Tag: love

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 18: I COULD LISTEN TO IT ALL DAY… round 2

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

Okay, so, TODAY.

I’ve had so much editing to do lately that, ADHD brain being what it is, I have escaped to Starbucks lately to keep me from wandering around the house finding side projects in the middle of editing (like repotting half of my house plants, which are many). Last week I spent five days at about five hours each in Starbucks. I am now the “NORM!” of my local Starbucks. I buy food (reduced fat turkey bacon anyone?) and several drinks, so it’s not like I’m not paying for my seat. But last week I feel like I double-paid. Someone who worked there all five days that I was there is absolutely batty about the Taylor Swift album Fearless. I am not. Fearless is Taylor when she was in her country-music era(at least that’s how it sounds to me), and, even with earplugs in my ears (which I resorted to on day four), The songs all have the same style of singing and guitaring to them. Sorry Taylor, I respect you as a human, woman, and businessperson, and I love some of your songs (“Look What You Made Me Do”), but if I have to hear “Fifteen” again I am going to stab myself in the neck with a coffee stirrer.

Today I walked in to one of my all time favorite songs, though I think it is a sad song, and it inspired me to quickly (not going to be ADHD-ing away from work all day) pen this list.

What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy (and none of them are “Fifteen,” though I understand how she felt back then, and I probably did too).

LET ME GO

I tried, but could not bring, the best of everything…. This song has just always hit me right in the heart. Heaven 17, what a brilliant song this is. Do you feel the sadness?

THE CITY SLEEPS


When this came out I remember spinning the radio dial constantly in my car, trying to find it playing anywhere. I was blown away by the beat, the vibe, and the incredibly clever lyrics by MC 900 Ft Jesus. I also think I might have been the only one of my friends who liked it. Weird.

OH VERY YOUNG


You’re only dancing on this Earth a short while. So enjoy this great classic by Cat Stevens.

THAT’S THE WAY I’VE ALWAYS HEARD IT SHOULD BE

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. Listen, growing up in the 70s was tough. No one spared us the sad songs for doo-wop like in the 1950s, and thank god they didn’t. When my parents weren’t speaking to each other, or us, they listened to “Yesterday When I Was Young,” by Roy Clark (and may god help us all!), and I listened to “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” by the amazing Carly Simon.

LAURA

College of the Pacific, one of my favorite Dave Brubeck albums. “Laura,” one of the most beautiful melancholy jazz songs ever.

ALMOST BLUE

What the heck, let’s stay blue. “Almost Blue,” by Elvis Costello. I’ve seen EC about six times live, but I don’t think he ever did this. It’s fantastic.

ALMOST BLUE

Same song, different player. This is the amazing Chet Baker putting a hurting on “Almost Blue” the way only he can.

INSIDE OUT

You may never have heard of Spoon, but it’s time to change that. This song is dreamy, and melancholy. I invite you to float away.

NERVOUS SOUL

You may also not have heard of the Silverlake Chorus. This song is also sad, and dreamy. Enjoy, and harmonize!

DOGS

I saved this one for last because it is, apparently, seventeen minutes long. So we began with Heaven 17, and we end with 17 minutes of Pink Floyd‘s own, perfect brand of despair. To Taylor Swift when she was 15 let me just say, THIS is the song for when you’re in the throws of teen angst. If you can survive being a teen and listening to the album Animals on repeat, you can survive. This is my favorite Pink Floyd song of all time. .

I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di

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I Buy Myself Flowers: Yellow Is the Inspo~

Today my beautiful lady has been filled with what I believe are gerbera daisies. Cost for flowers, about $20 @ Trader Joe’s.

I had gerberas in my wedding bouquet by necessity and not choice. Unfortunately my April wedding came to be about two weeks after the ranunculus were spent and gone. I wanted ranunculus, because they have a wind-blown look. I wanted orange, and my sister had an orange dress. We both had our dresses made by Kevin Simon, who seems to have vaporized since she once had a very pricey store on Abbott Kinney Boulevard. Kevin made everything in linen, and she was a master of sort of vintage-farm looking clothing, like late 1800s. I loved her work and could not afford any of it, so I splurged on my dress and my sister’s, assuming I was only getting married once. A regular skirt at Kevin’s was over $500. My wedding dress and my sister’s MOH dress combined were $1000. The back bottom of my dress had tulle orange flowers pinned to it. My dress was linen with a silk slip, and my sister’s was orange silk. I’ve since lost about 70 pounds, and I left the dress at Goodwill in Delaware when I moved, but I kept all the organza flowers.

