Hey Arnold!, the hilarious and charming cartoon that originally aired from 1996-2004, is remembered for its relatable themes—and rad music! The jazz-centric soundtrack provided the perfect jams for the zany characters. To celebrate 30 years of one of cable’s finest cartoons, composer Jim Lang, and his band the PS 118 All Stars, are hitting the road to perform the music of Hey Arnold! live! They’ll be at Pappy and Harriet’s at 8 p.m., Monday, Oct. 26. Unfortunately, the show is sold out, but there’s a waitlist here.
What was the first concert you attended?
There was an R&B artist named Edwin Starr back in the ’60s, and his one hit was a (song) called “Agent Double O Soul” back when James Bond was happening. I have no idea how this happened, but somehow, as a 13, 14-year-old, I got a call to go play keyboards with him. I went to what used to be called the Red Dog Inn, a theater in Lawrence, Kan. My dad drove me out there, and I played a gig with him. The last thing I remember about the gig is the tail lights of his car disappearing into the night without me getting paid for it, so I guess I probably didn’t do that good of a job. First concert, first live gig and first life lesson about being a musician.
What was the first album you owned?
Rhapsody in Blue/An American in Paris (George Gershwin). That was the first piece of music I ever listened to that just blew my head completely wide open. My folks had a copy of it, so that became my album.
What bands are you listening to right now?
Phoebe Bridgers’ new record is awesome. Phoebe actually went to school with my son, so I’ve known her for a long time. What an album! I’m a huge Snarky Puppy fan, and KNOWER, I’m crazy about.
What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone love, but you don’t get?
This is an incredibly stupid thing to say, because it just reveals profound ignorance on my part, but it took me a long time to come to rap music. I felt the whole gangsta thing was just culturally lost on me, and I didn’t get it for a long time until I got more curious about it, but eventually, I found artists who I really loved listening to, both from a musical point of view and also from a lyrical point of view. If there’s a style of music that I don’t get or I don’t feel attracted to, at a certain level, it pisses me off, and then after I get over being pissed off, it makes me curious.
What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?
Stevie Wonder.
What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure?
Spike Jones, because it’s just so incredibly funny. My brother and I grew up watching The Three Stooges, and slapstick humor has always made me laugh so much. It used to make my father laugh, and I think we’re always affected by people in our orbit who are enthusiastic or laugh or get joy from something. Spike Jones is like musical slapstick. That music really cracks me up, and you can kind of tell by the way I write, too, especially doing animation music.
What’s your favorite music venue?
There’s a great little bar called Justine’s in Frogtown in L.A., which is in my neighborhood where my studio is, and it’s one little tiny corner of the room. You can walk in there, and there’ll be a sax player and a drummer playing or something like that. Rooms like that, where there’s absolutely no pretense of any kind, and it’s just people making music and other people sitting there talking real loud and ignoring the music, that’s a really fun experience of music making. It’s not super loud, so I like that, too.
What’s the one song lyric you can’t get out of your head?
I don’t usually remember song lyrics for whole songs, except I know all the words to “Haunted House.” Phrases tend to stick with me. In that category, it is a tie between Joni Mitchell, “The kind of crazy you get from too much choice,” and Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”
What band or artist changed your life? How?
George Gershwin. “Rhapsody in Blue,” still to this day, I have a hard time listening to it without getting overwhelmed. There’s just so much in the dynamics of that piece of music, how melodic it is, and that harmony. … That one piece of music really encapsulated a whole zeitgeist, and it was long form, so it’s a full meal and dessert and nuts at the end.
You have one question to ask one musician. What’s the question, and who are you asking?
Herbie Hancock. He’s a meditator, and he has a practice that he does, and I think I would ask him some kind of question about that: “What’s your practice for getting centered?” So much of writing and playing to me at this stage of my life is about being quiet and opening up and letting what’s out there come through you. All this music that we make is so referential and reverential at this point, because you’ve listened and listened your whole life. “Herbie, what’s your practice for opening up and channeling all the elders, now that you’re an elder?”
What song would you like played at your funeral?
“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” When I was a kid, I went in the summers to this Methodist church up in Michigan. Back in the day, we sang all these songs out of the Methodist hymnal, so that church harmony is a big part of what’s in here, especially for a piano player.
Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?
The quick answer, and not a bad answer, is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, just for how mind-blowing that experience was of listening to that record. I think that was the first day I ever smoked pot. How do you judge an album? Do you judge it on first listen, or do you judge it on how many times you’ve listened to it since? That album passes both those tests.
What song should everyone listen to right now?
A song from Hey Arnold! called “Look Up.” It was in one of the first three or four episodes, and a few years back, a woman named Manouchca Joseph from Florida made a version of it that she posted up on Instagram. It was just her singing the song a cappella, and I went and got the vocal from her and played piano under it. It’s up on YouTube. Craig Bartlett, who is the creator of Hey Arnold!, also made a video of him coloring a cartoon image to go with it. It’s a throwaway song, but it’s about how you’ve got to try to keep a good face on things. Things can get pretty shitty, and we’re living in a world where things are getting kind of shitty right now, but the whole thing about that song is how beautiful her singing is. The song is very jaunty in the show, and she reimagines it as a ballad, and it’s just so sweet.
