Blogs are so passe and pretentious. Oh well, here's my blog about music that's stuck in my head when I wake up in the mornings along with adventures of the Cash family and wacky wacky crazy wacky shenanigans.
Today I woke up with a song in my head from a family movie that I admittedly like a lot, Walt Disney's "Enchanted." As a parent of young children, for me it's rare to find a move that I enjoy watching with my kids. This is one of them, and I recommend watching it if you haven't seen it yet. Here is the song:
The line that sticks with me, and possibly the reason the song was playing in my head is this:
"Does he take you out dancing just so he can hold you close"
Last night, I tried something new that I had never done in an effort to be more romantic. Once the kids were asleep, I made a playlist of slow love songs on my iPod. I waited for a moment when my sweetheart wasn't around and lit some candles in the living room. It wasn't the most ideal setting, but when you're stuck at home with kids, you have little choice. I turned the music on and slow danced with my wife in the living room.
I admit, as a cynic, I thought this possibly might backfire and come across as silly and contrived. But truly, the opposite happened, and I thoroughly enjoyed holding my wife and dancing with her. It made me feel young and brought back memories of when we first fell for each other. We danced for a good hour or so, talked to each other, laughed, and I think bonded in a unique way. My dear wife puts up with a lot, and makes sacrifices each day for me and the kids. I hope she knows I love her.
I highly recommend trying this some time with the one you love. I'm certain it will give your relationship a much needed boost. With all the distractions life throws at us, taking time to care and love each other in simple ways can only do good.
Today's song is brought to you by a little music group called Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. Let's have a listen:
If you get some time, after you listen to this rocking song, check out the lyrics. There is some real depth to what is going on here lyrically, with underlying religious and political statements. I was surprised to hear this song playing in my head this morning, but I'm glad it did, forcing me to look closer and listen better. I've had this song in my collection for some time but haven't listened as much as I should. If my life didn't revolve around a wife and four kids, I'm sure I'd have much more to say about this song.
I do know this though: I read recently that Ted Leo teamed up with Aimee Mann and they'll be releasing an album soon, if they haven't already. After reading the lyrics to this song, it will be an interesting collaboration between the two. Aimee Mann's lyrics are my favorite of any singer-songwriter. Their group is called The Both.
I don't have a lot of time. Today's song is from 1978. I'm confident you know the song, but I doubt many could tell me who the duo is that sings it. I even stumped my brother today, whose head is a library of music.
I'll give credit where credit is due, "Reunited" was written by Dino Fekaris & Freddie Perren but made famous by Herb Fame and Francine Hurd Baker, otherwise knows as "Peaches and Herb."
Here's the song, I'm confident you know this melody:
This is kind of an odd one. The song in my head this morning was inspired by a Vine post. If you haven't had the chance to use the Vine app, I recommend it. It's loads of fun.
First, I'll show you the video. A WARNING, this small clip could be offensive to some:
The strange music playing on this clip stuck with me. I had to ask the Vine user "afbradstone" what song it is playing in this clip so I can share it on this blog post. I was embarrassed to find out the song is called "Shore Leave."
It's a song by Tom Waits from 1983. It sounds very different than I had imagined after hearing 6 short seconds of it on Vine. The song is about a sailor on leave in a foreign country. What an odd way to learn a new song. It's a funny world we live in. Here is the song if you'd like to hear it.
This is the end of my odd little post. Thanks to afbradstone for exposing me to not only this song, but some really funny Vine videos.
This song is new to me. I've blogged about Martha Wainwright before. I don't know what it is about her music. I just find her approach so refreshing. Her voice is raspy. Her music is sincere.
Anyway, what's cool about this song is that her mother, musician Kate McGarrigle wrote it before dying a few years ago. In that same period, Martha herself was becoming a mother for the first time. In that realm, she felt it was important to cover the song on her latest album.
Honestly, I just haven't had the time to delve too much into what this song is about. My daughter is an expert in Greek Mythology. I was told that Proserpina is the Roman equivalent to Persephone, who is the Goddess of Spring. I find the melody and arrangement of this song both beautiful and haunting. Knowing that it was a great musician's last song makes it even cooler. I'm happy that Martha Wainwright was able to share this piece of art with the world. Forgive me for having little other to say about it, I'll let the song speak for itself.
