music – Page 24 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: music

pictures of you

Posted on June 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

props to onthecurb for stealing this groovy idea. and i’m stealing her verbage, in case kids want to try this at home:

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s Flickr Toys: mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

1. Sheryl Crow -Vancouver, 2. Peanut Butter Cup Heart, 3. Toms River High School North Marching Mariners, 4. eccentric beauty, 5. you really don’t have a blog?, 6. Fishin’ Remuz, 7. Arched people, 8. Spicy Mini Chocolate Lava Cakes, 9. We are fuckin Rock Stars, 10. wildwood crest – windblown, 11. colorful world12. Not available13. Not available14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

guilty pleasure monday: we live for love (pat benatar)

Posted on June 16, 2008 by wrekehavoc

Actually, there are three girls at Ridgemont who have cultivated the Pat Benatar look.

-Linda as played by Phoebe Cates, Fast Times at Ridgemont High

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwbKOu3CEwM&hl=en

admit it. if you’re a girl of a certain age, you remember that spikey, longish-short hair cut. the stripey tops with the slightly puffy sleeves. that swollen, chipmunk face. that heavily overdone eye makeup that we all wish we could have pulled off ourselves. and those deadly, operatic pipes.

pat benatar was definitely a killer queen of sorts in the early 1980s. she and her band rocked with such hits as hit me with your best shot, you better run, and heartbreaker. for my part, i was simply glad that we were moving away from those aurally-boring earthmamas and ladies who graced the world with to-the-floor gypsy wear (paging stevie nicks!) i welcomed the chipmunk chick — she seemed like someone who would kick christopher cross’s ass and eat peter cetera for lunch.

of course, i still have nightmares about the embarrassment that is love is a battlefield: careful. piss me off and i might shake my tits at you. i can’t remember whether it was letterman or conan o’brian who showed that one relentlessly, though i suspect it was the former (who also showed stevie nicks’ edge of seventeen relentlessly, too. just so you know: no woman singer is immune.)

but that came later. for now, i will share with you the fact that i adore pat when she sings we live for love. sure, it is a shameless disco song by a rocker chick who was probably begging for airplay by any means necessary. but it is a fun song, filled with her sweet, high voice.

back in the days when we, too, could experiment with makeup and no one would say: oh, that’s just too young for you. when we could cut our hair really short and wear extremely tight leggings and not care about whether our circulation was going to be negatively affected. we could wear too much makeup, and, well, so was everyone else. and we could wear those incredibly awful shirts and look like frantic bumblebees.

cos back then, we lived for love, too.

home

Posted on June 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BS sent me this article from the Inky regarding perhaps the most pressing issue of our times: where does north jersey end, and where does south jersey begin? and, more importantly, is there a culture to central jersey? a research-minded person has just completed a documentary on this very topic, and i, for one, hope it makes its way to the DC metro area, where there are boatloads of NJ refugees transplants.

now, most of you folks who have either never been to the garden state or whose experience of my beloved home state consists of a ride on the turnpike (helpful hint: hold your nose as you pass through elizabeth) probably have no earthly idea that we new jerseyans think we have different culchahs. we do, though to be fair, a lot of our customs depend on our proximity to either new york or philadelphia.

for me, for half my life, this was home. and in the old days, it was simple to me: you were either in the 201 area code, or you were in the 609 area code. growing up in toms river, i lived literally on the border of 609 and 201, though i was proud to be in 201 merely because i was sick of the yeehaws in south jersey who perpetually wanted to secede. (we were willing to let them, believe me.) i always figured monmouth and ocean counties were sort of a mix of north and south, as we always had an influx of people from both philly and new york. to me, monmouth and ocean were and ARE central jersey, and everything north of monmouth is north jersey; and everything west of both is south.

now, of course, there are 50,000 area codes covering the state, so my definition pretty much goes kerflooey. that, combined with the fact that monmouth and ocean seem to be completely infiltrated by new yorkers looking for better home prices (well, they were better until the influx) leads me to wonder whether my two home counties are still central anymore. i mean, route 9 — you know, bruce’s fabled highway, which passes both by my old house as well as by BS’s hometown in scenic freehold boro — is a nightmare now, with traffic that rivals long island. i’ve been gone for nearly 20 years, and the place is completely different.

