Kind of a catch-up day today, hence the title of the post. And if you don't get the reference, I can only strongly encourage you to watch The West Wing. Great show. Anyway, here we go.
* I swear the USB port in the back of my computer reorients itself to the opposite direction every time I need to plug in the cord that syncs my phone and my iPods. There's just no way I can always guess it wrong.
* I just had my house painted over the past two weeks. Before every room in the house was standard construction white, except for one bathroom I sloppily tried to paint years ago and an accent wall in the kitchen that was a particularly arterial shade of red that came that way when I bought the house. Now every room is freshly painted and looking good, and since the whole job wound up costing less than half of what I expected it would? I'm just getting warmed up as far as summer remodeling projects go.
* Cub Foods: Seriously? Who had the idea to get all clever and shuffle the aisles around? I knew where my stuff was. Target did this a couple years back and it took me a long time to get over it. Not cool.
* Since my home life has been overtaken with paint cans and drop cloths lately, I've been putting in some major screen time since there hasn't been much else I can do. I'm one disc away from getting caught up on the first two seasons of "Modern Family," and I'm already several dozen hours' into my second round through the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3. Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I'm a nerd. No surprise there. But if you knew what I had planned for my classes in the coming year, you would not dismiss my nerd powers so quickly.
* Is there a band the world needs less than Maroon 5? I would argue there is not. I'm not saying they're offensively bad, though they certainly aren't great. They're just completely unnecessary.
* Am I the only person who feels relief guilt when a huge storm front lights up the weather radars that interrupt network television programming, and that front misses my house by a matter of miles?
* I was reminded today that my little sister the high school soccer star played left-footed. This was because I'm left-handed (and consequently left-footed) and since she learned the game playing against me in the side yard when we were kids, she mirrored what I did. The things you remember out of nowhere that just knock the wind out of you when they come back... On that note, start watching my Facebook timeline for Relay for Life notices in the next couple of weeks. Go ahead and click on them and donate to my team if you'd like. Because cancer sucks, and being left behind when it takes someone is really not cool. The more money raised, but more baby steps can be taken in the battle.
* Okay, I'm not going to end on a down note. One of the highlights of my week.... The return of "Big Brother" to summer TV! I hate everything about this show and everyone connected to it, and yet I cannot stop watching. When I called Comcast earlier this summer to see how much it would cost for me to add a second cable box in another room (I didn't), I found out that adding Showtime would only cost me another $5 a month. I heard that and thought, "Hey. When Big Brother starts, they always shows live feeds on Showtime 2 late at night. It's summer. I'm up late. Five bucks? SIGN ME UP!!"
I'm not proud of this, but I'm man enough to own this for the weakness it is.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Pointless Observations 4: Minnesota's Greatest Hits
I’m old. Even if older people still tell me I’m just a kid and even if people usually guess me to be much younger than I am (I come across as very immature), I’m undeniably old. I know this because the music I grew up on isn’t just getting labeled as classic rock anymore -- it’s getting played on KOOL 108. They started calling it Minnesota’s Greatest Hits when they tweaked the format back in January soften the blow, but let’s face it: It’s always been the oldies station.
For the longest time, oldies meant music from the fifties and sixties. Back in high school when my best friend and I would drive around on the weekends, we’d listen to the “Saturday Night Classic Cruise” show. He really liked listening to the music, and I liked thinking that listening to songs from the American Graffitti era helped me project the illusion of possessing some kind of romantic depth. But to be honest, most of the time I would have been a lot happier with “Born in the U.S.A.” or “Pyromania” instead.
And so isn’t it great for me that now the hits from those very albums are getting played on the oldies station!! I don’t mind saying that KOOL 108 has become one of my go-to radio stations now, just because I know that most of the time they are going to be playing a song that I know and probably at least like, and just might love. I suppose if you live long enough, every song becomes an oldie (but not necessarily a classic.)To celebrate this inevitability, I’ve decided to listen to an hour or so of Minnesota’s Greatest Hits and write down whatever ideas or memories or opinions they inspire. You’re welcome....