I'm starting to miss blogging. So I guess I'll try it until I get tired of it again....
I love this song, and it was playing in my head this morning. Just listen to it, it's incredible:
"Jesusland" by Ben Folds
This song is about America. You can interpret it as you please. I love the way the piano rolls on this song with the underlying cello. Whatever you think of the lyrics, I have to believe you are moved in some way by what Ben Folds has to say.
If only one person hears this song without having known it before, I will feel like I've accomplished what I hope with this blog.
This is a song that frequently plays in my head in the mornings. You probably know it:
December, 1963 (Oh What a Night) by The Four Seaons
As a parent of young children, the wife and I don't get enough sleep. This song plays in my head often as my alarm goes off early in the morning after having a rough night with the kids. Just last week my daughter got the stomach flu and the baby had an earache. I think I figured out that I got 10 hours of sleep in 3 nights.
I could blog about what a bother this is, but I think I've written enough about the kids and how they disrupt my sleep. I kept thinking all week about what I could share that would have to do with "oh what a night."
I know this song has nothing to do with bad nights, but bad nights are the reason I have the song stuck in my head. I've had many bad nights in my life, but one in particular stuck out that I feel the need to share.
About 10 years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in New York City. There was a cheap direct flight available through JetBlue. The flight was a red eye, I had taken it before. One challenge for me is that it's virtually impossible for me to sleep sitting upright. I can fall asleep just about anywhere as long as I have a blanket and I can lie down. I was planning on it being a long night, but had no idea what was in store for me on this flight.
I noticed on my ticket that I was assigned to sit on the back row. I did not like this, but like I said, I had already resigned that this would be a bad flight so I accepted it for what it was. To my surprise, and relief, once I sat down it was evident that I would be on the back row alone. Awesome! I would be able to get a blanket from the flight attendant and lie down on the 3 seats and sleep!
The flight took off and proceeded as normal. It was just past midnight and I was exhausted. I had my blanket and once the seat belt sign was off I was going to crash and it was going to be perfect!
(A side note. I am an incredibly passive person. I have gotten much better as I've gotten older, but 10 years ago I was neither confident, or mature enough to handle the situation that you'll soon learn about. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm ashamed about the way I handled this.)
The seat belt light was turned off, and almost as soon as I unlatched the belt, I was tapped on the shoulder. The woman standing before me was dressed like a prostitute. I'm not kidding. I couldn't believe it. "It's crowded up front. Can I sit by you?"
Pathetic and passive 23-year-old Brady did not want anybody to sit by him on this flight. But "of course" was the response I gave to this scantily-clad woman. I don't remember how the whole conversation went after she sat down, but it was something like this:
Scantily-Clad Woman: Oh, thank you. I was certain I wouldn't be able to get any sleep on this flight.
Me: Yeah, me too.
SCW: Why are you going to New York?
Me: To see a friend.
SCW: I'm going to meet my boyfriend. We met online. I'm sorry I'm dressed like this, I just got off work. I'm an exotic dancer. I had to rush from the end of my shift right to this flight, I didn't have time to change.
Me: (Jaw drops to the floor)
The flight went on and my patience with this woman quickly dwindled.
She wouldn't stop talking to me. She found out I was a Mormon, she spent an hour or so trying to convince me to drink and told me stories about her life, the man she was meeting, her job etc. Once she finally shut up, she laid down on the empty seat on the row, occupying two seats. Relieved, I did my best to try to put my head against the walls of the plane and sleep. At one point she tried to put her head on my lap and I had to tell her I wasn't comfortable with that.
(Another side note. I tell this story as a means for relating the events as they happened on this night. It's not very often that I have such a close encounter with an exotic dancer. It's not my intent to paint a bad picture of people in this sort of profession. I'm sure there are plenty of respectful and pleasant people in this line of profession. This woman, to be blunt, was ridiculous.)
