Three Dog Night - Eli's Coming

The a-typical gender roles and overall dynamic in my family is weird. Most families are weird. I consider mine the weirdest, but probably because I’m in it.

A little overview before the story.

My dad is more like my mom. My mom is very dude-like. My dad is the homemaker. Despite the fact that up until he retired a month or two ago and made 4 times what mom makes, he was still the housewife. He cooks, cleans, does laundry, etc. still finds time to build porches and paint the house, all that good stuff. Mom, still works whatever hours she wants (she owns her own business) is very misanthropic. Has no friends, doesn’t want any friends. Growing up in such a large family, mom would now rather spend the rest of her life alone and quiet. Dad was an only child and craves love and attention at all times.

Growing up mom worked Saturday mornings. I can remember times before I started going to school (pre-kindergarten) where mom would do things with us (movies, swimming, etc), but what I most remember about growing up is my Saturdays with dad. Throughout the 80s, my dad drove a little Toyota truck and every Saturday morning my brother and I would pile up in the truck and fight over who got stuck in the middle while dad ran errands.

In the house I spent the early 80s in off Lake Wheeler road, (the house my engineer dad and his buddies actually built,) dad was forever building and home-improving. One of the biggest projects I can remember is the stand alone garage and workshop he and a friend built over one summer. The majority of our Saturday errands were trips to lumberyards and home improvement stores. Back in these days there was about 2 different home improvement stores in Raleigh and neither were big chains. One I remember very clearly was off capital blvd and is now a u-store-it kinda place. The day would always lead us to one fast food establishment or the other, sitting on the tailgate of the truck eating lunch. certain places will always stick out to me; the Hardee’s off Walnut Street in Cary. Arby’s on Hillsborough Street. Char-grill on Hillsborough. Although I have probably eaten at these same crap shops 1000 times since, I still think of dad, Kyle and I and being little and the grey Toyota truck.

There are 2 consistencies about these Saturday morning errands. A) Fighting over who got stuck sitting in the middle and the consequential ‘punch-bug’ fights that would ensue and B) my dad’s cassettes. Dad was always a music/vinyl junky. I owe my entire musical obsession to him. I owe to those Saturdays the fact that I can harmonize with the Beatles. It was on these errands dad would teach us all about his music. Tell us stories about each song (sound familiar?) some of my aural memories are recollections of my fathers’ memories (Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit and Viet Nam flashbacks, for example.) These Saturdays are when I remember my brother and I fighting over who could name that tune in the shortest amount of time. Couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7, we moved from the Lake Wheeler house to Apex in 1985.

One particular errand I can remember was pitching granite rocks that dad found via a rogue pile of off Beryl Road near the arboretum. I’m sure he was driving along and saw this big pile of scrap granite and hatched a plot. He was forever stopping to pick stuff off the side of the road. Pocket knives, hard hats, paint buckets, forever having a use for them somewhere. So one Saturday we drove out to the rock pile and spent the day loading the truck and driving back to the Lake Wheeler house and filling in our old sand box (which ran the entire length and breadth of the back porch of this house) with these rocks. It took a few trips. I remember complaining a lot.

I can’t tell you whether this song ever played on that particular day or not. But it’s one of dad’s favorites. I can’t hear this song without hearing my dad singing along. There are a million songs like this, for some reason this one sticks out. Most Three Dog Night, Beatles, Steppenwolf, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, etc… songs are the same way. It was hard to pick just one, but I chose this one. Ironically my best friend had a son 4 years ago and named him Eli. I have meant to tell her specifically why that name meant something to me so many times and it has somehow slipped my mind until now. Every time I hear his name I think about Saturday mornings with my dad and brother and that little grey truck.

Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun

a typical friday's email exchange between my best friend and I.



-------------------------------------
From: Karla
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 9:14 AM
To: Jeannine
Subject: today's theme song

For many many reasons

ALSO JAKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bccKotFwzoY
-------------------------------------

From: Jeannine
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:18 AM
To: Karla
Subject: RE: today's theme song

I don't know why it's your theme song but I love Jake so I am happpy
yes, with an extra p
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From: Karla
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:21 AM
To: Jeannine
Subject: RE: today's theme song

I can break it down for you if you want, I am out of work to do and am kinda bored.
-------------------------------------

From: Jeannine
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:34 AM
To: Karla
Subject: RE: today's theme song

that would please me
-------------------------------------


From: Karla
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:52 AM
To: Jeannine
Subject: RE: today's theme song


This is quite literally how my brain works when I hear a song I so totally connect with, such as this one.

