Gotta Lighten Things Up a Bit

My last couple of posts were pretty heavy, so I figure I'll put up a quick, light post before heading off to Brooklyn for a beer. The title of my last post was lifted from Hello Angel by Scruffy the Cat, a Boston-based bar band which made it to the college music charts with the single My Baby, She's Alright, in which singer Charlie Chesterman, in perhaps the most romantic lines ever written, describes the object of his adoration as long and lean like a Cadillac, supercharged like the Batmobile... ah, poesia romantica!





Charlie's voice is, paradoxically, droll yet lugubrious. Whether singing wistfully of unrequited love or fantasizing about getting away from it all, Charlie juxtaposed his wry vocals with a sincere delivery. Yeah, this guy could actually pull off comparing his girlfriend to the Batmobile. My brother Sweetums met Charlie, and Charlie, in characteristic smart-yet-goofy fashion advised him, "Ask each of your friends for a quarter, and be rich and friendly." Who the hell else would have given such good-natured, goofball advice?

Here's a great performance of the "relationship gone awry" lament My Fate Was Sealed With a Kiss:





Yeah, these guys were alt-country before alt-country was cool. Even if you don't dig their music, you have to recognize the fact that they may have had the best band logo of all time (drawn by the aforementioned Mr. Chesterman):





Unfortunately, the best Scruffy the Cat fansite has disappered (It was "tinybum")- the mp3 collection was great, including an incredible sequence of Teddy Bears' Picnic, Will the Circle be Unbroken, and Amazing Grace. Goofy to earnest, without missing a beat. I have steadfastly refused to update my browser (I'll probably spring for a new laptop sometime this year), so I can't access the unofficial "Myspace" page for Scruffy the Cat. Check it out if you do the Myspace thing, and if they have Teddy Bears' Picnic/Will the Circle Be Unbroken?/Amazing Grace, you're in for a treat. Another highlight is Swearing Off the Women, and I'm Swearing on the Booze, which, in clumsier or less good-natured hands, would have come across as a rotten "Men's Rights" anthem.