The worst part happened next. She got up to use the restroom. When she returned she was not well. She looked pale and told me she was feeling really sick. As a Mormon, I confess, that I am sheltered and have little to no encounter with narcotics. I have seen some movies, and while this gives me no street credibility, it appeared she had been punched in the nose, was having either really bad allergies or she had a negative reaction to something she snorted. She was sniffing like crazy and her nose had faint traces of blood.
This all carried on for the last hour of the flight. She kept saying she was going to puke and literally clung to me as she suffered. This was fast becoming the longest night of my life and I noticed dawn breaking as the flight prepared to land at JFK airport.
But no, my story doesn't end here. The woman could barely walk as we were leaving the craft. Begrudgingly, I allowed her to hold on to me for support. I should have turned her over to the airline for support. Who knows why I didn't? Alas, I found a wheelchair for her and wheeled her to baggage, helped her with her bags and allowed her to cling on to me for another moment outside the airport as I found her a cab and sent her on her way.
It was a long night, to say the least. Maybe I did the right thing by helping her. Maybe not.
A few days later I was out with my friend in New York and we met some friends of hers who had also flown in from Utah. During our lunch I was telling them this story and they said to me "Oh, you're that guy who was with the hooker on the airplane! We saw you!" Of course they were on the flight as well!
Yep. They saw me, along with hundreds of other people. What a night! More than ten years have passed, but I still cringe when I think about this awful flight.
This week's song is from Talking Heads' former front man, David Byrne.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS LIFE by DAVID BYRNE
The video I have here was done by a fan and is incomplete, but it has the complete song. I love the strings on this song. David Byrne has 2 albums from the early 2000's that feature some great string arrangements. Be sure to check them out if you're the checking out kind of person.
"The other side of this life," the meaning of this song seems to be clear to me in spite of my limited skill to interpret lyrics. This is about dying, and the afterlife. This feels fitting to tie into the bizarre thing that happened to me a few weeks ago.
In 2005 my Grandpa Mick died. I was close to him, he was a big part of my life growing up. Throughout his life he had several rings, including 3 different wedding rings. I was lucky to be able to inherit one of these wedding rings.
For about 3 years or so I wore the ring every day on my right hand. Not only does the ring have special meaning for me, I like the way it looks.
I was devastated about 2 years ago when the ring disappeared. I rarely took it off, but when I did, I would place in on the corner of my dresser so as not to lose it. If I remember right, I had placed it there one night before going to sleep and the next morning it was gone, without a trace.
I looked everywhere for it. I tore my dresser apart and checked every nook and cranny of my bedroom. I was riddled with guilt and lost sleep over the loss. About every 3 months I would look again for it without success. I lamented the loss to my wife and told her to keep her eyes peeled, even though I was starting to lose hope that it would ever turn up.
But sure enough, it did turn up about 2 weeks ago!
On that morning I had already left for work and my wife had moved a few things around in the fridge. The next time she went to the fridge, there was the ring, sitting there in plain sight on the top shelf!
I'm baffled by all of this. The only logical story that makes sense is this: The ring fell from my dresser two years ago. My daughter, Lucy, was playing with it and placed it in the door of the refrigerator. Next, a sticky jar of jam ended up on top of the ring where the ring stuck. A few years pass and Megan moves the jar, and the ring goes with it, but somehow falls onto the top shelf.
(side note) This makes it sound like we never clean our fridge. It may not be as clean as some folks' fridges, but I can assure you we do clean it.
Based on the bizarre circumstance of this whole story, my other theory makes more sense: The ghost of my grandpa Mick took the ring for safe keeping. He opened our fridge looking for a can of coca cola classic. (The man loved coke, I'll bet he drank a six pack of it each day of his adult life up until he died at 97.) Once he saw the coke wasn't there, he decided to play a trick on me and placed the ring in the fridge. The man had a sense of humor, so who knows?
Whatever the mystery, I'm grateful to have the ring. And I hope grandpa's having a great time on "the other side of this life."
I'm sure there are others who suffer the same kind of sickness that I do when it comes to music being stuck in your head.
