The Day of Your Life

The best pop band in the world* -- Midget, from Stamford in the UK -- reunited for their first show in five years yesterday. Their music is sort of a hybrid of Green Day, Blur, Weezer, the Beatles, and the hypothetical music that would be made by the sound of the collective amount of love, joy, and optimism in all human hearts at any given moment in the history in the world. (They also list Ben Folds Five, XTC, Jellyfish, The Pixies, and Nirvana as influences.) Please visit the above link and listen to "Invisible Balloon" immediately.

Midget's records are maddeningly hard to find in the U.S. (in record stores, anyway; there are 49 used copies of Jukebox available at Amazon.com) and the U.K., a fact that I learned over a two-month period in 2002 and that caused me to write things like this:

"Let it suffice to say that listening to “Invisible Balloon” was and is, to me, one of the most exciting and fulfilling things I’ve experienced."

and

"I was afraid my accent would belie my musical knowledge; one word would give me away as the ultimate brainless American: thick Southern accent, complete ignorance about all things British, and prone to statements like “Hah. Ah am not frum around heeyar. Do you hayuv the re-kord ah am looking for? Mah fay-vor-ite john-ruh is kun-tree and way-us-turn."

and

"Scotland was proving as big a disappointment as its Southern neighbor, Midget-wise."

Midget -- a band you never knew was gone -- is back.

(*I don't joke about things like that.)