get a bunch of military brats together in england and let them name themselves after a homeland they rarely see. voila! you’ve got america. while they don’t have the same pull that they had in the mid-1970s, you gotta give these guys some props, even if their music inspires you to leave the country.
yeah, if you get the sense that i tend to be somewhat ambivalent about this music from my childhood, i suppose you’d be spot-on. i’m not big on songs about dancing rodents or flying reptiles or even anonymous fillys. but there is one song i absolutely have always loved: daisy jane. there’s something so straightforward and honest about this song, a love song where the singer wavers between certainty of his love being returned and a little uncertainty:
Do you really love me
I hope you do
Like the stars above me
How I love you
When its cold at night
Everythings alright
despite the fact that i have never understood what temperature had to do with the singer’s sureness of love, there’s something so simply plaintive about those words. and the melody is very pretty and fits the simple words well.
okay. i’ll admit that i like sister golden hair, too, though i’ve always wondered whether sister golden hair surprise is some sort of lunch bargain, like the happy waitress special.
but that’s pretty much it. not saying anything else for fear of being banished from the nation.
faked you out again, huh? in fact, i was going to feature a completely different song today… until BC started singing this song at bedtime last night. (in the fine tradition of her dad, who usually sings the glenn tilbrook part to my elvis, girlfriend started singing bits of tilbrooks’ part on the car ride home from sunday school.)
when i was growing up, the only person i knew who loved elvis costello more than i did was my friend leifer. (add also pete townshend and the jam to that list.) i mean, the dude had an altar to pete in his room in college. (perhaps he’ll confirm in the comments so you all know i’m not a liarliarpantsonfire kind of girl who hallucinated too much in college.) his lyrics (costello’s, not leifer’s) at times are incredibly pointed and cleverly invective –anyone recall this gem, for just one example:
yep. the only thing during that period that came close, in my opinion, to costello’s brilliant songwriting was the stellar team of chris difford and glenn tilbrook of squeeze. in their early days, there was nothing finer than those two… plus i adored the hilarious keyboard player jools holland. (do any regular readers of this space know of anyone else usually referred to as jools? anyone? anyone? bueller?)
i still have fond memories of asking my mother, the original ms. malaprop, to borrow the then-latest squeeze album from my Brother The Doctor (before he was a doc and was merely my brother) during her visit to his apartment. my brother later called me up, laughing. mom asked for georgie porgy by the crush. i figured out you wanted argybargy by squeeze.
thank Dog he could translate elaineese..
anyway, when elvis costello produced squeeze’s east side story, i nearly went over the edge. (happily, of course.) squeeeee!two, two, TWO mints in one! i played tempted at least 50,000 times in a row on my little rinky-dink tape recorder every single day during the summer of 1981, smiling dementedly whenever i heard elvis break in singing his little bits and bobs. (later on, i’d lose it every time i heard him squawk no milk and sugar! in black coffee in bed.) and when i wasn’t listening to it on cassette, i was playing it on the damn piano, over and over until i suspect my parents considered having me committed. (don’t worry; i was still working on my old partridge family favorite… in secret, though. the patridges were tres uncool in the early 1980s in my set.)
so, to my delight, elvis and glenn did a little duet on elvis’ classic album, trust. is it either’s best work? hell, no. but their energy, along with the contrast in their voices, makes this song a firm favorite. (i’m not a belter, but i belt elvis’s part so loud, people probably hear me in west virginia and wonder what the hell is up in them there hollers.)
i remember it coming on one time and i started singing one part… and lo and behold, BS, a man who doesn’t sing a lot, period, suddenly burst into the tilbrook part. maybe it was an early sign of the apocalypse, but hell, it charmed me!
so hell. i’ll sing it anytime, any place, anywhere. thanks to my big, sometimes off-key mouth, the torch has been passed to a new generation. today, elvis. tomorrow, nirvana? now that BC is singing it, my musical hope for her has started to bloom anew.
we’re getting older/the world’s getting colder/ for the life of me, i don’t know why.
