{"id":723,"date":"2006-10-17T21:35:36","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T21:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/17\/the-allimportant-house-band-qu\/"},"modified":"2006-10-17T21:35:36","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T21:35:36","slug":"the-allimportant-house-band-qu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/17\/the-allimportant-house-band-qu\/","title":{"rendered":"The All-Important “House Band” Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben over at the World’s Fair is looking for a house band<\/a> for ScienceBlogs. He goes on for a while about Phish, which is kind of bizarre– you can’t be stoned enough to appreciate Phish while also retaining the ability to do math. He also suggests a few slightly more obvious nerd bands– Devo, They Might Be Giants, Weezer– before ending up with Wilco. Which I also don’t really understand, unless it’s because Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/cite><\/a> is about as much fun as vector calculus.<\/p>\n

If you want to suggest a “house band” for this mob, the obvious direction to go would for people like They Might Be Giants, or Tom Lehrer, or Jonathan Coulton, who do songs that are actually about<\/strong> science. These kind of miss the whole point of the “house band” thing, though– you don’t want a band that’s as nerdy<\/strong> as you are– if you’re moderately cool, you want a band that’s nerdier than you are, to make yourself look better (see, for example, David Letterman and Paul Shaffer), but if you’re a total dork, you want a band that’s cooler than you are (see, for example, Conan O’Brien and Max Weinberg) to bring people in.<\/p>\n

We’re dorks hereabouts, so clearly, we don’t wnat to go with somebody really dorky as a house band, no matter how good a lyric “I’m so into you, but I’m way too smart for you” is.<\/p>\n

Another way to look at this is to consider that Seed<\/cite> isn’t actually about doing<\/strong> science, but rather about popularizing<\/strong> science. It’s a magazine, not a journal, and they’re the ones that pay the bills. So what we want is a band appropriate for Seed<\/cite>, not for the nerdiest people on the Internet<\/a>. A band a little cooler than we are, but who has done songs about science popularization…<\/p>\n

(My suggestion below the fold.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So I’ll throw out Fountains of Wayne<\/a>. They’re definitely nerds, but cooler than most of the ScienceBloggers, and they write smart, funny pop songs. They’re a very New York band, and Seed<\/cite> is based in New York, and one of their songs (“Laser Show” off Utopia Parkway<\/cite>) is about going to the Hayden Planetarium… That’s science, or at least pop science.<\/p>\n

RPM’s suggestion of the Weakerthans<\/a> is a good one, too, but their science connection is even more tenuous. Reconstruction Site<\/cite> really is a fantastic album, though, and everybody should go buy it.<\/p>\n

(OK, fine, it doesn’t make any more sense than Wilco or Phish, but it’s a chance to plug one of my favorite bands. And unlike Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/cite>, Utopia Parkway<\/cite> and Welcome Interstate Managers<\/cite> are good pop records.)<\/p>\n

(Also, it’s been a long day, so cut me some slack…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben over at the World’s Fair is looking for a house band for ScienceBlogs. He goes on for a while about Phish, which is kind of bizarre– you can’t be stoned enough to appreciate Phish while also retaining the ability to do math. He also suggests a few slightly more obvious nerd bands– Devo, They… Continue reading The All-Important “House Band” Question<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}