In any case, I do have to say I’m not usually a gerbera girl, except when needs must. But today the yellow (which is a lot lighter in real life) on the flowers screamed, “Butter!” at me, with just a hint of orange at their centers, and so I was compelled. Mixed them with orange and some green greenery, et voila!

The little pumpkin/squash you see there I plan to eat, not carve. LOL. Roasted pumpkin in things is divine! As are these lovely gerbera. Ranunculus are actually not great cut flowers, so droopy.

It is a blessing to have flowers anywhere in the world, of any kind, and especially on my very sunny kitchen counter. Buy the flowers, hold them high, and repeat after me, “Here’s to the times we bless others, and also to the times we bless ourselves!”

Have a wonderful week~

PS. Most flowers I buy last a full two weeks! Just keep the water clean and fresh.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 17: I COULD LISTEN TO IT ALL DAY… round 1

Wake up and rock out!

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

I have been told that, as a music lover, there are some odd things about me:

#1. If I love it, I want to hear it, over and over. I once played “Magic” by Pilot, for two solid hours (a 45 I’d pilfered from my friend) on my raggedy record player while in the Temple University dorms, in the middle of the day (who has classes from noon-3?) until another student showed up (and I was bouncing up and down on my bed at the time, as if it were a trampoline) and yelled at me to turn it the fuck off. It was… embarrassing. But that is 100% me; I cannot deny it. I no longer think beds are sturdy enough for adults to bounce on, but I could get that vibe again in a second.

#2. The second thing is that I can mix seemingly disparate music together. You will be able to tell when you take a look at today’s inaugural list (which, to be fair to #1, will start with Pilot). I am the same way with food. I am currently eating stir-fried cabbage for breakfast, with a big steaming cup of coffee with cream and sugar. I like strange tastes all in the same mouthful, or, as goes with this post, earful.

#3. I will merge songs in my head: two songs will become one the way I think of them. As an example, I often will sing, “Hotel California,” to the tune of, “If You Like Pina Coladas,” and use the chorus from the second instead of the “Hotel California” chorus. Try it. It is incredible. It’s my version of Laverne’s milk and Pepsi. If you are ever around me LIP, I will perform it for you, no charge. It works really well.

#4. I prefer vinyl. I am annoyed by vinyl, because you cannot make your own greatest hits like you can with a cassette tape or digital files, but I am addicted to the snap, crackle, pops. And there’s just something beautiful about an album. Us kids from the 70s, in the pre-MTV times, used to lock ourselves away with our crappy record players and our vinyl, and play side 1, and then side 2, or side A and then side B, and just pour over the album, look at all the liner notes, read the lyrics, check out all the band photos, basically memorize the thing. I could do that all night long. I still love it.

Okay, so lemme throw up ten today, and there’ll be more to come. What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy.

MAGIC!

Oh my gosh the lead singer is cute! I’m sorry world, but 1970s singers were the hottest… except for maybe Lenny Kravitz, and Bruno Mars. I love the strings in this, and I’m ready to hear it again, dormmates be dammed!

GOD SAVE THE QUEENS!


This was from a previous post, and, as it was already here, I’m including it in this list. What I had said last time was, “I need something like this right now. Something that feels punk, and resistant, and full of a big fuck you to oppressors everywhere.” Yep, still me; I’m still there, and, Vienna Vienna is not from the 1970s, but is pretty cute anyway. Can an old lady still find rock stars hot? It’s another thing I can’t seem to stop doing on repeat.

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES


This is a live version, but I wanted one that showed the band, and not just an album cover and the music. Why? Because I’m still hoping to get trapped in an elevator for 12 hours with Robert Plant. I mean, come on. The guitar, the harmonies, the Plant… you could burn your fingers on this one.

TRYIN’ TO GET THE FEELING AGAIN

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. But you sing your heart out while you’re doing it. I was so lucky to see Barry at the Hollywood Bowl in… 2011? He’s amazing, and so fun, and really talented. My brother, who played in a Rolling Stones cover band most of his life, liked Barry and introduced me to him when he gave me Barry Manilow II. It had “Mandy” on it, and “Avenue C,” and I was hooked. Love songs mixed with show tunes! What’s not to love?