yes, today actually is my birthday. (i’m 19 in case you were wondering.) and actually, i celebrate my birthday for the entire month of march — i mean, why not? but today is the actual date.
sure, i could put up the beatles (for which i crank the volume up to 11 every year on this date.) i could put up the smiths unhappy birthday (which i also listen to every year on this date.) but neither one captures the guilty pleasure essence; there’s nothing to feel guilty about over either song. methinks.
and then, there’s this chestnut, which has nothing to do with birthdays but everything to do with wanting things you can’t have, keep striving for things anyway, and being happy to be as you are in the meantime. sure, it didn’t chart as well as it’s companion single, straight on, another heart song i, ehem, heart. [in fact, my dream cover band will definitely sing that one. i would kill to have ann wilson’s voice.] but i think it’s a beauty nonetheless.
(i remember a comedian once making fun of dog and butterfly, though i cannot find it anywhere on google. ah well.)
anyway, every year on this date, i try to remember all the good things that have happened to me in my life. there are waaaaay too many to list, and besides, you all didn’t come here to read pollyanna’s sweet guide to the sweetest life ever, right? and of course, people who read this regularly or who know me know that it hasn’t all been wine and roses (in spite of the fact that some spouses, unnamed of course, think i step in shit and up pops a daisy. yes, honey. i’m talking to YOU.)
i haven’t had a birthday party in years; i suspect if i ever want one, i will have to plan it myself. but i do get a lot of love from my entire family; and, if luck holds, they’ll bake me Betty Crocker’s finest cake slathered in Betty Crocker’s finest, er, cake goo (and covered in a zillion pounds of pink and green decorating sugar. my teeth hurt just thinking about it.) we’ll hit a restaurant, perhaps not my favorite one (which doesn’t exist anymore, anyway), but one where the kids will also eat and where it’ll just be fun to be out together (and not have to do dishes!)
yes, sometimes it is important to reach for those slightly-out-of-reach birthday stars; but more often than not, it’s good to appreciate the soft, green grass beneath your feet.
i missed my high school reunions. i missed old work reunions. in short, i have missed pretty much any opportunity to reunite with people i’ve known throughout the years. you should know this is not because i am an anti-social person; the dates or times simply didn’t work for me. (well, most of them didn’t. i didn’t attend my five year high school reunion because i didn’t feel ready to face most of the people who’d be there. i needed more time and space between us.) besides: most of the people i truly enjoyed, i probably already kept in touch with, i thought (erroneously, as it would turn out.)
about six months ago, my old friend phil started up a facebook page for people who were alums of our new jersey USY region. it was like a compulsive disease for me: i’d check back every day to see whether new old friends were signing on. and every time i’d find one, i’d friend the person and we’d have a mini-reunion. apparently, i wasn’t alone; for pretty soon, phil was helping to organize a real live reunion of folks.
which brings me to last saturday. i was nervous about attending a reunion. after all, after two babies and some pretty heavy duty illnesses and medications, i am no longer looking as i did when i was 17.
wreke at hagalil encampment, 1982?
wise old middlebro, veteran of many reunions (remember the old part? the dude has three years on me.), pretty much quelled my fears. wreke, he said, everyone at reunions is older, fatter, and balder. don’t stress.
so i attempted to chill.
of course, then my old buddy wah began to stress, which meant i began to stress. we figured we’d drive up together; then we wondered whether we ought to go at all. after i volunteered to provide the evening’s soundtrack, i really knew i couldn’t back out. and wah probably knew she didn’t want to back out, either (right, wah?) besides, it would be my first weekend away from my husband and my kids. EVER. so it wasn’t sitting by a pool in some exotic location; i needed a break.
so wreke and wah had our excellent adventure. in nj.
after the most peaceful ride to NJ ever (no one needing a bathroom break, no one fighting over mp3 players, no one having to throw up — is traveling without kids always this calm?), a ride including some great music on XM thanks to old DJs i haven’t heard since i was young (pat st. john playing deep tracks! wheeeee!), wah dropped me at my folks’ house and then went up to her parents’ house. i had a wonderful friday and saturday with my parents, shopping, going to lunch as an early birthday present, and just being my parents’ child for a day instead of being someone’s mom.