but i still return. my family is still there. i can’t get decent pizza outside of the new york metro area. i can’t really experience the sleazy joy of the boardwalk anywhere else quite the way it is there, the rancid odor of the sausages and zeppoles, the taffy which can cost you $1000 in dental work if you’re not careful. the salty smell of the shore, the green of the pine barrens, the swirl of hungry seagulls swooping and diving inland before a storm, the delicious, secret thrill of hanging out amongst people who probably live a lot more dangerously than you do.

i just can’t really feel that anywhere outside of my old stompin’ grounds. i guess i don’t really care whether it’s north, south or central jersey, in the end. it’s just an overpopulated, underappreciated place.

but one thing’s still for sure: people in new jersey never, ever, call it joisey.

guilty pleasure monday: what i am (edie brickell & the new bohemians)

Posted on June 9, 2008 by wrekehavoc

there goes rhymin’ mrs. paul simon:

edie brickell is an inspiration to any of us chicks who wish we could just jump up on stage and start singing with a local band. which is what she did one night when the new bohemians were playing. the rest is one-hit wonder history.

what i am is one of those quizzically-lyric’d tunes that just makes you want to bop around, whether you are in a bar or whether you’re dusting your furniture. i remember when it came out. i was in graduate school, living in one of the many ancient 1900s rowhouses that new brunswick is famous for. yes, just me and three others: my buddy Kip (who is still friends with me, years later, in spite of the hyperventilation incident during finals); another woman who had a boyfriend who liked to hunt and cook venison in our ancient kitchen; and a woman who apparently had psychological issues. serious ones. (we just won’t go there today.)

oh, and did i mention that the giant oil drum which held the key to the power in our home was actually leaking copious amounts of oil into the ground and into our home? i suspect we all ended up with our fair share of brain damage from the fumes.

ah, the handy street house from hell:

this is probably not OUR handy street house from hell, but it sure looks like it; and based on the oil situation, it could have been what happened to us.

but back before we ended up on the porch because of the nasty-ass venison fumes; and back before i moved out because i could no longer live on a Superfund site, we had us some happy times. like defrosting the ancient tundra that had formed in the ancient freezer. and studying like crazy. and my most favorite memory: when my boyfriend, now known as BS around these parts, came to visit me one day. somehow, Kip and I were cooking something — G-d knows what, considering that the kitchen was semi-functional — and BS showed up. edie brickell came on the radio. next thing i know it, BS and i are dancing around the kitchen, along with Kip. it was so spontaneous, and probably hilarious considering the (lack of) size of the kitchen.

but there we were, silly as ever. is there anything too deep about this memory? probably not.

I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know, if you know what I mean.

guilty pleasure monday: come down in time (elton john)

Posted on June 2, 2008 by wrekehavoc

elton john has been through many metamorphoses. he has been just the piano player with the honkin’ big glasses. he has been the guy in the goofy donald duck costume, lording over central park. he’s been married, and he’s been gay. (still is, of course.) he has been the champion of AIDS causes and of little ryan white. he has been the friend and defender of lady diana. and of course now, he takes his place as a sort of elder statesman in the pop pantheon. he has had monster hits, and he has made some monster dogs.

there are those who like to think of sir elton as a bloated relic of bloated material. granted, there’s not much that i really enjoy from his catalog once you get into the 1980s, but like him or not, the man has had an amazing career, and there’s a reason for that. even the most jaded music fans should hear me out.

the elton john i love best is the early elton john; slightly unsure of himself and very hooked on piano-based ballads and rockers. his first few albums, while not necessarily chockablock with hits, contain some extraordinary music. my personal favorite of them is tumbleweed connection, a sort of concept album which uses the old west as a backdrop for some incredibly moving music. there are no US singles here, so this is an album i think largely forgotten by many. burn down the mission is probably the most famous song on the LP, with perhaps country comfort also getting some AOR airplay in the ’70s. but certain songs, however unknown like talking old soldiers, are incredibly powerful. i defy anyone to hear that and not be moved. and where to now, st. peter (a cheerful ditty about suicide) was a favorite when i was young, prompting me to actually buy the sheet music and learn how to play the song properly.

but probably my favorite song on the album is come down in time, a slightly mysterious long song. i’m not too crazy about this particular clip of come down in time: elton is much older, and he sounds a little like elvis as he tackles it. nevertheless, it is a beautiful song, whether it’s like this or this (which is the demo, and a bit rushed.) for anyone else, it would probably be a careermaker.

for sir elton, it was just a hint of things to come.

guilty pleasure monday: stephanie (the partridge family)

