MamaSnee complains tonight about two songs that have been getting stuck in her head. Thank you, MamaSnee, for giving me something to talk about when it's getting way too late to have not blogged today:
1. Fly by Sugar Ray. I don't know why this song enters my head, particularly as often as it does. Maybe when I'm thinking about something I do "every morning" and then it goes haywire? I don't know. I hate that I know every word to songs like this just because of the quality of radio programming in West Tennessee in the late 90s.
2. Strangers in the Night (instrumental version). This is the song that my brain turns to when it's in neutral. "Doo-bee doobee dooo...." if you can hear what I'm trying to say. I don't whistle the way some people do. I CAN whistle, I just...don't. Some people whistle when a song is in their head, or when they are zoning out. I sing, to myself, "Doo-bee doobee doo....exchanging glances..."
3. Some other lame late 90s song that turns into Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio when I'm singing it to myself. See, the whole point of this post was that when I get one specific song in my head, another unwelcome one like Sugar Ray (Sublime? Smashmouth? Something like that...) at some point I realize I've stopped singing that song and started singing, "...cause I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it..." I can't tell you why, even when I can remember what the first song is. Damn, this has turned into a terrible story. (**EDITED to add: I remembered! It's What I Got which is indeed by Sublime. Here is what happens: I don't cry when my dog runs away. I don't get angry at the bills I have to pay. I don't get something when my mom smokes pot, skips the bottle and goes right to the rock... (which THEN morphs into "Revival" by Me Phi Me off the Reality Bites soundtrack)... Here me now the waves are splashing, love is laughing... and THEN into Gangsta's Paradise. Seriously.)
I also, sometimes, get bits of my Dad's songs in my head. Songs he hasn't sung for years, like Fool's Gold or Do You Ever Even Miss Me or I've Been Waiting All this Time for You. I only remember bits of most of them. I remember singing some of them for him when I was sooo young, younger than 5, too young to know what the words meant. And sometimes it makes me think about songs like they are people, who go away. I still have a song (Favorite Place) by my high school boyfriend's band (Planet) on one of my earliest mix tapes (Delaney's Faves Volume 1) (which also features Boys II Men and Candlebox) and I think, that was a great song. They weren't a great band, but it was a song that you could sing along to. And for years now, that boyfriend is gone, that band broke up, that song only exists on high school girlfriend mixtapes, a terrible grainy recording made in a garage, and it makes me feel lonely for it. Like the song got banished to outer space with all the garbage and comet shrapnel, and nobody will make it real anymore. It's sort of a velveteen rabbit soft spot for me.
Showing posts with label tunes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tunes. Show all posts
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Augusten
or
Watch Me Abuse the Conversational (Parenthetical) Aside
So after WAY too many (2) Dr. Pepper's with dinner, and possibly too many (4) blueberry vodka drinks (best friend; also nemesis) at the Mercy Lounge last night, I have some thoughts. Tonight's show was Cory Branan and Ben Nichols, touring under the moniker Brew City Tour III, meaning this is the third time this Particular Circumstance of Cory and Ben on stage together, trading songs, has crossed through Nashville. Ben Nichols is the lead singer of Lucero, Cory is a singer-songwriter from Memphis-ish, but not the douchebag type, as he likes to say. This pairing is dangerous on a very basic level. There are some bands who REALLY appeal to boys, boys respond to them, boys buy their music and wear their shirts. And there are some artists who have an exclusively female following, girls learn all the words, girls write blogs about them. What happens when you put one of each on stage? At the same time? It really starts to stir up some much larger questions, about music, and musicians, and what they mean to us, and fidelity, and the future, and the type of people you (I) want to be.
Ben Nichols is the Pied Piper of boys with tattoos. I have said this many times in trying to identify and categorize this bizarre scientific occurence: when Ben Nichols talks, boys listen. They memorize lyrics. They bellow along while pumping their fist in the air, with their other arm slung around the shoulders of the boy next to them, whose fist is also raised, clamped firmly around a PBR. If Ben Nichols said, "All you boys out there, with your tattoos and trucker hats and scruffiness, go jump out the window," that venue would be, almost immediately, emptied of hairy legs, and there would be a mess on the sidewalk for the CSI people to deal with. I have been around boys and boy culture my whole life, what with my gigantic big hairy family of men with broadswords, and then all the boys I collected in high school and college, as a den-mother-type who made them study and break up with girls who were bad for them. And I have never seen boys respond, en masse, to a leader, a messiah, a raconteur, the way they respond to Ben Nichols. Lucero are like Uncle Tupelo, but dirtier, with whiskey running through their veins, cheap beer pouring from their fingertips like conductors of drinking songs. The difference is Ben Nichols.
