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.
I learned last week that singer-songwriter and artist, Daniel Johnston, passed away.
I first heard of Johnston when my cousin loaned me a copy of a DVD called "The Devil and Daniel Johnston." If you are a music lover, and like hearing stories about fascinating people, this documentary is worth checking out.
Daniel Johnston is an oddity. His singing voice is barely listenable at times, but his songs are sincere and sometimes littered with subtle brilliance. He was brilliant, and he had a lot of troubles. I'm not surprised to hear he's passed away.
I've always loved his hopeful song "True Love Will Find You in the End" although hearing it breaks my heart every time. I wasn't too surprised to find it playing in my head on this morning.
Here's the song:
And if you're more interested in hearing the song with a more commercialized-sounding voice, here's Beck's lovely cover of the song:
I had a really strange dream last night. In it, I was responsible for several monkeys. Maybe 50 or so. They were everywhere and impossible to manage. I don't know how it happened, but in the dream I somehow accidentally shrunk all of the monkeys to about the size of an ant. After they shrunk, they scattered everywhere, all over the floor and I did my best to not step on them. I remember looking on the ground and seeing chaos, as bug-sized monkeys scattered everywhere. How did this happen!?!? I panicked and looked around and realized that I had accidentally stepped on a few. I remember seeing a monkey through a magnifying glass as it agonized over a broken leg that I had caused by stepping on him. I saw a mother monkey weeping over her crushed baby. It was all so vivid.
Who knows why, probably because they saw me as a threat, but a few of the mini-monkeys started to climb up my legs, I could feel it as they used my leg hairs like tree limbs and climbed up, sometimes randomly biting me, or scratching me until they found their way up to my chest. It was an awful feeling and everything felt so real!
I did my best to gather the monkeys and eventually created a jungle-like environment with small bugs and foliage in an empty aquarium. It felt like the best thing I could do for them considering what I had done to the poor little apes. Then I started to think about how amazing it was that I had somehow created a new species and imagined what it would be like to actually set them loose in the wild! Would the mini-monkeys survive in a miniature world?! I'd never know because I woke up!
What a weird dream. One I'll never forget because everything about it was so vivid.
OK, and consequently, I got a song about monkeys by They Might Be Giants stuck in my head that morning.
Here's "One Dozen Monkeys" from TMBG's fantastic kids album "Here come the 123's"
If any of you haven't listened to TMBG's kids albums (they have four!) and you have children, take some time for both yours and your kids benefit to check them out. Here come the ABC's and Here come the 123's are both my favorites.
From the Musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"
"Magic Foot" is the name of the song, which the lugubrious (if you're a fan of the show, like me, you'll appreciate the adjective) William Barfeé sings about his magic foot, which he uses to spell out words in the spelling bee. I love this song and moment in the show.
