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.
Who knows why, on a Sunday morning in late May I have the lyric "All The Leaves Are Brown, And The Sky is Gray" going through my head as I wake up? It's been a beautiful Memorial Day weekend so far with perfect weather.
But let's go back to 1966 when this song, "California Dreamin" by The Mamas and The Papas was hugely popular. If you don't know this song, then you grew up in a cave, or in one of those countries that doesn't let you listen to music.
This song is considered, by Rolling Stone Magazine, to be the 89th greatest song of all time on a list of 500 songs. Isn't that neat? I personally would have ranked it 88th, but that's just me.
I just bought the album on which this song is found, 1966's "If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears." It only cost 5.99 on iTunes, so I thought, why not? It will be fun to listen to these guys.
Things I didn't know about the Mamas and the Papas:
-They were only together as a group for about four years and in that time they released 5 studio albums and in that time they scored more billboard charting hits than many artists with lifelong careers.
-Of the four original members, only one is alive today- Michelle Phillips, who still nets royalties from this song some 50 years later (she is credited with her than husband John Phillips with writing "California Dreamin")
-Mama Cass (Cass Elliot) another female member of the band, died suddenly in 1974. Most people know this and an urban legend is that she choked on a ham sandwich and died. This is not true. She died of a heart attack at the age of 32.
-I'm feeling very 1960's today with the skinny jeans and black boots. (This has nothing to do with the Mamas and the Papas, this is more to do with my own indulgence cause it's my blog you know?)
For those of you who went to High School in Utah during the nineties, I'm about to take you down memory lane, in the same fashion I was taken just last night...
My only sister turned 40 yesterday. To think I have a sibling in her forties is beyond weird, but such is life. I'll be in my forties in 5 short years and that will be that.
And I don't want to be a downer about it. My sister is great, and looks great and lives great so she shouldn't have anything to feel sad about. Especially since last night was such a huge celebration for her. Her husband (who oddly enough, shares a birthday with her) arranged a surprise birthday for her. Probably 100 people were there and many more could have attended. Molly is well-loved and knows so many people.
The coolest part of the party though, for me, was that her husband put together a concert for her from local Utah singer-songwriter Peter Breinholt. He took the stage and played songs that I hadn't heard in years and quickly I was taken back to my high school years, and let me tell you, that was a great time for me and these songs were a big part of it.
There's something really special about Peter Breinholt's 1993 album "Songs About the Great Divide" which managed to become the best-selling independently released album in the state of Utah. Truly, the guy was huge, and his music is credit as to how it happened. After revisiting these songs in the last 24 hours, I'm surprised he didn't go further with it.
Still, Breinholt has managed to maintain a career as a singer-songwriter, even all these years later and is somewhat of a celebrity in the state I call home. He put on a great show last night.
The highlight for me is when he called my sister to the stage to sing a duet of John Lennon's "Grow Old Along With Me." My sister has been such a fan of Breinholt's for so long and I know a dream of hers has been to perform as a back-up singer. Seeing her up there with him was an emotional experience for me and for her I'm certain.
OK, let's get to today's song. I knew it would be one of Breinholt's after last night. This song is called Jerusalem. I can't find a studio recording of it on YouTube, but this is a nice live recording:
Everything about this song is so beautiful to me. Do I dare say it's about the birth of Christ? Frankly, he could be singing about candy corns and it would still be a great song to me. (Candy corns are good though)
I'm grateful I was able to revisit Peter Breinholt last night and will look forward to buying some of his music to add to my digital collection in the near future. It would please me if this post were to introduce this man's music to anybody outside of Utah.
And I'm gonna stop apologizing for liking her music. She's incredible. Period.
Today's song is no exception. I love this song, despite it being dark and full of difficult subject matter. This is what's cool about Tori Amos, and perhaps what repulses people about her.
In the late 90's Tori Amos had 3 miscarriages. Like any mother, she struggled with the loss. She had planned to take a break from writing music to be a mother, but the loss spawned what would become her album "From the Choirgirl Hotel." Many of the album's songs are about this particular kind of loss.
I woke up early this morning (5:00 A.M.) with a song called "i i e e e" playing in my head. Immediately, I went to YouTube to see if I could find any sort of interview, or performance that would explain this song, and especially its bizarre title. I found her explanation to be that after her second miscarriage she kept having a recurring dream. I'll tell a condensed version, but in the dream a young Native American boy and her were travelling by car to a small town. Upon arrival they would find that everybody had died. As she struggled in the dream knowing so many people had died, the young boy (who she felt was her child) would say to her, "it will be all right. We can travel to another town and save the people." And then he would sing to her, just as you hear it in the introduction of the song "i i e e e"
I probably have lost many of you, but if you appreciate what I'm writing about, I hope you'll appreciate this song. What I find particularly moving is her sadness as she questions why God could allow something like this to happen.
