Chit-Chat Check-In #108 Transcipt

Hello, this is your Captain speaking from the control room of the Starship Casual. Which is just a recording studio.

I'm sitting around with the crew here, and just trying not to think about the eggnog-uration coming up. I wrote a song--no, I didn't write this song--I recorded a song with my sort of not-up-to-normal-standards voice. I think I'm always graded on a curve, but in this case, I would appreciate a little consideration for the fact that my throat was very sore singing this, so I'm a little flat on some parts of it, and ...

You don't care. I don't care. Everyone's looking at me weird, because I'm being meek. Meek tiny.

(Laughter and voices in the background: That's not true! It's not flat!)

It is flat. It's a little flat. I do care, actually. Every once in a while I turn into the singer of the Meek Tinies. You may remember them from years past with their hit, "I Tried But I Can't."

(More laughter)

That's, that's .... never mind. Don't go looking for that track. It's made up.

Anyway, here's "Something in the Air" ... I believe this was written by Pete Townsend's chauffeur. He was in the band and recorded it—Thunderclap Newman—named after the keyboard player, not the guy that's singing and wrote the song. Speedy ... fuck. Speedy Keen!

(Continued laughter)

"Something in the Air" by Thunderclap Newman, on acoustic guitar. The fun part is trying to play the piano break that's in the middle that's sort of insane on an acoustic guitar. And the fun part is, uh, honestly, the earnestness of the belief that permeates this song. Some sort of collective action--not necessarily the violent side of it, but the collective spirit of revolution-- that the song seems to be built upon. And I don't know ... people are cheering me on.

(Voices: Bring it home! Sing it, Jeff!)

It's good--it's a good song. God, it's a great song. We can talk about revolution in the comments if you want. But there are a lot of different ways to approach the idea of revolution. It's something I think about a lot. I don't know if I'm prepared to share all my thoughts on that right now. But the reason I thought about this song is because it represents a counterculture, and I would like there to be more of a counterculture in today's society. I'm looking for it, and wanting it to be something that I can feel a part of. And when I look around for it now, it seems to be commodified in a way that I can't fully get behind.

But I feel it in my mind, and I feel it in my friends and my family. I feel a warm otherness from the general mainstream culture. And I always have felt a little bit outside of it. And that's what this song reminds me of, even though I don't fully co-sign the notion, the romantic notion, of violence.

Anyway, carry on.