my friend A picked me up for the reunion. (A is smart. she knew my parents would love to talk to her — they always love talking to my friends — and so she built in an extra 15 minutes so that she could chat. all my old USY friends like to talk to my parents. i always had to drag people AWAY from my parents. hello? you’re here to see ME!) anyway, we went to our friend D’s house, where we had some yummy things to eat and drink and just had a great time. another dear friend, leifer, came over. (those of you still traumatized by my blatantly bad 70s music month may remember my friend leifer. perhaps not fondly.) i probably would have been pretty damn content to stay in D’s kitchen and just laugh and laugh and laugh. i realized then how wrong i had been about thinking that i was in touch with everyone i needed to be in touch with. how i’ve missed D! (yes, leifer, i always miss you, too. i just haven’t lost touch with you, have i?)
anyway, i knew i had music to deliver. so off i went.
many of you out in wreke-land know i am a little particular about music. i like what i like. i’m open-minded, but i am also a bit, er, what’s the word — snobby? trying to capture evocative music for a crowd that was in high school anywhere from roughly 1977 through 1994 was a little challenging, especially since i was limited to about four hours, and extra especially because there were only a few of my friends in USY (or high school, for that matter) who were listening to the music i listened to at the time. (it wasn’t until college at rutgers where i discovered others like me.) i’m sure there were those in the crowd who would clamor for michael jackson, for madonna, for debbie gibson.
for those of you, i’m sorry.
lucky for me, everyone was so busy yapping, i don’t think anyone noticed any of the songs except when paradise by the dashboard light came on. (gah, i hate that song.) suddenly, people started singing. (and yet no one sang to the smiths. go figure.) ah well. the music must have been somewhat successful; no one complained about it.
about the interpersonal aspect of the evening: i fell back into high school mode, flitting around people but never, ever having the chance to have much of a conversation with anyone. in some cases, that was okay — we will still have facebook. but in other cases, i was truly bummed. it was simply so hard to focus on any one person because i was just so overwhelmed by everything. i never thought in my wildest dreams that i would see some of these people again. and in most cases, i am so blessed that i had the chance.
and even though there were a few people i really, really wish i could talk to more (and may never get the chance), i’m delighted that there are people, like my friend Boog, who i’ve now found again — and i’ll never let her go. again.
so all in all, this reunion stuff is a mixed bag. yes, i literally saw people i haven’t seen in years. yes, middlebro was right – a lot of us are fatter or balding, and sometimes, you’d rather remember people as they were rather than as they are now. but reunions seem to me to be just the tip of the iceberg. now i want to corral a smaller subset of friends and actually converse.
sure, she’s so unusual. but pay no attention to her hair or her newspaper shard skirt. really.
forget about the fact that this song has been used by countless advertisers — kodak included — to shill products. cyndi lauper’strue colors is a magnificent anthem about loving yourself, an appropriate song for a woman who has grown to become an important human activist as well as respected artist. [as an aside, i know the boys in BC’s 4th grade chorus think the song is a joke (the 4th grade is singing all 80s songs this year in their performance this week), but i hope some of the kids hear the words and take a little something away from the song.]
in the video, you watch lauper progress from a little girl to a confident grown woman. i always loved lauper’s videos — she rarely has conventionally pretty people in them, and true colors is no different (unless you’re the one person who thinks that her perpetual video love interest is attractive.)
what i love best about this song is how lauper’s voice starts in a child-like whisper and grows to become a full-out aural assault. when i listen to modern singers, i seldom hear any sort of artistic buildup in their voices. it’s all about the vocal acrobatics. not that people on american idol aren’t impressive (to someone; not usually my cup of tea, i seldom ever see that show); not that the folks out there who use never-ending vibrato and who glide up and down the scales a thousand times while delivering the star spangled banner don’t have talent. but for a lot of these folks, it’s about showing off their pipes, not emoting with them.