First; Precious tune. Love the drums in this one. My toes never stop tapping, no matter how many times I’ve heard it, which at this point has been many, many times. It’s totally happy, as most VW songs are, but looking at it on a deeper level, it’s a super bittersweet song of hope and all that. To me anyway. Obvs.

Next, this is what Ezra Koenig had to say about it, “I got the idea for the song from a book my Dad gave me called Giving Up The Gun. It’s a history book about the time when Japan expelled all the foreigners from the country, closed off all trade, and stopped using guns and reverted back to the sword. It seems unimaginable now that humanity could willingly go back to an older technology. It got me thinking about whether you could give up the things that you have and go back to a simpler way of life.” (From here: NME)

This song make me think about not necessarily giving up THINGS but ideals, irrational hopes and fears or expectations, giving up on a pointless fight or struggle. Specifically, and the reason it is today’s theme song, this song makes me think about Giving up/letting go of my dreams for Jim, but yet just because I am giving up on him, it doesn’t mean I’m giving up on love.

Ready for the breakdown, this may make it make more sense.



When I was 17 I had wrists like steel and I felt complete
And now my body fades behind my brass charade and I'm obsolete
- This makes me think about all the blind hope I had for true love when I was that young. No matter how funny I looked or how many times I fucked up, I still felt hopeful and complete. And here I am, 15 years later and I still think like that 17 year old and sometimes I feel like I should be ashamed of how I still believe so ardently. Beliefs like mine, as every experience thus far has taught me, are basically obsolete. Except in movies and pop songs. Also, I am obsolete to him. As of today I have not seen his face in two weeks. He has made no attempt to contact me. I don’t exist for him anymore and yet he has eclipsed the world for me... delicious irony!

But if the chance remains to see those better days, I'd cut the cannons down
My ears are blown to bits from all the rifle hits and still I crave that sound
- If I knew how to stop fighting so hard for the love I want, I would. My heart has been beaten to hell, but I still crave it. The fullness and joy and pain and anxiety and torture of falling in love. If I knew for a second that letting go and stopping the fight... (mental? Emotional? Facebook? Haha!) ...for Jim would result in the situation I want, I would stop fighting in a minute. And I’m beat to hell over him. I’m sore and tortured, but I still want him. Crave him.

Your sword’s grown old and rusty, burnt beneath the rising sun
It’s locked up like a trophy, forgetting all the things it’s done
And though it’s been a long time you're right back where you started from
I see it in your eyes, now you're giving up the gun
- My techniques are getting sloppy. I’ve trained myself for so long that ‘love works this way’ and ‘this is the progression of relationships’ that I’ve forgotten that, obviously, I am not in a working, loving relationship, so there is the possibility that i am wrong. I am so proud of my capability to love and my epically passionate beliefs and yet I keep letting myself forget how much it has hurt me over the years. I always walk so blindly right back into it. Every time I start, even with sweetjim, I start right back from the beginning, like it’s the first time I ever loved. Today, this song is inspiring me to try something new next time, to ‘give up the gun’ and stop doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. definition of insanity, anyone?

I see you shine in your way; Go on, go on, go on!
- This makes me think of you and everyone who knows me best and loves me most; Encouraging me to never give up; recognizing the things in me that sometimes I let myself believe are faults and then reminding me they are perhaps my best qualities.

The B52's - Love Shack

I am a gypsy. Although I have spent the majority of my life living inside the Beltline, I have moved every year for the past oh…. 6 or 7 years to a new apartment. A break back to my folks’ house once after a break-in at a house I once lived in off of Gorman Street.

This Gorman street house, although I didn’t make it there a full year, holds some of the deepest, darkest, most insane memories for me. Mostly these memories are centered on parties that reached epic proportions. This song, while played to death on most pop radio stations and holds a special place in the heart of everyone on earth for some reason or the other, makes me think of drag queens and Goths raging at 4 in the morning in that little green house.

What had happened was: I was living in Cary with my ex. We split up a year or two after we probably should have, and I decided to purge myself out of that apartment. (I basically pulled a Peaches.) I put out some feelers and much like every random hook-up I’ve ever received in my life; my mom’s mastery of word-of-mouth at her hair salon came through. I cannot tell you how many jobs, piano teachers, boys, apartments, cars, etc. I have gotten through my mom’s shop. A client of my mom’s, Ms. Hazel, had a house for rent. It was 3 bedrooms, old and busted, and only $500 a month. It took my dad and I a few Saturdays to paint, clean and fix it up to a livable condition (leveling the toilet, lying carpet, lining cabinets, you name it.) We finally got it move-in ready and filled that house with a bunch of adopted furniture and salvage from the NCSU lot.

