You Want It, You Got It

It's been a few days since I posted. I figured I better get something up here again just in case someone is actually reading. Don't want to chase them off from a lack or absence of activity....

First off, it's worth mentioning why I've been so bloggingly inactive as of late. Happily, other writing has taken precedence. Looking at the color-coding system I have going in the folder where my chapter files are stored for the manuscript I am SO CLOSE to finishing, I see two chapters tagged red (meaning they are pretty close to done), six tagged green (meaning they exist only as fleshed-out outlines right now), and a whopping NINETEEN tagged blue, meaning they are more or less complete. We'll go with less here, because once I have all of the chapters finished up so I'm happy with them, I'll have to go through everything all as one big document to check for continuity and general first-look editing. But after that it will be time to PDF that baby and start sending it out to my Opinion Committee to get reactions. I don't expect much in the way of people saying to make any big revisions, especially since I really only have two people I know I can count on who won't pull any punches if they see something they don't like, but also because I feel this project is going to turn out strong. A reasonable estimate would be that I've worked on this project on and off for about fifteen years now. I think it's had appropriate time to gestate. My one goal as a writer is to someday be able to walk into my local Borders and see one of my books on the shelf. Maybe, just maybe, this one will make it happen. I think it has the right combination of quality and marketability that almost all of my other stuff has lacked.

Album of the Day: "You Want It, You Got It" by Bryan Adams. When I saw this had finally shown up on iTunes, I was very excited since I'd been looking for it for probably years. This thing is OLD. This is from back before anyone had any idea at all who Bryan Adams is, or was, depending on your definition of musical relevance... I was kind of leaning toward the 'was' myself before I decided I'd give him credit for not being dead. Even if his career kind of is. But back in the formative years, Bryan was the man. I saw him live...let's see.... four times? "Cuts Like a Knife," "Reckless," "Into the Fire," and then on an old-fart co-headline tour with Def Leppard a couple summers back. The first three times I saw him I really enjoyed his shows, but those tours were all back in that 1983 - 1987 window of time when people played him on the radio and bought his albums.

That fourth show? Wow. Different story. I really did enjoy the show. It was the first time I saw Def Leppard and they put on a great show. I saw the show with my cousin who is NOT the Secretary of State and his wife. It was at Midway Stadium just outside of St. Paul, an outdoor minor-league baseball field, which was the perfect place to see an outdoor concert on a perfect late July evening. My cousin was even introduced to the concept of a contact high, courtesy of the dude who stood behind us down on the field for about half an hour. The crowd was made up of 30 and 40 somethings out to pretend they could still rock like they were seventeen, but now old enough to buy beer. The babysitters of the Twin Cities Metro Area made out like bandits that night, I can tell you. Since we were in general admission, people were walking all around so you didn't get stuck next to the same people all night. I fell in love at least three different times during the show. There was one particular woman out with her girlfriends with these turquoise capri pants on... wow.... but I digress.

Bryan Adams really stole the show that night, if you take "stole the show" to mean that he found a way to take a stadium full of people out and away from the kids for a night and looking to have a good time, and then sucking all of the life out of them. I highly suspect he skipped his Metamucil that day, and it came across in his performance. I won't describe all of the suck for you, other than to say that about half of the songs he played were songs that NO ONE in the audience had ever heard before (songs from his "new album" that we didn't know existed). And, AND, he did the dumbest thing I've ever seen at a rock show -- he brought some woman up onstage to sing along with a song... and it wasn't one of his hits. She said she knew the song when he pulled her out of the crowd, and why wouldn't she because it got her up onstage. But when she couldn't sing it, even after someone in the band provided a lyric sheet, HE SENT HER BACK INTO THE CROWD. Then he asked again if there was anyone who wanted to come up and sing this song that nobody in the stadium other than he and the members of his band had heard before. He got another volunteer, and again, she didn't know the song, but she was at least drunk enough to give it a try and put up something of a flirty fight when he tried to get her off the stage as well.

He broke through with the Cuts Like a Knife album, but back before then the once-mighty KQRS -- again, the only socially acceptable Twin Cities radio station of my high school years -- played two Bryan Adams songs from today's album. One, "Lonely Nights," was one of those minor hits of the time that you might recognize if you're about my age. The other one, "Fits Ya Good," was more of a stomping rock song that hinted at a harder-edged Bryan than the heartbroken "Lonely Nights" and the mullet he was rockin' on the album cover indicated.

Having played through the album now, I can say this: Nephew #1 was in a band in middle school. They called themselves Silent Tyrant for awhile; I don't think that was their name when they finally broke up, but I thought it was kind of a cool name for a middle school rock band. Anyway, I saw a couple Silent Tyrant videos on YouTube, and I saw them play at a Battle of the Bands showcase they signed up for at the 7th Street Entry at First Ave. down in the Cities. I feel this makes me qualified to say that there are at least three songs on "You Want It, You Got It" that would not live up to Silent Tyrant at their best moments.

Outside of it's two radio songs and maybe one other one, this album is crap. I'm still happy I found it, because I know the 15-year-old me would want to see it in his adult music library. But one thing I'm finding out during the Album a Day project is that some of the music that you loved and allowed to define you in high school does not always hold up. More often than not it sounds dated and doesn't measure up to your memory of it's greatness. Prime example right here.

By the way -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ROCKS.

I'll also stick a Lazyman Update in here -- out of the 150.7 miles of cardio I'm supposed to do to complete this, I've finished 45.7 miles, which puts me about 1/3 of the way there. I went to the dentist today and had my blood pressure taken as a part of my visit. "Blood pressure looks good," is what I was told. Who would have thought exercise and health were related...?