Collected Notes on the Aesthetic of the Bumble
by Jesse Jarnow

[Editor's note: this all began with a request from aforementioned editor to Jesse. "Jesse, can you write an essay about the time you wore a diaper and appeared on stage with moe. as Baby New Year?" Jesse complied, somewhat begrudgingly, explaining that he didn't want to focus the piece on himself. The resulting essay offers this long-time moe. observer's opinion on where the band's future direction should carry the group...]

I want to be a Beatle. Granted, this is an odd way to begin an article about moe., but hear me out. Fun is the key. It always was; an adolescent version of the rock and roll impulse. That's why I wanted to be a Beatle when I was a kid, and exactly why I want to be one now. Watch "A Hard Day's Night" or "Help!", or even "Magical Mystery Tour".

At the heart of those movies is a band that's romping around their world and trying, somewhat competitively, to have a better time than everyone else. Sure, it's silly and it's slapstick and it's canned and all that, but there's a basic kind of intelligence that informs all of it. It's not cosmic, and it's certainly not the crazy wisdom of the Holy Fool or any of that acid-tinged mystical shit, but it's something that's simply good natured: a sensible way to live.

In a recent SPIN article about John Lennon, critic Sarah Vowell pointed out that "in at least half the pictures [of him], John's mouth is open. He's either singing, or laughing." Despite the crush of frame and Lennon's own deconstructions of the band in the years that followed their demise, it seems like being a Beatle was an awfully exciting thing to be most of the time.

It looked like a fun life -- not necessarily free of responsibility (Christ, they were the Beatles), but certainly a life worth living even in the face of stupidity, violence, and soul-crushing nihilism. The Beatles acted out a process of rock and roll self-discovery that many have followed since, both musicians and fans alike. Virtually any photograph of the band, right up to the end, holds the promise of big fun right around the corner.

And, now, moe..

They are not the Beatles, but they do hold a similar promise of big fun, contagious fun. Being a fan of the band requires an acceptance of this. moe. is quite capable of playing cosmos-sweeping explorations, and even occasionally do, but they're usually followed by something inherently silly. People kvetch about how much moe. talks on stage, but it's just as much part of their identity as any song in their repertoire. Before I even heard my first moe. song on my first tape, I heard them banter. I could imagine them smiling out on the crowd as they tuned up, completely bemused by the fact that they were acting out this rock and roll ritual in front of their friends.

moe. are five regular guys. Onstage, their characters begin to come clear. Each night will almost invariably feature bawdy jokes, takes on current events, pop culture references, and pinhole glimpses into band members' lives. Over the course of time - with tape collecting, newsletters, and feverish net discussion - a broad picture forms. In a way, it's like "A Hard Day's Night", stretched taut and updated for these heroless times. It's easy to imagine that moe.'s time onstage is just another part of their day and, after they wander off at the end of the gig, they'll be out seeking more mischief and misadventure. Romantic, huh?

Then why the hell was I scared shitless as I stood in the wings at Tramps in New York City on New Year's Eve 1996, about to step onstage? To be fair, I was wearing a homemade diaper, a pair of tattered Cons, and little else. It all seemed so easy before that - "yeah, sure, I'll be the Baby New Year" - just an extension of whatever other wackiness was transpiring in my life (which, at the time, included the publication of an underground slander sheet, the first pangs of a deadly Uno habit, and high school). It seemed simultaneously natural and the closest I was likely to come at that point to being a Beatle. And maybe it's the closest I'll ever come.

For me, that act somehow validated the silliness -- both their's and mine. For moe. to let me - a gawky dork from suburban Long Island - onto their stage to prance around and try very hard to make it look like he wasn't deliberately singing along with Three Dog Night's Joy To The World in pick-up range of guitarist Chuck Garvey's microphone... well, that was pretty fab, honestly. Being inside that particular moment, it began to dawn on me how much of moe.'s appeal was - and is - rooted in near-comic gestures like that. What's more, that kind of hyperactive intimacy is reflected in their music -- which simultaneously makes it special, as well as to its eventual undoing.