Let me just give you a walkthrough of what Wednesday morning was like for me this week.
5:30 A.M. I wake up and hear the baby crying. The song "Agony" from INTO THE WOODS is playing in my head:
"AGONY" from INTO THE WOODS
I get up with my wife to help with the baby. As I stand, half-awake, noticing her make a bottle, loving her for being such a good wife/mother/woman, another song came to my mind, perhaps maybe not the most relevent, but a love song the same.
"TO ALL THE GIRLS I'VE LOVED BEFORE" by JULIO IGLESIAS & WILLIE NELSON
The baby had some prescription eye drops for pink eye that we had decided to give to him while he drank his bottle. I was giving him the bottle, and Megan was getting the eye drops ready. It was taking longer than I wanted it to while the baby quickly drank and milk was fast running out. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough milk to distract him before putting drops in his eyes. The next song started to play....
"RUNNING OUT OF TIME" by HOT HOT HEAT
Luckily we got the drops in his eyes and the baby went back to sleep. Exhausted, we got ourselves back in bed. As I hoped to drift back to sleep, a new song started playing. One that I am currently learning for an upcoming production at the nearby theater.
"COME SPIRIT, COME CHARM" from THE SECRET GARDEN
The moment had finally calmed but I was stuck with the madness of my mind and the morning music shuffle had permanently disrupted my sleep. Soon after I started the shower and began another day.
Last Wednesday I woke up to a familiar sound. It was my wife, and she was talking. What she said, I couldn't tell you... since it didn't make sense. Immediately a familiar tune came into my head:
TALKING IN YOUR SLEEP by THE ROMANTICS
This is one of many songs I was exposed to at a young age by MTV. My guess is that I watched at least one hour of MTV every day with my brother and sister between 1982-1984 when I was 3-5 years old. I think many of these early 80's songs were permanently tattooed to my young, developing brain. Even after all these years, I still love these songs from the early 80's.
My wife uses the term "pillow talk" when she hears me talk in my sleep. A couple of years ago, she started emailing me the bizarre things I say in my sleep. It always makes me laugh when I get the email early the next morning. Here's one example:
on April 25th last year: "Did you put this hornets nest on my neck, Megan? Huh, did you?"
I started doing the same thing as I heard her talking in her sleep.
This is one Megan said on the 23rd of February, the night after a late rehearsal as Musical Director for Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat: "Perhaps well all misjudged the lad." (A lyric from the show.)
I love when this sort of thing happens. It's always good for a laugh.
Often I am asked by our daughter to share a story from the first year of our marriage. When I married Megan, my step-kids were 5 years old and 18 months old. One night, the baby woke up and Megan got up to comfort him and help him go back to sleep. She soon returned and got back in bed. Through all the commotion I was awake and I asked her "is everything OK?"
Her response was an angry, incoherent stirring of mumblings that made no sense. I'm still impressed in this moment at her ability to fall back asleep so quickly. Still not sure if she was asleep and wondering where she had learned to speak wookie, I asked her to clarify what she had said.
She sat up, scoffed and said "Zoe was cleaning the bathroom, and I told her to stop making so much noise or she would wake the baby up." I was new to parenthood, but it did seem bizarre that a 5 year old would voluntarily clean the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Don't be deceived by this sleeping beauty. She doesn't make sense when she talks!
My personal favorite is more of a sleep walking story. My dad woke up in the middle of the night and my younger brother (about 8 years old at the time) was standing by the side of the bed awkward and silent. When he asked what was wrong, my brother didn't respond. Soon, my dad felt something wet and realized my brother had mistaken the side of his bed for the toilet and he was being peed on. My dad acted fast, jumped out of bed and rushed little brother to the toilet. It was too late though, there was pee all over the bed and floor of his bedroom.
I'm sure everyone has their own little story about sleep talking. Thanks for listening to mine. Share some of your own in the comments section here if you feel so inclined.
I've joked many times about having goofy TV show theme songs from the 80's stuck in my head. So I wasn't surprised this week when a familiar melody came to me:
Facts about the smurfs that you may not have known:
1- The Smurfs are a Belgian cartoon! I had no idea, did you?
