Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ryan Flynn
Just outside my bedroom window this morning, were the sounds of backyard commerce. The night before, the chiropractic student living on the other side of our duplex asked if we had any objections to having a yard sale to get rid of everything she owned and didn’t want to have to deal with anymore when she traveled halfway across the country, back to where she was raised and had most of her family. What finally got me out of bed wasn’t the opening and shutting of an aluminum money box, but a cell phone conversation where our neighbor happily told whomever that she’d sold the washing machine, but not the dryer. It was early and she’d already sold a major household appliance, so I was happy for her. It’s the next part of the story where a segue into a brief discussion about the simple joys of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players comes into play. Our neighbor’s boyfriend – when we ask how the selling was going – tells us that business was actually slow, despite a noticeably steady steam of walk-ups. He attributed the slow business to buyers who weren’t buying, telling us that he suspected many of the prospective yardsale shoppers as “regulars” on the scene. One approached him, asked, “You guys got any gold watches?” and then turned around and drove away when the answer was, “No.” Like the watch hunter, it’s probably likely that Jason, his wife Tina Pina and 12-year-old daughter Rachel would be just as one-tracked, scavenging for precise trinkets and doodads.

But Jason Trachtenburg, a man who looks like a thinner, nerdier Rick Moranis (impossible no longer) and who seems to have overdosed on a blend of coffee and helium but would still order you to top him off, suggested last week – from a pay phone in Nebraska – that he wants not for the things he used to want for. His life is the equivalent to George Michael Bluth having all the bananas a banana stand could ever use or a copy machine having a lifetime’s supply of toner. He and his eccentric family have all of the vintage slides, suitable for handicrafting into pop nugget songs, they could ever desire. They’ve got a glut of them, handed over by fans and friends and bought on their own hunts. They don’t have to go diving anymore and that’s some mad creative stability.

“I’ve got so much stuff,” he said in his characteristically hurried manner. “People just give us slides. I am always on the lookout for new ties though.”

The Trachtenburgs, currently on the road with the iconic, palindromic Baby Gramps, are so obviously abnormal that it’s funny to even mention it. Jason plays the guitar, keyboards and sings while Tina makes sure the slides coordinate with the lyrics and little Rachel pounds out an aloof drum beat to songs that feed on the assumed importance of a random snapshot. Out of the 1960s comes a Christmas morning picture of grandma mugging for the camera with her new Mickey Mouse slippers and it becomes a statement that can be twisted into something grander and bigger in scale. This action of grandma’s is actionable in song. It becomes part of a verse about consumerism or the Democratic Convention. They construe typical, classic photographic poses – the “cheese” moments – into meaningful sonatas that have motive and can still speak to the complete silliness of capturing time on photo paper. All that the Trachtenburgs do is kept light and potable – for the most part – but they aren’t overly kitsch or novelty. With friends and admirers like David Cross, Regina Spektor, Nellie McKay and John Waters, there’s something very substantial to what they’re doing.

“Silly stuff makes me nervous as well. Silly stuff causes squeamishness,” said Jason. “You have to have double and triple meanings coming at you.”

It’s really hard to know what to make of the Trachtenburgs because they do have a Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood feel to them, but there’s also a portion that’s Bill O’Reilly or Anderson Cooper or Michael Moore. It’s a miraculous swirling of seriousness and goofiness. In the band’s recently released DVD, “On and Off Broadway,” the family is seen visiting a friend in New York who has the world’s largest collection of Troll figurines. This is fucking creepy, but it’s them. Then you see Jason thinking out-loud that he really would like an apple, thinking about it incessantly enough that he just has to go out to a market and buy apples. And even as a power mower is being operated behind him while he’s on the pay phone (at the end of the DVD, Jason is seen giving a deadly serious public service announcement pleading with people to only use their cellular phones for emergency purposes like they were intended) and he’s acting all spazzy because Tina’s testily warning him that he needs to get off the phone, though he’s only been on for two minutes, the dichotomy of the man and the band is evident.

“I’m going to attempt not to be worried about everything so much,” he said, the attention deficit disorder taking hold again. “I forgot already.”