Buying fully into moe. requires buying fully into this, the band's aesthetic - their musical personality - which I will call the "aesthetic of the bumble". I'd argue that there are two main parts to this: a cartoon-like grace and a grandiose method of self-effacement.

To a certain degree, moe. don't really take themselves seriously. They can pull off something like "Timmy" - a hilarious mock rock opera pastiche of pop culture and self-referential taunts based on Timmy Tucker's hijinx in Manhattan - without coming off as pretentious. This has a lot to do with presentation. Near the end of "Timmy", for example, the title character ends up at the Wetlands where - in the 1995 edition, anyway - he encounters "some lame-ass hippie band called moe... who are on stage playing the same two-chord jam they always play".

Most of the time, moe. aren't aiming for high art, they're just aiming for rock and roll. Sometimes, in the heat of the bumble, they get both. And, even when that does happen, it's kept in balance by that same self-effacement. I saw a show in March of 1999 where the band ended up in the midst of an absolutely sublime Four jam -- deep and very real, free of humor and silly grins. During one of Garvey's solos, fellow guitarist Al Schnier purposely stepped on one of bassist Rob Derhak's pedals, causing Derhak's subtle and tasteful accompaniment to turn suddenly and harshly to loud burbling sound.

Garvey looked up for a beat and said, sarcastically, "hey, man, that's my art!" and went right back to work. It wasn't, for the most part, an act of immature vengeance on Schnier's part. It's just how moe. seems to operate.

A lot of the time, I get the sense that what's happening in moe.'s music is accidental. At a show this past December, during one of the set's peak moments, Derhak began to look around and laugh uncontrollably. It's a common reaction. When it's at its best, there's a wonderful elegance to their improvisation. It reminds me of Charlie Chaplin or any of the great old physical comedians who give the appearance of being a direct cause for imminent disaster but are, in actuality, in full control of themselves. In fact, this illusion of disaster is caused by an absolutely skilled kind of ballet.

The problem with moe. sometimes, I think, is that they're not conscious of it. They're Chaplin the character, not realizing the role they're playing in a larger comedy. It's at a point just beyond this that self-effacement begins to fall short.

The band used to plan out long series of segues and refer to them as "fiascoes". This was their way of saying "yeah. this might be pompous of us to try, but we'll probably fuck up, so don't worry... we're not that pretentious". At least, that's the way I read it. It takes a certain degree of ego for a musician to get onstage to begin with, and a certain degree of ego to try something experimental and think he can get away with it... and a certain degree of self-effacement to admit that he'll probably fuck up while doing so. If there's too much self-effacement going on, though, then it's necessarily hard to take chances.

To quote noted self-help guru Troy McClure (in a wise bit of advice occasionally quoted onstage by Garvey himself): "get confident, stupid!"

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" was, and is, a great album, but it was also haughty as hell for the Beatles to try. Strings, sound effects, Indian musicians, choral arrangements, and experimental noise had all been used by the band before, but never with quite so much emphasis on them. Part of this jump involved believing the hype about them -- a dangerous line to cross. And while it probably ultimately broke up the band, it also produced what most people consider to be their best work.

They were able to retain some of the fun while still being serious, though. On "Magical Mystery Tour", for example, I am the Walrus shoots for high art, succeeds, and still manages to be basically electrifying on the same level as A Hard Day's Night, while still being that much more evolved. While moe.'s songwriting has undoubtedly grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, their improvisation doesn't seem to have followed.

John Cusack has played basically the same character throughout his acting career, from Lane Myer in "Better Off Dead" through Rob Gordon in "High Fidelity". While the specifics of his characters' plights certainly change, he has reacted to them as if they were a part of a larger story -- such that Rob Gordon is simply a more mature version of Lane Myer. Taking their improvisation more seriously doesn't mean being unfaithful to moe.'s inherently silly nature -- they can still remain the same character they always were. It's just a matter of updating with age.

There have been hints of this. With the band's foray into ???-dotted setlists during the summer and fall of 1998 and, more recently, the individual band-member begun sets at the moe.down in the summer of 2000, they seem to have pushed towards a more mature identity: a fully-formed adult with the enthusiasm of someone younger. It doesn't seem they have followed up on these things, though. There comes a point where I sincerely hope they do.