lauper can hit several octaves. she also knows she doesn’t need to use them in every. single. song. it’s all about using what you have to create a statement.
and that, combined with the powerful message of the song, is why i love it. so i won’t be afraid to let you all know that i adore true colors.
let me clarify. i am the girl who put a no madonna clause in the DJ’s contract for my wedding. i am the girl who loathed all the wannabes who seemed to flourish everywhere i looked during 1984-6. i am the girl who pretty much can’t stand 98% of ms. ciccone’s musical output. and when i read andrew morton’s biography of the, erhm, lady, it solidified everything i suspected about Her (faux) Blondeness.
so why the hell does ray of light have a place on my mp3 player’s shuffle?
i think the first time i heard ray of light, i had just become a mother for the first time. there was something so vital, so bouncy, so energetic about the song. parenthood had left me feeling sluggish, sloth-like, and nearly dead. how could this little creature who i loved more than life itself manage to suck the life out of me with her medical issues, her exhaustive needs, her never-ending wails?
and then, i heard this almost-trance-like sound from the TV. it was upbeat, it was exhilirating, it was… madonna? WTF? and yet here was a lady who was a relatively new mother — a single mother — and she was Doing. It. she was getting things done. (nevermind the fact that i’m quite sure she had an army of help. money changes everything.) it somehow connected with something in me.
i. could. do. this. too.
so quicker than a ray of light i snapped out of my foggy doledrums, little by little. basically, you might say that i felt like i just got home.
amusingly, hellboy adores this song, especially at the end, where madonna screams like she’s finally lost her mind.
so hellboy, this one’s for you.
(now don’t go telling people about how mommy also likes to hear bananafone by raffi, okay, or her already-laughable coolness rating will completely go down the tubes.)
a year ago, i was thinking blerg-y mondays could be happy mondays. i thought and i thought about how i could go about making this work. i wondered what people out in blogland would enjoy. i entertained the idea of posting a cute picture — you know, start my own i can has cheeseburger, only do it with amusing pictures of geckos, perhaps? how would i make readers happy they came to my site? it drove me nuts — WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT, ANYWAY???
and then it came to me: this is MY blog. i’ll do what I want.
and once i thought about what made me smile, i thought who cares if anyone else likes what i like perhaps others might enjoy the music i like. conversely, they might enjoy a laugh at my expense. which has happened. a lot. like every week.
my first entry wasn’t exactly a barnstormer. but others have garnered either lots and lots of commentary OR tons of hits. (against all odds probably hit the latter because there are apparently a lot of people in this world who are still searching for rachel ward. who knew?) and unlike my blatantly bad 70s jag i underwent last november, my GPMs don’t garner hate mail. (you think i kid? check out people i don’t even know hating me because i knock songs like wildfire and playground in my mind.)
so on this first anniversary of guilty pleasure monday’s birth, i thought i’d round up my guiltiest of guilties from the past year. check them out and then vote. (or, if i didn’t include your fave, let me know in the comments.)
faked you out, huh? bet you thought my last day of guilty pleasure mondays month – the 1970’s hits edition – would be something by the fab four, right?
you’d be half right. in a manner of speaking, of course.
okay, okay. this is a lame homemade video by Dog Knows Who. but i wanted to share the song, which was eventually co-opted by the folks who brought you that uproarious sitcom about happy ladies of a certain age.
(…and how better to complete a month of guilty pleasure mondays that could get me laughed at.)
i love this song, okay? andrew gold — son of marni nixon, whose voice is the one you hear coming out of natalie wood’s mouth in the screen version of west side story as well as audrey hepburn’s in my fair lady and deborah kerr’s in the king and i — has done it all in the music industry. he enjoyed a lot of success on his own as well as in his collaborations with people like linda rondstadt and another completely unsung but magnificent voice known as karla bonoff to name only two.
not sure which was a bigger hit — thank you for being a friend or lonely boy — but i loved them both. they both have solid hooks, though TYFBAF is not exactly a rockin’ song. still, the sentiment is sweet. i always thought andrew gold should have come out with his stuff about four years earlier; i suspect that mellow california sound he made that was so popular in the mid 1970s kind of got mauled by new wave and punk.
but i appreciate it nonetheless, with or without a septaganarian.
