I was walking down the sidewalk this afternoon, apparently whistling. And a guy coming the other way looked at me and said “Well, *you’re* having a good day, aren’t you?” Tis a fine day, but you have to appreciate the power of a song that can make it sound like a good day. This is what I was whistling:
Which brings me to other reliably good mood music. You know, that stuff that guarantees a smile. We’ll start with the Violent Femmes’ I Held Her In My Arms:
Seriously, how you can anyone not be smiling after that?
Finally, as a bonus, here is the song that will stop me dead in my tracks and have me sing the whole thing out loud on demand - Louis Jordan’s Beans and Cornbread:
On September 21st of this year, you’ll be able to head down to Penn Quarter and see a real live pro criterium race in the form of the ING Direct Capital Criterium. It’s a six turn 1km circuit that winds its way among the Federal agencies downtown.
I’ve been waiting for a long time to see something like this happen (in fact, I already know the shot I’ll be aiming for). As it stands, there’s going to be a Men’s 35+ race, a Men’s 1/2/3, and a Men’s Pro. No word on who the teams will be yet.
DId you notice something missing from that list of races? That’s right, no women’s field. Which is especially disappointing, considering that Cyclelife, a presenting sponsor, has its own women’s team. They’re aware of that disappointment, and while they haven’t promised anything about next year, they say that they hope to include a women’s field when they can.
The official race site is here, and I’ll post more when details become available.
The following conversation took place in the 80s, at Riverdale Junior High School:
“Well, Mr. Blacknell, you’ve got a choice. Detention, or three licks.”
“Three what?”
“Three licks.”
“uhh . . . “
I was standing in the assistant principle’s office, at the time, probably because I’d told a teacher she didn’t know what she was talking about (true in 9 out of 10 cases, in retrospect). I’d just moved to Georgia (from West Germany), and I was still having a bit of trouble with the accents. But even putting aside the accent in this case, I didn’t know what the hell a “lick” was. And as I came to understand that “lick” meant hitting me with a long wooden panel, I was . . . gobsmacked (not a Georgia word, btw). Never in my life had any adult, aside from my parents, ever even *looked* like they would threaten me with physical violence. Ultimately, though, I decided that three smacks to my ass were far easier to deal with than 60 minutes sitting in a quiet classroom after school. But it struck me then - as it does now - as an entirely ridiculous approach to discipline.
Twenty-one U.S. states still permit the use of corporal punishment in schools. In Texas and Mississippi children as young as 3 are struck for transgressions as minor as gum chewing, the report says.
[ . . . ]
Citing U.S. Department of Education data, the report said 223,190 students nationwide received corporal punishment at least once in the 2006-2007 school year. This included 49,197 students in Texas, the largest number of any state.
And we wonder why we’ve got a problem with violence in this country.
Some covers are interesting because they take a work originally filled with energy and just strip it away, leaving a previously unappreciated core. I’ve got two examples of that today.
The first is Frente!’s cover of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle:
You know, I somehow missed this when it first came out, and only discovered it when I stole a CD from a friend a few years ago (thanks, P!). And if that CD had been vinyl, I’d have worn it out by now.
The second one came to me just yesterday via one of those often (and rightly) maligned Facebook applications. Despite the means, the end is good - Jenny Owen Youngs’ take on Nelly’s Hot in Herre:
Every once in a while, in communities of which I consider myself a part, I come across something that makes me wonder whether I was ever a part of the community in the first place. This post over at Boing Boing directed me to a debate over at io9.com, on whether or not “Young Adult” sci-fi was . . . well, I’m not sure what the debate is over. As best I can tell, one side thinks that YA sci-fi is a good introduction to the larger sci-fi genre, and the other thinks that it is threatening to all but hollow sci-fi out from the inside and collapse it. Now, I’m sure anyone involved in that argument who reads my summary would be appalled. They’d probably say that I’m oversimplying the sides, misunderstanding the participants, and lack appreciation for the ultimate importance of the problem. And to an extent, they’d be right. But mostly I’d just say that I don’t really care, and that I enjoyed Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in 6th grade and Scott Westerfeld’s So Yesterday just a couple of years ago. Good sci-fi is good sci-fi to me, and it’s something I’ve enjoyed all of my reading life. Thus these epic arguments over what appears to be a lot of nothing just seem a little silly. Sure, it matters quite a bit to those engaged in the argument, but in the bigger scheme? Not so much, I think. It’s easier to see that when you’re not all that involved with the community.
What’s my point? Well, it’s not just the sci-fi lit community that can waste a lot of energy navel gazing. It’s a point that I think a number of us who spend a lot of time talking and acting on and worrying about political races would do well to remember, too. We tease meaning out of every movement, angle, and word. And while each of those movements, angles, and words may actually have been intended to impart some meaning, the vast majority of the people out there will miss it. And even if you point it out? They won’t care. Obama to Hawaii? Don’t care. McCain’s cross in the dirt? Don’t care. Former-Abramhoff-business-partner-and-failed-candidate-Ralph-Reed-was-going-to-attend-a fundraiser-for-former-Abramhoff-investigating-committee-chair-McCain? Don’t care. We can spend our time spinning over the details. And perhaps that’s even useful, from time to time. But we’d do well to remember that it’s the big picture that matters to most. If it even matters to them at all. Try not to lose sight of that.
The more the official line is examined, the more it falls apart. That “weaponized” nature of the anthrax used? Well, not so much:
Among the new details Monday was that, contrary to statements made over the years by other government officials, the mailed anthrax had not been coated with additives to “weaponize” it, or make it more deadly.
