I finally had an excuse to go to “Troll Radio Review.”

The show started with a hammy McCain/Obama skit where the troll wanted everybody to vote for McCain; there was a decidedly leftward bent to the adults present: lots of obviously all-natural fiber clothing, Obama buttons and unisex couples. Without apologia, this was a socialist indoctrination camp/ kid’s music show.¹

Soon after the skit, the musicians came onstage and started playing a fast, intense, gypsy violin/guitar piece. The violinist was doing a bit of a Flamenco, each heel crack making the kids jerk up in their in seats. It was good but maybe went a bit above the heads of the tots present, who were all eerily sitting in there seats, quietly listening — exactly the sort of thing you don’t expect to see: kids watching an adult stomping to music — except for a little girl down past front row, just below center stage, holding her hands above her head and slowly twirling at a completely different cadence to what was being played.

The rather intense, violan/guitar music session stopped and some new musicians came on. They started playing music boxes.² Needless to say everything had become dreamy, faraway and and totally relaxing,³ They kids were listening and attentive, but zoned out like when they’ve watched too much TV, but then the three musicians started singing unintelligible gibberish in a sing/song/humming⁴ way that perfectly suited the music box accompaniment.⁵

Up until this time, the boy had refused to even step into the auditorium, but the Sotto voce/music-box combo had now hypnotized him and lowered his defenses and so he would step into the auditorium only to catch himself and step right back outside to hug his mom, but he couldn’t look away. So what the mom did was inch down closer to the center stage tricking the boy into getting closer and closer to the stage where the little girl, who now was starting to twirl a little bit faster but was still all alone up there.

At some point, like magnets approaching each other that suddenly fall into the other’s magnetic field, he instantly zipped down to the girl, who by this time had attracted several other kids, all twirling and dancing, while upstage the three musicians kept sing-humming, would look at the kids and smile, as if this was exactly the effect they had meant to produce: a modern day Pied Piper.

And so the tinker bell music went on and kids keep spinning/dancing⁶ for a few more minutes until the music stopped and the kids stopped levitating and fell to the floor but within a minute, Spud and his buds had come onstage and started playing a strictly 4/4 beat⁷ and so the kids started stomping hard and started twirling faster. They had now woken up from their daze and were very much bodies in motion and soon they were flinging themselves out into the seats or twirling into each other and dropping like stones. At some point I had to ask one of the ushers if the radio show was really meant for kids and they said, “yes,” which made me relax.

The music ended and kids were being gathered up along with lost shoes, and everyone was happy and going home, but the first to leave the auditorium were two older women who asked, “Is this for kids?” and I said, “Yes.”

She said, “it was not stated in the paper it was for kids. This is no outdoor playground.” I replied, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the music” in such a gleeful tone that they had to realized that I was not sympathetic to their complaints one bit and that they should realize that not everything was aimed for the pleasure of old farts and to give the kids a fucking break.

1. I suppose it’s just as well;the republicans start them off young with hunting and ATV’ing, why not democrats. While I think it’s distasteful to make kids — even if they don’t get — watch adults making fun of other adult. It’s something didn’t seem to bother anyone in the crowd and was probably regarded as educationally. I’d probably have too readThe Big Sort and many other socio/politico monographs to really understand and give a more enlightened account of the first 15 minutes of the show, but i suggest you just check it out yourself. [↩]
2. I was trying to describe the sound to someone else and was at a loss at how to go about it. I had a thought that it sounded like a `plucked bells’ but that only suggests how the sound was made but it doesn’t really get at what it sounds like — they don’t sound like bells — perhaps it’s like a primordial sound in that it can only be described by itself,e.g., nothing else sounds like a piano and no one says the piano sounds like a hammered harp because you can’t derive “piano” sounds qua “piano” sounds from something else, or at least I can’t. [↩]
3. Just think of those commercials or movie trailers with a music box score. They either make you think of childhood memories or induce some nameless dread about what’s hidden in the closet. [↩]
4. think humming with your mouth open: a lullaby without words. [↩]
5. again, the tone was either childhood bliss or psychic horror of things under a kid’s bed [↩]
6. I keep wondering if this was what a hippie be-in would look like: Long haired girls and shaggy boys all spinning around, looking up at the ceiling, with beautific smiles and glazed over eyes, seemingly detached form here-and-now physical space and on some other plane that Mystics takes years to achieve. [↩]
7. the music box stuff had a strange rhythm. It had an initial beat that could be determined but I couldn’t tell how many beats each bar contained but it had to be odd and had to keep changing, which was probably what had made most of the kids give up trying to dance and just twirl to the music. That or kids just like to spin in circles. [↩]