I WAS DOIN’ ALLRIGHT

Sadly I cannot find a performance video of this one, but damn it’s good. This whole record is freaking amazing. Get it. Play it. It’ll make you feel like you’re walking on air.

I CAN’T BELIEVE

Tony Trischka and Skyline… the fabulous Dede Wyland on lead vocals. My boyfriend at the time was heavily into playing his mandolin, so we went to a lot of Bluegrass concerts. Sometimes I think Country music, the kind I grew up on, has lost its way, but not Bluegrass. I dearly love every Skyline concert we went to, and all their songs. I wish they were still together. I mean just listen to the instrumental section in the middle, and then Dede’s voice comes soaring back in like a bird. Wow.

COMME UN AVION SANS AILES

You won’t have heard of this, because you didn’t have Corrine Soler come and stay with you for two weeks in high school, but I did. And she brought me Poemes Rock by Charlelie Couture, which remains one of my top ten albums in my collection. I love it completely and treasure it dearly. If I was rushing out of the house due to natural disaster, I hope I’d remember to grab it, because I bet it is irreplaceable. You’ve probably long-since stopped reading this post, but you should hit play on this one. It’s surprising.

FUNKY MONKS

Funnily enough, one of my favorite of their songs appears to be one they rarely perform. Good-on the kid who requested it. I freaking love it.

KISS THEM FOR ME

Thought I’d finish off with two women. Siouxsie was one of my idols when I was in college. She’s incredibly beautiful, talented, and this song… what a delightful ear worm. It feels off-the-beat to me, but what do I know, but it is that off-kilter feel that it has that I cannot get enough of.

TOM’S DINER

No controversy here. Probably the entire world likes this one. This is a live version though. Badass.

Hopefully it won’t take me this long to come back with another bunch. I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di

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Give Me Back My Patriotism

From the time I can remember, whenever I belonged to any group, I was, what my brother would call, a rah! rah!

My brother was definitely not a rah! rah! But, in his defense, organized things, like church and school, weren’t always that welcoming to the distracted kid who looked like he would have preferred to be anywhere other than there, and he would have.

I remember so clearly many aspects of 1976. I wore one of those mop hats Betsy Ross and the like wore, because my class was so often engaged in colonial reenactments at malls and nursing homes. I remember my friend, Krissi, who had Mr. Griffin instead of Mrs. Wentz, and her whole class did a huge lip-syncing performance, and Krissi got to be Elton John while another girl, who I was very jealous of, got to be Kiki Dee. Damn!

But my class was relegated to what Mrs. Wentz liked, and that was patriotism.

Well, that wasn’t that hard for me. I loved fireworks, something which, I must admit, years of dog ownership as an adult have soured for me. I loved barbecues in the back field with all the dads playing softball against all the sons, even if it did mean that the other daughters and I were stuck being beer-bringers, cheerleaders, and trash-picker-uppers. I was so proud a few years earlier for the Battle of the Sexes, where Billie Jean King roundly kicked Bobby Riggs’ old ass. I believed in feminism from the door, as much as a new human could. But the guys were not at all happy about Billie Jean King. They were pissed, and embarrassed, as if each one of them was Bobby Riggs. When our working class neighborhood had those ball games in the field I had an understanding that the guys needed those ball games. Those dads needed to clobber their young sons, and they needed their wives and daughters to cheer them on. 

I have the photo of Converse at the top because we wore Converse and Keds, my brother and me, and I had a pair of Converse, I think they were Converse, in 1976 that were stars and stripes, and I loved them. I had a patriotic T, and I put crepe paper in my spokes, and biked in the 4th of July parade, learned all the patriotic songs (I was able to sing all the words to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” just last night at the Hollywood Bowl), and I loved America. 

My parents were blue-collar, a machinist (later a gunsmith) and a telephone operator, and they raised us on church, and baseball games, and love and respect of elders, and turkey with stuffing, and all that stuff.

As I grew up, though, that fit me less and less. 