———————————————–
and so there you have it: a whole month of songs that might get me ridiculed in certain circles. thank you all for being tolerant of my little meander into self-indulgence. i suspect i will come back with my usual GPM feature — maybe not this monday since i’ve od’d a bit on them, but soon.
in the meantime, i miss writing about my kids. i’m their mom; it’s my sworn duty to embarrass them as much as humanly possible. i’ll get back to that soon, i’m sure.
but in the meantime, always remember: if you threw a party and invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say:
hello, and welcome to one of the biggest search terms that lead people to my blog. don’t know why, of course.
okay, okay, so this one was released only in the UK. but how many times do you need someone telling you how amazing jet is, or maybe i’m amazed, or even another seriously guilty pleasure of mine, helen wheels? i’ve already yammered on about venus and mars/rock show. so i figured i’d take a little meander, again, off the beaten 1970s paul mccartney output track.
the first time i ever heard mccartney’s musical ode to mary, girl with the crazy, clingy sheep, i was watching a TV special called james paul mccartney. i must have been about eight years old, but it made a HUGE impression on me. for years afterward, i would anxiously scan the TV Guide, hoping it would be rebroadcast. and occasionally, it was, at some bizarre hour. i would set my alarm clock, wake up at aforementioned odd hour, and watch it, all the while bemoaning the fact that i had no way of recording it. (this was before the days of VCRs, kiddies. yes, i’m that old.) sure, there was a bizarre number where paul was singing and dancing with a group of half-men/half women split down their middles that i didn’t care much for. but the rest of the music was great, and i especially looked forward to mary had a little lamb.
fast forward about twenty or thirty years.
meet wreke the mom. i would sing this song to my babies. and i would be thrilled listening to them attempt to sing along with me. little babies, you see, can muster the la la parts. the only problem: mom always got teary toward the end of the song, much to the babies’ confusion. the teacher always turns the lamb away, much to the children’s (and the lamb’s) dismay.
But the lamb loved Mary so,
the eager children cry,
And Mary loves the lamb, you know,
the teacher did reply.
yes, the obvious john lennon choice would be imagine, one of the most beautiful songs i think i’ve ever heard in my life. blah blah blah. i just like to meander down the path least taken, do things slightly off-kilter. speaking of off-kilter, see yoko knit throughout this entire experience. knit, yoko, knit.
(oh, and to my beloved spouse, who probably would pick #9 dream… or maybe that’s revolution#9, only because he wishes to realize that dream of his: to pick #9 at a deli counter and then walk away, leaving the poor counter guy saying number 9? number 9? number 9? not picking it, hon.)
anyway, instant karma. what the hell was lennon thinking about here? he was thinking about creating a song and releasing it as instantly as possible. he wrote and recorded it the same day, and then he released the single 10 days later – a miracle for anyone who has ever known anything about the recording industry. there’s not much to the song, really; it’s a simple song that can turn into an endless loop of an earworm if you’re not careful.
crazy trivia point for you crazy trivia people out there: stephen king apparently used part of the chorus of this song to name his novel. how he went from we all shine on to that cheerful, upbeat, happy tome we all know and love as the shining is anyone’s guess.
phil spector produced the song, which is apparent to me as it sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom. he ended up doing a lot of production work for the beatles that year, 1970. i believe this was his first work with them. considering the beatles were not exactly pals at that point in time, i suspect lennon’s speedy work spoiled spector for the rest of the time, which dragged and dragged on immeasureably, i bet. spector’s karma couldn’t possibly have been too instant.
expectations management, people. it’s all about expectations management.
anyway, instant karma. instant guilty pleasure. of course you know who’ll be on the hook for tomorrow, don’t you?