And then there is Cory. I've written about him before, on my old blog, and I don't want to cross over into gushiness or worshipfulness or whatever. He has become my friend after years of just being a fan, and for this I am grateful. I can sum it up this way: Cory writes the words that every girl, in her heart of hearts, has waited her whole life to hear a man say to her. And her dad doesn't count. This is a dangerous talent, fraught with risk and bad omens. This man exists, he writes poetry that doesn't always rhyme, he says brave things and dirty things and things that make you catch your breath and shake your head like you've been slapped. He's right there, in front of you, don't you want to just sit down on a stool sort of off to the side and wait for him to come off the stage, towards you, and take your hand? He could say those things to you, you know he has the words, this could be the moment. Wait for him, watch sideways as he puts his guitar down and fusses with his hair for the millionth time, don't make eye contact with the dozen other girls on that same side of the stage with obviously the same intentions.
I've been mentally mapping out a blog for a while now, about Things I Wish I Didn't Know. (The subheading is "Dad, please think before you say these things out loud to your daughters.") And I think what made it come up in my mind in the first place is a sort-of starfucker kind of issue... is it better for performers to be remote and distant and to fulfill all my hopes and dreams in song, or do I really want them to sit down next to me and start talking?
What am I going to do, take him home with me? Because he strings the right words together in a cadence that suits me? Take him Home, where The Boo has been sleeping for hours now, The Boo who will get up early and ride his bicycle and take care of our demanding and hilarious pets? No. I'm not going to do that. Even writing about it seems destructive, the way I was in college, when I would write cheating poems, just begging to be caught and punished. Last night I said good night, I walked out the door, I put these thoughts together on the way home, and I brushed my hair before going to bed so I wouldn't smell like smoke in the morning.
and here is my policy on Bailing: if you have plans with me, and those plans change, please tell me. This is not difficult. I am a text messaging fiend. Send me a text that says "I'm not coming" and I promise you, I will be fine with that. If I already bought you a ticket, I might give you a little bit of shit about that. But mostly, I'd rather just know that you aren't coming than have my calls and texts ignored. Suck it up, be straight with me.
And remember the good karma request of a few weeks back? It didn't work out. It was a job interview, I'll tell you that now, and I found out this morning that I didn't get the job, and I'm really disappointed. So there, I'm looking for a job, if you think of anything. And I'm glad I've got my girl Brandy here with me now to gossip and keep me distracted and this bad news is not going to ruin my weekend.
P.S. The Mercy Lounge, one of my favorite venues, is failing at their half-assed attempt to be smoke-free. There are a couple of shitty signs hanging up on posts, and otherwise no structure, no enforcers, particularly not John Bruton, lighting up in a fog at the bar. I mentioned the smoke-free rule to several partakers tonight, one of them even asked me if I worked there, and I don't care what that implies. I'm the bitchy schoolmarm, whatever. It sure would have been nice to come home tonight without having to wash all my clothes. What a violation of personal rights.
Watch Me Abuse the Conversational (Parenthetical) Aside
So after WAY too many (2) Dr. Pepper's with dinner, and possibly too many (4) blueberry vodka drinks (best friend; also nemesis) at the Mercy Lounge last night, I have some thoughts. Tonight's show was Cory Branan and Ben Nichols, touring under the moniker Brew City Tour III, meaning this is the third time this Particular Circumstance of Cory and Ben on stage together, trading songs, has crossed through Nashville. Ben Nichols is the lead singer of Lucero, Cory is a singer-songwriter from Memphis-ish, but not the douchebag type, as he likes to say. This pairing is dangerous on a very basic level. There are some bands who REALLY appeal to boys, boys respond to them, boys buy their music and wear their shirts. And there are some artists who have an exclusively female following, girls learn all the words, girls write blogs about them. What happens when you put one of each on stage? At the same time? It really starts to stir up some much larger questions, about music, and musicians, and what they mean to us, and fidelity, and the future, and the type of people you (I) want to be.
Ben Nichols is the Pied Piper of boys with tattoos. I have said this many times in trying to identify and categorize this bizarre scientific occurence: when Ben Nichols talks, boys listen. They memorize lyrics. They bellow along while pumping their fist in the air, with their other arm slung around the shoulders of the boy next to them, whose fist is also raised, clamped firmly around a PBR. If Ben Nichols said, "All you boys out there, with your tattoos and trucker hats and scruffiness, go jump out the window," that venue would be, almost immediately, emptied of hairy legs, and there would be a mess on the sidewalk for the CSI people to deal with. I have been around boys and boy culture my whole life, what with my gigantic big hairy family of men with broadswords, and then all the boys I collected in high school and college, as a den-mother-type who made them study and break up with girls who were bad for them. And I have never seen boys respond, en masse, to a leader, a messiah, a raconteur, the way they respond to Ben Nichols. Lucero are like Uncle Tupelo, but dirtier, with whiskey running through their veins, cheap beer pouring from their fingertips like conductors of drinking songs. The difference is Ben Nichols.