I know we're dying and there's no sign of a parachute we scream in cathedrals why can't it be beautiful why does there gotta be a sacrifice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVb7xk4srkU So.... uh.... Happy Mothers Day to those moms out there! The only control I have over what I blog about depends on the music to which I listen. I didn't intend for my Mothers Day post be a sadder side of motherhood. Really I didn't. But does anybody, besides me, find beauty in sadness? I suppose I'm allowed to find vicarious sadness beautiful when truly I am such a happy person, not only because of a happy childhood (thanks mom!) but because of a happy adulthood (thanks mother of my children!) As an added bonus, I'm putting a clip of Tori Amos performing this song live. I can't get past her passion as she sings, it's intense and sincere. Also, I love her inhibition, her fearlessness to express herself with such intensity. Plus, playing the keyboard with one hand and piano with the other is particularly cool and effective to me. Have I converted any of you to Tori Amos?
Last night I was privileged (obligated) to chaperone (babysit) a group of energetic (obnoxious) Jr. High Kids during their cast party after a final production of a school musical.
Oh my, what a group of kids! Did I ever really have that much energy when I was young? My daughter was among them and I can't believe I'm really at this stage in my life, when I spend my Saturday nights ensuring that my daughter enjoys her Saturday nights. I admit, in a very selfish way, it was hard to be there- not only because it was work (the group made 'The Lord of the Flies' look like a children's book) but it took me back to a time when I was even more insecure, uncertain and terrified- who knew these types of anxieties would never go away.......
....but seriously, it was the worst in Jr. High, and I got a taste of that last night at this party. And I had my own level of anxiety when I was nominated as the person who would be in charge of the music and karaoke. I like that people trusted me with the music but as much as I love music, I hate electronics (the fact that I can even put together a blog post each week is a miracle) and being the one in charge of making sure the sound system worked while kids sang karaoke was very stressful for me. Good thing I take medication for my anxiety.
Anyway, have you ever just used YouTube as your source for karaoke music? It totally works! We even got some pretty obscure requests for songs and I was able to find them on YouTube as karaoke. (Have you noticed I'm using a lot of paragraphs in this blog post? Well I am, and I'm going to continue doing it.) So..... I know how my musical brain works in the mornings after blogging like this for over 2 years, and last night I was certain that one of the songs sung during the party would be stuck in my head today and I was right.
Today's song is from the musical "Wicked." I've never seen it, but I kind of know that it's about the Wicked Witch of the West (from 'The Wizard of Oz') before she became a wicked witch. This song is performed between the wicked witch herself and Glinda the good witch (are you still with me?) who have become friends and ultimately changed each other's destiny for having become acquainted.
It's a clever little song and makes you aware of how strange the term "for good" is in the English language. In the song each character says "I have been changed for good." In my interpretation, one character (Glinda) takes the literal sense of the term and has changed to be a better (good) person. The Wicked Witch of the West's words indicate a more figurative (more common) use of the term, she has changed forever for having experienced what she has. I've heard this song for years but I've never really paid attention to the lyrics. It's a good song.
So, as a group of girls was singing this song in karaoke (and falling behind with the music, forcing me to prompt them find the timing of the song) something strange happened: This group of girls started crying almost hysterically- feeling emotional at the idea that Jr. High was ending soon and they had deeply impacted each other as friends. The cynical side of me had to scoff at their moment a bit, knowing that life had so much more in store for them than the friendships (enemies?) they make in middle school. But we all let them have their emotional moment and what seemed like an eternity passed and we moved on to "The Eye of the Tiger" from ROCKY and the group was back to its rowdy, obnoxious self.
I thought I would be a cool parent, but I guess I'm not since I constantly told this group to shut up, stop throwing things, and pick up their trash. Yes, I'm THAT parent, and I suppose it's karma since I know that I was (most definitely) THAT kid who drove parents to drink with hyperactive, disrespectful behavior- but I digress.
Who's still with me? This is getting long.
So, the party ended and I survived a vicarious reminiscence of life in Jr. High. I suppose this is my life now, and I'm very sorry (grateful) for it.
And dear readers (I know there aren't many of you) but I was put to shame last week when I asked for performance requests for this week's post (seriously, people who read my blog ask me all the time when I'm gonna perform with the kids on this blog again (it's been a long time) and so I offered to do it here this week based on requests (comments) made on last week's post ) and didn't get any comments (requests) so I guess you won't be getting a performance of this song, which is too bad because I know that my wife and my teenaged daughter would have rocked it.
(This is a long and obnoxious post. I'll stop now)
