Another Letter From Home: Where I talk about the "Pete and Pete" soundtrack vinyl reissue, the Polaris live album, and of course, nostalgia

When we were standing in the kitchen, listening to the recent vinyl reissue of the soundtrack to the television show “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” my wife posed two questions—

The first was asking why, for a children’s show, all of the songs on the album are so sad.

And the second was, why, when she thinks back to her childhood, all of her memories are from the summer.

The two seem unrelated at first, but in a sense, they are—and neither of them have a really easy answer.

The vinyl reissue to Music From The Adventures of Pete and Pete by the “made for TV” band Polaris has been a long gestating thing. It was originally discussed in an email update sent out maybe two or three years ago from Polaris frontman, Mark Mulcahy—well before he opted to reissue his debut solo album Fathering last year, and possibly before, or around the same time, that he launched his comeback record, 2013’s Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You.

Music From arrived in stores on Record Store Day, roughly a month ago. Speaking volumes of either how few copies were sent to stores, or how fed up people are with the idea of Record Store Day, copies went on sale on Mulcahy’s website the following day. The traffic and clamor to purchase a copy practically broke the site, according to an apologetic email sent out around three weeks later.

Paired with a double live CD recorded from one of the first Polaris live shows, recorded last fall in Chicago, my package from the Mezzotint online store eventually arrived, just shy of four weeks after I had placed my order. “We’re really behind,” I was told about a week or so after the order was placed.

I suppose this also speaks to just how beloved the show “Pete and Pete” is to anyone that came of age (and had access to cable) in the 1990s, as well as how endearing and charming the music Mulcahy wrote for the show was.

I’ve written about Mark Mulcahy a number of times—starting with his 7” single released in the UK at the tail end of 2012.  But it’s worth explaining just who he is, and how Polaris came to be. Mulcahy fronted the cult-following college rock outfit Miracle Legion throughout the 1980s, and into the early 1990s, before they fell apart due to a bad deal with a major label offshoot. It was around that time that the creators of “Pete and Pete” (both huge fans of Miracle Legion) approached him about writing music for the show.

The first (and only) Polaris release for four years was a cassette single with three songs, available through a mail-in offer on a box of Frosted Mini Wheats, during the summer of 1995. The CD release of the soundtrack arrived in 1999, and the band recently just started performing live shows, and put out a one-off cassette single in the fall of 2014 with two new tracks—both just as jangly (though neither as bittersweet) as the songs written for the show.

Getting back to the two questions my wife posed earlier—why are these songs from a kid’s TV show so sad, and why can she only remember summers from her childhood—the songs themselves were not written with the show itself in mind. Kind of like how movie soundtracks are dubbed “songs from and inspired by.” Miracle Legion’s music, overall, was never this straight up sad at its core, but as Polaris, Mulcahy and company seemed to have tapped into a theme that the show itself never really directly addresses, which is the kind of bittersweet nostalgia of, and for, your childhood memories.

The show combined absurdist humor and surrealism to tell the tale of two brothers, who share the same name, living in a sleep suburban town. They have adventures, and the older “Pete” narrates each episode, as if he’s reflecting on this time in his life. Aside from the few very obvious “sad” episodes—the one about the enigmatic ice cream man Mr. Tastee, or the one where Artie leaves—the show’s emotion is masked by its humor. And the emotion is that the show, in a sense, is about the longing for something more and wanting something bigger or greater, no matter how ridiculous it is. It’s about the imagination and innocence of childhood, and an attempt at recapturing that once you grow older.

Why do we only remember summers from our childhood? Or rather, why, when you think of your youth, you are automatically drawn to a memory from the summer? Is it because you’re free? Is it because it’s like one long weekend with endless possibilities?

“Pete and Pete,” to some extent, is a “summer show,” in that regard then, despite many of the episodes taking place in other seasons, because it tries to bottle that essence of endless possibilities and the overall innocence of youth.

The music, however, is far from summer music. Mulcahy, no matter what capacity, is almost always best described as “autumn music,” and the soundtrack to “Pete and Pete” is no exception. It’s also music that literally begs to be played on vinyl, which is what makes this reissue such an important release for those whose young lives were shaped by this show, and who have treasured these songs since they were first used over 20 years ago.

The bittersweet nostalgia runs throughout the mournful “Everywhere” and the slow burning “Ashamed of The Story I Told”; while Mulcahy’s knack for jangly upbeat songwriting isn’t lost on quintessential songs like “Ivy Boy,” “Saturnine,” “Waiting For October,” “Coronado II,” and then the show’s theme song, “Hey Sandy,” complete with indecipherable lyrics that the band themselves will never reveal.

Space travel, and the larger universe “out there,” for some reason, was a recurring theme of sorts on “Pete and Pete,” and it has turned up in many ways with both the soundtrack to the show, and the live album. The soundtrack includes bits and pieces of a Speak and Say talking about the planets, as well as sound clips of rocket lift offs; the album art includes constellations; and the album itself is dedicated to Laika and Ham—animals that were (cruelly) sent into space in the early days of space exploration.

On Live at Lincoln Hall, it shows up in the charming album artwork—a dog wearing a space suit—as well as in two well planned covers late in the band’s lengthy set: REM’s “Man on The Moon,” and the heartbreaking “I Don’t Want to Live on The Moon,” both songs exploring, whether intentional or not, loneliness, innocence, the want for something greater, and nostalgia.

Live at Lincoln Hall serves as a companion piece of sorts to Music From The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Recorded live in Chicago in October of 2014, the band plays all 12 of the songs from the soundtrack, two Miracle Legion oldies, both new songs from the cassette single released around the same time as the show, and a smattering of covers. Spanning two CDs, it also includes all of the stage banter in between songs, adding to the charm of the collection.

The sleeve notes indicate that it is 100% live, with no overdubs—and as if you didn’t believe them on this word alone, one listen will reassure their statement. Live at Lincoln Hall is incredibly raw and unhinged; it’s not sloppy per se, but as a live unit, Polaris is loose—very loose. But it’s fun. They don’t take themselves seriously at all, even when they dig into the somber tracks like “Everywhere” and “Ashamed of The Story I Told.”

Live is a fun record—a bit of a “thank you” of sorts to all the support that the idea of Polaris, and the original music from the show has garnered over the last twenty years. It’s by no means essential—I mean to someone like me, it is. To a casual listener, it’s certainly fascinating and captivating to hear this classic material played live for one of the very first times—comparing how time has aged Mulcahy’s voice and playing.

Music From the Adventures Pete and Pete has aged remarkably well, which shows just how timeless the songwriting is. Sure, the heavy chorus pedal on the guitar dates it slightly, giving it that trademark early 90s sound, but that’s half the fun. It’s a remarkably evocative and inviting set of songs—bringing to mind memories of your childhood (summer or not), watching “Pete and Pete” during its initial run on Nickelodeon, the day your cassette single arrived from your Frosted Mini Wheats boxtops, the leaves turning, the days getting shorter and air turning cooler, and everything else in between. 

Both the vinyl reissue of Music From The Adventures of Pete and Pete and Live at Lincoln Hall are available now from Mezzotint.