Nostalgia can be a soft memory, one that takes you back to a specific time and place in your life and fills you with sweet emotions of how things were. Or, as in today’s case, nostalgia can be a lunging punch to the back of the head, one that never fades, always there and waiting to reawaken.
     I don’t remember the first time I saw the Arthur’s Almost Live Not Real Music Festival segment, but I can guarantee you that I was probably singing a lot of the sings immediately afterwards. And repeatedly. Getting into high school was pretty much the proof of the segments standing in Arthur lore. A bunch of kids born in 1989, and a handful of conversations with other 16/17-year-olds about growing up would eventually, in some way, make mention of Arthur. Then, no exaggeration, pretty much 100% of the time you would get “Having fun isn’t hard, when you’ve got a library card.”

     With such strong nostalgic memories, I haven’t revisited it in about a decade and a half. I felt like I never really needed to, as it always sat in the back of my mind and bubbled back up every now and again, especially one song in particular that, to be honest, I've had in my song library for a long time. The 20th anniversary of its airing came and went, and it slowly felt more and more appropriate to revisit.

     The second half of the third season’s eleventh episode opens with D.W. as she hears… something… that she can’t quite pinpoint. After questioning her mom and thinking it might be Pal’s stomach, she heads to the basement where she finds Arthur and Buster ‘filming’ their own imaginary musical show (with Buster Jam’s “Hey, What’s For Dinner?”). After D.W. makes mention of how ridiculous it is, Arthur encourages her to try to use her imagination and see how much fun it could be.
     The opening is great since, let’s be honest with ourselves, D.W. is one of the best characters ever created in anything. She’s hilarious and has her fair share of best moments/lines from a variety of episodes under her belt. Her finding the two friends and then scolding them with reality (“That doesn’t look like a TV, and that camera’s not on!” while also mocking Buster’s beatboxing) is peak D.W. awesome while also being a cute set up for the segment.

     ‘Library Card’ is the first song and it’s just as catchy as I remembered, though the chorus does take away from how enjoyable the rest of it is. From Binky and his pretty flowers, Jules Verne, HG Wells, and Ray Bradbury name drops, and Ratburn being excited about making your own fancy door knockers, ‘Library Card’ does a genuinely good job in showcasing why libraries are great and important. And no, the moment you might be waiting for doesn’t happen yet.

     The second song is easily my favourite. As catchy and fun as the other three are, Brain’s musical rendition of his own personal ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ scenario is absolute bliss to my soul. The entirety of the song is immensely memorable and a great earworm that has really clever lines and jokes that build to a fantastic chorus that I come back to quite more than I care to admit in my day to day life. The direction and design work is also great here, with the chorus dance being a particular highlight that’s easy to immediately act along with when it happens (as has been done on my end….). I love the look of ‘Hyde Brain’, and even small touches like his head transforming through a variety of things when potion trying is great. It’s also kind of funny that Brain is reading (or that this song is dedicated to-) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m not really sure how many 3rd/4th graders are hankering to read such a serious, horrific, and ultimately depressing book, though I guess it makes sense Brain would be traversing those waters.
     Also, a quick mention of how great Arthur has always been at educating casually, as they do so here in two good moments. There’s a brief pause in the song where Brain explains what an ‘allegory’ is, after having used it in the song itself. Then there’s a point where Brain has a dream that involves a test in school where the answers are given in semaphore as we see the other student characters waving flags around. This is one of my favourite moments in the episode nowadays since, at 30 years old, I don’t think I’ve ever just casually come across any particular mention of semaphore in my very everyday conversations with people. I don’t even remember a class where semaphores came up, but I know what it is thanks to Arthur.
     Also, I particularly like that it ends on a cliffhanger of renewing the book. It’s a nice touch. And yes, this is the song that I have in my song library. I love it so, so much.

     ‘Leftovers Goulash’ I never remembered all too well, though I did remember it being a part of the musical. Set to different operatic pieces like Offenbach’s Cancan and Bizet’s Toreador, I always thought that the sudden rhythm change in the first 20 seconds was slightly odd, and still feel the same way now. That being said, though, the piece does end up being pretty memorable on its own once David Read’s part begins and he proceeds to list off his numerous creations and experiments in the kitchen. He has a really good singing voice, and the song really finds its footing in his section. This is followed up by D.W.’s great breakdown over how much she hates fish, all fish, and why do these cookies smell like fish? The song is better than one may remember, though it probably still comes out as the weakest of the set, only because the others are so catchy and memorable.

     Ratburn’s ‘Homework’ is another one I have a tendency to reference here and there, as the line ‘just a little homework, tonight’ is so sweet and calming, thanks to its do-wop-y influence, that it has always stuck in my head. It’s a very nice and short interlude that works incredibly well, especially when adding Buster as a prominent secondary voice. Buster himself gets two great moments here, the first being a back and forth with Ratburn involving the class having “really worked hard today.” The second may be the single funniest moment of the entire 12 minutes of the segment, as Buster laments the homework with “why-ai-ai-ai-ai, I think I’m gonna die-ai-ai-ai-ai.” It’s so funny to me that it always gets me even though I expect it.

     Then we end on a reprise of ‘Library Card’, which has more overt name references to a few books, paintings, activities at the library, and a reminder that the Dewey Decimal System is your friend! The whole episode is an ode to books and how great they are, from fiction to cooking, so it makes sense to end on a second half of this song. It even works well since it gets all the characters together to sing in unison, as the proper curtain closer to the episode before heading us back into the prologue/set-up in the basement, with Buster’s hilarious line of “Pretty good for just two guys in a cardboard TV, huh?” being perfectly meta-twisted by D.W’s “It was okay for the basement but it would never work on real TV.” It’s a great little joke that keeps in line with some very funny meta jokes Arthur has made over the course of when I watched it.

     The entire segment does genuinely really hold up for enjoyment, but that isn’t simply why I still love it endlessly. I’ve always felt that Arthur’s Almost Live Not Real Music Festival is great to revisit because it perfectly captures what I remember about Arthur, and the honest truth of the series; it does a great job naturally educating, while also being endlessly fun and funny, with a cast of great characters and more great lines. There are a ton of Arthur episodes I remember very vividly, and it has a lot of dialogue and jokes that I remember and quote almost as much as any other well remembered comedies out there (“or C- do the hokey pokey”). I hope to eventually get to revisit the series in some way, shape, or form, but for now, with everything going on in the world, Arthur’s Live Not Real Music Festival is a perfect way to sit back and spend 12 minutes, and any other amount of time afterwards that you’ll find yourself singing the music to yourself.

     And by the way, who’s Dewey?