Sometimes, in my childhood, boys were just jerks, mean, violent. I never had a group of girls surround me on bikes and spit all over me, or throw worms in my long hair when it rained, or pick on my friend Richard, who was probably gay, and hit him, and hit me if I tried to stop them. But the boys did that. The boys told me I couldn’t play run-the-bases, or go in their fort, or go with them to the creek. Not my brother, my brother was always nice, but the boys the same age as me. In school the boys got angry when I got a higher score on the test, like it was a crime, and then would do something, “Race you to that pole!” to prove they could beat me. Or just knock into me in the hall, or hold my locker door closed when I was trying to get my books out. I loved my father and brother. I loved baseball and hockey and boxing. I wanted to hang out with the guys and the girls, but the guys weren’t usually welcoming, and they really didn’t want to hear my ideas on how to do things, at church or at school. And there were plenty of girls who were always ready to defend the guys being just as jerky as they wanted to be, if it meant they got asked to the prom. I also wanted to go to prom, but not that much.

As I grew up I was always more of a reader than most, and so I read the Sunday paper, and the Bible, and the school textbooks, and the encyclopedias that we had (I think we had through J), and the Atlas. I knew what the books said, and I knew what I thought about what I read. A lot of the guys hadn’t read, but they knew with certainty what they thought, and I had better not say different. And their girlfriends agreed.

In college, when I was living in an apartment near University of Pennsylvania, the neighbor guys threw ketchup and mustard on my apartment door, and banged up my bike locked up in the hall, because of my Geraldine Ferraro poster, which they tore down and tore up.  Guys were always telling me I had too much to say, and too many opinions, and read too much.

Much later, when I signed up to adopt from China, I joined a Yahoo group for adopters-to-be, and quickly learned that a vocal group of waiting parents were fundamentalist Christians, and they didn’t want anyone using rainbows for anything, or to adopt while gay, or to really like China at all, which was, in the views they often espoused, a bad place full of bad people whose children needed rescuing.

I watched the Watergate hearings as a small child. When the cartoons were over on Saturday mornings, I stayed for the hearings until my mom shooed me away. I was so disappointed in Nixon. I thought Ford was a kindly but ineffective man. I thought Carter was great; I wanted to meet him. I despised Reagan, and both Bushes, and I was thrilled about Clinton, but more thrilled about Mrs. Clinton. I was devasted when Bill cheated on his wife. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this except that, when I was young, I loved being a USA booster, and as I aged, I have felt more and more pushed out, like my kind of person wasn’t the right kind of American, and I’m white and straight! For those who aren’t, the pushing must feel so much more constant.

When I went to see Hamilton last fall, all my patriotism was re-awakened. My god what they did to get this country made! What they had the imaginations to plan for in the future, and what they were willing to give up to make this dream country!

But then, less than a month after I saw it, so many people voted for the wrong person. Now, I agree, we can compare and agree to disagree on John McCain and Mitt Romney vs. Barak Obama or the like. But we cannot do that on the current occupant of the White House. The man elected in 2024 has done nothing but egregious activities his entire adult life, and yet he brings out the patriotism in so many people, people, I would argue, who have no idea what patriotism is, and what it means to be an American in the America created by those founders whose stories are told in Hamilton. My father, who taught me to love baseball and boxing, and my brother, who taught me to love hockey and catch tadpoles, would have been horrified by elected officials being shot in their homes by a fake cop, and would have been disappointed in a president who could not bring himself to offer condolences to their governor. Where are men like them? Where are the real patriots? I feel like I’ve been in states of disbelief, grief, confusion, amazement, and panic since the fall election. I have moments where I want to take my small family, and our friends, and run for another country. But when you’re from the country that kicks everyone out, can you really ask another country to let you in?

I haven’t put out a flag for Flag Day or the 4th of July in years. I am an American patriot, but not for this version of America. And I wish I could have my pride and patriotism back. For me, it’s almost like the 4thof July has been sucked into “the upside down,” where everything I’ve loved about this country has been changed to its most perverse opposite. I know that what people like me lost from our country we lost in tiny little pieces, from, in my lifetime, the pardoning of Nixon foreword, in the name of trying to give space to two sides that are really not equal at all. As the short and fantastic film Here Be Dragons says, “Math class doesn’t give equal time to 2+2=5.” But we did. I lost my patriotism, and many lost much much more. I don’t think it’s something barbecue or patriotic sneakers or colored explosions can fix.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 16: WILL YOU REMEMBER?