I wasn’t there long before I realized I needed to have a housewarming party. I did. Not much longer, in the midst of a horrific depression, I realized I was broke, so I got a part time job. I wasn’t working the part time job long before I realized I needed to have yet another party, a New Year’s Eve party. Yes friends it’s THAT New Year’s Eve party. There are some people who have been in the scene long enough that *still* talk about this party. I used every connection in every scene and clique, getting the word spread, even handing out flyers at the store. 3 bands played. Every scrap of furniture or anything that wasn’t nailed down got shoved into a locked back room. I got a keg. I even bought chips and a veggie tray.
This is an excerpt from my long-lived and still kicking livejournal (began in 2000! Keepin’ it oldschool!) about the evening:

“…so alot of sh*t got f*cked up. one of my nicest turtles got broken. my coat rack got ripped off the wall. tons and tons and tons of beer spilt on the floor. assholes outside kept dropping their cigs on the ground on my front porch so theres like a million scorch marks in the outdoor carpet. im still not done cleaning up... not anywhere near done. im too tired.”

So many things happened that night. I met my first drag queen. Liquid acid was rampant, people still come up and tell me new stories about that night involving acid that I didn’t know anything about. (Talking to azalea bushes?) Lots of sexual deviances. Troops of hippies, Goths, punks, rock stars, frat guys, supermodels and pre-hipster-hipsters came through there. I managed to stay sober the entire night and the cops only came once to tell people to move their cars to the other side of the road. It went on until dawn and at one point there was a count of about 300 people inside and around the house.

My crowning achievement… my glory and hopefully my legacy in Raleigh will be this party and what happened after the bands played and the CD player got turned over to the PAs set up in the living room. The microphones were still on and ready for the loudest most ridiculous 3am karaoke jam in existence. After much Olive, Vengaboys and the like, the real “party” music started. I very vividly remember a goth friend of mine, one of what I would have at the time considered queen of the Über-goths, took the mic and sang this song at top volume while Babs, the S&M drag queen, danced with the hippies.

When I hear this song I think of New Year’s 2001.


Then I think about what happened after on Jan 21, 2001. (Made public for posterity. Please note I was 23 at the time. My head is hung in shame.) Needless to say, it wasn’t very much longer after that I moved out of that house.

(note: livejournal is now basically hidden to anyone not on my flist, so all you'll get to stalk of me there is a bunch of random youtube videos and other vague such things. enjoy!)

Claude Debussy - Suite Bergamasque, m.III, Clair de Lune

I have mentioned before in this blog that I was not a very active kid. While my brother spent the majority of his free time chasing his friends around playing “war” and climbing trees, I was hiding out in a corner with a book. I do remember playing outside and learning to ride a bike and all that typical stuff. What I think of most when I think of the old house and the life I lived there until the age of 7 is reading, the turntable, being scared of the dark and my piano.

I don’t remember asking or being asked if I wanted to take lessons, I just remember one day that my mom said I was going to start taking lessons. I’m sure I replied with the 5 year old equivalent of “oh. ok, cool,” which probably involved me flipping off couches and asking a million questions. I don’t clearly remember my first lesson, just bits of it. My first teacher was the wife of our preacher at the time, my lessons for the first few months were held at the parsonage. I didn’t stay with her long until my mom met the woman who would become the person I came to admire the most and despise the most for the next 11 years. Her name was Mrs. Hamme (pronounced hammy) and she and her husband lived off western blvd in a 60s ranch house with a car port that had a long sloping driveway, surrounded by trees. The driveway was at a sharp incline and had a bridge over a creek in the front yard. This was my favorite thing about her house. My second favorite thing was the pink and black tiled deco bathroom.

Playing the piano over the years, became the thing that defined me. It was the thing I was most proud of myself for being able to do but it became an obligation for me. My parents would request certain songs and I would pull my hair and overreact. I grew to resent it. I quit as soon as I could, it only took oh… 13 years? I was never one of those Ben Folds type people who could sit down and just make something up. I was trained so strictly by Mrs. Hamme in the classical style. I can remember maybe… 3 songs total that I ever practiced that weren’t some sort of etude, sonata, or fugue. I never chose my own pieces. In the last few years of study my parents would literally sit an egg timer on top of the piano and I wasn’t allowed to move for an hour, minimum. I never wrote my own songs, I never improvised. I never learned how. I met a man at the Landmark once who told me that since I couldn’t improvise that I only had ‘ability’ and since he could, he had talent. I laughed it off, but it crushed me. Because it was true.

