This week, Stuck Between Stations combed through a Denny’s shortstack of YouTube bookmarks to find videos that simply will not escape the brain, no matter how many times you call the sheriff to force their eviction. The visual equivalent of ear-worms, these A/V train wrecks take up residence in the corpus callosum, either because of or despite their badness, and lodge there for keeps, like grains of sand in your Juicyfruit. There are elements of awe and sadomasochism at work here. It’s not just that these videos are “so bad they’re good” (though there’s plenty of campy indulgence); we’ve come to genuinely love these “bad” music videos, and offer no apologies. In Vol. 1, Roger and Scot subject themselves to South Indian breakdancing music, the bizarre-but-relevant soul stylings of Tay Zonday, a troupe of angry geriatrics covering The Who, an airborne David Hasselhoff, the worst Star Wars theme song cover ever taped, and Leonard Nimoy’s foray into Hobbiton.

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A Tribute to Devendra Banhart

And hey there mister happy squid, you move so psychedelically
You hypnotize with your magic dance all the animals in the sea
For Sure

Devendra Banhart - Little Yellow Spider

At first spin of Devendra Banhart’s Little Yellow Spider, one might think it a children’s song. That is what came to mind when I first heard it on a mixed CD a friend sent as a New Year’s gift. Then I reached the line about the pig mating with a man. The appeal only grew.

Who was this poetic troubadour artfully warbling lyrics that were both playful and taboo, naturalistic and psychedelic, odd and profane? Suddenly a drawer had been opened and in it, amongst the lacy vintage shirts and bright paisley dresses, lay the sparkling spangles and baubles of wonder, magic and healing. Every time Little Yellow Spider came on my daughter would yipe, “I love this song,” and I would cough loudly over the pig verse.

I was driven to learn more about this man who could equally endear my child and myself, yet had a secret darkness, a seedy underbelly, a heart that had been broken by human folly.

And hey there Mrs. Lovely Moon, you’re lonely and you’re blue
It’s kind of strange the way you change
But then again we all do, too.

Over the course of a few months I purchased all of Devendra Banhart’s CD’s and found myself enraptured by song in a way I hadn’t been since my birth in the Summer of Love. Wordsmith of alchemical poetry, knitter of connections between microcosm and macrocosm, Banhart was projecting a wolf cry for our generation. In one album I could find pagan spell work, poignant love ballad and subversive declarations of liberation. Banhart was showman with a bowler hat and cane, skinny 60’s love child smoking peace pipe amongst oat straw and star thistle, edgy outrageous queen performing acts of desire behind closed doors, mother, yogi, long haired child. All this, and multilingual vocalist extraordinaire, who can, as my husband likes to say, “play his axe.”

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