” on an album by the Brady Bunch kids.
The only original Beatles recording that I’m sure I encountered back in the day was from a TV commercial that was an abbreviated version of this movie promo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRPh1xwab8
I still can’t hear “When I’m 64” without thinking of a floating baby.
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I didn’t discover the Beatles until the mid-eighties, but I had read about the lines in front of the record stores. So on the day that Paul’s “Press to Play” album came out in 1986, I was standing in front of the door of the record store an hour before it opened. An hour later, I was still the only one there.
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Hey, Jacki.
I’ll have to check out some of those sources you mentioned. I am already quite familiar with Bob and Doug, though. I wasn’t a regular viewer of their SCTV skits, but I was introduced to them via their “Great White North” album, and I’m a big fan of their “Strange Brew” movie. (Fun fact: Claude Elsinore was played by Paul Dooley, who was the first head writer for “The Electric Company”.) I also enjoyed the movie “Canadian Bacon”, and of course Weird Al’s parody song “Canadian Idiot”.
As for the “Dan” thing, good question. Dan just seems to me like the name of a stereotypical rugged Canadian outdoorsman. Perhaps I was subconsciously influenced by this old TV memory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ9YaDgSGmA
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Okay, Jacki, you’ve got me intrigued. You said “never was a Dan”. Is that Canadian slang of some sort?
I hope the snacks and hot chocolate are holding out.
Oops, never mind. I see you just corrected it to “fan”. But I may use the expression anyway; its seems appropriate.
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I can relate, Michael. One of my students recently asked me, in a similar context, whether I went to Woodstock. I said, “Well, I was three years old at the time, so if I went I don’t remember it. But then again, that’s true of most of the people that went.”
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Thanks, Howard and Jacki.
I may have overstated my point a little. The problems I was having weren’t in retrospect that significant, but they were monumental to me at the time. Plus I still enjoy listening to that song, but it always comes with an unavoidable side dish of anxiety. It’s more the unpleasant and vivid memory of how I felt, as opposed to actually being in that same state of mind again.
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One of the most stressful incidents of my life was my first day of junior high school, when I was eleven. Without going into details, some problems arose, and for the first time in my life I was without an adult to turn to immediately to resolve them.
I was on the verge of freaking out, when my brain suddenly started playing “Little Star” by the Elegants (from my “Fonzie’s Favorites” album), and I immediately calmed down.
To this day, whenever I hear that soothing song I’m transported back to that moment, and I relive in excruciating detail all the panicky thoughts that were going through my head: thoughts that otherwise would have been long since forgotten.
For better or for worse, that’s the effect that music can have on us.
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Jung, it sounds like, for better or for worse, we’re essentially going back to the pre-Beatles era when record labels made most of their profits off of singles, and most albums were just “greatest hits” compilations created to squeeze a little more money out of the same songs.
Like Sheryl Crow, I find that many if not most of my favorite songs off of albums are not the ones that were released as singles and got a lot of air play. I think singles are designed to have an instant appeal, but you don’t get much more out of them after the first listening. Meanwhile, album tracks tend not to make as strong of a first impression, but over time their little nuances grow on you until you realize you’ve got something really unique and special on your hands.
I myself don’t create playlists; I just listen to an album straight through, because I assume the songs are arranged in a certain sequence for a reason, and I’m constantly trying to discover the reason. And some songs that at first I found inferior or forgettable have ended up becoming endearing favorites.
I guess it’s sort of a moot point for me, because I don’t listen to any contemporary music other than MLT, and of course they’re not under any pressure to abandon the album format. But it would certainly be a great loss for music in general if most songs were written just for a quick harvest, without regard to planting seeds that may sprout later.
