Chit-Chat Check-In #68: Happy Second Birthday, Starship Casual!
Celebrating another trip around the sun with you all
I’m sitting on a tour bus—not part of the official Galactic Fleet of Starship Casual, but a place where I spend a lot of time—and realizing it’s Starship Casual’s second birthday this week. In honor of that, I’m going to share another short excerpt from my book that seems especially pertinent.
Also, to celebrate the ship’s anniversary, we’re going to continue the tradition of opening the door for new Captains Club sign-ups again. Except this time, we’re going to experiment with keeping the door open. The wily Starship engineering corps has been figuring out how to manage the complexity of shipping physical gifts (Susie calls them “prizes”) while allowing new members to join year-round. They prepared this page with lots of information about it.
Here’s a sneak peak at a prize that existing, 2022-2023 Orbit Captains Club subscribers will receive in the mail relatively soon. It’s already too late to sign up for this mysterious yellow disc, but new Captains in the 2023-2024 Orbit will get something similar (but different) of their own… For all the details, check out this page.
Free, Paid, or Captain, I thank all of you for being part of this community with me.
OxO—Jeffy
Happy Birthday (from World Within a Song)
I should love this song.
Reason 1: It’s the ultimate folk song in that it’s almost never sung in a formal setting. No one goes to a recital to see a guy in a tux sing “Happy Birthday.” “Until you’ve heard Pavarotti sing it, you’ll never truly appreciate it. By the time he got to the ‘You belong in a zoo’ part I had tears streaming down my cheeks.” Outside of the waitstaff at TGI Fridays, no one gets paid to sing “Happy Birthday.”
Reason 2: Obviously there are no other contenders for a song more often sung to us on joyous occasions. Ditto for songs sung to loved ones on their special day.
The sad truth is, I’m pretty ambivalent about this song. I’d even go so far as to say that I actively disdain singing it more often than not. I think things started to shift for me about the same time I started making records and being a musician began to be more legitimate in the eyes of my extended family members. Which is when I began to notice people looking at me as we gathered around the candle glow of a birthday cake and expecting me to “wow” them with my vocal chops. “Why isn’t he leading us?” and “I can barely hear him, this is how he makes living?” and “Doesn’t seem like he knows the words” are just a few of the things I’ve seen people thinking.
I’m not alone, though. I have a nephew who struggles with the sensory overload of his relatives breaking out into song and ruining a perfectly enticing cake experience. He had grown to hate the song so much that if he’s around on anyone’s birthday, we give his mom and dad enough of a heads-up to allow them to escort him out of earshot. One year on Susie’s birthday, even being taken to the furthest corner of our backyard wasn’t enough to prevent the mirthful strains of “Happy Birthday” from reaching his ears and causing a fairly major meltdown.
After some backroom counseling, he regained his composure enough to rejoin us at the table. At which point he calmly announced that he had something very important to share as he bit into his first bite of cake: “I hate all of you.” Amen. Sometimes it takes someone brave enough to tell us the truth.
This Week In Wilco, Etc.
2012 / July 25: Wilco is in NYC to perform “Art of Almost” on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, then heads over to Terminal 5 for a 28-song set with Cibo Matto opening. Wilco’s set is later officially released as Roadcase #5.
2021 / July 26: Starship Casual debuts with Jeff’s first post, welcoming the crew and passengers on board.
2017 / July 29: Wilco appears at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, RI. Their 17-song set is broadcast live on WFUV and concludes with a Billy Bragg guest appearance on “California Stars.”
I totally get this line, and genuinely chuckled out loud: "....are just a few of the things I’ve seen people thinking"
.... happy anniversary Captain!
On this, the second anniversary, I’ll finally ask. Why isn’t there an apostrophe in Captains Club?
Please don’t make me forfeit my prizes for asking.