Twiddle – "Beethoven and Greene" (2011)

A cool breeze makes you

Think about the situation

Walking forwards, moving backwards

Here’s a photo I took earlier today at my local McDonald’s with my iPhone 16 (i.e., “The Official Smartphone of 2 or 3 Lines”):

Springfield and Sacramento stand out in that photo, but you may have trouble making out the other city names printed on the wall – which include Atlanta, Columbus, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix, and several other large cities. 

But the names of a number of smaller cities also appear on that wall – Augusta, Carson City, Concord, Dover, Frankfort, Jefferson City, Pierre, and Salem among them.

If you’re a denizen of trivia competitions like 2 or 3 lines is, you’ll immediately recognize what all those cities have in common: they are all state capitals.

But there’s one city on that wall that doesn’t belong there.  I’ll zoom in a little closer and you see if you can figure out which one of those cities is not like the others:

Still not sure which city I’m talking about?  Let’s zoom in even closer:

That’s right – I’m talking about Montpelier, which is the state capital of Vermont.

*     *     *     *     *

Did you know that Montpelier is the smallest state capital in the United States?  According to the 2020 census, only 8074 souls live in Montpelier.

Montpelier is also the only state capital in the United States to not have a McDonald’s.  That may be because Montpelier prides itself on favoring locally-owned farm-to-table restaurants over national fast-food chains like Mickey D’s.  Or it may be because a town with only 8074 people doesn’t consume enough Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets to make a McDonald’s profitable.

If you were thinking about moving to Montpelier but are not sure that you can live without McDonald’s, fear not – there may not be one in Montpelier, but there’s one just three miles away in Barre.

*     *     *     *     *

Montpellier, France – the third-largest city on France’s Mediterranean coast – is the city that gave Montpelier, Vermont its name.

(Did you notice that the French city has one more “L” in its name than the Vermont city?  Perhaps you assumed that was a typo.  No way, José – 2 or 3 lines doesn’t have typos!  It’s the folks in Vermont who made the mistake!)

Here are a few other fun facts about Vermont:

1.  In addition to boasting the smallest state capital in the country, Vermont also has the smallest biggest city of any state.  (Burlington, the most populous city in Vermont, has only 44,743 residents.)

2.  Vermont is not quite the least-populated state in the country, but it probably will be in the relatively near future.  (Wyoming currently has fewer residents than Vermont, but Vermont had a hundred-year head start – Wyoming is catching up.)

3.  Vermont is the least diverse American state – 94% of its residents are white, while only 1.3% are black.  (The mixed-race population is about 2%.)  

4.  The country that supplies the most immigrants to Vermont is Canada – not surprising given that Vermont borders Quebec.  But you’ll never guess which countries rank next highest when it comes to the number of immigrants going to Vermont: Nepal, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

5.  Vermont has only 26 McDonald’s – the fewest of any state in the country.  (Alaska has 27, while Wyoming, North and South Dakota have 29 apiece.)

6.  Did you know that Vermont claimed to be an independent republic from 1777 until it became a state in 1791?  If you didn’t know that, you’re not alone.  In fact, very few people outside Vermont were aware of during the 14-year existence of the so-called “Vermont Republic,” which never received diplomatic recognition as an independent nation by any country.  

7.  The constitution of the Vermont Republic prohibited adult slavery, but allowed the enslavement of males below the age of 21 and females below the age of 18.  Doesn’t that seem backwards to you?

8.  During the Revolutionary War, Vermonters negotiated with the British in hopes of becoming part of Canada.  They withdrew from those negotiations when it became apparent that the British were going to lose to the Americans.

9.  Finally, Vermont is one of only three states that 2 or 3 lines has never visited.  I’d love to see Alaska someday.  And while I’m not sure that I’ll ever make it to North Dakota, I wouldn’t mind going there.  But I have no plans to ever set foot in Vermont.  (The dearth of McDonald’s restaurants in Vermont is bad enough, but the treachery to the fledgling United States during the Revolutionary War is even worse.)

*     *     *     *     *

According to Wikipedia, the most prominent recording artists hailing from Vermont include The Cancer Conspiracy, Drowningman, Noah Kahan, Mellow Yellow, Phish, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, RAQ, Rough Francis, and Twiddle.

Until recently, the only name on that list that I had heard of was Phish, the Grateful Dead wannabe jam band that has been a plague on our nation for over four decades.

Last week, Noah Kahan was the answer to this trivia question: “Who was the first recording artist to ever sell out four consecutive nights at Boston’s Fenway Park?”  That was literally the only thing I knew about Noah Kahan.  Today I learned that he’s from Vermont and wears ridiculous clothes:

Photo

I have no intention of featuring something by Phish or Noah Kahan just because this post is about Vermont.  So I’m going to feature a Twiddle track instead.

The bad news about Twiddle is that they are a jam band like Phish.  (There must be something in the water in Vermont.)

The good news is that Twiddle went on indefinite hiatus in November 2023 “to explore their individual creative pursuits and spend more time with their families.”  So it’s possible that we’ve dodged the bullet of ever having to hear Twiddle perform again.

By the way, the page on the Twiddle website explaining that the band is on hiatus closes with this sentence:

Twiddle’s music and mission, however, will continue to live on in the hearts of every frend [sic] who ever embraced the movement that captured so many purple & green hearts across the country.

When I asked Gemini what the reference to purple and green hearts meant, here’s the reply I got:

In the LGBTQ+ community, green is the color for the aromantic flag, and purple is the color for the asexual flag. Using these heart emojis together often signifies being on both the aromantic and asexual spectrums.

I consider myself neither aromantic nor asexual.  But if those words apply to you, Twiddle’s music might be just what you’ve been looking for.

I decided to feature “Beethoven and Greene” – a track that was released in 2011 on Twiddle’s second studio album, Somewhere on the Mountain – after reading the following description of it on the Bearded Gentlemen Music website:

The song begins as a catchy rock tune with some infectious lyrics, which after a few minutes transitions into a Sublime-sounding reggae affair (Sublime is an obvious influence on this band), then back to the original song structure. Moments later the floodgates open and the band rips into a “zydeco-esque,” rock-jazz jam (does this make any sense?) for nearly the remainder of the cut, until they slow it down again returning to the reggae riff to finish up the piece. 

Click here to listen to the studio recording of “Beethoven and Greene.”

Click here to buy the recording of a 2018 live performance of “Beethoven and Greene” on Amazon.