And then there is Cory. I've written about him before, on my old blog, and I don't want to cross over into gushiness or worshipfulness or whatever. He has become my friend after years of just being a fan, and for this I am grateful. I can sum it up this way: Cory writes the words that every girl, in her heart of hearts, has waited her whole life to hear a man say to her. And her dad doesn't count. This is a dangerous talent, fraught with risk and bad omens. This man exists, he writes poetry that doesn't always rhyme, he says brave things and dirty things and things that make you catch your breath and shake your head like you've been slapped. He's right there, in front of you, don't you want to just sit down on a stool sort of off to the side and wait for him to come off the stage, towards you, and take your hand? He could say those things to you, you know he has the words, this could be the moment. Wait for him, watch sideways as he puts his guitar down and fusses with his hair for the millionth time, don't make eye contact with the dozen other girls on that same side of the stage with obviously the same intentions.
I've been mentally mapping out a blog for a while now, about Things I Wish I Didn't Know. (The subheading is "Dad, please think before you say these things out loud to your daughters.") And I think what made it come up in my mind in the first place is a sort-of starfucker kind of issue... is it better for performers to be remote and distant and to fulfill all my hopes and dreams in song, or do I really want them to sit down next to me and start talking?
What am I going to do, take him home with me? Because he strings the right words together in a cadence that suits me? Take him Home, where The Boo has been sleeping for hours now, The Boo who will get up early and ride his bicycle and take care of our demanding and hilarious pets? No. I'm not going to do that. Even writing about it seems destructive, the way I was in college, when I would write cheating poems, just begging to be caught and punished. Last night I said good night, I walked out the door, I put these thoughts together on the way home, and I brushed my hair before going to bed so I wouldn't smell like smoke in the morning.
and here is my policy on Bailing: if you have plans with me, and those plans change, please tell me. This is not difficult. I am a text messaging fiend. Send me a text that says "I'm not coming" and I promise you, I will be fine with that. If I already bought you a ticket, I might give you a little bit of shit about that. But mostly, I'd rather just know that you aren't coming than have my calls and texts ignored. Suck it up, be straight with me.
And remember the good karma request of a few weeks back? It didn't work out. It was a job interview, I'll tell you that now, and I found out this morning that I didn't get the job, and I'm really disappointed. So there, I'm looking for a job, if you think of anything. And I'm glad I've got my girl Brandy here with me now to gossip and keep me distracted and this bad news is not going to ruin my weekend.
P.S. The Mercy Lounge, one of my favorite venues, is failing at their half-assed attempt to be smoke-free. There are a couple of shitty signs hanging up on posts, and otherwise no structure, no enforcers, particularly not John Bruton, lighting up in a fog at the bar. I mentioned the smoke-free rule to several partakers tonight, one of them even asked me if I worked there, and I don't care what that implies. I'm the bitchy schoolmarm, whatever. It sure would have been nice to come home tonight without having to wash all my clothes. What a violation of personal rights.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Two Important Points
1. 68 Second Solitaire Game. Boo-yah.
2. Is there any song more guilty and yet more just rock awesome than Boys of Summer by Don Henley? For real. Damn. I wonder if there is a way I can make the song play while you read this.
A few other things:
Q. How can you tell that I have lived with Austin Gray for three years?
A. Part I: I said Boo-yah up there.
A. Part II: I called someone an Ass Clown in traffic the other day.
A. Part III: I spent a healthy part of this morning researching methods of making your own sausage at home. This is after a long-running debate about this process and the potential ickiness of it. But I figure, so long as I keep my foot firmly planted on the Will We Get Our Own Pig to Therefore Raise and Slaughter Issue (Austin's defense: it would be like a pet, and we'd name it Joey Joe Joe), I can help with grinding up some spicy bits and maybe some non-scary pork shoulder that we buy at a store and don't have to hack off a formerly-live animal ourselves. Particularly one with a name.
That's all I've got today. More news on yesterday's requested Karma-fest soon. Sushi tonight, hooray! And chicken parmesan at home tomorrow, yum yum.
2. Is there any song more guilty and yet more just rock awesome than Boys of Summer by Don Henley? For real. Damn. I wonder if there is a way I can make the song play while you read this.
A few other things:
Q. How can you tell that I have lived with Austin Gray for three years?
A. Part I: I said Boo-yah up there.
A. Part II: I called someone an Ass Clown in traffic the other day.
A. Part III: I spent a healthy part of this morning researching methods of making your own sausage at home. This is after a long-running debate about this process and the potential ickiness of it. But I figure, so long as I keep my foot firmly planted on the Will We Get Our Own Pig to Therefore Raise and Slaughter Issue (Austin's defense: it would be like a pet, and we'd name it Joey Joe Joe), I can help with grinding up some spicy bits and maybe some non-scary pork shoulder that we buy at a store and don't have to hack off a formerly-live animal ourselves. Particularly one with a name.
That's all I've got today. More news on yesterday's requested Karma-fest soon. Sushi tonight, hooray! And chicken parmesan at home tomorrow, yum yum.
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