2- When I was 4 years old, I wanted to be a smurf when I grew up. True story. That, or a firetruck.
3- The smurfs social organization is similar to termites. Smurfette, like the termite queen, produces 20,000-30,000 smurf eggs each day! If it weren't a children's TV show, I would go into more details.
So here I am again with some music, stories, and adventure.
If you know me well, you know that I am an odd person, who is oddly drawn to odd things. Oddly enough, I will share with you something oddly odd. This week's song is from an album called "Here Lies Love." Once I heard about this album, I knew I had to have it. David Byrne (of Talking Heads' fame) and British DJ and songwriter Norman Cook (otherwise known as Fatboy Slim) teamed up to write this album.
David Byrne wanted to write a musical about former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos. As he was doing research on her life, he learned that she loves to disco dance. This inspired him to collaborate with Fatboy Slim to give his songs a disco beat. He intended to put the show on stage to tell the story of Marcos' life while giving the show a discotheque feel. Then, after writing the songs, he hired several different female artists to sing on the record. I am a fan of David Byrne, and once I had heard that this album existed, I knew I had to own it.
Candie Payne is the artist who sings the song that was stuck in my head Wednesday morning, "Every Drop of Rain." This song is about the woes of being poor and is the second track on the album.
I like the idea of this song, how someone who is poor feels "every drop of rain." I think this is true for anyone who feels sorry for himself. I've talked about this before, but my son has a bum left arm that doesn't work. He was born this way, and we've already had one operation for him back in July last year. 8 months later, we've found ourselves again at Shriner's Hospital in Sacramento for another procedure today. This time, the doctors are transferring nerves in both the bicep and forearm. It's not nearly as invasive as the first surgery, but he is very little and any kind of surgery for a parent can be nerve racking.
I guess I'm trying to tie this song into how I'm feeling. There's a temptation to feel sorry for yourself, to wonder what you could have done differently, to blame yourself for his troubles, or to just wish things could be different. I am a worrier. I fret over everything. Yet, for some reason, even with all of Jude's troubles, I have never been in deep despair over his arm. I've watched him take 15 months to learn to pull himself up, scoot around on his bum instead of crawl, and fall countless times hard on his head- having only one arm to brace his fall. Still I feel, and have always felt, that he would be OK whether we can fix his arm or not.
Those of you who know him, understand what a great kid this is. He always smiles. He is sociable, and likes everybody. He makes everybody happy with his charming personality. His charm is probably one of the main reasons I don't worry about him. He's just a rad kid.
Wow have we been busy these days! This post is late, a few weeks ago I woke up on a Wednesday (my new song day) with this song playing in my head:
Probably the most dramatic moment in Les Miserables, already a dramatic show, this song features several key characters as they anticipate the next day's events. It's such a neat song! (I'll let you, dear reader, decide whether or not the last sentence was sarcastic)
And sadly, I tried to round up my kids to get a Cash family production of this song together. Sadly, we have not had the time, with Megan working at nights and me away for a business trip. If time permits, hopefully we will throw one together...
A year ago today I created my first blog post ever. I mostly started this blog because, first of all, I have music going through my head all the time, and second of all, because I was starting to feel worn down from parenting 4 young children. I needed a creative outlet and being mostly stuck in the home it seemed like an interesting idea.
A year later, I've had nearly 9,000 visits to this site. Traffic has slowed in the last few months. Partly because I haven't written as much, and partly because I've felt uninspired and the quality (not that any were THAT good to begin with) of the posts has gone down. Also, I used to promote new posts regularly on Facebook and Twitter. I've decided to do that less frequently because I figure if people are interested in the blog they would be following already.
Anyway, 9,000 visits... not incredible, but much more than I thought possible!
Here are some posts that I was proud of from the year. I realize even having a blog is a pretentious and indulgent thing to do. And now I'm one upping that by saying, hey, look how funny I am over the last year and check out the best of the best. With little shame, I'm doing this anyway:
I plan to keep blogging but I need to change a few things.