Because of all this training and practicing and effort put into this thing, this instrument throughout my life, I was on a much more musically mature level than most of my peers. I had a deep and abiding love for classical music. Amadeus was and still is one of my most favorite and cherished movies. At any time I can be found listening to a mix of crappy eurohouse and opera. When my friends were raving about cockrock and hairmetal, and I was trying to branch out into some deeper roots, there was always Beethoven, Bach and Brahms on my playlist. It’s just been a part of who I am for so long. I am deeply attracted to classical music. That is the point of this.

One of the things I regret most in my life is not taking my piano playing to a further level. It became such a just… pain in my ass, towards the end that I closed the lid on the piano and didn’t open it again for years. However when I hear any song, pop or not, that features a piano, I imagine myself learning to play this song. I have lots of fantasies of performing like this. There are mix cds that I have made for myself in the past that were full of songs I wished I had learned when I had the chance. You would imagine that playing the piano is something akin to riding a bike, you don’t forget. I took a music theory class 2 semesters ago and I panicked the first few days of class because I was so mad at myself for forgetting as much as I did. By the end of the class, I was probably about halfway where I was when I left. It solidified in me the fact that I really, really need to get my own house so I can move my piano over and practice. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

This song; Debussy’s Suite Bergamesque, specifically the 3rd movement, the Clair De Lune, is a very well known piece, and is one of my absolute favorite pieces of piano music. I look at the sheet music and I know I can learn it, but I haven’t. (D-flat major! Christ!) I try to explain to people… my favorite thing in the world is “Bittersweet”… the feeling, the memory, the taste, the definition. My favorite feelings and memories are bittersweet. This little 5 minute piano tune is the truest and closest piece of music that I have ever heard that resonates who I feel that I truly am - the things that I really love in this life. When I die, it is the piece of music I know for sure I want played at my funeral. It is hopeful, it is sad. It has the smallest hint of drama and a deeper sense of peace than any song I have ever heard. And I've heard a lot of songs. It is everything beautiful in my heart that I can’t and won't ever let go of. It is the sound of every memory I thought would kill me but won’t allow myself to regret because these things made me who I am, and who I am has to be a beautiful person, right? This song is me saying "Life will not bring me down. No matter how much shit gets thrown at me, I will never stop believing in beauty, truth and love."

.... I may have tricked you a little with this post. You may have thought I was done there. This song makes me think about playing the piano, right? Makes me think about "life" ...Yes. But something else happened recently that has made my connection infinitely stronger to it, for the time being.

A few months ago, without forethought or hesitation I let myself fall madly in love with a beautiful boy. I was feeling pretty good about myself, the timing seemed right and he seemed to be crazy about me, so i didn't hold back. I rarely do. Things went really well for a while; we took a trip to the beach. Saturday morning, I woke up early, around 7:30am and couldn’t sleep anymore, so I rolled up my jeans, stuck on my headphones and took a walk on the sand, down to the pier. I sat on the pier and I stared out at the water and I let my iPod shuffle itself silly, and then suddenly this song came up.

I asked my best friend earlier today if she had any suggestions for what I should write my next post about, because I wasn’t really inspired. I was sitting at my desk earlier and this song came back up again and I knew this was it. This was something beyond inspirational and bittersweet and raw, how could I not do it?

Listening to this song today, after the boy and I are no longer together, has been an altogether different experience. After a messy end, including a lot of tears and denial from me, today it takes on a different level of bittersweetness, but that morning on the pier I was in another place. I remember sitting there and praying, thanking God that I found him. That when I went back into that room, that amazing person would be there waiting for me and he would be happy to see me. And he was. The bittersweetness on that pier was all the trials and pain it took for me to get there. The reward I received in the form of him. The justification and happiness and acceptance of my journey.

That morning, I very specifically remember praying: “Even if it only lasts a minute and there’s hell to pay, I am happy right now. Thank you.” The bittersweetness I feel when I hear it today is the acceptance of that prayer. It was only a minute. There was hell to pay, but god damn it was worth it. The pain subsides, the memories that remain are gorgeous.

Elton John & Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” - John Lennon



An over-active imagination for a child can be either a blessing or a curse. If a child was to never learn to control this imagination, to distinguish reality from the fantasy land in their heads - this would be a curse; this would be me. When the fantasy that a person makes up in their own mind becomes literally painful to let go of, this is bad. most kids learn how to let this go. I held on voraciously. It is one of the things I like most and least about myself. when I think of where it all started, this black and white perception of reality that I seem to have, my all or nothing personality, I have no one but Elton John to blame.