This is a strange one.

And no, neither of them is in drag.

That is the wonderful duo of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.

My mother loved musicals when I was a kid, so I heard a lot of them. I used to ride my bike up and down our blue collar alley singing “Climb Every Mountain” at the top of my lungs…, you know, like all the cool kids. I once was a very high soprano, but now I am definitly a mezzo-soprano, if not a baritone.

Jeanette MacDonald went to school with my grandmother (one year ahead of her), which is what every old person in Philadelphia used to claim, but in our case it was true, and I know this because my grandmother, Sara, who never lied, and could not sing, told me she thought it was dumb, Jeanette doing all those “La la las” after school. My grandmother also told us that stolen flowers grow best, so there you go. My grandmother never knew her father, who ran off and joined the Canadian (French?) foreign Legion while my grandmother was still incubating inside her mother. Story goes her father got a new Canadian family, and died in WWI. So, of course, my grandmother had nothing to sing about and stole flowers. Of course. And so she walked home each day past Jeanette’s house where she could hear Jeanette singing. My grandmother wanted to play the piano more than anything, and knew a few tunes (“Jesus Loves Me,” “Cowslips,” and two-thirds of “Rose of Waikiki.”), but did not have the resources Jeanette had, and was certainly envious of those singing lessons, and the piano in the house.

In any case, family history and legend aside, my mother quite liked Jeanette MacDonald, and my mother was also a soprano. I remember the movies Jeanette made with Nelson Eddy were so corny, but she also made the movie about the San Francisco earthquake with Clark Cable, which was tragic and maybe a bit less corny, and had the stirring song about San Franciso in it.

In any case, I was a huge fan of her work, and I just loved this song that the duo did together, and “Indian Love Call,” (probably racist film and movie… but loved the song!)

and I also loved Rosemarie by Nelson on his own.

As corny as everything about them is, they had a tragic love life, if you read their Wikipedia pages, all brought about by the Hollywood studios trying to control them not getting divorced, which put Jeanette, who suffered with a weak heart, into a marriage of domestic violence. Really as tragic as their films often seemed! And they both died in their early 60s, which is also sad. They had money, fame, and privilege, but were denied the thing they wanted the most, each other.

“Will You Remember,” the first song inserted at the top of this post, has a habit of popping into my head on random, and I end up singing it for an entire week, in the shower, in the car, in my dreams. Hopefully you’ll find something to enjoy in these fantastic old tunes, and, if you do, join in, and see if you can hit those high notes!

May they be clasped in each others’ arms in the great beyond….

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 15: MY NEW FAVORITE BAND

Wake up and rock out!

I love finding music I would not normally find.
This musician, from Los Angeles, calls the music glimmer rock.
All I know is that it is fantastic and over too quickly.

God save the queens!


I need something like this right now. Something that feels punk, and resistant, and full of a big fuck you to oppressors everywhere.

Duh, weirdos who want to go back to 1950, it’s not the conservative spending goals we dislike, it’s the hate and cruelty you seem to so enjoy.

Well, I don’t enjoy it. So god save the queens! Let’s play it again!


Try this one too!


Everything’s fine, when it’s clearly not.

Another sweet tune:

Truly, some people are not happy about things changing.

Well, not me. I may not get everything that’s below me in age, but I am here for it.

Here is an article on the Wonderland EP.

You should probably buy the EP, by the way. I did. All the cool weirdos did. I am here for the weirdos.

And, dammit, save the queens!

Hang tough all the wonderful DEI people, the women, the immigrants, the LGBTQii+, and all the allies too!
I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess, but I do believe we will.

Or we’ll move.

Buy a copy of Vienna Vienna’s soon to be hit song “God Save the Queens” and the EP Wonderland!

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 14: I’M IN YOU

Sexy Frampton

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last did one of these posts.

Well, I’m back baby.

Again.

Listen, let this be a bit of information for all you scribblers of any sorts, you can always go back to it. You are the rules, so hop back in.

I got the vinyl going today, sitting at my desk with the front door open to let in the Los Angeles version of chilly weather. It’s delightful.

I rearranged my “office” a few weeks ago, and now the record player is right up against my desk. Let me get you a photo:

Oh, mama, lookie who is there, just looking at me. He’s positively smoldering at the sight of me! I honestly don’t know if I’m worthy. But he seems to think so.