Posted on May 26, 2008November 18, 2017 by wrekehavoc

those of us ladies of a certain age — and we know who we are, don’t we, now? — were big fans of the partridge family (aka the pretend cowsills) back in the day. sure, even at age 5 i knew that no one was playing their instruments — duh! — but i didn’t care, cos i had my very first crush on this man:

yes, there i was, a preschooler, deciding that david cassidy was the cutest guy alive. (well, second to paul mccartney, of course, back when he still could be called cute… although i suppose you can refer to some older people as cute, but then it means something entirely different.) even then, i knew i had to keep a thin veneer of cool about me at all times; but i had a few of their albums (thank G-d for Hal Blaine, huh?), a few comic books, and a scary knowledge of the shows.

the latter doesn’t seem remotely interesting except for one little detail: this was in the era before VCRs. in fact, this was the era before prime time shows were syndicated, much less repeated, save for 1950s gems like i love lucy. i had to depend on my photographic memory to remember the songs, especially since not all of them ended up on the albums.

one in particular was my favorite song of all. stephanie was actually from a very special episode guest starring (say it with me now)…ooohhh. ahhhhh. bobby sherman!!! (nope. bobby didn’t do anything for me, either. while i am sure sherman is a good person, even at age 5, i knew i didn’t like anyone who might call me little woman.) after some breaking and entering that would normally land a dude in jail, bobby sherman and a dorky, tone-deaf guy named lionel poindexter (whose mother obviously didn’t love him when they saddled him with that sucker) end up getting their music and lyrics together (courtesy of the partridges, of course.)

what amazes me to this day (if i may say so myself…and i will) was that after hearing that song during that one episode in 1970, i never forgot it. in fact, i did what any self-respecting preschooler freak of nature wunderkind little kid would do: the minute we got a piano, two years later, i sat down and figured the song out. only, too bad for me: the only parts i remembered were: stephanie, whose eyes are blue/what would life be like with you… skip ahead to the chorus: and i’m doin’/all i can do/all but the growin’/that’s up to you. yes, i was mystified as all hell trying to figure out what growing had to do with anything, but i was even more frustrated that i wanted to hear this song again… and i couldn’t, except for in my head or through my fingers on the piano.

thank G-d for youtube.

so dad, if you’re out there (and i know you are), now you know why i just had to sit at the piano and play a stupid set of chords, over and over. this may sound familiar to you now.

and i’ll dedicate this guilty pleasure monday to my beautiful cousin stephanie, even though her eyes aren’t blue. and she doesn’t need to grow.

can someone please unglue susan dey‘s fingers from the keyboards?

with a little luck

Posted on May 23, 2008 by wrekehavoc

every morning, i drive BC to school a little before nine. we hear my favorite DJ, weasel, who was a mainstay at the old, much lamented and missed 99.1 WHFS and who now hangs mornings at The Globe. most mornings, he asks a trivia question, and i never call even though i know the answer. and BC says: aw mom, why didn’t you try?

this morning is the first SOL (standards of learning, though some fool definitely made for one unfortunate acronym) for BC, and she’s nervous. she ate a good breakfast, and we packed some solid snacks for her. but she was still nervous. as the good mom i am, i always deal with my feelings by making a joke out of them.

so we’re driving to school, and i’m telling her: BC, honey, whether or not you pass the SOLs does not determine whether you pass the third grade. you would have to go and do something crazy, like burn down the school at this point to not pass third grade. and that would be a stupid, stupid thing to do.

BC grinned. mama, that’s the craziest idea i ever heard!

exactly. then we heard weasel about to announce the question of the day. i generally do not dial and drive, but i figured, aw, what the hell. i’ll dial and pull over. it will make the kid laugh.

the question: sheryl crow sings my favorite mistake and now claims it is about some philandering ex-boyfriend of hers. we know who it is really about, though, right? call me and tell me who it is and you’ll get a pair of tickets to her show.

duh. if anyone was paying attention a few months ago to my clapton/harrison binge, they’ll know that if i wondered whether it was true before, i know it’s true now. while clapton never out-and-out admits it, based on his past track record and doing the math, it is not hard to figure out. weasel mentioned that he could not understand how the two of them tour together after breaking up.

anyway, to make madame smile, i called. and… i WON. yes, jaxx, yes BS, yes everyone out there who thinks i’m the luckiest girl alive, i won two tickets to next week’s show. unfortunately, it is a wednesday night, the last night of religious school and a night before another SOL. can’t get a sitter. can’t take the girl.

