Issue #7 : Psychosis

This issue’s featured piece of music is:

The Miffy Song by Dick Bruna

(and Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.9, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy) 

Things like this always start so innocently. There you are, checking your emails etc, while your baby crawls around on the floor behind you, making sounds that indicate he’s feeling neglected by his daddy’s preference for a computer screen over joining in pulling out of all my CDs from the CD racks and then meticulously picking everything apart and ruining all the little CD booklets, which Reuben finds so endlessly enjoyable. Plus the one low bookshelf he can reach. Whump, they all fall on his head (again). So, I think, I really have to get this work done, but Reuben is bored and destroying all our possessions and now, I can sense by his trajectory, has his mind on a more rewarding prize: bleach bottles in kitchen cupboards. So I sit him up on my knee and think, OK, let’s find a kiddies’ website he might enjoy and we can then bond over that, sort of thing. So we go to the Miffy (a Dutch bunny rabbit) website, and Reuben responds immediately: his ears prick up, a delighted smile breaks out on his face and he bounces excitedly up and down on my knee. The Dutch bunny rabbit is already working her (she’s a girl rabbit) magic. On the website are some games (all too advanced for Reuben – he is only eleven months old), some opportunities to purchase Miffy merchandise etc, and a ‘3D animation’. I like the sound of the 3D animation, so we click on that, and it’s a 3D-animated song - ‘The Miffy Song’ - sung by a friendly-sounding lady backed by an accordion and a trumpet. Miffy and her animated friends cavort on a hillside. The verse of the song is about Miffy and her friends going out to play, and its chorus is:

Miffy, a sweet little bunny

Miffy, a smart little bunny

Miffy, a cute little bunny

Miffy, and friends.

I mean, it’s pathetic, you know? Just a plinkety-plonk pile of tots’ c**p. But Reuben is transfixed; indeed, he’s beyond transfixed, he’s in baby raptures.  His mouth is wide open in delight, he’s bouncing madly on my knee, it’s the most exciting thing he’s ever, ever seen. From start-to-finish, the whole animated song only lasts about 30 seconds, so, when it finishes and Reuben turns around to face me with a post-ecstatic, borderline-crestfallen expression, the easiest thing to do is just to play the thing again. And, if anything, he’s more delighted by the song second time round than he was the first After four or five run-throughs, I’ve had enough, and shut down the website. Reuben, as you’d expect, is a little upset, but his spirits are soon resurrected by the systematic desecration of Miles Davis’s Pangaea (double, i.e. more fun to ruin) CD and we’re all, um, happy again. 

Over the next few hours and then days and subsequently weeks, Reuben does not forget about ‘The Miffy Song’. As he’s currently learning to stand, he likes to stand holding onto my legs and point at my computer screen making encouraging gurgling noises before collapsing. And so, every now and again, I pull him back up onto my knee and we sit and enjoy ‘The Miffy Song’ all over again, and again, and then another few times after that. By now I have had enough of ‘The Miffy Song’. I know it well. I know it too well. I know it so well that it haunts not only my subconscious, but my above-ground consciousness too. Pretty much every thought (all seventeen) I have in an average day is soundtracked – dominated by – Miffy, a smart little bunny; Miffy, a cute little bunny. So much so that even when I’m listening to other music (e.g. Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.9), I can hear ‘The Miffy Song’ proudly rising above the music, the Dutch bunny white noise in my head blotting out all extraneous sounds. It’s beginning to freak me out somewhat. Does this happen to other people too?

You might be thinking: well just stop listening then. The baby’s only eleven months old; there are other things to distract him; he’ll soon forget all about this stupid song and your internal jukebox will revert back to normal (that Teletubbies song that got to number one ten years ago). Well yes, I could. But the unfortunate problem is that Reuben’s reaction to ‘The Miffy Song’ is the parental equivalent of crack cocaine. Watching him watch ‘The Miffy Song’ is just too good, man – I can’t get enough of it. Watching one’s own offspring as magically, lagomorphically transported as this is relentlessly compulsive. Plus there’s the fact that I now even actually secretly like the song itself. Sad sack that I am, I sing loudly along with it, and harmonize, and rock back and forth in time, quite possibly even more hypnotized by it than my baby son. 

A week or so later I realise that I am now hook, line and sinker addicted to Miffy. Reuben, however, isn’t that fussed about it anymore: he’s moved on. He’ll sit there now on my lap and tolerate the song while staring off yearningly at my priceless pile of Les Rallizes Denudes bootlegs over there in the corner of the room awaiting dribble and defenestration. But I force him to sit through sing-along after sing-along, which he does, with a small sigh. Then this morning in the bedroom I caught my wife Faye distractedly singing ‘The Miffy Song’ quietly under her breath, but she’d got the tune slightly awry.

