jitterbug!

does anyone know whatever happened to andrew ridgeley? does anyone know what andrew ridgeley contributed to wham or this song or anything in general? i often imagine he is the character hugh grant played in the movie music and lyrics, although in ridgeley’s case, as a guy who probably had talent but who was overshadowed and then overlooked. i imagine it’s hard to shine when george stay out of public loos michael is your singing partner.

(not this george michael, either.)

ah, but remember them in their fluffy-haired heydey? remember the choose life shirts that were so huge and were also made, at the time, in day-glo, neon colors? i had too much self-respect to wear one (and i, the queen of malaprops, did not want to be confused with an anti-abortion activist by wearing that message, not that i choose death, but still.) oh, they were doe-eyed and adorable. and those teeny-tiny shorts? these guys were too sweet to be real.

and this song. admit it — you hear it start, and you want to dance. you don’t want anyone to know that you want to dance, but it is absolutely infectious, and maybe not in a good way, but there it is. it has a bouncy horn section to go along with it’s bouncy beat, and george’s smooth vocals carry you away into some sort of confectionary moment.

but poor andrew. after racing cars and solo work that didn’t go anywhere, you wonder not whether he has any dart boards with george michael’s face on them, but just how many.

yes, i am cheating by posting a link to last year’s thanksgiving day post.

but i am thankful to those of you who don’t mind.

here you go.

happy thanksgiving!

excepting alice…

i realize i’m not exactly supplying any serious blog post here. i am just highly unmotivated. so instead, i provide you the song which i look forward to hearing each year at this time. it always makes me contemplate the importance of disposing of trash properly.

happy thanksgiving!

if you love something, set it free.

if it comes back to you, it is yours.

if it doesn’t, it never was.

yeah, yeah. you can start laughing at me now. but when this song came out in 1985, i was completely hooked. it’s rock, it’s jazzy, there’s a marsalis in it. how can you not start tapping your toes when it comes on?

lots of my friends felt betrayed when der stingleheimer started on a different musical path post-police. stingerino seemed to start down a path away from the reggae/ska/punk-lite path and explore new stuff, ultimately destined for lite rock stations everywhere. and yet i love this stuff, at least up through the mid-1990s.

and if you’ve ever carefully watched the video for this song, you’ll notice some cool things happening. one person is slowed down. one is speeded up. one is filmed in black and white.  and beloved branford? he’s a transparent ghost of himself.  i just love it.

and as for the hackneyed cliché that graces the song’s title? it has probably seen it’s way onto many greeting cards and needlepoint samplers. there’s a load of jokes surrounding it including these. but me, i’m a purist. whoever said this said it best:

if you love something, set it free.

if it comes back to you, it is yours.

if it doesn’t, hunt it down and kill it.

second verse, same as the first.

henry the VIII is one of those random songs that gets stuck in your head once and then pops up at the darndest times. for me, it pops up during those blank and dreary moments where you need something to make people smile and get re-energized.  there have been countless times when i’ll start singing it and the kids join in.  (yes, we’re that family.)

the song was one of the hits for the band herman’s hermits (including, as BS would imitate from the TV, peter noone from my generation!), a british band that became huge in the heydey of the beatles. in fact, they apparently were the top selling pop act in the US in 1965, toppling the beatles from that post.  all this, in part, thanks to famed producer mickie most, who would select their songs and often wouldn’t let them play, using session musicians like john paul jones and jimmy page instead. they had hit after hit for several years, but of course one day, they broke up and tried their own stuff which was never quite successful. (peter noone had one minor hit covering what ultimately became a bowie classic oh! you pretty things.)

but i’ll keep it simple so that no one chops my head off. henry the VIII is bouncier and a lot more fun than it’s subject matter would imply. and it’s actually kid-safe, unlike plenty of my musical fodder.  but yeah, i would get laughed out of a lot of places for this one.

