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'Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly'

Is this where the young are going?

James Kochalka Superstar: "Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly."

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If you haven't a clue as to the type of music your college-age offspring are listening to, then "Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly" by James Kochalka Superstar could be very enlightening. The CD, one of seven by this Burlington-based musician/cartoonist, is an entrée into the world of non-adult music. Here is a CD chock full of the type of musical diversion a hard-studying student might want to listen to when his brain needs a bit of lightening up and cooling down. I guess Kochalka must think very highly of himself for even the most self-absorbent rocker I know, Michael Jackson, hasn't added "superstar" to his many personal creations.

The 14 tracks on this CD expend just 26 minutes of listening time. Kochalka has got the timing just right, for this generation of students operates with a very short time span for most activities and this CD can be listened to in a meal, a walk to class, or, as I did, in the drive from Montpelier to East Calais.

Some of you unfamiliar with this musician's oeuvre might know his other artistic side better, for he is also a cartoonist. Kochalka's drawings appear locally in Seven Days, the Burlington weekly lifestyle magazine. I find them very much like his music, simplistic and enigmatic. He has carved a niche as a popular alternative cartoonist with several books and many Internet references. If you've made it to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia with a write up and a photograph, as he has, I guess you are very well known. This 38 year old, originally from Springfield, has been cartooning since the early 1990s, and has been releasing his music since 1995.

Apparently, Kochalka has had some astounding musical success. His songs, which are at best silly, have been made into cartoon music videos on Nickelodeon, and his albums have been played on college radio stations nationwide.

To add to his musical laurels, his song "Hockey Monkey" performed with The Zambonis is used as the theme song on the Fox television sitcom "The Loop" which is entering its second season. This type of recognition should lead to a hefty royalty check for Kochalka and get other local musicians, whose music might be more polished, to consider changing course and also entering the realm of cartoon-like music.

All this makes me wonder as to what is happening in the world of commercial music. Is the American cultural slide into trivia steeper than most have predicted. Has the obesity plague reached such momentous proportions that teens and post teens cannot distinguish real music from kitsch, while the right side (the artistic lobe) of their brains has become nothing more than gray post-digestive mush?

I can understand Kochalka's appeal on one level. We live in a world that is scary. Wars break out almost weekly. Gas prices are reaching undreamt of levels. It's getting warmer all the time. We also face monumental health care issues, a disastrous war that few want to see continue, and many of our current crop of college students are in hock up to their noses. In this environment, "Spread Your Wings and Fly" serves a very positive purpose. Here's a total diversion from the travails of life. For 26 minutes you are enveloped in off the wall eccentricity wrapped in a mostly hard rock package.

The singer/composer shotguns songs with titles such as: "Cocaine," "Stash in a Box," "Britney's Silver Can," and a song whose title I can't print but you can figure it out yourself – "Wash Your —- (the part of body you sit on" – along with "Bad Song," "This Is How We Rock in America," and "Fascist Bikes," among others. Only one track is four minutes long and most are less than two minutes in length. By the time most of the tracks had finished I was just beginning to understand the lyrics. But that was probably OK as few had much to do with any conventional rhyme scheme or involved deep meditative thinking to understand.

I must admit I found a few tracks catchy. I especially liked Track Four "Britney's Silver Can," with its three minute intonation "Justin Timberlake" – whoever he is. If ever we need to yell out in frustration at life around us, I think the cry "Justin Timberlake" is as effective as some of the more off color cries I've heard of late.

Kochalka, in an Internet interview, revealed his composing style, and it says a lot about the music on this CD: "The daily work that I do on music is like just singing while I'm walking down the street, or singing in the shower or doing something else. That's how I write the songs. That doesn't really take up any time — there's no time blocked out for that. I do that in the extra time that I have, in my free time."

College is starting soon. As a way to get your student acclimated into her new environment "Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly" might be just the right present. Think of it this way — you and your offspring student can have a good chuckle after you pay your first tuition bill.