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive
I actually saw them open for Van Halen on the 5150 tour. BTO was made up of four older guys (who were probably about the age I am now) who had apparently seen more than their fair share of backstage catering. They had a sense of humor about it though, and were selling concert t-shirts that read “BTO: Half a Ton of Rock and Roll.” As for this song, I’d like it a lot more if it wasn’t for that bu-bu-bu-baby stutter. Thing is, it’s not even a real stutter. It’s an affectation! I remember Casey Kasem (the national pop DJ bridge between Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest, for those of you too young to know who he was) told me on American Top 40 one week how Randy Bachman faked that stutter to cover for the fact that he couldn’t hold a sustained note. The weird things that stick in my brain....
The Warrior - Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth
Seriously? Smyth? MTV killed this one for me. It’s not a bad song but I can’t get past two things about it: (1) The video was one of the truest examples of everything wrong that dates the 80s, and (2) the band was named Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth, when the album before, with their song “Goodbye to You?” They were just Scandal. There was nothing so great about Patty Smyth that made her deserve a separate billing like that. The change always left a bad taste in my mouth. Come on, Patty. Let a band be a band.
Hello Goodbye - The Beatles
Never been a fan. They have a few songs I like and I admit that a lot of my favorite artists were heavily influenced by them, but I just never understood the universal Beatle adulation. At least it’s a short song. Oh, wait, it’s not. There’s still another verse I have to sit through...
Hot Blooded - Foreigner
Foreigner was one of my musical bedrocks in junior high. I’m not sure how many notebook back covers I drew the cover for their “4” album on, but it was enough to master the cool bubble letter font they used in their logo. I didn’t get this song until the greatest hits package “Records.” Good song, but the guitar solo is lacking -- it’s just kind of there and doesn’t really compliment the rest of the song, and in the end it sounds like the guy playing it ran out of ideas of with another seven or eight seconds to go. The first time I heard this was when my cousin Dan’s band played it in his backyard at one of his brother or sister’s high school graduations back in the 70s. I had just started drumming so this would have been about 5th grade, and I thought seeing a guy playing on a real drum set was about the coolest thing ever.
Caught Up in You - .38 Special
Unless you were one of the Alabama fans who all seemed to work at McDonald’s in Elk River back in the mid 80s, .38 Special was about as close to country music as you were allowed to like and still be cool. I always thought their lead guitar player was underappreciated, and again, being a drummer, I liked that they actually had two drummers in the band even if I couldn’t figure out how they’d pull off two drum sets live. I actually bought this album and was a big fan of the cover artwork. If you’re curious, hit your search engine of choice and see if you can figure out why it would have appealed to a kid in eighth or ninth grade.
You Don’t Mess Around with Jim - Jim Croce
This guy was a little too folky for me to ever appreciate, but believe it or not my mother actually bought his greatest hits album on LP, and until my sister and I discovered Styx, it was the closest thing to a rock record in our house. Not that I ever played it much; this was back more during the days when I was busy memorizing “Gilligan’s Island” and “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns instead of listening to music.
Dream Weaver - Gary Wright
I remember hearing this a lot on the AM back in what must have been 1976 or 1977, when I started listening to the radio. Much like some guys will watch sports just so they have something to talk about when they get together with other guys, I listened to AT40 so I would have some idea what my older cousins were talking about. The song is a little too space-hippie for me, but it’s not terrible.
The Heart of Rock and Roll - Huey Lewis and the News
I really liked the band and the working class hipster image that seemed so bluesy back then but now seems less authentic when mixed with the dated eighties pop sound. I saw them once at the state fair with two of my high school buddies on the Sports tour, the summer between 10th and 11th grade. I know that because I remember this guy I didn’t like much complimenting me on my tour shirt during journalism class, even if it was a really bright purple. I was only able to buy that shirt because I may have sold an extra ticket outside the gate... Our tickets were for general admission so we waited nearly two hours before the show to get in and get good seats. And yeah, we were almost crushed to death when the gates opened. It was kind of scary.