my sweet virginia…

last night, BS and i saw a concert. there was a time in our lives that this wasn’t so noteworthy — pre-kids — but since becoming parents, we don’t get to see concerts a whole lot. and now that we are picky fogies, we won’t go to big stadium shows anymore, either. the biggest we go it the verizon center in DC, which certainly isn’t insignificant in size, but it’s more manageable… and we have a place to park.

anyway, with BS’s birthday coming up, i was grateful and happy when BS did the presale for the Foo Fighters, even though the seats at the start of the presale were still up with G-d. BS loveloveloves the Foos, so while I like them, for him, I knew this was a big deal. And since he is the Hardest Man on Earth to Shop For (TM), it was almost like instant birthday present. (well, that plus last weekend, when he went to play in some poker tournament in PA. or was it DE? who knows.) i found a sitter, and we were set.

i won’t go into the dinner, which was forgettable, food-wise.  i won’t go into the opener for the opener, the joy formidable, who kept us on the edge of our seats waiting to see which rock cliché they were going to embrace (were they going to smash their instruments? set them on fire? no, they just created a ton of noise and feedback and just left the stage with the feedback still haranguing the audience.)

and i won’t even go into the opener, social distortion. yeah yeah, i know that social D is an institution. i get that. i just don’t like them, okay? mike ness’s voice always sounds to me like someone let monotone uncle marvin loose in a karaoke bar. it grates. but i have loads of friends who like them, and that’s cool. i’m sure they put on a sufficiently good show, making the crowd scream every time ness said motherf***er. yeah, that’s a thrill.  (you know what else would be a thrill? writing a song that uses more than three chords.)

but i digress.

anyway, the foos exploded onto the stage around 8:30. dave grohl, my secret boyfriend #3, ran all over the stage, down a runway past the soundboard, and then onto a mini-riser, which made it easier for people like us in the cheap seats to see him. i’m not sure what tiny dave eats besides wheaties, but that man, along with taylor hawkins, the drummer with 0% body fat, are unbelievably energetic. he was absolutely pumped because, he said, this was the first time he had sold out the big-ass arena in my hometown. he talked about growing up in springfield and the girl who broke his heart when he was 12.

the night she broke his heart, he had a dream, he said. he dreamt he was in a rock band, playing in a huge arena. and he looked out among the sea of faces, and there she was. and then, he shared that there she was, in the audience, tonight.

(talk about the one that got away.)

the Foos went through plenty of material from their current album as well as plenty of their hits. (they played for three and a half hours for the hometown crowd because he was so pumped to be there.) local bob mould came onstage during the encore to play dear rosemary with the band, which he does on the LP.  but my favorite moment was an unspoken one.

while singing arlandria, there was this glimmer i saw. arlandria, for those who don’t actually know, is a section of alexandria just below the arlington border. it’s along four mile run, above del ray. the song is loaded with double entendres (for example, Virginia is also grohl’s mom’s name.) anyway, it must have been a little trippy to sing arlandria in front of a crowd who knows exactly where and what arlandria is (at least, we folks in arlington and alexandria, anyway.) and when dave sang my sweet virginia, i could swear this genuine smile came over his face. it wasn’t his usual toothy, forced concert grin. it was absolutely warm.

dave has come home.

…and it all started because of a little dog.

ray lamontagne is a singer-songwriter from new england whose raspy voice has graced grammy-winning music. i had no idea of any of this until i saw the travelers insurance commercial featuring an adorably-scruffy but neurotic benji dog who feared for the safety of his favorite bone. i know radio in DC is limited, but i can only wonder how many other artists i have been missing since we lost any station that plays anything new.

but enough of that rant. what i have since learned about the reclusive mr. ray: he apparently grew up in a less-than-stellar situation and initially rejected music because it is something his father did (and apparently, his relationship with his father was, you guessed it, troubled.) but, as legend has it, he was working in a shoe factory when he heard a song. this song:

and suddenly, his life changed.

what little i can read about him makes it sound like he lives a pretty private life with his family. it doesn’t sound like he likes to tour much. pity. what truly brought him to my attention was a song from his latest album, g-d willin’ & the creek don’t rise.