(anyone wanna go with me? i have no earthly idea how to get to the venue, of course. so you’d be driving 😉

but the grin on BC’s face as she walked out of the car was priceless. and that is exactly how i wanted to send the chick off to school. mama’s a doofus, but her aim is true.

ah, the things we do for love.

speaking of love, here are the former alleged lovebirds.

i know why the caged bird sings, weasel: it’s good business to tour with a legend.

guilty pleasure monday: electric light orchestra

Posted on May 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i tell you what-what, doo doo doo hey what-what

don’t bring me down.

i just thought i’d let jools, who was two at the time he uttered those inimitable words, introduce today’s:

guilty pleasure monday.

yes, my clever son takes after his gram’s unspoken musical motto: if you don’t know the words, make ’em up. there was a time when the formerly-known-as-a-classic-rock-station-now -a-station-that-pretends-to-be-progressive-station seemed to play ELO’s don’t bring me down every hour. at least, it was on every single damn time i was driving with the boy in the car. and no matter your age: it can, and it will, take over your brain in a powerful way, much like my number one earworm for all time, bittersweet symphony.

(you can thank me later for that last link.)

and symphony is where it all started for this band from birmingham (england, not ‘bama.) at the dawn of the 1970s, jeff lynne (probably one of the biggest beatle worshippers of all time) formed a band with roy wood of big-in-Britain group the move. only, too bad for wood, as he wasn’t happy and left the band, leaving lynne to take over wood’s vision of immersing classical music into rock.

yes, it’s a long stretch to go from symphony to xanax xanadu, but there was a time when the music ELO put out was actually interesting, at least to youngish me (who was trying to figure out how my flute lessons fit in with my beloved rock.) (and no, don’t tell me jethro tull. most of tull leaves me yawning.) i was probably reeled in first by can’t get it out of my head, a beatlesque ballad that. has. strings. face the music is one album that, if you play it backwards, actually DOES have a message for the intrepid listener, and it’s not paul is dead. (i know. i used to do it when i was younger and had a working turntable.) roll over, eleanor rigby, and tell mccartney the news. do ya is simply a dashboard-thumping anthem.

and rockaria clinched it with such lines as:

she’s sweet on wagner.

i think she’d die for beethoven.

she likes the way puccini lays down a tune.

and verdi’s always creeping from her room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKK_XW74teM&hl=en

sure, they put out plenty of crap. but i give them a ton of credit for attempting to mix classical with rock. they tried to do something novel, at least novel for that period of time.

and anyway, how often can you say that classical music has a good beat and you can dance to it?

olé ELO.

guilty pleasure monday: isn't it time (the babys)

Posted on May 12, 2008 by wrekehavoc

(oh hush, you human spell-checks out there. that’s really how they spelled babys.)

Isn’t It Time is a powerful little gem of a mid/late-1970s song: fantastic hook, great backup singers, fun horn section, and of course, ginger-haired-wonder-himself, john waite. (you’ll probably remember him from one-time inescapable MTV hit Missing You and the more forgettable Bad English song When I See You Smile, both of which came later and probably still grace a lite FM station near you.) two songs from movies (If Anybody Had a Heart and Change) in the 1980s also became hits.

sometimes, i have a hard time separating it from Every Time I Think of You, another babys single which came afterwards.

but i can. and i do.

what i can’t seem to understand is how this guy didn’t become bigger. he has a unique voice that is filled with emotion. he wrote chart-friendly material at the time.

and of course, he had…the hair.

now of course, he has a lot more hair.

but i like to think back to when he looked like a red version of this:

that’s probably what did it. see, he had the hair to be a punk back in the late, great 70’s, but his material was too melodic. in the music industry, image is all, i guess. (that would explain the success of a lot of people. but i won’t digress at the moment.)

all’s i can say is that i love a guy whose hair sticks up. see, my hair used to look like that, too (though it’ll be a very cold and bitter day when i post pictures.) so, for today’s embarrassing imagery, just imagine me singing it at the top of my lungs in the car.

cos i do.