To explain:

Growing up in the little ranch house near Lake Wheeler, It was me and my brother surrounded by kids I had trouble connecting with because I couldn’t play regular kid games. I wanted to play “house” or “stories”, wherein I would create some elaborate set-up, epic love story or something involving shipwrecks or space shuttle launches. When my friends would get tired of me being so bossy and trying to direct the action of the story, they all wandered off to climb trees or ride bikes and I retreated back inside to my real friends; my 7” vinyl collection and fisher price portable turntable.

I don’t remember who bought all these vinyls for me, if I adopted them or they were picked up at flea markets, they were just there. I do remember buying a few with my allowance, but the rest of these singles, of which there were and still are stacks of them, I hoarded and multiplied. Titles I would have never thought to have picked out for myself but played over and over again because I could control them. Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” and The Beatles “Revolution” are a couple of the ones I remember playing the most.

I remember sitting on the floor of my living room with my headphones on, listening intently with my hand on the dial of the receiver of that huge Kenwood stereo my dad had back then. I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, so this is 1982-ish. I can very clearly remember formulating this theory that seemed completely rational to me at the time, which was that for every song on the radio, the Band or Musician had to be in the studio set up and ready to play each song. For the same song to play on two different stations meant the band had to move very fast and hopefully the radio stations weren’t very far away from each other. This is why musicians were paid so much for what they did and had such big fancy houses like Graceland; so much work! This is when a child’s overactive imagination is a blessing because it’s adorable to look back and laugh at myself for this.

Around this same time, I very vividly remember dragging the portable turntable into my brother’s room and playing Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” on 7” vinyl over and over; dancing/spinning in circles. (I had a constant habit of spinning in circles to music as a kid. This lasted way into my early teens. I apparently was a whirling dervish in my past life.) I very suddenly had a very vivid realization of the true meaning of the song… The man was singing, quite literally about his heart breaking. This singer was having a heart attack. This somehow translated into some sort of Frankenstein situation whereupon the Man singings’ heart has been broken and the woman sings “I’ll give you my heart” and therefore some sort of post-modern promethean heart transplant takes place. I then spent the remainder of the afternoon staging and perfecting the stage production or perhaps music video of this song, acting out both parts on my own. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up and dropped that needle that day. I played both the donor and the donee, there was dancing, props, the works. I can still quite literally remember dance moves to certain parts of this song. This was the first time I ever did this to a song. Now this all I do to songs. Damn your lyrical prowess, Bernie Taupin!

Here is the curse of the overactive imagination. One would assume as a child, such daydreams with any activity, musical or otherwise, are normal or encouraged. However, it became a type of compulsion and expectation for me that remains to this day. My favorite songs all have choreography or a story/music video in my head. The best songs are the ones that have me starring as the lead singer, perhaps on stage. This entitlement I seem to have to these songs, the trigger in my head that won’t allow me to listen to a really good song without spacing out and creating the story in my head that best fits it, causes me to sometimes become what others would perceive as abnormally attached to certain songs. Or even certain bands. There are songs that border on absolute obsession for me because the story is so emotionally and personally strong in my mind that I have laid claim to them.

My overactive imagination married me to this ideal of only songs that are worthy of a story are worthy of a place in my heart. There are many, many songs with many, many stories. Some of them are true, some of them are what I wish were true. I created this blog to keep up with the true ones. The rest are stored in reserve on my external hard drive and in my noodle.

This is the song that started it all. Thank Elton.

Daft Punk - TEACHERS

One October, many years ago after working by day as an accounting clerk for a local university for several months and finding the transition to a once-a-month pay schedule a bit of a purse stretcher, I decided to seek out a part time job. I knew I didn’t want to do anything that required a nametag or a training video. I casually applied to several locally owned independent books, video and music stores, one of which was a now non-defunct indie store called “the record exchange” at mission valley shopping center. I wasn’t expecting much of a response. Applying for “cool” jobs so close to a major university is a total crap shoot. It shocked me when I got a call for an interview a few weeks later. It was, in fact, my favorite interview of all time. All my soon-to-be-boss and I did was sit and talk about music for over an hour; favorites and shows we’ve seen. I got the job.

For the next 4 years or so I worked 20 hours or more a week, but I use the term “work” loosely. It was your standard retail store for all intents and purposes. We had daily checklists (pull old flyers from the windows, empty trash cans, etc…) but the majority of our time there was spent talking shit with customers and ourselves, going to shows with free tickets, hoarding vinyl, and scoping out promos. Some of the friendships born from the people to whom I sold music we mutually liked are still going very strong to this day, 10 years later.