one of those random internet radio stations played it, and i had to find out who was singing that song. (yeah, i know — it’s a little countrified, but i like it. it has a bit of that neil young harvest vibe to it, methinks.) and then, i heard that voice and thought, hmm, isn’t that the voice from the commercial with the cute dog that has that song i like?

so yeah, it’s a little bit country AND it’s a little bit rock. and if you’ve never listened to this guy’s stuff, you really ought to give it a try.

wish he toured more. maybe touring is more trouble than he can handle, though.

it’s all cher’s fault.

back in 1998, a new technology, called auto-tune, was employed on cher’s hit single believe to ensure that her vocals were perfect.  (if you’re brave, you can give it a listen. i’ll wait.)

did you hear those notes where it almost sounds like her voice has become like a synthesizer? where she sounds more like a machine than a human? welcome to the magic of auto-tune.  and over the past 10 years, it has become a huge tool in the world of pop and R&B. people in country have admitted to using it, too, like shania twain, tim mcgraw, and faith hill. it appears that everybody want to rule their pitch.

music, to those of you who know me or who have paid any attention whatsoever to my blog over the past 9 years, takes up a lot of space in my brain. to me, it is an art that clutches at all that is human inside me and which expresses frailties and strengths about our experiences in life and love and spirit and everything in between. auto-tune removes all that is human and imperfect from music. it distances the artist from the craft. and it creates a gap between the artist and me. there is this computer that sanitizes and perfects the experience.

if you are really all about the music, and  if you are really all about creating a real experience, a real moment between yourself and others, then you need not use auto-tune. i cannot imagine bob dylan auto-tuned, or bruce springsteen, or aimee mann, or anyone whose work i respect. i don’t expect them to have perfect performances, and i don’t want their voices synthesized into electronic nirvana. i want to hear them raw and real and regular. i don’t expect vocal pyrotechnics; i expect emotional truth and warmth.

can you imagine john lennon auto-tuned? nope. me, neither.

sometimes, especially in pop and R&B, there is this need to embellish vocal embellishments. it’s like artists are not so much interested in the emotion of the song but rather in proving they can glide around 16 notes in a second. their vocal chords are superior, apparently. but doing so is fraught with easy failure. auto-tune to the rescue! just because whitney houston could do it without doesn’t mean you need to, and you, too, can sound like a diva! the tv show glee is rife with it. i wonder whether broadway is now, too.

nope. not for me. maybe it’s the aural equivalent of telling those damn kids to get off my lawn, but i don’t want any auto-tune in my music.  and if they want to keep it real, then artists ought to demand that their imperfections remain for us fans to love or not love. i know music is a business, but if the product actually becomes 100% manufactured for our listening pleasure, then there’s no art left.

i like the illusion that there’s something honest going on there, but auto-tune completely pulls back the curtain and let’s you see that the wizard is truly bankrupt, false, and neurotic.

quite possibly, talentless as well.

be forewarned: i am probably going to accidentally trounce on beliefs without meaning to and without any malice. apologies in advance. i’m thinking aloud here.

all this talk about raptures is puzzling to me at best. and that’s at best.

i had to do a little reading about the concept of rapture, as it is a christian concept and thus obviously nothing i was taught as part of my time with mrs. hannah felder, the torah-ettes, and our stunning hebrew school curriculum. there’s a piece of the christian bible called thessalonians (which i had to practice saying, i would add — that word is a tongue twister and made me feel like i had a lisping challenge) where paul writes one of his epistles.  (i remember reading a bit about him in college through the confessions of st. augustine. that paul was pretty prolific.)