I’m In You, the album you see there, is a very underrated album. First of all, 1970s albums that are less hard-rock, but still rock, have that sort of high-pitched, lightly plucked sound that I think of sort of orginating with Jefferson Airplane, like “Love, Lovely Love.” It comes across as a spring sound to my ears. So if you think of The Beach Boys and etc. as the sound of summer, Frampton could win for sound of spring, because he does that soft, twang guitar and laid back sound I just love. I grew up in Philly, where I always think the best season is spring, because it’s cool but not humid. Fall can be too hot and humid even as the leaves change, or freezing cold, but spring is delightful, and, I think, from the 70s to now, has probably shortened by a month or so as summer heats up sooner each year, in my anecdotal experience. If you’re lucky enough to live in Los Angeles you are luck to have that humidty-free, winter-is-not-here-to-stay feeling from, typically, November through July. July, August, and September, unless you’re on the Westside, you’re going to want to be indoors and as naked as possible, but the rest of the year you can float along on this light jacket daytime weather that turns to sweater weather at night, and it’s fantastic. IT makes me get a feeling in my skin that I’m young, that life is full of possibility, that the air smells of flowers. It makes me come alive. Like Frampton.

For this post I want to highlight not a single song per se, but the whole of I’m In You. The album has the gentle vibe of spring weather, full of possibility, but also chill. I want to highlight a song that really hasn’t ever gotten the attention it deserves: “St. Thomas (Don’t You Know How I Feel).”

I could argue that Frampton, who wrote “Do You Feel Like I Feel,” was a bit obsessed with the word feel, because he uses it at least 14 times in this song, but that just makes this song easier to sing along to. The point is not the lyrics. The point is the vibe. This song is a feeling more than a message. There’s a fantastic solo in the middle. And Frampton is a great guitar player. It’s a gentle rocking of a song. Take a listen and see if it doesn’t make you think of spring.

Did your blood pressure just drop five points? You know it did.

Of course, we cannot go forward without mentioning the title track. “I’m In You.”

“I don’t care where I go when I’m with you
When I cry you don’t laugh cause you know me

I’m in you 
You’re in me
You gave me the love, the love that I never had

You and I don’t pretend; we make love
I can’t feel anymore than I’m singing”

And what I always just loved about this song, aside from the idea of me and Frampton being in each other, was the opening line, “I don’t care where I go when I’m with you,” that also ends the song, but I’m gonna make the guess that the final word of the song is “with” and the “you” is not sung, but played by the guitar, which is super cool, and makes it more emotional. It ends on that high note. Frampton seems to be merging the physical with the sound. It’s working for me:

Those 70s guys, damn:

How great was that? So chill.

I have to point out one more song on the album that I have never been able to get enough of, “Signed Sealed and Delivered.”

It’s a Stevie Wodner song, in case you didn’t know, and I am a huge Stevie fan from his 60s and 70s catalogue, and I love this song by Stevie, but I also loved the cover by Frampton. (By the way, my last “it should be half an hour” post was on the Red Hot Chili Peppers who also covered Steve beautifully: “Higher Ground.”)

But, back to Frampton:

I saw this comment on YouTube:

Peter Frampton’s 1977 – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered … I’m Yours” – on his album I’m in You. His version also contains instrumental elements from Wonder’s hit “For Once in My Life” Mick Jagger is featured on backing vocals. Frampton’s version was released as a single. Motown Soul delivered from England’s Peter Frampton. With this re-make of the Classic Stevie Wonder Hit, Frampton topped The Billboard “Hot 100” at #18, and #13 on the Cashbox Top 100, also #13 in Canada.

So, today, as I enjoy the “Punxsutawney Phil Was Wrong” feel of the great Los Angeles weather, I want to offer you the thought to give Frampton a listen. You think The Beach Boys own that nice-weather vibe, but spring is better than summer any day, and Frampton is a great ride you may have missed.

Check out his Tiny Desk concert too:

I don’t know Frampton, but his whole vibe is “gentle soul,” and I love that about him.

Enjoy….

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 13: DISC 2 SIDE 2

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last did one of these posts.

