The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Polaris, Miracle Legion, and my love for 90s alternative music

Recovered from my old blog, Not Too Amused.

If you grew up in the 90s and had access to Nickelodeon (or maybe you grew up in the 2000s and had access to reprises), you may have watched The Adventures of Pete and Pete. It’s a show about two brothers with the same name, who live in a town called Wellsville. The town is full of strange characters such as Artie, the strongest man in the world and Mr. Tastee, the mysterious man who sells ice cream and disappears during a hot summer day. It was a strange, surreal, yet wholesome show. And, most importantly, it had a killer soundtrack.

Most of the soundtrack was composed by Polaris, a fake band formed by the members of Miracle Legion. The opening track, Hey Sandy, has a mysterious verse that will be kept secret forever, but sounds like this:

Hey smilin’ stange

You lookin’ happily derranged

** Can you settle to shoot me? **

Or have you picked your target yet?

Hey Sandy (hey hey hey hey)

Most of their songs sound deliciously nostalgic, and it did fit very well with the show.

The band appeared in one episode, A Hard Day’s Pete. In this episode, little Pete (big Pete’s little brother, if you haven’t assumed it yet) runs a radio. However, he also has a surprising distaste for music. Then, he hears the band playing in the garage and that changes everything.

But Polaris (or Miracle Legion) wasn’t the only musical attraction in the show. It also featured a lot of songs by other artists, some that I’m a real fan of:

• Drop Nineteens (I will talk more about them, they are very interesting)
• The Apples in Stereo (they are part of the Elephant 6 collective, that brought us Of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control and others)

The show also featured some artists, some as brief cameos, others who were regular characters on the show, such as Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Michael Stripe, Kate Pierson!

Sadly, if you don’t live in the US, finding episodes of The Adventures of Pete and Pete will be hard. I’ve watched some reprises when I was young, but I think Nickelodeon had probably lost the portuguese dubs of the show (they used to air it sometimes without audio, or in Spanish, and I used to believe that the episodes indeed had no audio, which made the show even more strange). You can find some episodes in English or Spanish on Youtube, though.

Read more about it

Welcome to Wellsville: Top Ten Musical Cameos in The Adventures of Pete & Pete

The Website of Pete and Pete – Music

“Get a Life, Jerk Weed!” or: How I Became a Music Fan Through The Adventures of Pete & Pete