(speaking of prolific paul, i always love being at weddings with BS when they get to the part of paul writing to the corinthians. my husband always makes me laugh:  dear corinthians, he’ll whisper, STOP. how’s the leather business? STOP. etc.)

so that thinker named paul, he took on the thessalonians as well, only this time, he was talking about christians being taken up to G-d. and i’m no theologian (so i will defer to my friends who are), but it sounds like depending on which sort of christian you are delineates how the whole rapture scenario plays out. but ultimately, my understanding is that as long as you are christian and have declared Jesus as your savior, you are good to go toward that heavenly reward.

see, here’s where i get a bit perplexed and i’m hoping someone out there can help me out. in judaism, i think we earn our place in heaven by good works.  i don’t think the concept is limited to jews, either — i think anyone who does good on earth can enter heaven (if it’s a concept he or she believes in, obviously. not everyone does.)  you don’t have to belong to any particular religion; you just have to be a decent human being. now obviously, behaving as Jesus would want you to would put you in this category, methinks, as Jesus had some pretty critical ideas that i can appreciate. but in our non-christian worldview, i don’t think you have to be christian to earn your place with The Big Entity Upstairs.

so is it enough to surrender yourself to Jesus or G-d? i’m thinking about all those poor people who stopped their lives in their tracks last week because they believed that rapture was imminent. they handed out pamphlets; they paid for billboards; and they did everything they could to spread the word. i respect their right to share their ideas. however, is that all there is to it? just believe and you’re done?

you need to understand that i am somewhat skeptical about organized religion, including my own. but a worldview i do embrace is all about your behavior here on earth. how you treat people in the here and now is everything to me. and frankly, i am not doing this because i am hoping that i end up in G-d’s good books (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s, for that matter.) i do that simply because i want to be part of a world where people treat each other kindly and fairly. i’m far from perfect on this front, of course; but it’s something i strive for every day. it’s something i try to share with my kids every day. and all these people who are eager to die and be lifted up to heaven — have they completely given up on improving life on here in our world? i find people like that to be the scariest people of all.

i know that life for some people is very, very hard. i know that i count my blessings all the time — i have a healthy family, i have access to lifesaving medicine, i have people i love and who seem to like me, etc. — so it may seem pretty easy for me to talk about good works and good deeds. but when you look at history and see persecuted peoples, people under the greatest of stresses, there are countless stories of grace and courage and, as my tribe would put it, mitzvot. i think, for example, about the righteous among the nations, non-jews who risked their very lives saving jews during the holocaust.

isn’t that sort of deed enough to earn your place in heaven?

but is that really a good reason to do the right thing? no one really knows what happens to you after you die. maybe heaven. maybe worm food central. who really knows? and i don’t begrudge anyone their beliefs, but you can’t really control what happens to you after you die. you can, however,  control how you behave in the here and now. you can create heaven… or hell… right here on earth, as the temps sing.

and shouldn’t that be the focus?

i learned the truth at 10, thanks to this song.

an indictment of the world of high school that could be considered the great grandma of mean girls, janis ian’s at seventeen must have hit a chord with a lot of others as well, as it was a huge hit that year. it’s a commentary on the importance of popularity, cliques, and being judged on your appearance: your clothes, your face, basically everything about “ugly duckling girls.” at 10, i knew i’d never be a cheerleader, a beauty queen, or one of those girls who seemed to walk out of a shampoo commercial. for starters, my hair was brown (and we all knew back then that blondes had more fun.) all the girls in my class were thin as sticks; i somehow was curvy, which wasn’t too cool when you’re in 5th grade. (and that continued on into high school, when finally most of the girls caught up.) and worst of all, i was a smart girl.

i knew it would be a long time, if ever, that anyone would want to date a smart girl like me. at 10, i was reading mother jones and newsweek and all sorts of classic books; i adored joining my folks as they watched PBS shows on history and politics. most of my peers at the time were not there; many still aren’t. and yet, i also loved it when my friend jeanne and i would borrow her older sister’s seventeen magazine. somehow, my entire existence was supposed to be centered on finding the right lip gloss and taking quizzes that would surely determine the path of my life going forward.  it was all so confusing to me; it was like i was supposed to be several different people, all without actually turning into sybil.

and then janis ian cleared it all up for me. don’t worry kid, she seemed to be saying. the really pretty and popular ones were going to lead boring, traditional lives. but you, my friend, are an ugly ducking girl like me.

and what i took from that? well, you know what eventually happened to the ugly duckling, right?