To start off, I am going to blog weekly instead of every other day. I liked the idea of making it a daily blog so that a vast array of music could be talked about. I'm feeling burnt out a bit, so weekly I think is better, and I'm sure you do too.
I like the challenge of having to blog about a song that my subconscious magically put into my head in the morning. Ever since my days of playing Dungeons and Dragons with all kinds of multi-sided dice, I've been obsessed with the idea of something random happening.
That being said, I will be writing about the song that plays in my head on Wednesday mornings. Then, I will work throughout the week on one blog post about that song to have it posted by Tuesday the following week. By doing this, I hope to accomplish the following:
-Better blog posts, quality over quantity.
-Give myself more time to focus on things that are important in my life (i.e. not this blog)
-Hopefully find time to learn to play the song and perform it more on this blog.
-Challenge myself both creatively and musically to make a really entertaining blog for all to enjoy.
Also, for your information, I'm gonna stop obsessing so much over how many people have come to visit my blog. As the numbers of visits started going down, I found myself feeling insecure. I know, an irrational thought, as if people only liked others based on the quality of their blog posts, right?
Don't be deceived by the title. This is not a song by Madonna, but rather a song by The Beatles.
What a great song it is too. Go Beatles go. Such a shame there isn't any more music for this group to produce.
And with today's song, I have enough music for another compilation disc which, as you know, I like to give away right here on my blog along with other "valuable" prizes.
So...... here we go friends.
PRIZE NUMBER 1
The best of the songs stuck in Brady's head volume 6- 19 songs I've blogged about since about Thanksgiving on. Not only does this compilation have good music, it also represents music from the 60's, 70's 80's, 90's, 2000's and 2010's. Your ears will be happy and it will be like you're having a history lesson in music. Good stuff indeed.
PRIZE NUMBER 2
Ellis Peters' classic novel "A Morbid Taste For Bones" on cassette tape! Described as "A Medieval Whodunnit" this book on tape is ideal if you're lucky enough to have hours and hours to kill and if you're lucky enough to run into a cassette tape player while killing time.
And best yet, this classic is read by Glyn Houston. (If you have to google search this person, shame on you. Shame.)
PRIZE NUMBER 3
Do you love mediocre music performed by twins with beautiful long flowing blonde hair? Well Nelson should fill your needs indeed! Nelson's classic 1990 album "After The Rain" only here on thesongsstuckinmyhead.blogspot.com
PRIZE NUMBER 4
This is my most proud moment of generosity. Yes, friends, you could be the lucky owner of this glass encased scorpion, 7 inches in length! Impress your friends and family with fake stories about how you captured this beast in the jungles of Siberia just before it attacked you. Don't tell them the truth, that it really came from Hy and Mike's Pawn shop (for 5 bucks) on 35th south.
What's saddest about this scorpion is that it looks like it's been placed in there with an asbestos background. For all I know he died from asbestos poisoning. :(
Check out the sharpie pen I've placed on the 2nd picture to give you a perspective on how big this mofo is.
OK, here's the thing people. THESE ARE SOME GENUINELY AWESOME PRIZES! Seriously, you would be so lucky to win them.
All you need to do is comment on this blog post. Say anything. If you need some ideas, talk about corn dogs, or maybe Milli Vanilli, or maybe something deep like existentialism and stuff. Just make a comment, it's just that easy!
And just for funzies, I'll enter you in this drawing twice if you can prove to me that you've shared this link with your friends through Facebook, Twitter, or poor Google Plus.
Here's the other thing. I know a lot of you come and look at my blog, but few of you enter these contests. Come on! Have some fun and enter! The way I see it there are 5 things that may be holding you back from entering.
1- You are embarrassed that you read my blog and don't want anyone to publicly know that you do. Fair enough, enter anyway!
2- You've entered before and haven't won. Fair enough, maybe today's your lucky day.
3- You've entered before and HAVE won. Enter again, there's no shame! I can assure you that your odds of winning again are just as good.
4- You just don't have the time to win free crap. Well poo on you. Enter anyway.