Baby Hold On - Eddie Money
Never got Eddie Money. Good example of a guy who probably got a record deal from playing in a lot of bars. He had some good songs and even a couple of classics (not this one, because not every old song is a classic), but I don’t know how much actual songwriting he ever did. Anytime I hear Eddie Money now I think of a different song of his, which makes me think up a whole other memory from my college days. And not every story needs to be on the Internet.
Dream On - Aerosmith
Not my favorite old Aerosmith song. I’m not a huge fan to start with, especially since about 1988 when they started making a career of releasing different versions of the same four songs (power ballad, heavy rocker, mid-tempo swing rocker, occasional stab at demonstrating they weren’t slaves to formulaic pop). Now, Sweet Emotion? There’s a song. This one? Eh. This was the kind of song that if it came on the radio when I was cleaning out the garage on a summer afternoon? I wouldn’t necessarily enjoy it, but it wasn’t worth making the effort to change to a different station.
I’m Alright - Kenny Loggins
There’s no point writing about this one. If you try to say it doesn’t make you think of the dancing gopher from “Caddyshack,” you’re lying.
Summer of ‘69 - Bryan Adams
I LOVED Bryan Adams. When some of my girls asked me on the last day of school this year if I’d ever owned any clothing with neon colors, I had to admit my t-shirt from the Reckless tour had hot pink inside of the sleeves which was only visible when you rolled them up, and you can bet that I did. Bryan Adams was the first guy I heard drop an F bomb in concert, and since I was fifteen that was as cool as you get. This song opened side two of his Reckless album, which probably goes down in history as one of my thirty most-played album sides.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
Elton really suffered mid-career with a lot of FM radio pop songs. It made sense that decades later he and Billy Joel toured together because both of their careers started off with great songs, then they hit real creative slumps, then they had late 80s/early 90s comebacks. I bought the CD of this album just to have “Funeral For a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding,” but this is another of the good songs from that. It’s a perfect example for me of the kind of song I like for of the overall tone, because I still don’t really know all of the lyrics or what they mean. And I’m not curious enough to find out.
Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
I did my first teaching field experience in a 4th grade classroom at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. There was a girl in that class named Rhiannon. I immediately figured her parents had to be Fleetwood Mac fans.
Authority Song - John Cougar Mellencamp
I’m including the Cougar because it was still part of his stage name when this song came out. Not one of my favorites of his, but I do have more than a hundred of his songs in my iTunes library, so I guess I’m a fan. The thing I remember about this is how it demonstrates that I’ve been a rule-following little toadie from way back when. I’d hear the song and think, “‘I fight authority?’ Why would you do that? You’re just going to get in trouble.” Cool drum break in the middle of the song though. Usually a cool drum part is all it takes to win me over.
Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
For the record I’m hearing the radio single edit of the song, which is an abomination. I loved the power ballad album version, but when they remixed it into this mess? With the upbeat poppy rhythm guitars instead of the John Sykes crunch riffs and the saccharine keyboard flourishes and the dubbed in backing vocals? Of all the things Whitesnake should be deservedly embarrassed about, this version has to be at the top of the list.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Return to your day. I’m going to go try counting gray hairs.
For the longest time, oldies meant music from the fifties and sixties. Back in high school when my best friend and I would drive around on the weekends, we’d listen to the “Saturday Night Classic Cruise” show. He really liked listening to the music, and I liked thinking that listening to songs from the American Graffitti era helped me project the illusion of possessing some kind of romantic depth. But to be honest, most of the time I would have been a lot happier with “Born in the U.S.A.” or “Pyromania” instead.
And so isn’t it great for me that now the hits from those very albums are getting played on the oldies station!! I don’t mind saying that KOOL 108 has become one of my go-to radio stations now, just because I know that most of the time they are going to be playing a song that I know and probably at least like, and just might love. I suppose if you live long enough, every song becomes an oldie (but not necessarily a classic.)To celebrate this inevitability, I’ve decided to listen to an hour or so of Minnesota’s Greatest Hits and write down whatever ideas or memories or opinions they inspire. You’re welcome....