When I left the store, it wasn’t pretty and isn’t relevant to the story. It wasn’t long after I left that the store sold out to a chain in Virginia and closed up and turned into a comic store, which failed after a year. The store sits empty to this day.

Over the years that I worked at the Record Exchange, a number of coworkers came and went, and there were about 3 of us that remained the entire time I was there myself, my boss and another part timer included. One of these gentle music obsessed souls that floated in and out of my life was a kid named Jade. He was Pilipino and a local house DJ. I can’t remember why he worked there for so short a time, I think he was one of those that just randomly didn’t show up one day. I don’t hold this against him, he was a cool kid. He was the one that told me about the edit of Phantom Menace that had JarJar Binks completely eliminated. This kid still has to be around town here somewhere, but it’s been so long, I wouldn’t probably know him if I saw him.

There was an order to the way things worked at TREX. We had a wall behind us that had a “now playing” rack. The rules were that we were supposed to pick 5 very different cds and put them on shuffle. If Jeff, the boss, was in store, then this is what you did. If he wasn’t, then the rules changed. They became, "whoever came on shift first had dibs." So say I come in at 4 and you came in at 5, I had enough time to scour the used cds and find every U2 and Erasure cd or something and you were screwed until close. I got stuck with a lot of crappy music that I eventually came to really like in this way. I would have never given Dave Matthews or Mindless Self Indulgence a chance before they were forced on me. Now I know to give any band 2 minutes to impress me.

However, when working with Jade (we called him Jader, as in Darth,) as he was a DJ, he was one of the few, if not only coworkers with whom I had a total rapport with musically. We spent a lot of time playing house music and bopping around the store, flashing the lights off and on, faking raves.

Daft Punk’s homework came out in January of 1997. We got an advanced copy a few months eariler that Jader and I literally fought over. We compromised by not shuffling the disc-changer at all and playing this album back to front, over and over for our next few shifts together. Jader was the only other kid I knew who knew the DJs/Artists listed in this song.

For example:
Jammin Gerald
Little Louie Vega
Green Velvet
Joey Beltram
Derrick Carter
Armand Van Helden


When I listen to “Teachers”, I think of the first person I knew who knew what I knew: Daft Punk is king and Homework is perhaps one of the best albums EVER.

I also think about this weird/awesome dance Jade did to this song across the store once, no idea how to describe it, so I’ll just say what I said and leave it at that.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

created: Friday, May 29, 2009, 11:36:39 AM
modified: June 26, 2009, 2:30:24 PM

This is going to be a round-about way to get my point across here, but try to keep up.

When trying to think through how I was going to start this off, this was my actual thought process:

- I love Michael Jackson, I don’t care who knows it.
- Why would anyone condemn an artist for his personal life when his music is so amazingly funky?
- It’s not personal, it’s business. Meaning, I don’t care what he does on his own time, as long as ‘PYT’ and ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough’ remain on permanent rotation on my iPod.
- That makes me think of “You’ve Got Mail” which was; let’s admit it, a precious movie.
- I don’t want people to think I got my “it’s not personal, it’s business” philosophy from a movie, but it will help to add perspective to the situation.
- I think MJ is a strange person, but I don’t think he is a criminal. Regardless of my vague opinion of his personal life, I will always love him because he is the funkiest human being in the universe.
- I have more memories associated with Michael Jackson than most any other artist, because Thriller came out when I first started obsessing over music.

This last point segue into my original reasoning for choosing Billy Jean as the maidenhead MJ post, they may be more, or I may be able to fit it all in this post, in a roundabout way.

In 1983, MJ released thriller. We were kids; we were obsessed with it, like most everyone in the country at that time. I was in either Kindergarten or first grade at the time. This album was the first of many that I took with me Show and Tell. I brought the vinyl in to show the class the amazing photograph of Jackson lying on his side, clutching the baby Bengal tiger. But mostly I wanted to show off how awesome I was for having this new and exciting release. (This was then followed by Showing and Telling of Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” and The Police’s “Synchronicity”.)

Shortly after I showed off the album (or either it was soon before?) was the Motown 25 special wherein MJ dazzled the universe with His Moonwalk. The next day, we kids were in a frenzy. The entire day was spent talking about sparkly gloves and falling over ourselves in an attempt to recreate this magic backward-ness.
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This is where I stop and pause. I have a tendency to start a post for this blog and then stop for a couple days to make sure I am remembering everything I mean to say about a particular song. In this instance, I started this post a little less than a week ago. Last night, we lost our king. I am so bewildered and so unbelievably sad about this tragedy. At this point, no one knows the circumstances surrounding his death, and I doubt I will be deterred by whatever the reasons may be, controversial or not.

