“Pitting Seinfeld and The Simpsons Together as Cultural Foils, as Particularly Pertains to the Classic Rock Element of ‘Psychedelia’”

In the downtown area of South Bend, Indiana, my hometown, the State Theater sits conspicuously empty, and now, even boarded up. It’s a minor disappointment — probably not as grave as the giant, still-vacant College Football Hall of Fame, which, to my knowledge, hasn’t had any foot traffic in about 13 years or so. Still, especially seeing as it’s oddly harder than ever now to find a parking spot downtown, the State’s derelict status does speak poorly of our general culture as a society, or, as a nation, if you prefer. 

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in a cafe across the street, on my second big cup of coffee, and my mind was racing, as you might imagine. In my mind, I thought of what sort of brand of entertainment could actually revitalize the State Theater. For some reason, my thoughts raced to the Jefferson Airplane song “Martha.” I envisioned a stoned audience (amongst which, yes, there would theoretically be the vagabonds dabbling in acid, coke, meth, etc.) hearing the song on audio and watching some sort of ephemeral plot unfold on a video screen. What would the video plot entail, I thought? My mind toggled through the concept of commercial success in television, so I thought of Seinfeld, a show I happen to enjoy immensely, myself. 

Well, I thought, wait a minute — Seinfeld is like the exact OPPOSITE of what would work in a setting like this. It’s everything psychedlic rock isn’t — it’s quick, instead of patient and expansive; it’s destructive (“she eats her peas one at a time”) instead of inclusive and optimistic; it’s “cool,” rather than ideological and semantic. Have we really come so far, as a culture, that the best sit-com ever could be so ill-fitted to a tamer viewing of The Wall? Or have we FALLEN that far, should I say? 

My mind cycled to other sit-coms — Friends, Mad about You. Both of these, as it happens, were set in New York City, as well, and both also seem really unfit for offering visual themes to accompany psychedelic rock. The question is begged, then, as to whether we can trace a deeper, more traditional aversion to psychedelia on the part of New Yorkers — indeed, I can’t remember a significant Grateful Dead show ever taking place there, Zappa and Velvet Underground escapades albeit extant. Life in New York City, it seems, requires rapid reaction and expedited behavior. People have less patience with you there. In this way, I think, it represents the exception and not the rule, a little pocket of our culture tailored primarily to hip-hop, TV comedy and I guess Broadway, but otherwise rendered niche. 

The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, are the most successful touring band of all time. Even just this fall, working at a Notre Dame tailgate, there was this adorable little 18-year-old girl working with me who had a Dead pin on her bag. I hear Pink Floyd widely and frequently in the bar where I work. 

Jefferson Airplane, for perhaps succumbing to somewhat of an identity crisis, at times, for having so many different songwriters (not to mention that annoying habit of telling us to “find somebody to love”, as if we didn’t think to do that initially), are typically an easy sell in middle America. The sound is expansive, the lyrical themes often having to do with drugs, or some other sort of misbehavior, and, of course, Grace Slick’s voice could peel the paint off the walls. The biggest hippie/music snob I know of around here, a dude I went to high school with, is a staunch Jefferson Airplane devotee, naming, I believe, After Bathing at Baxter’s as his favorite album. So on the premise that the band is less popular in New York City than the rest of the nation, I’m still playing my cards and ascribing to them a general, default appeal, by way of the popular vote, and by way of, simply, phenomenological modes of existence which aren’t subject to the same level of fast pace and impatience as, typically, New York City is. 

Anyway, it’s been somewhat reassuring to me that The Simpsons is the second-most-popular, and probably second-best, sitcom of the ’90s, since, to the greatest extent of any show perhaps in history, it is beholden to a certain bent toward the psychedelic, or the “mentally prostrate to mind expansion or alteration through drugs and/or music,” if you want to be all definitive about it. This is evident, of course, in all the instances of music festivals within the show’s various plotlines, appearances of rock stars like Billy Corgan and The Ramones, and the pot-smoking bus driver Otto. Certainly, little Simpsons snippets would work better than Seinfeld ones — perhaps little brief, one act silent films involving certain of the characters. Is there a place in this charade for that fat dude running after an ice cream truck, all the way out into the country (sort of like that Smashing Pumpkins “Today” video, I guess), getting skinny in the process, and then, at the end, rejecting the ice cream for a quinoa salad, at the end? But I digress. And, yes, digression is the point, provided a dispensary vendor’s attendance on the scene. 

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