I Hear Music

Random thought: It's really too bad Scott Bakula's so married. We could make beautiful duets together.

I have been in a hellaciously bad mood for two days now. A real get the hell out of my way, off my back, put up or shut up, who the bleep asked you, tylenol and wine doesn't work kind of mood. I don't enjoy bad moods. Don't think that's an obvious. There are people who revel in them. Many of them related. Not mid-westerners.

When I'm this pissed off and hating the world and my place in it, I want to be with people/persons who don't feed the nastiness. That's really all I can hope for. There are very few people who can actually diffuse me and only two of them are still alive, and (unfortunately) they're not at my beck and call.

Instead I find myself in the company of negative, sometimes downright nasty people who enjoy pushing other people's buttons. Oh, you get upset when someone uses derisive or prejudicial language? Well then, by all means, let's do exactly that and watch you get upset! What are you getting upset for? It's just a joke, lighten up. And, of course, I don't believe their goal is to reduce me to tears, yet it managed to happen. Not that I was personally insulted. I wasn't. It's just that I really don't feel that I'm a bad person, or that my standards and ideology are so 'out there' that they should be subject to frequent ridicule. People who get their kicks that way piss me off even more.

On a bright yet expensive note. Irish convinced me (I'm an easy sell) to get iTunes. Boy was that hard to not buy $300 worth of music in one night. I was in 30 sec. clip heaven (but what was Lynyrd Skynyrd doing in the Jazz section, I have to wonder). There was Mingus, Coltraine, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, The Monkees, The Partridge Family (oh yes I did!). Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Nina Simone...and I didn't even get to Barry Manilow, Abba, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald or The Allman Brother's Band yet. All this great music and what did I buy? Three songs by Laurie Berkner, the rock goddess of the pre-school set. Now if only there were an iPod to download to. Maybe for my birthday.

Speaking of which. Happy Birthday to our erstwhile blogfriend, Irish. I hope you get everything you want for your birthday. Including Shakira...

Come Fly With Me

It's Thursday night, the best night of the week.

Tonight's drive time music? Frank Sinatra, Volume I. But usually it leaves me in a better mood than it did this evening. Which is very rare. Frank always does the trick with me. I've been known to do impromptu tap routines whenever I hear it/him. Yet I couldn't quite get into the...bounce, I think...of the songs. Couldn't quite connect. I think I missed on the music tonight. Which is a perfectly good waste of Frank.

My 'barbershop buzz' is also missing this evening. I had a great evening, a really pleasant time. I love being there and the challenge is still fresh and...well, challenging. But as soon as I left the building (not far behind Elvis), the wind just kind of left my sails. No fanfare. No buildup. Nothing. And I didn't even notice it was gone for quite some time.

I sometimes get scared that the best parts of life will pass me by. Then again, I'm scared of my own shadow so what does that matter? Tonight I listened to women bragging about their 'barbershop husbands' and their close knit families and how sisters and cousins and aunts and in-laws all sing together in the chorus and even though I was surrounded by fantastic, friendly people, I felt very alone in the middle of the room. Well, the middle of the back risers. Where I need to tone down my physical performance. A compliment, really.

My mantra these days is: Life's too short. But that doesn't necessarily mean that sometimes the days aren't really long.

No point. Just observation.

Easter Parade

It's not really Easter for me unless I play a church service. And since nobody around here seems to want my services (piano, wise acres, piano), I'm taking my fingers back to Block Island where Anna and the Rev. Terry have been kind enough to let me come play for Easter service. It's not always easy for a 'big' service to say "Sure, we'll let you come play even though it's been 8 months since you have and we'll only get to rehearse with the choir on Saturday afternoon (and most of you know that's enough for me)". It really is very nice of them. Yes, I'll be the only one from my family in church that Sunday.

Rumor has it, though, that I'll be at Soda on Friday for Open Mic Night. For those of you in mid-western climes, I'll be appearing sometime in the early summer. As soon as my cousin gets back to me about those dates. *hint hint*

You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman

I'm teaching my son to belch.

It's not one of my greatest life skills. I can't stop conversation or do part of the alphabet or anything brag worthy like that. But today I realized that he sings and dances, has his own make-up brush routine while Mommy's putting on her face, wants his hair brushed whenever I brush mine and has only seen someone pee sitting down.

I'm not about to start shaving, I know squat about cars, he's too young for football and I couldn't scratch my ass in public if you paid me. The only 'guy' thing I know to do is belch. Decently, but without fanfare.

Guess he's doomed, huh?

Kids

I was forwarded an article today that caught my attention. It was about teenagers in Fulton, MO (home state of the Warbler - Fulton's not that close, though, to my home city) who did a production of Grease and upset some bible thumping parents who found the subject matter too risque. Yeah, we wouldn't want to think that kids these days drink, smoke, sneak out and obsess about sex and cars. So they cancelled the Spring Production of 'The Crucible' - about witchhunts and McCarthy-ism set in the Salem Witch Trial Days (for those of you living under a rock) and supported, instead, a production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream" about - let's see if I can paraphrase what the article said - magic, paganism, beastiality, etc. The article was written by a former theatre weenie who seemed to have turned out quite okay, as well as their co-horts, despite doing such plays as 'The Crucible' and 'Grease'.