Yesterday, I sat with a table of friends, all about the same age as me, some up to 5 years younger and 4 years older than me. We were all, technically, children of the eighties, why was I the only one who was so obviously upset by this? I was watching the streaming report on cnn.com when the coroner made his official announcement that he was gone. I began to cry. Everyone looked at me like I was a special needs kid. I didn’t really care too much about that. I called my one true friend who knew how upset I was and knew exactly why. I tried, very calmly, to explain to my boyfriend why I was upset. This is the paraphrasing of why. These are the things my best friend already knows. This is why I love her.

I started to explain this a few paragraphs up… and the whole purpose of this blog in general should explain, that I was a child who was greatly influenced by music. My entire life has been a “musical journey”. I have a passion. I may not be a musician myself, other than playing a few instruments for personal pleasure, and I may not be a painter or a photographer, or an artist in a traditional sense, but I consider myself a person who takes great pleasure from the aesthetics of life. The main cynosure of my pleasure receptors for the appreciation and obsession of the arts is primarily focused on music. I find the greatest pleasures, pains, passions, experiences, loves, hates, and most significant moments of my life have been a great soundtrack composed by the men and women who created these masterpieces just for me. My heart is in this goofy little blog. My heart is in the songs. My heart is with the artists.

There is the simple beginning. My father was a music nut. We played records, rather than watched Saturday cartoons. Dad would quiz me on bands like Steppenwolf and the Four Tops to amuse his buddies when I was 4 or so. Dad was the one who let a 7 year old me stay up to watch the first ever MTV awards until 11pm. It was dad who helped me buy my first ever vinyl, Thriller, and dad who bought me my first ever CD, Dangerous. I grew up with Michael Jackson. In a long line of musical passionate responses, my first realization that music was more than just a “thing”, was the way my body, my toes responded to Billie Jean. I never forgot that, and I never forgot him. I was never not a Michael Jackson fan. Even through all his personal drama, I always knew his music would never let me down.

I can remember when Thriller (the video for the song) first came out, and the special about its making, came on MTV and how it played all day long. I can remember when the same thing happened for Black or White. I can remember so many performances, so many videos, so many songs I knew as well as myself. So many funky, just technically perfect pop songs. So many people overlook the beauty of pop music. How a good, happy song, just for the sake of hearing a good song that makes your head bob, changes your mood. This all round-abouts into my (and Oscar Wilde’s) argument about art for art’s sake. Just because a song isn’t profound, heartbreaking, life-changing, doesn’t mean it’s not a good song. Some songs are just awesome because they are awesome. This was Michael Jackson’s music for me. He was an amazing artist and performer, and his music was great.

I am sad because so many people forgot this and it took his death for the american media remember that they loved him. So many people forgot how amazing he was and let the media destroy him. I can’t imagine the hell his personal life has been for the past few years. I pray he is at peace.

Public Enemy - Fight The Power

Fisher-price’s my first activist song. For me, anyway.

Picture it: Fuquay-Varina, 1989. I’m 11 years old in 5th grade. I suddenly find myself shunning Debbie Gibson and turning to EPMD, BDP and the D.O.C. Much to the confusion and concern of my family, the pre-teen, chunky, red head girl hiding in her room suddenly found herself relating more to angry adult black men. Maybe it was because I felt oppressed myself… I was awkward, overweight, always hiding in books and didn’t play sports. I started learning about MLK and reading the autobiography of Malcom X. I found myself becoming overwhelmed with injustice. I was preoccupied with the baffling concept of racism and what the implications of slavery meant for our society. This was some heavy shit for a kid my age.

Around this time I started feeling like I was left out of some club. I felt myself being drawn to the black girls in my class. All we really had in common was our love for Mariah Carey and the Rude Boys, but I made it my mission to sympathize and make some sort of stride towards racial harmony in my podunk town in rural NC.

It was around this time I started clashing with my parents. I grew up with my parents throwing racial slurs around like action verbs, thinking nothing of it. I remember once sitting in the car at a pier at Carolina Beach. We were waiting for my brother to buy something inside. My mom and dad in the front seat, a couple walks past; black guy, white girl. My parents both grumble and make comments like “such a waste…” my mouth falls open. I remember it being the first time I stood up to them. I said something to the effect of “that’s really fucked up. You can’t help who you love.” And I got the “We will disown you if you ever bring home a black guy” speech.