5- You would feel guilty taking these prizes off my hands when I could keep them for myself. Bless your kind soul, I don't want this stuff. Please somebody take it!
Important, if you leave a comment and I don't know who you are, please leave an email address or twitter name so I can let you know that you won. There will be one winner of these 4 special prizes. The random drawing will take place this coming Sunday night, February 3rd. I will ship the winnings anywhere in the world for you!
Have fun.
I'm kind of cheating today. You see, here's the thing, I just got back from a weekend get-away with my hot wife. We went to Vegas, and each of us got to decide what we wanted to do each night.
My choice was to see Ben Folds Five for the first time. The concert was Friday night, and it was fantastic. If I had more time, I would go into detail. I've never heard a piano sound so loud and amazing. The show rocked, and I was in nerdy music bliss.
Saturday morning I woke up with a song from their new album stuck in my head. Hearing the song live gave me a new appreciation for it. Here it is, this is Michael Praytor, Five Years Later.
Before I play the song, I want to tell you that it's about a guy named Michael Praytor, who has no real significance in the singer's life- but the singer seems to run into him every five years, completely random and inexplicable.
There is this guy I used to work with at Wendy's. His name is Dustin. He's my Michael Praytor. I've run into him so many times, in the strangest places, and we always laugh about it when we see each other.
(The next time I run into Dustin, I'll take a picture and post it here)
OK- moving on.....
So, wifey poo really wanted to see The Beatles "Love" by Cirque du Soleil. The Beatles are sure neato, so of course I went. For me, I had to get used to what it might feel like to do acid (I've never done drugs) for the first 30 minutes of the show. But once I adjusted to the artificial "trip" the Soleil-ites were giving me, I had a jolly good time.
Not trying to sound trite, wow, The Beatles wrote some pretty incredible music and wow, some of those performers in Cirque du Soleil were incredible athletes and performers. The drunk guy behind me shouted through the whole show, but that is the only criticism I can give about the performance.
Sunday morning (fittingly) I woke up with a song by The Beatles that is (fittingly) about the circus.
Here's "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite."
Here's something interesting I came across in all my deep and intense web research I do.
This is the very poster that inspired John Lennon to write this song. Lyrically, you can see that he is quite literal with his inspiration. I never knew this before now, and I likey. You can read more about it here:
Above is a sign I saw in town. I may be the only one who finds this funny. Perhaps there is something I'm missing, but I read this as "If it's here, then it's here!"
Lastly, here is a picture of me and my sweetheart. We've been married 7 years now. I don't regret a single second and I'm happy as I look at this to see that we are starting to look older. Hopefully we've become more sophisticated as well. I love that she shares my passion for music and has an even stronger passion for tolerating me. But musically, what a fun weekend for me: Ben Folds Five and The Beatles. Awesome.
Wow, it can be exhausting trying to come up with creative things to say about songs. Hopefully some people stop by here to just hear the music!?
I'm sure if I had more time, if I were a better writer and if I were more clever, that I could make this blog really fun and hundreds of people would come to visit, rather than the 50 or so that come each day. I don't know who a lot of you are, but I feel sorry for you that you like my blog.
(Forgive the dialogue, the song starts at about 1:10) (Also, it baffles me that any band would want any lines spoken through a music video, it should just be the music and visuals, but here you go anyway)
Today's song is from TRAVIS, a band that I should have been listening to years ago- and I've blogged about. They just have such a great sound. I love this song too, it seems to be in my head a lot lately.
Anyway, I'm feeling realy uninspired, which says to me that I should stop right now.
But first, here are some pictures of us messing around with camera effects. The kids thought this was the funniest thing we had ever done.
Today's post is probably one of the reasons that I took a 3 week long break from this blog.
The music from Les Miserables is so darn catchy! There was a time (high school) when I listened to Les Mis almost every day. I couldn't get enough of the poppy 80's musical theater power ballads that Les Mis had to offer. I wonder if REO Speedwagon has ever tried to cover a song from Les Mis? They should.