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive
I actually saw them open for Van Halen on the 5150 tour. BTO was made up of four older guys (who were probably about the age I am now) who had apparently seen more than their fair share of backstage catering. They had a sense of humor about it though, and were selling concert t-shirts that read “BTO: Half a Ton of Rock and Roll.” As for this song, I’d like it a lot more if it wasn’t for that bu-bu-bu-baby stutter. Thing is, it’s not even a real stutter. It’s an affectation! I remember Casey Kasem (the national pop DJ bridge between Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest, for those of you too young to know who he was) told me on American Top 40 one week how Randy Bachman faked that stutter to cover for the fact that he couldn’t hold a sustained note. The weird things that stick in my brain....
The Warrior - Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth
Seriously? Smyth? MTV killed this one for me. It’s not a bad song but I can’t get past two things about it: (1) The video was one of the truest examples of everything wrong that dates the 80s, and (2) the band was named Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth, when the album before, with their song “Goodbye to You?” They were just Scandal. There was nothing so great about Patty Smyth that made her deserve a separate billing like that. The change always left a bad taste in my mouth. Come on, Patty. Let a band be a band.
Hello Goodbye - The Beatles
Never been a fan. They have a few songs I like and I admit that a lot of my favorite artists were heavily influenced by them, but I just never understood the universal Beatle adulation. At least it’s a short song. Oh, wait, it’s not. There’s still another verse I have to sit through...
Hot Blooded - Foreigner
Foreigner was one of my musical bedrocks in junior high. I’m not sure how many notebook back covers I drew the cover for their “4” album on, but it was enough to master the cool bubble letter font they used in their logo. I didn’t get this song until the greatest hits package “Records.” Good song, but the guitar solo is lacking -- it’s just kind of there and doesn’t really compliment the rest of the song, and in the end it sounds like the guy playing it ran out of ideas of with another seven or eight seconds to go. The first time I heard this was when my cousin Dan’s band played it in his backyard at one of his brother or sister’s high school graduations back in the 70s. I had just started drumming so this would have been about 5th grade, and I thought seeing a guy playing on a real drum set was about the coolest thing ever.
Caught Up in You - .38 Special
Unless you were one of the Alabama fans who all seemed to work at McDonald’s in Elk River back in the mid 80s, .38 Special was about as close to country music as you were allowed to like and still be cool. I always thought their lead guitar player was underappreciated, and again, being a drummer, I liked that they actually had two drummers in the band even if I couldn’t figure out how they’d pull off two drum sets live. I actually bought this album and was a big fan of the cover artwork. If you’re curious, hit your search engine of choice and see if you can figure out why it would have appealed to a kid in eighth or ninth grade.
You Don’t Mess Around with Jim - Jim Croce
This guy was a little too folky for me to ever appreciate, but believe it or not my mother actually bought his greatest hits album on LP, and until my sister and I discovered Styx, it was the closest thing to a rock record in our house. Not that I ever played it much; this was back more during the days when I was busy memorizing “Gilligan’s Island” and “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns instead of listening to music.
Dream Weaver - Gary Wright
I remember hearing this a lot on the AM back in what must have been 1976 or 1977, when I started listening to the radio. Much like some guys will watch sports just so they have something to talk about when they get together with other guys, I listened to AT40 so I would have some idea what my older cousins were talking about. The song is a little too space-hippie for me, but it’s not terrible.
The Heart of Rock and Roll - Huey Lewis and the News
I really liked the band and the working class hipster image that seemed so bluesy back then but now seems less authentic when mixed with the dated eighties pop sound. I saw them once at the state fair with two of my high school buddies on the Sports tour, the summer between 10th and 11th grade. I know that because I remember this guy I didn’t like much complimenting me on my tour shirt during journalism class, even if it was a really bright purple. I was only able to buy that shirt because I may have sold an extra ticket outside the gate... Our tickets were for general admission so we waited nearly two hours before the show to get in and get good seats. And yeah, we were almost crushed to death when the gates opened. It was kind of scary.
Baby Hold On - Eddie Money
Never got Eddie Money. Good example of a guy who probably got a record deal from playing in a lot of bars. He had some good songs and even a couple of classics (not this one, because not every old song is a classic), but I don’t know how much actual songwriting he ever did. Anytime I hear Eddie Money now I think of a different song of his, which makes me think up a whole other memory from my college days. And not every story needs to be on the Internet.
