Day: May 28, 2017

Song of the Month: May 2017

“Fill in the Blank” by Car Seat Headrest

Thanks to Jan for featuring this song on her blog.  I love it so much. Lyrically,  I think it has the potential to be one of the go-to songs on the days when I need to buck up.  Musically, it hits a lot of pleasure centers, with the opening riff, the rough harmonies and that great double lyric part at the end.  The video is fun too.

“In the Long Run”  The staves

I also have Jan to thank for this song.*  The Staves have lovely harmonies, and also I love the content of this song.  I’m a big subscriber to the view that people will come back around.  You’ll see them again.

Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran

This will not be a song I purchase, because I’m going to get very sick of it very soon,  but this is totally a song of the month.  I think right now certain stations have this in an every-other-song rotational format.  It’s also being used in the trailer for Ferdinand, the animated film somewhat based on the classic children’s story.  In the trailer, they do not play the parts of the song about drinking, throwing up, smoking or kissing.  Mostly, they just loop the chorus.

I’m a sucker for songs that tell a story, especially a reflection-of-youth story.  “Summer of ’69” by Brian Adams, “Blood on Blood” by Bon Jovi, even “Jack & Diane,” before they played that Mellencamp song to death.  So this is a winner for me, even though I think it’s overly long and clunky in places, especially when he updates us as to what his friends are up to.  He has a lot of friends.  There are a lot of updates.  For how to do this a little better, see the aforementioned “Blood on Blood” where you get two lines: Now Bobby he’s an uptown lawyer, Danny he’s a medicine man / and me, I’m just the singer, in a long-haired rock and roll band.”  See?  Done!

I also am confused by Ed Sheeran.  While listening to many of his songs, the feeling I come away with is uncomfortable embarrassment. He seems to be trying too hard.  And I often don’t love what he writes about women.  Matt and I had a text message exchange about a one of his songs where one of Matt’s responses was, “That’s the song I was telling you about! She is clear with him about how she sees the relationship, and he writes a mean song because he wants to change things up and she doesn’t!”

I get the feeling that Mr. Sheeran grew up nerdy, but rejected the nerdy and now there’s this uncomfortable trying-too-be-cool vibe about him.  I’m also quite curious to know what he looks like in concert.  Does he dance around?  Stand still?  (I’m apparently not curious enough to pause what I’m doing here and google.)

*Jan.  Supporting this blog not only with comments, but also with post content!

Requiem: Fan, CD player

After I graduated from high school, I went through all my things and discarded large swaths of my childhood. I donated a big box to my friend’s father’s favorite cause.  They had a fundraising garage sale every year.  I also renovated an antique trunk to store all my important childhood things in.  I prepared to leave home, but I don’t remember doing much to prepare myself for college.

My mother did a lot of that.  The college sent a list, and that summer I would come home from work to discover things had been purchased. I still have the stapler she bought me, and I probably haven’t yet gone through the box of staples that came with it.

One of the things that we did buy was a fan.  I was thinking this was bought in Boise, but it might have been one of the items we waited to purchase when we got to school.  If that was the case, it came from Walmart, which was the only shopping option in Nevada, Missouri.  If not, I think it came from K-Mart.

And this was my fan, for years and years afterward.  When the weather cooled off, I disassembled it and put it back in its original box.  It was mailed back to Boise when I finished up at Cottey, and I mailed it from Boise to Amherst when I went to UMass.  Then it traveled back across the country in the moving truck when I left Somerville.
I haven’t used it the last few years. Matt brought home an oscillating fan from work that is in better shape, so I haven’t gone through the ritual unboxing and assembling.   We were cleaning out one of the sheds and I decided it was time to let it go.  Thanks fan, for keeping me cool all those hot and humid summers.  And thanks, Mom, for making sure I had what I needed for college.

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I was very resistant to the compact disk.  I loved records, particularly loved 45s, and hated how CDs took over and the 45s disappeared from the stores.  I hated that they were more expensive than records or cassettes and it drove me crazy that everyone made the switch. They didn’t sound THAT much better.  I didn’t start buying CDs until 1997, when my college boyfriend was getting rid of his old boom box (we might have still been calling them ghetto blasters then?) and asked me if I wanted it.  I said yes, and bought a few CDS.  One of them was “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Soundtrack Volume 1,” another was The Brian Setzer Orchestra, “Dirty Boogie.”To this day, I can’t listen to either of those CDs. I played them too often to ever hear them again.  (Though I still enjoy certain songs of Ella Fitzgerald’s from that album.)

I can’t say I loved this boom box, it was more of  a means to an end. But for the past decade I’ve felt warm feelings while looking at it, remembering the things I liked about the college boyfriend, remembering being young in the big city of Boston, cooking dinner and listening to my CDs.  There are so many things I don’t miss about that time in my life, but it was the time I was young, and I’m happy I got to be young, living in an old town, trying to figure my post-college life out.

There is an imagined parallel life that is running constantly in my mind. One where I got married and had kids when my mom did.  If I’d replicated her life, my daughter would be 12 now, and my son 10.  I remember being 12 and that things in my childhood that had always been there started to wear out and be replaced.  It felt weird to have new dishes when we’d always had the white ones that were wedding presents.  I think about how maybe that imaginary daughter would be astounded to see something leave that had always been there, something that she had spent her childhood playing CDs, before she discovered streaming.

Or maybe she wouldn’t have noticed.

Dead Relatives Tour 2017: snowball bush

The snowball bush didn’t do so well during the hard winter, it’s being propped up here and there. My grandmother loved snowballs, and when it’s in bloom and also Memorial Day, she gets a bunch on her gravestone.

We made the tour as usual this year, despite my Aunt Pat being under the weather.  Basil and Basiliki and George and Helen were visited, and then Matt met up with us at Verde Cocina for a delicious lunch.