So, I guess what I'm getting at, is that even though I haven't listened to the music from Les Miserables for more than 10 years, I finally saw the movie a few weeks ago and the gull darn music is not leaving my brain.
Here's "On My Own." You know it, you probably love it. Here you go.
Since the resurgence of this beloved musical, thanks to Hollywood, something has come up a few times for me as I talk to people about this show. It concerns how to classify Les Miserables. Is it an Opera? Is it Musical Theater? Or is it in its a class of its own? This may not be a common discussion for most people, but being married to an Opera singer, people sometimes ask me, "has your wife ever perfomed in Les Miserables?" Of course, I always respond with "no, Les Miserables is not an Opera." And then I get this: "But there's no talking!"
I'll try not to rant- I don't claim to be an expert on music. If anything I'm a certified music obsessive spazz, nothing more. Nothing less. But this is how I see it. Opera, or a better way of putting it, classical singing, has everything to do with the style of singing you're doing! Opera singers have gotten their voice to the level where it cannot get any stronger. They are the best singers in the world. Yes, many of the singers in Les Miserables are great singers, but few of them could fill their voice in an auditorium without a microphone, or belt out the high notes to the queen of the night aria or do this. I assure you that cute little Cosette's character from Les Miserables would explode if she even attempted to sing either of these songs.
So there are my thoughts on the matter. Now are you wondering whether or not I liked Les Mis? The answer is "yes." Much more than I thought I would. I just don't consider it an opera.
I've taken another little break. Who has missed me the most? (Cricket Noises)
Anyway, I'm back, for better or worse. I'm also starting to wonder if I'll tire of doing this someday. The model I've chosen for this blog has been to write every other day. I made this choice intentionally, so that I could show you the varying music that's playing through my head- and to make it a little crazy. Who knows how long it will be before I throw in the towel, or write less frequently.
Bored are you? Welp, let me tell you what was playing in my head this morning. In fact, I'll even play you a video.
Isn't little Michael just the cutest little thing you've ever seen?
The first thing I thought about this morning as I heard this song, is one of my earliest memories of school. I have lots of memories, most would bore you. Since I have no shame, I'll tell you this story anyway.
In the first grade I was almost as cute as young Michael Jackson. In fact, here's a picture.
After you hear this story, you probably won't think I was a cute kid. You'll probably wonder instead how I've made it this far in life. Most people do.
In the first grade, I was terrified of when we, as a school, would do a fire drill. I don't know why this scared me. Maybe it was the loud bell that rang, followed by the announcement. Maybe I thought it was a real emergency. Maybe I never recovered from having watched the Challenger space shuttle explode on live television while I was in class (does anyone else remember that?)
Well, for whatever reason, I was really really really terrified of doing the fire drill. I swear, we did it once a week too, further heightening my day-to-day anxieties. With such severe anxiety, I had an even more irrational fear that the fire drill would happen while I was alone in the bathroom one day. Of course, the bathroom was attached to the classroom and I would have been fine, but in the mind of a six year-old, going to the bathroom was not an option.
So.... I did what any other bright kid would do, I wet my pants every day. I would do it during class. I distinctly remember the warm feeling of pee filling my underwear and slowly finding its way down into my pants. Then slowly it would turn cold and itchy, intolerably itchy. When we would be released to go to recess, I remember seeing a puddle in the curves of my school chair. When I would return from recess, the puddle would magically have "evaporated."
I bet I wet my pants intentionally at least 10 times that year. But here's the odd thing- Nobody said anything to me about it! If my teacher knew, he was covering for me, wiping up my pee and never drawing attention to it. If the kids knew, they had the decency to not make fun of me for it (we all know kids would never do this, cruel little bastards that they are.) And if my mom knew about it, she certainly never said anything to me, in spite of having to clean my stinky laundry. If I was ever scolded for it, I certainly don't remember it.
So, what I learned from this experience is that it's perfectly OK to have irrational fears and to deal with them in irrational ways. And most importantly, there is no consequence to peeing your pants. I wonder, even now, at 33 years-old, if there were a fire drill at work, or a false alarm of some kind, if I might pee my pants out of sheer terror.
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