In other words, the public had been repeatedly lied to for years. But don’t worry, this was just the work of one crazy man.
Whatever I care about the Olympics, I care about Olympic swimming even less. Add on top of that my reflexive dismissing of anyone who’s been hyped by the media, and I’m pretty sure that I’d never have written about Michael Phelps, here. But it’s been on in the background tonight, and they just cut to the Baltimore Ravens (NFL team) stadium, where it looked like most of the people in attendance had stayed *after* a preseason game to watch a native son aim for a record eighth gold. And as he did it, thousands and thousands of Baltimoreans cheered.
(This weekend’s effort comes courtesy of Peej, the same fine talent that brought you the Cover Girl edition last month.)
So what do you do when you are a just barely teen living in a country where access to new music is limited by the availability of such music (even on the black market), the ability to get to the place where you can finally make the acquisitions, and having to deal with a lack of blank tapes so you can’t make copies what you have and do exchanges with your friends to expand your library–leaving you desperate for new sounds?
You get bored and start to look around your family’s basements to see what you can find… and come across a treasure trove of LPs from the ‘wild’ youth of your aunts and uncles. LPs from the mid 60s to the mid to late 70s. LPs that you find as fascinating as the albums by Pet Shop Boys or a-ha or that all female group everyone is raving about (which you keep telling them translates to an article of jewelery, by the way), because it’s not the time yet to scoff at the music from that era and besides, you never cared much for anyone else’s opinion, anyway.
My cousin and I must’ve found 40 or 50 plus LPs and a good smattering of 45s (not counting the classical ones; but we’ll leave those aside for now). I might be tempted to think that I became enchanted with the music because anything new [to me] would have sounded good, back then, but that’s not it. The music was really good; the lyrics were better. For me, and my even more desperate need to get my hands on ANYthing written in English (I almost cried when I came across my parents’ volumes of the 1963 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana in one of those basements), finding all these lines that read like poetry by themselves was like so much icing on the cake.
I still have the first mixed tape we made from those LPs, which was incidentally the first mixed tape I ever made. And I still think it’s one of the best. Every single song on tape was chosen lovingly and put in order with such careful thought–I guess we lived our own High Fidelity moments right there in that basement.
***
It’s hard to say why I like these four the best of all the songs we put on that tape. A couple of years later after making ‘the tape’, I read Carson McCuller’s ‘A Heart is Lonely Hunter’ and I felt such an affinity with the young girl in the book, Mick, who loves music but doesn’t know how to describe why she does out loud. Except that Carson McCuller’s does so beautifully, especially when she describes Mick’s hearing Beethoven’s Third for the first…if I remember correctly in one part she describes the opening as “…God strutting from side to side…”
Well, these weren’t exactly heralds from heaven above and certainly no Beethoven’s Third…but you know, I think, for me, they were just as powerful as that symphony was to Mick.
(It always amazes me that McCullers was only 23 when she wrote that book.)
Interestingly, I when I moved to States and started to collect the LPs myself and learn more about the various artists, I realized there was a sort of six degrees of separation going on with all the the songs we’d put on that first mix tape (although that’s ultimately true of most of the music of that time, especially British bands), including the four I liked so much. See the end of this epistle*, if you are so inclined to find out…
***
1- First up, is what I thought sounded like the best love song of all time (and I still do). It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found out that it truly was a love song, or rather a love letter from Keith Reid to his then girlfriend. If all you know of Procol Harum is A Whiter Shade of Pale, then listen up:
Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum; Shine On Brightly)
2- I think it was the surprise of the lyrics so late into the song, and the memorableness (is that a word?!) of them, despite the brevity, that really caught my ear. Of course, the anticipatory guitar runs aren’t half bad either.
3- This is the one I can’t find anywhere. I think there is a cover of it on Youtube, but this is one of the very VERY few songs which I simply don’t want to listen to as a cover. I can’t see how I could not fallen for this song: a mutinous, hormonal youngster experiencing all the usual angst of impending teenhood and EXTREME puppy love while being stifled and controlled emotionally outside of my home at every turn? Please. This one was made for me to listen to over and over, and try to sing to myself all the times I was SO misunderstood and SO miserable and it hurt TOO much to breathe and god did he just look MY way?!
(Turn it up a bit; it’s a bit low on volume)
The Gardenof Jane Delawney (Trees; The Garden of Jane Delawney)
4- Finally, this was right in line with what my dad calls my marxist-socialist-hippie inclinations, even at that age. (My dad said he thanks god every day I was born too late to be part of the Mojahedin–specifically the Peykar offshoot– movement in Iran when we lived there. Because he thinks their professed goals and ideals would’ve been exactly the type of thing to suck an idealistic teenage me in.)
Streets of London (Ralph McTell; Spiral Staircase)
* So here is the six degrees of separation, sort of: Ralph McTell’s song is in part inspired musically and lyrically by a song of Al Stewart’s…Al Stewart worked with Trevor Lucas on some of the more interesting guitar arrangements for his third album, Zero She Flies…Trevor Lucas was married to Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention and the two heavily influenced the work of Trees, including Bias Boshell’s songs for the band’s first album, The Garden of Jane Delawney….Brian Boshell later became a guest keyboardist for The Moody Blues, whose successful single, ‘Nights in White Satin’ was one of the main reasons Procol Harum were backed by their music label to release ‘A White Shade of Pale’ . . .