Now, for the other rock dwellers amongst you, I was a high school theatre weenie. (What a great name for a B movie)I hung with high school theatre weenies. We were a large, formidable but sincerely nice group of kids. The few posts of the last couple of days concerning teen-agers has encouraged me to share with you what my little group of friends was like.

For the most part, in my fairly large high school (I graduated #204 out of 408 seniors - how incredibly 50% of me), the two largest cliques were the Jocks and the Thespians - don't bother with the jokes, we know them all. (In fact, the Gupta brothers probably told them all as The Two Unknown Comics at our Talent Shows. They were soooo bad and we loved them! They're now doctors.) The Jocks were known for their heavy-handed partying. The Thespians, for the most part, were anything but. Most of us were everything you'd consider mid-western, middle-classed kids to be. We had all the same acne and angst as the average teen-ager, and we probably weren't the safest drivers around, but we didn't drink (just a few and they were the techies), we didn't smoke (it ruined our voices), we definitely didn't do drugs (hell, Janis Doty's rum balls were considered a big deal one Christmas) and most of us couldn't get a date much less have sex. And we liked it just fine. We were too busy having fun. High School was a great time for us. We put on shows, we talked about putting on shows, we practiced for the next show, we hung out and made music, we played miniature golf, went to movies like 'Fame' and sat awestruck, went to theatre camp in Muncie, Indiana, we bowled, we t.p.d each other's houses and went to clean up the next day. My personal little group consisted of Renee, Kathy, me, the brothers Erik and Mike, with an occasional Todd thrown in. I spent several days on Lake Jacomo in a 14 foot sailboat that spent more time upside down than otherwise - ON PURPOSE. The brothers were both Eagle Scouts. The three girls were always jockeying for who had a crush on which brother that week. We attended the KC Rennaissance Festival with other friends - several of whom spent a lot of falls working there, one even still does (check out The Jolly Rogers with Chivalry Music). Sure, we had the occasional argument with our parents - me more than most. We backed each other up, we loved each other as human beings, we supported whatever someone in our group was doing. We were good kids. And we were proud of being good kids.

Teen-agers, by definition, are a little more chaotic and angst-ridden than the rest of us. Except for toddler-hood, there is no time more tumultuous and confusing. But in this world, in this country, there are so many good kids who are amazing people. They work hard, they volunteer, they have a clue about life, the world and their place in it. They know they want to be somebody, even if that somebody leads a very small life. Not all teen-agers drink, smoke, drive drunk, smoke pot, hang out on street corners and parking lots (although Patrick Walker and I used to love to spontaneously waltz in them), have sex in the backseat (or any other seat, for that matter), scream and have fits at their parents (more than a few times), and in general give teen-agers a bad name. And a great many of them, like we did back then, are having a lot of fun being good people.

I did do a production of 'Once Upon A Mattress' where we had to take out Lady Larkin's line 'I'm pregnant' and just insinuate it. I don't recall anybody rushing out to have sex after that show. Although, after 'Brigadoon' I did have a great urge to eat shortbread cookies and dance daintily over crossed swords.

Telephone Line

It's been a long time since I've sat down and learned a new song. It's not as easy for me to play by ear as it is for some, but I'm still thankful that I can muddle through.

The little table-top stereo, expressly for this purpose, that was my Christmas present is broken. I had to borrow the teenager's boom box and it cost me dearly, I can tell you. I have learned how to handle it without disturbing the taped-in-its-perfect-position antenae.

It was years ago I first heard the song. I was very, very young. I'd add another 'very' but y'all know better. My brother had all of ELO's albums, filed right next to Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery or whatever that silly LP was. When he was gone, I'd sneak downstairs and play ELO Ole' or one of the others. Several years ago, I found ELO's greatest hits in a two CD set. ELO is probably almost as cool as Barry Manilow, I know, but I like them just the same. One of my favorite songs is 'Telephone Line'. It was pre-disco sell-out and that makes it even better (Don't Bring Me Down? Come on!).

For the last few weeks I've been playing Telephone Line (when I actually can) on the 'puter and wondering if it would translate to the piano. Doesn't hurt that my keyboard adds strings, either. I'm still not sure. But I sat down with the CD and the carefully situated on the cat scratch post boom box and began to play along. It wasn't one of the most difficult tunes I've ever had to figure out. I have two Stevie Wonder songs that took me days to get. (Sometimes I'd have to play the same three measures over and over and pick each note of a chord out singly because my jazz theory is extremely rudimentary) But once I'd figured out the key, it was a fifteen minute thing. The only hard part is the beginning sequence that is reminiscent of the notes of a dialing keypad.

A friend and I were just discussing this song, so now there's a note of reference as I try to re-learn the words and figure out how the hell I'm gonna turn this song into my own.

"Hello. How are you?
Have you been all right
all these lonely, lonely (five of 'em), lonely, lonely, lonely nights?
Is what I'd say.
I'd tell you everything
If you'd pick up the telephone."

My favorite part, true to forn, is the
"Doo wop, shooby doo wop
Doo wop doo lang lang
Blue days, black nights
Doo wop doo lang lang."

Possibly because it's the easiest standard chord progression in the history of popular music. I know, I know. I'm just an old softie.