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.
This week I thought about quitting this blog. But I just can do that. Not sure why.
Let the Elvis fest continue!
This song's week is The King's "Burning Love" which first appeared as a single in 1972. Like many of Elvis' songs, it's a cover of a country song written by Dennis Linde and first performed by Arthur Alexander who recorded it that same year.
I grew up on the Beatles, not Elvis. This is because Elvis was a decade behind my parents' teen years. I've never really listened to Elvis music- other than the standard songs which inevitably you will hear at one time or another.
A couple of months ago, I reluctantly tried out and accepted a role in a production of the Musical "All Shook Up." My reluctance to be involved in the production was related to having just finished one production and maybe a little toward my apathy when it comes to Elvis Presley.
Little did I know that over time, these songs, littered throughout this show, would begin to grow on me and incidentally weasel into my head. Being away from my kids while I perform is stressful and I worry about what it does to them. And I know what it does to the order of my life when I'm spending less time at home- the house gets messy and we get behind on "things" in the house.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is Elvis (even though he really wasn't much of a writer, so much as an iconic performer) was great and the songs he made famous are fun and are now getting stuck in my head.
"Blue Suede Shoes"was originally performed by Elvis on his debut, and self-titled, 1956 album. If you happened to buy this album in 1956, Blue Suede shoes would have been the first song you ever heard by The King! But if you were smart, you would have known that the song, although immortalized by Elvis, had actually been written and performed the year prior by Carl Perkins.
Here's Perkins' version of the song:
And here's The King!
And just for funzees here's a picture of me and the wife in this crazy, silly, fun show we're doing, "All Shook Up" at the Terrace Plaza playhouse in Ogden. Fun fact: Fake Leather doesn't breathe and wearing it as a costume under hot lights is pretty neat!
Today is a good song by my boyfriend Ben Folds with lyrics by Author Nick Hornby.
This is "Claire's Ninth" which lyrically tells the story of a young girl, named Claire (I've always LOVED that name) celebrating her ninth birthday with her parents who have recently separated. It's a sad song, but it a goodun.
Listen to the lyrics and love the music.
I live in a home with step-children. I've been around them a dang long time, long enough that we are pretty familiar (notice how the word familiar is derived from 'family') but I've been them suffer in deep ways by having divorced parents. It can be ugly- I hope we all deal with it pretty ok, but I know the pain is always there for them.
I know divorce is ultimately the final option for certain people and so I can't condemn it entirely- I know it's hard on kids though. I don't know what I'm getting at- I try to work at it and work through all tough situations with my wife. I think we have a good marriage and I am happy about it. I hope my step-kids love me even though I'm not biological- I know I love them.
I'm a couple days late getting to this, but Sunday morning I had the well-known 'Do-Re-Mi' from The Sound of Music stuck in my head, but the lyrics were a little different. I'll play the song for those who want to hear it and then explain what was going on with the words in my head....
OK! So.... I served an LDS mission in Rome, Italy from 1998 to 2000. I was 19 when I left, 21 when I came home. During that time, I served in 6 different cities (Potenza, Avellino, Rome, Carbonia, Ascoli Piceno and Cagliari.) I loved my time there and I made tons of friends, both those who were of my faith and those who weren't as well as loads of other missionaries.
In this post I'm giving a shout out to Dan Smith- we met at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah and ended up in the same apartment in Rome, Italy in the spring of 1999. We were immediate friends, and we still are.
So... I'm tangenting (not a word) a bit, but as missionaries we are taught something called "The Commitment Pattern" which is a tool to get the investigators we are teaching to really commit to do and try certain things as they are considering becoming Mormon. We used to jokingly call it "the manipulation pattern" which I guess is funny, even though I hope from the bottom of my heart that nobody I taught as a missionary felt manipulated by me! I'm going to list the steps in the commitment pattern and then explain their relevance to this post today.
(I'm doing this by memory so I'm sure I got something wrong)
1. Build relationships of trust with your investigators
2. Feel and recognize The Holy Spirit
3. Present your message- teach.
4. Find out- ask questions to understand what they're thinking
5. Resolve Concerns as they come up
6. Invite, using "will you" as a segue. "Will you attend church this Sunday?" for example.
7. Follow Up at a later date
At one Missionary Zone Conference, we were told to put a skit together for other missionaries- which was a fun way to break up the hard work we were doing day-to-day. Putting the skit together was right up mine and Dan's alley as we are both singers and creative people, so we worked hard to make a fantastic, hilarious skit. The end product made me really proud.
I don't remember all the details (this was nearly 20 years ago) but there was a part in the skit where we were making time to teach "The Commitment Pattern" to other missionaries, Dan and I played the teachers and began singing to the melody of "Do-Re-Mi"
♫ Let's Start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you Read you begin with 'A-B-C'
When you teach you Begin with 'B-R-T ♪ (Build Relationships of Trust)
Anyway, this went into the chorus of 'Do-Re-Mi' with the following lyrics:
♪Trust- is what you need to build"
"Spirit- must be felt and recognized"
"Then Present- the true message"
"Find out everything you can"
"When brought up, Resolve Concerns"
"Invite, Committing with 'Will You'"
"Follow up- A.S.A.P."
"That will bring us back to B.R.T....T!♫
Then we went into a choreographed dance section when we ended up in a circle holding hands, but adhering to mission rules, we placed Book of Mormons between the male and female missionaries so that they would be holding the edges of the book instead of hands!
Our Ragtag Group of Missionary Performers (I'm the one biting a tie)
So, who knows why- I've learned lots of things over the years and I've retained little, but for some reason, this parody we did on 'Do-Re-Mi' has always stuck in my head, and the lyrics were there Sunday morning as well.
I loved my time in Italy and this is a very happy and fun memory for me.
I hope this story was funny to some and not just some random, lame, inside joke.