(Aside: This is extremely ironic and completely unplanned… I am now in a deeply committed relationship with an Asian man. It took me several months to tell my parents. When I finally did, my mom said, “as long as he isn’t ‘B’.” She couldn’t even say “black.” I wish just once I had fallen for some black dude, just to challenge them. But I never did. Alas.)

Anyway, I digress… I was 11 or 12. I was suddenly opening my eyes to the world. I was expanding my socio-empathetic nature; I was burying myself in oppression and listening to more Marvin Gaye, U2, Peter Gabriel and Public Enemy. I started debates and straight up fights in my English and Social Studies classes. I started questioning authority way too early. When I think about all this, I am disappointed in the fact that I’m not some sort of great revolutionary leader. Is it ever too late? I have to believe it's not.

So when I hear this song I think about buying this tape, playing it in the car with my dad, him taking it out and telling me to get over it. I think about screaming at my PE teacher because he blatantly split the class into black and white for a football game one day in class. The day a friend wouldn’t talk to me because she told me I had an “A-T” (attitude) and I couldn’t understand what an A-T was and I thought it was a secret black girl thing, like a secret handshake into the club and I got even madder about how bad my ancestors fucked things up for me.

When i watch the video, however I mostly think… “what the hell happened to Flavor Flav? And Where the hell is Chuck D? We need him back.”

I also think about the space ghost episode where Space Ghost told Chuck D his favorite rapper was M.C. Escher.


Please Escher, don't hurt 'em!

Underworld - Dark and Long (Dark Train Mix) - a quickie

I have never heard this song where i didn't think about this scene in Trainspotting and how freakishly hot Ewan McGregor was in this movie.... FREAKISHLY. It was a role that sparked my mild obsession with soccer hooligans with shaved heads.

oh my!

David Bowie - Sound and Vision

I used to babysit a little girl named Michaela. Every Wednesday for a year and half, before I went away to college, Her dad would pick me up and drive me over where I would hang out with the 7 year old for about 30 minutes until she went to bed (which would take hours to finally happen sometimes) and then I would be left all alone in a house with no junk food or cable TV.

The dad was a dentist, the mom a nutritionist and every Wednesday they went to a couple’s counseling/prayer meeting at their catholic church and then would go out on a date. (They were really cute and very good to me.) But their house was boring as hell. This was pre-internet and they had practically no movies. They had a complete works of William Shakespeare and a miniature record collection of about 25 vinyls. I slowly made my way through each album, copying (onto cassette) each album I felt worthy. The only two I really remember were Lou Reed’s Transformer and King Crimson’s Islands.

After I had made my way through the record collection, after a couple weeks I eventually discovered that I could pick up NCSU’s college radio station, WKNC 88.1 from their stereo. This was around 1993, when their signal didn’t reach much further than the beltline, and I ironically only lived about 1/8^th of a mile from the family, but the signal didn’t reach my house at all.

I started recording hours of just random songs… songs by bands that I, as a 15 year old, had only just recently discovered… the sugarcubes, siouxsie, moz… after an hour or two of then, “current” songs, suddenly this one song comes on. I thought it was catchy and cute. I taped it. I was that kid in school who always had headphones on (not much has changed in that respect,) and I listened to the tape with this song on it constantly. But me, being brilliant and forward thinking, decided not to record the bit where they were talking, so I had no idea what the song actually was. I knew, by way of my childhood obsession with the movie Labyrinth, that the singer was David Bowie. I knew he said the world “blue” over and over.

I played the song for friends who I knew had even the smallest inkling of musical aptitude and no one had a clue. Flash forward a few years, tapes become obsolete. This song still followed me. I always kept an ear out. I never heard it again except for on that one tape. (Damn you, Google, for not existing 10 years ago!) I got so excited once, I found a Bowie cd with the song “blue jean” on it, I bought it. It was not the song. It was not a good song, in general. It was not a good album. I was bitter for a while, at that point.

For whatever reason, one day rob and I were at a borders way up in north Raleigh, and he buys Low. At this point, I am around 21 or 22 years old, and had given up on the song. We had recently watched The Man Who Fell to Earth, and he said it was music that was either in the film or meant to be in it. He bought it and put it in, in the car. 4^th song in, and I’ll be damned… there it was. I was so shocked; I think I had to pull off the road.

Since its discovery, I have heard this song no less than 4,877,992 times. It never seems to get old and every time I hear it, I am 14 on Michaela’s parents’ floor, making mix tapes.