‘You’re singing Miffy wrong,’ I snapped. ‘It’s not like that, it’s like this.’ And I sang it properly. And then neither of us knew quite what to say at that particular moment. I was damned if I was going to apologise though. She should have been the one to apologise, for getting the tune wrong. It’s not exactly hard. 

So this is where we are. Stuck on Miffy. I haven’t been listening to much music, classical or otherwise – its just been Miffy, 24/7. Just the way I – and the Dick Bruna Corporation – like it. Obviously I am now looking forward to Reuben getting into repetitive kids’ TV as well, and Bullet For My Chemical Valentine too of course, in a year or so or whenever. 

Finally, a subtle commercial interjection: my brand new paperback, which describes my pan-European attempts to get to grips with a completely alien culture; that of classical music (from out of which this newsletter sprang) ROCK ME AMADEUS: When Ignorance Meets High Art, Things Can Get Messy is OUT NOW, published by Penguin Books. Here are some of the nice quotes it’s collected thus far:

‘Entertaining and very, very funny.’ – The Independent

‘A Bill Bryson for the Kerrang! generation.’ – The Sunday Telegraph

‘Breathless and very entertaining.’ – The Guardian

‘Hunter is as good as it gets.’ – The Times

‘A blitzkrieg of witty observations and raucous rock ‘n’ roll metaphors.’ – The Irish Times

‘Vulgar, irreverent and shameless, it should be on every music lover’s shelf.’ – The Irish Examiner

‘You will love this book.’ – Big Issue

Quick, back to Miffy though. I got the bunny DTs.

            Listen to ‘The Miffy Song’ here

            Listen to Squarepusher’s, erm, ‘remix’ here

            Buy my new book from amazon.co.uk here

            Oh alright, here’s some proper music: Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.9

            Buy it at amazon.co.uk here

‘I entirely agree with you about the classical club nights - I\\\'ve long felt that it\\\'s a rubbish idea - and that if anything it needs to be much edgier, not pretend to be a club night (as these are blatantly about getting mashed in a sweaty warehouse - as well as incorporating living composers.. people like Anna Meredith (Camberwell Composers Collective), Tansy Davies etc.. I was reading Norman Lebrecht\\\'s book about the death of the classical recording industry and he said that one of the reasons for the downfall of classical industry (as defined by him) is the lack of innovation now - ie. Stokowski et al regularly played the music of living composers, Stravinsky etc.., but when does that happen now? How is there a connection with classical music as a living potent force.. probably there isn\\\'t for folk who grew up on a heady cocktail of mild narcotics and drum and bass/new rave/grime etc.. However, everyone I\\\'ve ever taken to concerts gets blown away more regularly by the Ligeti, Kurtag, Lachenmann end of the spectrum - especially when the composer has a chat about it all before it - akin to contemporary art i guess - for which there is a much more eager following amongst my Hackney dwelling friends it seems.. I reckon a mix of Bach, Ligeti, and Tansy Davies would sort people out - drag em from their copies of the Wire / Razzle - into a cabaret club type environment, and get someone with suitable electronic credentials to play Battles in the gaps - a bit like the adventures in the beetroot fields things at Koko but a bit more grown-up and more intimate - and then we can all go sweaty raving afterwards.. A few empty thoughts - maybe one day we could launch the post-Darmstadt Monsters of Serialism festival - it would be awesome.’ – a BBC Radio 3 employee who wishes to remain anonymous

‘The fundamental flaw, as I see it, was DJ Eleanor. If you’d had DJ Mikey D from Braintree, he’d have nipped off to the bogs with Cecily from KPMG for a quick knee-trembler during the 12-minute Rachmaninov ‘Mega-Mix’ – thus elevating the event to a true “mad fer it” clubbing experience.’ – Mr Steve Webster, Rattlewreck 

‘I was raised around classical music since my Dad taught orchestra in the public schools and always played with the local symphony and a few string quartets as side gigs for extra cash. Other kids always thought that was what I listened to all the time, which I thought was dumb because I was after all a kid their age and while I could probably rattle off more classical trivia than any of my peers, I would rather listen to AC/DC. I never really appreciated classical music as much as I should have, but then again it was something ordinary since it was around all the time.  Therefore it is really funny to me when people try to be a little snobby since they listen to classical or as you noticed, put on a suit just because they are at an event where classical music is being played.  Let\\\'s remember that this used to be music for the masses back in the day and even the peasants dressed in rags listened to the stuff whenever they had the fortune of being around musicians, and that was probably often as I assume most musicians were peasants back then since just as most of them are now.’ – Christopher Blickensderfer, United States

‘Aaaaaaaaah….. this music is just…. Mindblowing… I don’t care if it’s all very well calculated… IT WORKS! Thanks! You just made my day.’ – Ms M. Kyriakou, Cyprus