Dream On - Aerosmith
Not my favorite old Aerosmith song. I’m not a huge fan to start with, especially since about 1988 when they started making a career of releasing different versions of the same four songs (power ballad, heavy rocker, mid-tempo swing rocker, occasional stab at demonstrating they weren’t slaves to formulaic pop). Now, Sweet Emotion? There’s a song. This one? Eh. This was the kind of song that if it came on the radio when I was cleaning out the garage on a summer afternoon? I wouldn’t necessarily enjoy it, but it wasn’t worth making the effort to change to a different station.
I’m Alright - Kenny Loggins
There’s no point writing about this one. If you try to say it doesn’t make you think of the dancing gopher from “Caddyshack,” you’re lying.
Summer of ‘69 - Bryan Adams
I LOVED Bryan Adams. When some of my girls asked me on the last day of school this year if I’d ever owned any clothing with neon colors, I had to admit my t-shirt from the Reckless tour had hot pink inside of the sleeves which was only visible when you rolled them up, and you can bet that I did. Bryan Adams was the first guy I heard drop an F bomb in concert, and since I was fifteen that was as cool as you get. This song opened side two of his Reckless album, which probably goes down in history as one of my thirty most-played album sides.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
Elton really suffered mid-career with a lot of FM radio pop songs. It made sense that decades later he and Billy Joel toured together because both of their careers started off with great songs, then they hit real creative slumps, then they had late 80s/early 90s comebacks. I bought the CD of this album just to have “Funeral For a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding,” but this is another of the good songs from that. It’s a perfect example for me of the kind of song I like for of the overall tone, because I still don’t really know all of the lyrics or what they mean. And I’m not curious enough to find out.
Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
I did my first teaching field experience in a 4th grade classroom at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. There was a girl in that class named Rhiannon. I immediately figured her parents had to be Fleetwood Mac fans.
Authority Song - John Cougar Mellencamp
I’m including the Cougar because it was still part of his stage name when this song came out. Not one of my favorites of his, but I do have more than a hundred of his songs in my iTunes library, so I guess I’m a fan. The thing I remember about this is how it demonstrates that I’ve been a rule-following little toadie from way back when. I’d hear the song and think, “‘I fight authority?’ Why would you do that? You’re just going to get in trouble.” Cool drum break in the middle of the song though. Usually a cool drum part is all it takes to win me over.
Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
For the record I’m hearing the radio single edit of the song, which is an abomination. I loved the power ballad album version, but when they remixed it into this mess? With the upbeat poppy rhythm guitars instead of the John Sykes crunch riffs and the saccharine keyboard flourishes and the dubbed in backing vocals? Of all the things Whitesnake should be deservedly embarrassed about, this version has to be at the top of the list.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Return to your day. I’m going to go try counting gray hairs.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Creative Whiplash
I haven't rambled about the manuscript for awhile. Here's an update on where things are, if anyone is curious.
It's summer vacation in these parts, which means back to grinding over the word processor. Vacation didn't start well this year, which actually isn't too uncommon for me: I don't always adjust well when going from letting my school life become all-consuming to waking up one morning and finding out that once again I'm back to being like the jet-fuel genius Tommy Shaw sang about in "Too Much Time on My Hands." Some years this existential whiplash really knocks me over and leaves me feeling depressed and aimless until I regain my footing. And since this past spring was one of the more consuming springs I've had in recent memory (to say the very, very least), I slipped into summer vacation as smoothly as a car speeding down the highway might slip into a concrete bridge support. So that first week off? Not pretty.
But! I'm over that ridiculous hump now and I'm biting off huge chunks of my summer to-do list with each passing day. Of course the biggest bullet point on that list is finishing off the manuscript once and for all, and man, I am so close to done right now I can almost taste it. Of course DONE is relative, but reaching this version of done will be big. I've just recently finished attacking a printed copy with a pencil and a highlighter, which was one of the last big steps I needed. Looking at the story on paper gives me a much different perspective than on the computer screen since I can't just scan my way through it as easily and carelessly. Also, since I can't edit on the fly I have to scribble down notes and take a little more time to think about what it is I'm going for. And now that step is finished, so all I have left is turning all of those scribbled notes into edits and revisions. After that I just have a few more very specific beta readers waiting to look it over, including one officer of the Grammar Police who will be giving it a merciless edit. Then I'll be ready to send it into the publishing world to seek its fortune, so to speak. And since I'm really only about a month behind the admittedly ambitious timeline I'd established last fall, I'm feeling pretty happy about being where I am.