(windows closed, of course.)

remedy

Posted on May 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

our house is stress central.

one child had to get two immunizations yesterday. a child who has a limited pain threshold. i won’t mention names, but it’s a girl child. a girl child who was star of the week one minute but then not necessarily star of the pediatrician’s office the next. her hand started hurting her, along with the shot sites. tylenol was not helping. my brother-the-doctor indicated that perhaps a nerve was hit, but not a biggie. still, not a pretty afternoon.

one spouse had to work. he had to work a lot. he had to work a lot again. he called at 4:45 pm to share that we needed to go downtown to pick up one other child at school. school ends at 6 p.m. this is the height of DC rush hour, coming AND going. am i happy yet?

no. not hardly.

downtown we drove in a rush, the unhappy and now-in-pain immunized person and i. we made it in record time. my parking pass was confiscated, as i need a new 2008 one. it is now may. but nice security people let me park anyway, as the worst security threat we pose is one girl reenacting the exorcist. (i’ll let you wonder which one. the answer is not as simple as it might seem.)

we make it to one hellboy’s school. a hellboy who apparently as of late has made a career of knocking around some of the toddlers in the morning. (just cause.) someone is acting out. someone who might be a pissed-off palooka. but knocking babies around like inflatable punching bags is unacceptable behavior around here.

fortunately, today was not a punching-other-children sort of day. it was merely a spending-time-holding-hands-with-my-main-girlfriend sort of day. yes. the boy is in love. and he’s in love with a girl named condoleezza.

not this one (though i suspect she may be named for her. but i don’t know for certain.) ah. only in DC.

but he listened. and he behaved.

am i happy yet?

not quite. but a little better.

we three rush home, rushing in a rush hour way. which means not exactly speeding down constitution avenue. it doesn’t help that the woman driving in front of me is driving like hunter s. thompson is her co-pilot. wouldn’t it be funny if we got home and daddy’s car was in the driveway? BC joked.

don’t push me, little girl.

of course, BS wasn’t home when we got home. and i had not even cooked dinner. when it’s after 6 and dinner isn’t even started, and people are climbing the walls in search of something edible, it is time to visit mr. freezer to see what magic he holds. lucky for me, there was a wegmans veggie lasagna languishing, ever since i bought it and BS said: ew. no one is going to eat THAT. tough times call for tough measures. (and i say that in this house, if you’re not home, you don’t get to pick dinner.) that sucker was going in the microwave.

miraculously, the kids loved it. we’re talking BC, aka miss picky-picky of the western world, asked for seconds. the only criticism i got about it was that there were carrots in it, according to jools. (i don’t have the heart to tell them that there was also spinach and mushrooms. jools loves them, but BC hates both of those.)

am i happy yet? getting closer.

i get kids bathed; i read some chapters of some inscrutable Bionicle book we found at the elementary school fair last weekend. i medicate a certain older child with the zillion different things she requires thanks to her magical lungs… and immunizations. in case i have forgotten, she is IN PAIN. she CAN’T MOVE HER ARMS.

do all moms have days like this?

i start hellboy into bed. it’s 8:00. BS comes home.

DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well, so much for that mission accomplished. at this point, BS is speaking in monosyllabic grunts. he has had a long day. he has had a long, not-so-good day. he has had a long, not-so-good, and apparently hungry day. did you eat yet? i believe he grunted in the negative. enjoy the lasagna!

i get the boy into bed. i get the girl into bed. she’s in pain, so i get her something from the freezer to help at least one of her arms. in vain, of course.

BS says goodnight to the girl. BS says goodnight to the boy. after a few minutes of decomposing, as we call it in this house, BS announces he’s going to bed.

fabulous.

meanwhile, there’s one little girl who can’t sleep. in the morning, she’ll let me know that she was UP. ALL. NIGHT. but i waited, and i waited until she fell asleep before i went up to bed. so i know she was at least asleep for 30 seconds of the night.

on the bright side, little man went to sleep like a champ.

lately, i am so exhausted. i feel completely wrung out. tomorrow, i go for some more IVIG, and hopefully that will help me keep from getting sick. see, when i get wrung out, i get sick. no one around here gets that. moms are supposed to just keep going and going and going. but i have to just stop sometimes. if i don’t stop some times, i will stop. for good.

fortunately, this morning, i awoke and thought about a little boy in this house who likes to sing a certain song. how BS found out about this group, i don’t know. but jools is completely hooked on the hook of this song, called Nth Degree.

i found it on youtube. and everyone gathered around. even BS.

and suddenly, there was the remedy. it was just a few minutes, but we actually were all smiling. we were all happy.

even me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhMhm9euT8&hl=en

and that dang bird is still trying to get into our house.