One of the reasons I was so amused by my Soft Boys YouTube discovery is that it’s funny to see a young Kimberley Rew banging his head so furiously, alongside Robyn Hitchcock. He can really play guitar. His more recent song-writing/performing accomplishments are, to my ear, less convincingly rocking.
In other news, I was discussing TV and film with a student and it emerged that, since he hadn’t been born yet when The Simpsons started running, naturally he thinks of The Simpsons as a thing that has just always been there. A comedy equivalent of electricity and hot running water, if you will. Curious. (By the by, Amazon has seasons 1-10
In other news, I see Keith Richards is writing his autobiography.
{ 12 comments }
Keith 08.02.07 at 2:19 pm
I remember back when the Simpsons debuted and family values types were in an uproar about how Bart Simpson was a 2D Antichrist and his prominence meant impending doom for all mankind. Now, his antics seem so tame that parents wish their kids were as well behaved as Bart Simpson. How times change.
CJColucci 08.02.07 at 2:56 pm
How much will Keith be able to remember?
thag 08.02.07 at 3:43 pm
1–
which kind of vindicates the family values, types, right?
They thought that the Simpsons would contribute to the coarsening of popular culture and the difficulty of raising decent kids, and sure enough the culture is coarser and the kids are ruder.
Look, maybe the events haven’t vindicated the most hysterical worries. But they sure have not proved the more moderate worries wrong.
Walt 08.02.07 at 5:19 pm
If you think kids are coarser and ruder today than they were twenty years ago, then you’re insane. Kids today are better behaved than when I was a kid.
omicron 08.02.07 at 7:27 pm
4: That’s a hard claim to make. How do you quantify ‘rudeness’?
Keith 08.02.07 at 7:56 pm
i was commenting more on the perception of the kids these days then the actuality. I think they’re just fine, most of them. I’m more concerned about the family values types, who seem to be on the verge of a collective aneurysm.
Also, Bart has gotten a little more tame over the years.
CJColucci #2- I remember quite a lot of the Simpson’s. I was 12 when the debuted and I still recall watching the first episode. I’m not that young.
jacob 08.02.07 at 7:56 pm
It’s pointless to use the Simpsons as a yardstick for crassness, because the Simpsons hasn’t remained constant. In other words, it’s not that people used to fear Bart but now Bart looks good–it’s that Bart behaves differently now than he did before.
rekniht 08.03.07 at 1:51 am
Re 7:
The majority of the Simpsons episodes watched are repeats. There was a time a few years ago in Baltimore that you could watch the Simpsons from 6PM until 11:30 straight on the various local stations. The effect is that Bart does not behave differently than he did before since we are still watching his previous behavior.
jf 08.03.07 at 4:51 am
Kimberly Rew can totally kill on guitar, but it seems only in combination with Hitchcock.
Barry 08.03.07 at 11:37 am
Walt: “If you think kids are coarser and ruder today than they were twenty years ago, then you’re insane. Kids today are better behaved than when I was a kid.”
That’s my impression.
omicron: “That’s a hard claim to make. How do you quantify ‘rudeness’?”
Actually, it’s an easy claim to make. As to the quantification of rudeness, I use the Revised Uniform Descriptor of Explicit Nastiness Exhibited Socially Scale.
Richard Cownie 08.03.07 at 1:37 pm
No fair. “Walking on Sunshine” is just about the
perfect pop song. I saw Katrina and the Waves live
around 1986, and if I don’t recall KR’s guitar
playing in any detail it’s only because I was too
busy dancing.
John Holbo 08.03.07 at 4:04 pm
Admittedly, “Walking on Sunshine” is an adequate pop product.
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