We’re off today for the US Memorial Day holiday, which for many of us in this hemispehere marks the unofficial beginning of summer. We will have a post tomorrow, then it’s off for the other annual celebration, the SSP Meeting, so expect content here to be sparse for the rest of the week.

To tide you over and get your summer moving forward, I offer you the joy that is Shonen Knife, a band that recently celebrated its 40th anniversary of existence. Formed by school friends in 1981, the band’s trajectory skyrocketed in the early 1990s when they were celebrated by no less than Kurt Cobain and asked to be the opening act for Nirvana’s tour that year. If you don’t know them, Shonen Knife offers fun, positive, Ramones-esque songs about animals, chocolate bars, and Barbie dolls. Their musicianship has greatly improved over the years, but I still find myself going back to their earliest recordings which are packed with an untouched amateurish charm. In keeping with the day, find below “Summertime Boogie” from their debut album Pretty Little Baka Guy.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

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