Well, I’m back baby. 🙂

Once upon a time I had a fairly large vinyl collection. And then I started moving often. I took the whole collection with me to the dorms my first year of college, and when I flunked out that first year and my mother kicked me out of the house, I took the whole collection (and my rickety record player)

And here it is (thank you eBay!):

From there I went, eventually, back to my parents’ house, which was the worts place for me, and for which I blame Ronald Reagan (there were no jobs). After I got my degree, and then a few jobs, I moved myself and my record collection to my boyfriend’s house. But that lasted about 3 years because I am a bad picker, and so I eventually decied to move out so his new girlfriend could move in, even though he would have been happy to have me stay on, oddly enough.

My record collection and I went from the suburbs to Philly. I had an awesome, if rodent-infested, apartment in West Philly for about three years, until I managed to buy a small twin in Roxborough. I lived there for one of the longer periods of staying-put, just about seven years, and then, having both gotten sick of the parking situation (trashcans in the street anyone?) and swept David off his feet, I moved to CA, and sold or donated most of my collection (and, luckily, my sister showed up at the donation place right after I left, and she rescued a few of them, (inlcuding my Wings Over America, which she very kindly returned to me last month! It still has all the skips in it I remember. Delicious!) Of course the record player, the double of which is now selling on eBay, had long since died, so there was not anything to play the vinyl on anyway. And have you attempted to travel with vinyl? It slips and slides and weighs a literal ton. But, it is still my favorite way to listen to music.

Just to get us up to date: I spent 4 years in Venice Beach, and 4 years in Canoga Park, and then we went back to the East Coast, reluctantly for me. There was a year back in my mother’s house (my father was gone), which, was, again, the worst place for me, and then we landed in teeny tiny Milton. Whicle we were there my sister, who was living n Brooklyn, found a record player in the trash which she gave to me, and I started lisstening to my little stash once again. I had mostly saved the family Christmas albums that my mother had tried to sell at a garage sale once in my presence (the Philistine!), my small jazz collection, my smaller bluegrass and cajun collection, and a few rock albums. We then spent (I believe) exactly 7 years in Milton (about 3 too many), and then we came back to CA, and we spent 1.5 years in Montclair, and now we’ve settled in Monrovia. We’ve been here almost 9 months, and I could see myself not leaving, actually. We’re renting, which is not ideal (it’s been 16 years since I last had a rental), but we’re one-block from a street full of restaurants, which I love, and we turn the corner from our rental and see the mountains, and we’re all very happy. It’s like we found our way back home, to some extent. And so I have started collecting vinyl again, and we have just a wonderful front porch, and David recently surprised me with a second record player, very small, for the front porch. The past couple of weeks I’ve been lugging the laptop out to the porch (and the precious coffee), and working out there, and now I have music too, which is very distracting, but I do love it.

And this is about one of the most recent albums I bought, which I used to have on CD, lord do I hate cds! But that’s what we used to have for the car. In any case, I got myself BY THE WAY by one of my top 5 favorite rock bands, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, on vinyl. It’s a two record set, and disc 2 side 2 has four songs on it that I wish, each one of them, would never end.

I think I first got into the Chili Peppers when they put out “Breaking the Girl,” which is on BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK (which Dave got me on vinyl to go with the record player!). And that song is a really well known one, and a really good example of why I love them. First of all… funk. I love funk, and, in my view, they are funk. Second, they have a vibe, a thing that goes on in their music which I can only describe as cacophony. It sounds like someone is tapping a glass, and someone else is banging pot lids, and someone else is clapping, or there are street sounds, just… a lot of sound. Their songs are really layered and tend to, in general, really improve my mood any time I hear them. They make me want to move around.

Disc 2 side 2 is one of their more mellow outings, but it still has the layers of musics and noise, and it makes me want to move and sing, and I get it gloriously stuck in my head. I expect I will wear out the album, but it will be this side I destroy first, in the same way you might destroy your favorite teddy bear from sleeping with it so hard.

The first track is “On Mercury.” It has a Mexican/mariachi sound to it. I’m a big Herb Alpert fan, and it is reminicsent of that sound I think. It reminds me a bit of “The Lonely Bull.” It’s fast and upbeat, and it repeats the chorus, and I love the idea of “lemon trees on Mercury,” because I am certain that if trees on Mercury were possible, the would be lemon yellow, almost as if being so close to the sun burned them yellow, rather than buring them black.

