How Come Kids Get All The Cool Stuff?
by Sean Carolan

I've been betrayed by adult media. Not that kind of adult media (though I dig the bass work). No, I mean the hours upon hours of dross adults get handed by the TV networks, the movie companies, and the music industry. Whenever I turn on the TV, I can say the punch lines before the characters do, and that's on the dramas. I've generally got the ending of a movie pegged within the first half hour; far less for an Adam Sandler film. This isn't just me, of course ... most people I know, even the most culturally clueless, are beginning to catch on. And when I hear of an alternative act that has "matured", I cringe - it was their immaturity that brought me into the fold in the first place, and that maturity usually means working with a (cliche'd) name producer, on a budget that lets them do all the tricks the big stars do. Homogeneity looms dark on the horizon.

So where do I turn for TV entertainment? Well, if you don't count "Iron Chef" (and how couldn't you?) I generally wind up watching Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. These guys will do anything, as long as it means a kid doesn't change channels. That means keeping them interested, which means doing things differently. So Cartoon Network brings us "The Powerpuff Girls", which is propelled by its techno soundtrack, and has managed to spawn a companion album that has managed to pin the "Kids' Records" charts with music from Frank Black, Devo, Apples In Stereo, and Shonen Knife (which doesn't even count Komeda's "B.L.O.S.S.O.M." or Optiganally Yours's "Walk And Chew Gum", both minor masterpieces.) My criteria for purchasing an album is that it must have three good tracks; this record blows past that with about seven fun ones.

(Full disclosure here: after I started watching Powerpuff Girls, I wound up writing the comic for DC. One of those stories is being made into an episode of the series. No matter how much you watch it, however, I'm not getting another dime, so consider this gush genuine.)

Cartoon Network also has the ever-so-bizarre "Space Ghost Coast-To-Coast", which is probably the weirdest fifteen minutes of video to grace the airwaves since Ernie Kovacs passed away. Here we get music from Man...Or Astroman and other space-age surf lounge stalwarts, and it all just fits perfectly together.

Then there's Nickelodeon, who managed to feature a teenaged Alanis Morrissette and had a wonderfully bizarre show of its own back in the day, "The Adventures of Pete & Pete", which may have been shot in Bayonne, NJ, but whose musical heart was closer to Hoboken, with guests like Syd Straw, Miracle Legion, Luscious Jackson, Iggy Pop, Kate Pierson, Juliana Hatfield and Debbie Harry. Heck, Mike Stipe even showed up as an craggy ice cream vendor. (By the way, Polaris, who are actually pretty much Miracle Legion, released an album of their music from the show - finally.)

Now Nickelodeon has Invader Zim, whose soundtrack is downright industrial; I'm ready to absorb the soundtrack album whenever they're ready to pop it out. Besides that, there's always new music from Mark Mothersbaugh on Rugrats.

So when you get tired of getting talked down to by Hollywood, try watching what kids watch; you'll see the Violent Femmes playing their lil' hearts out on the new promo for Spongebob Squarepants, and you'll understand.

(P.S. Pray that when Cartoon Network breaks out their "Adult Swim" programming block later this year, they remember what the adults who were already tuning in were there for in the first place.)

©2001 Sean Carolan