So why am I pulling away from it for a few self-indulgent blog paragraphs? Am I procrastinating here, or is this really part of the process for me? God knows my process contains more than a small amount of attention deficiency, so even when I'm waist-deep in it doing what I know works for me it still feels like procrastinating... until I reach the point when surprise, surprise! Things have somehow managed to come together. Seriously, this stage is so sadly meticulous it's like taking ten minutes to write out notes on what I want two consecutive sentences to say, and then walking away from it to let my brain cook in a whole different direction for awhile before I'm ready to take those notes and build those two sentences exactly the way I want them.
Which is exactly why I'm writing this now: I'm letting two specific troublesome sentences percolate a bit, and sometimes thinking about the whole thing sideways like this is what I need to get past the roadblock. And now that I have a few unnecessary paragraphs out of my system, maybe something will be waiting for me when I go back to that file. Time to go find out.
...and for the record, anyone who isn't listening to Rush's new album "Clockwork Angels" these days is really missing out... just saying....
It's summer vacation in these parts, which means back to grinding over the word processor. Vacation didn't start well this year, which actually isn't too uncommon for me: I don't always adjust well when going from letting my school life become all-consuming to waking up one morning and finding out that once again I'm back to being like the jet-fuel genius Tommy Shaw sang about in "Too Much Time on My Hands." Some years this existential whiplash really knocks me over and leaves me feeling depressed and aimless until I regain my footing. And since this past spring was one of the more consuming springs I've had in recent memory (to say the very, very least), I slipped into summer vacation as smoothly as a car speeding down the highway might slip into a concrete bridge support. So that first week off? Not pretty.
But! I'm over that ridiculous hump now and I'm biting off huge chunks of my summer to-do list with each passing day. Of course the biggest bullet point on that list is finishing off the manuscript once and for all, and man, I am so close to done right now I can almost taste it. Of course DONE is relative, but reaching this version of done will be big. I've just recently finished attacking a printed copy with a pencil and a highlighter, which was one of the last big steps I needed. Looking at the story on paper gives me a much different perspective than on the computer screen since I can't just scan my way through it as easily and carelessly. Also, since I can't edit on the fly I have to scribble down notes and take a little more time to think about what it is I'm going for. And now that step is finished, so all I have left is turning all of those scribbled notes into edits and revisions. After that I just have a few more very specific beta readers waiting to look it over, including one officer of the Grammar Police who will be giving it a merciless edit. Then I'll be ready to send it into the publishing world to seek its fortune, so to speak. And since I'm really only about a month behind the admittedly ambitious timeline I'd established last fall, I'm feeling pretty happy about being where I am.
So why am I pulling away from it for a few self-indulgent blog paragraphs? Am I procrastinating here, or is this really part of the process for me? God knows my process contains more than a small amount of attention deficiency, so even when I'm waist-deep in it doing what I know works for me it still feels like procrastinating... until I reach the point when surprise, surprise! Things have somehow managed to come together. Seriously, this stage is so sadly meticulous it's like taking ten minutes to write out notes on what I want two consecutive sentences to say, and then walking away from it to let my brain cook in a whole different direction for awhile before I'm ready to take those notes and build those two sentences exactly the way I want them.
Which is exactly why I'm writing this now: I'm letting two specific troublesome sentences percolate a bit, and sometimes thinking about the whole thing sideways like this is what I need to get past the roadblock. And now that I have a few unnecessary paragraphs out of my system, maybe something will be waiting for me when I go back to that file. Time to go find out.
...and for the record, anyone who isn't listening to Rush's new album "Clockwork Angels" these days is really missing out... just saying....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)