“Hey Sandy” – Polaris
(Words/music: Mark Mulcahy, available on Music from the Adventures of Pete & Pete, Mezzotint 1999)
Today’s the beginning of my summer vacation, and one of the things I associate with the vacations of my youth is The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It’s not that I have specific memories of watching episodes over the summer, but rather that the Petes represented this idea of hope and wonder that fuels summers in our youth. The kids in Wellsville lived in a Nickelodeon orange tinted version of magic realism – these were very believable, normal kids that lived in a slightly bizarre, slightly implausible world. This was a world with superheroes and villains and artifacts and extra-terrestrial communication, yet it never seemed an outright fantasy. Instead, it captured the spirit of youth by harnessing the power of possibility – to kids, anything is possible, and even the smallest endeavors become epic quests. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen the show (even though it’s on DVD), but it undoubtedly shaped my taste for the absurd and the heartwarming wrapped together.
It’s always been a source of pride that the band who performed the opening theme hailed from Connecticut. “Hey Sandy,” the show’s theme song, is largely unintelligible, but the parts I can make out (“it’s mighty strange… happily deranged”) fits the show perfectly. The tone always seemed appropriate, and its odd science film introduction seems fitting for a show that combined equal parts of school age boredom and metaphorical star gazing. Yesterday on Pitchfork, I noticed an article about a star-studded album of songs all written by the band’s frontman Mark Mulcahy. Mulcahy’s wife passed away last year and the compilation is a benefit to help him raise his children and continue to play music. Admittedly, I have only a cursory knowledge of Mulcahy past “Hey Sandy,” but I was struck at the collection of famous friends and admirers gathered to give him a helping hand. It made me smile the same way that Pete and Pete makes me smile – inspiring me with optimism and giving a small spark of everyday magic. I can’t wait to hear this compilation.
More on Polaris: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
25 Notes