Did I Write that?

Got up this morning at 4 am with a song in my head. This is one of the rare occasions that I just get up and write it. I liked it very much and have been singing it all day. Now I'm a bit worried that it's actually an Allison Krauss song. Oh well. It's happened before, with pretty good results. So sue me.






Update: Hubby says he doesn't know why I ever thought it sounded like an Allison Krauss song, and that it sounds like a Michele song. Also, it's been 12 years since I've written anything. At this rate, I'll have a CD in 120 years. Stick around okay?

Gitcher Geetars...

As many of you know, I plays me a little music. I used to play more back in the old days before kids and hubby and homeschooling etc. When I was in college there was an open mic that I frequented on Tuesday nights at a little bar near my apartment. I was a regular, and it seemed I wrote a new song a week and got up there and sang it. I usually sang it well, I can't say much for my guitar playing though, but I had to have backup, so I did the best I could with what little guitar talent I had. They called me "Bottom of the Bucket Newton" because the host would draw names out of a bucket to order the performers, and I was almost always chosen last. Usually the morose heroin addict with his battered notebook full of disturbing poetry was at the top of the list. He usually traded places with me, so that I could go on early. Most people were leaving as he was bloviating at 2 am. I guess he didn't mind, he wasn't really there at that point either.

After a couple of years I stopped playing open mics. Many things came together at that point to send me in a different direction. The first was meeting Hubby. I would take him with me to the open mics and he would sit there with a matchbook in his hand lighting one match after the other, watching them flame up and burn down. I thought he was trying to be all rebel-without- a-cause for me. You know, bad boy, leather jacket, fire.... Really it was a thing with crowds. Hubby doesn't like them, and he bore it in silence for me. He also had to deal with an ex-boyfriend of mine who would sit at the bar and glare at him. Not that Hubby couldn't kick his butt, it's just that the ex-boyfriend usually started crying at some point. That was just too weird. So he threw me over his shoulder and dragged me out of it all. It was all okay with me, cause he was sexy and stuff.

Funny little side story:

When I was still jailbait, and Hubby didn't know me, I used to sing in a band. We played a local club called Planet Earth fairly frequently. The bands would play upstairs, afterwards there was usually an industrial dance night downstairs. One night we were playing and began to smell smoke. We lost our crowd, but were never told to evacuate. Later we found out some moron downstairs had set a couch on fire behind the building.

Many years later, when Hubby and I were still new, he told me about his Planet Earth days. He used to frequent the Industrial Dance nights. He could put up with a crowd if he was stomping and pushing people around for fun. He also had a thing for girls who lined their eyes thickly and wore a lot of black. He told me one night, before the "music" started pumping, he was hanging out with one of those goth-girls in the back stairwell. Maybe the smell of leather and cloves made him anxious, because he was lighting matches and throwing them out the window unaware of the highly flammable couch below. Good thing I didn't meet him then. Not because I was supposed to think he was a moron, but because I was just 16 he was really cute.


Yes, it's a long story, but it's prelude to something else. I have this crazy idea about starting another blog (great way to treat an internet addiction, huh?). It will be a Tuesday Night Open Mic where folks can submit their own audio or video files for me to post. It needs a name first, then I can take some time and figure out the details.

So why Tuesday nights? Well that's just selfish I guess. I used to play the open mics on Tuesdays. Oh, and TV sucks on Tuesday night.

There were a lot of things I didn't like about open mics. Many would agree with me that you had to sit through a lot of crap before someone would get on and actually entertain you. That wouldn't happen in the blog world. I think people would spend their time adjusting the mic before they press record, and if you happen to dislike what they were playing, there's a little button you can push to shut them up. Then you can go to your own free bar, pour yourself a Sam Adams and fire up the next one.

Let me add something here. There are also a great deal of unexpected little gems at open mics. I remember Mindy Smith played at the one I did. She was very shy and unassuming and she wouldn't play her guitar. She used it as a cane. The first time I saw her, I thought, "oh no, here comes another asthmatic squeaker to sing a Janis Ian song." Then she started to sing. She did sing cautiously and quietly, but that was fine because the crowd had a good dose of the shut-up as soon as she had her first word out. That was probably another reason I stopped playing the open mics. I didn't want to be anywhere near her on the list.

Okay, my open mic blog needs a name. If you have any name ideas or suggestions on how to put the thing together, just leave them in the comments section.

Lagrima

It's not my best, but it's the best I can manage with the camera in my face, so I'll call it good enough. I like the name "Lagrima" it's a prelude to a longer piece I've never heard. Lagrima means "tears".

This is a pretty cheap camera, so the sound quality isn't great. I've downloaded something called Audacity that's supposed to prettify it a bit, but I'm not quite sure how to use it.

Bjork and Kitties in a Blender.

So well done.

An Old Song of Mine

One of my homeschool homies wrote an eloquent post about trains, and his memory of them, which got me thinking about them too.

I recorded this song (along with four others) in 1995. Actually Glenn and Jonathan Reynolds recorded it for me with their pal Doug Wienstein. I think I still owe them a case of beer. In 2002, Glenn put it on disc for me. In all the years between, I hadn't gone looking for the recording, because I tend to cringe when I hear myself. When I actually did listen to it, I thought it sounded pretty good. It sounds pretty good to me today.

I did have a tendency to sing everything a bit to loudly with a bit too much vibrato, and I think I tried to cram in a few more words than the song needed, and I could have had someone play guitar besides myself, and.....well, you better listen now because I will probably take it down tomorrow.

Since I can't find a way to embed it, click this here purple word.

What Ever Happened to Guys Like Stevie?

I'm so sick of hearing about bitches and ho's. Once upon a time, black music was for gettin' on your boogie. That's the way I liked it. Uh huh. So take a listen to one of my faves.

Can I Just Say Something?!

I'm just so freaking tired of my kids talking talking talking talking when I'm trying to tell them to do something, I could just put duct tape over their non-stop lip-flapping mouths! Or put superglue on their precious little lips and just smash. them. together.

Or I could do what Dharma doeswhen she gets really desperate and get out the broom and spin it around me in a circle and say "Out! Out! Out! OF MY SPACE!" Take that barking dog with you too! AND Get A JOB! But they wouldn't hear me because they keep talking talking talking.

Now, if you tell them to be quiet (with extreme prejudice) they start to cry. Then it's just crying crying crying. You can only stand the spray of your own spittle so much as you shush them for the fourty-seventh time in three minutes. Oh and they never hear you when they're crying.

Oh goodness! Now the dog is barking barking barking. I need a drink.

Once I get past the aluminum wonderbra, and the makeup, I so hear what this lady is saying. She must be a mother. God help her.



I'm just venting here. No actual children or animals were harmed in the making of this post, or even shushed, believe it or not.

On a good note, my niece just informed us that she is ready to babysit now. She may have a down payment on a home of her own by the years' end.

Found Nancy Sinatra's Website

Here's one of my favorites.

Desperado

Listen.


Here's the CD.

That Video Down There and Some More Ramblings About Gender My Husband is Sick Of

That video down there is by a band called Mika. I heard them on the local radio station and thought it was Queen. This got me thinking about Freddie Mercury and his quite palatable gayness. Except for the short-shorts. But that's just bad taste for any man, you can almost give him the gay pass for it. I would be more troubled by a straight man in short shorts than I would be around a gay man in short shorts. Could you imagine some guy in aerobics wear hitting on you at a bar? I can feel the Killian's Irish Red coming out my nose just thinking about it. Otherwise Freddie Mercury's gayness was just part of the entertainment, and he pulled it off in a fairly masculine way compared to some.

Strangely enough I will admit that Tim Curry was oddly alluring in Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wouldn't say he was palatable because the character was a bit disconcerting as well. Sex itself was a bit troubling to the teenage me who went to the movie with my sister. (Add to that the whole Rocky Horror Virgin thing, made me wish I had a fake ID, and some clue about how to mix something that would knock me out.) Anyway, he sure could sing in that corset, with the garter belts, and the fishnets.

Rock is full of androgeny. Robert Palmer, Roger Daltry (bee-ooo-tee-ful), Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Mik Jagger, David Bowie....I could go on and on. Girls fell all over themselves for these lovely guys with puffy shirts and ribbons in their hair. What is that all about? You know the straight guys did it because the girls loved it. Girls buy records. Girls fueled the whole Rock and Roll industry. As the music got harder sounding, the boys seemed to get softer looking. It's some Rock n' Roll sexual conspiracy I think. Someone in the industry got the whole psychology of attraction figured out. I don't really think women want to emasculate men, but maybe women want to see a little of themselves up there on stage with the testosterone.

None of this offers me any clue as to why I have a problem with female drummers.

P.S. I know I misspelled "Freddie" on that post. But heaven help me, this HTML bullcrap won't let me change anything. Well, so what your image of me as perfection incarnate has been a bit sullied?

Freddy Returns

Cringeing Through American Idol

I admit to never having seen American Idol before this season. Not a big admission, I admit. Anyway, I've discovered that I am a nervous eater. The way my kitchen is laid out makes it possible for me to stand behind the pantry door and eat Doritos and I can still peek around the dividing wall in the kitchen and catch half of the TV screen. That makes the train wreck a bit less gory. Now I need to figure out how to half-plug my ears while eating Doritos and poking my head out occasionally. This is also the method I've begun to employ when watching State of the Union addresses.

Wouldn't It Be Good

I was 11 when this song came out. Still, I had healthy little crushes on the right pop stars. No Nick Rhodes for me. John Taylor (Duran Duran) and Nick Kershaw (especially when he was in that video with the static suit, and not dancing around on British Solid Gold.) And I always thought, "Yes! It would be good if you were on my side. Even if it was for just a day." Still love this song.

Wouldn't it be good if I could post this video on my actual web page? Been trying for too long to set up an account on YouTube.