“I change the key from C to D; you see to me it’s just a minor thing; he knows everything.” The second track on thsi side is “Minor Thing,” and even though minor keys are associated with being down, or sinister sounding, this song is very upbeat. The guitar that anchors this song sounds like vintage U2, and I would be willing to bet there’s a flute or recorder being played though it. It’s a fast song, and a little bit rap, and I just feel like it’s clever.

Then the tempo slows and Kiedis sings, “Shiver for me girl…,” and goes on to sing, “….swim for your smile in a blue rock quarry,” and ends with the words, “…settle for love.” It’s got an orchestra playing along with the band, and I think it’s very romantic (and it helps that I’ve always found the whole band to be easy on the eyes). It’s called “Warm Tape,” and I find myself going through my day repeating the “shiver for me girl” part over and over, though I confess I don’t “get” the title.

The last song on disc two side two is “Venice Queen..”

SatoriTree has this to say about it on Reddit:

If it’s true, it makes it even better. It’s not a slow song, but the vibe is very mellow, and it begins sounding almost mystical. Flea does great harmonies on this one, and he and Anthony sound to me like they could be family because their voices meld so well. I like to sing Flea’s part when I sing along, but I often like to sing the harmony. I think I would have made a fantastic back-up singer, can hold a harmony well, and I’m not really looking to be a front man.

LOL, in some ways, maybe that is why I am so passionate about publishing people. I’m not a front man, really, but I’m a helluva back-up singer.

While I have been picking away at the keys trying to write this post, being interrupted by my daughter, and my dog, multiple times over, I have listened to this on repeat, disc two side two, about 4 times, and when I finish typing this, I’m going to start it again.

“I see you standing bby the sea; the waves you made will always be; a kiss goodbye before you leave, G*L*O*R*I*A is love…. my friend, my friend, my friend….

I think anyone who dismisses the RHCP out of hand as just noise, or whatever, needs to really take a listen. This band has very complicted music, and gorgeous lyrics, and they just may be hiding them from people who judge them by their looks. And, as I alluded to above, I like their looks just as much as their music. But, really, this is a complex and talented band, and every time they make new music, I’m in.

OH MY GOODNESS, how did I just find this today?:

So fun! I love the Peppers!

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 12: “Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.”

HA! I got you! You thought I was going to put up the Beatles version, didn’t you?

Well, there’s a reason I didn’t put that first, but I will put it below.

George, I never knew him, but he always struck me as soft and gentle, in the way that men are not supposed to be soft and gentle. And I think it was very hard for him, as it is for so many people in so many bands, not to be overshadowed by the other members. And I am a Beatle girl, until the age of 30 or so, there was no other band I would spend my limited record money on (aside from Wings, because I was desperately in love with Paul). So I love the Beatles version, but George was given so few slots in the band’s catalogue, so let’s begin with him here, and paired with another gentle great, Paul Simon. And BONUS, if you watch all the way through you get “Homeward Bound” too, one of my favorite S&G songs. I had S&G’s greatest hits (still do have it) because I stole it from my brother, so that was his record money, not mine, and I know I that I probably wore out “Homeward Bound” and “America.”

But this is about the great song, “Here Comes the Sun, ” which I have literally had on “Alexa” repeat since Dave took Sophie to school… so a few hours.

What do I like about it?

Well, it’s plinky might be the first thing I would say. It’s got great plinky guitar. I like plinky guitar; I am a big fan of it. Secondly, that plinky guitar acts like an extra voice: it follows the melody through the song, literally singing the main tune right along with George. I remember hearing that the Beatles had conflict over George wanting to (often) have the guitar follow the melody in the songs, as an extra voice. And the story went that Paul didn’t like it. I do not know if that is true, and Paul may be the sometimes most-hated Beatle, but the guy is a hugely successful songwriter, so there’s that. I think the plinky and the guitar acting like a voice works here, and ads to the gentleness of the song.

The second thing I like about “Here Comes the Sun” is that it is understated. If we assume it’s England, where the sun often hides, and it’s been a long cold lonely sunless period, then WOW! the sun is out!!!
But this is “Here comes the sun… do-do-do-do…,” and “…it’s alright.” It’s low-key, low energy, they way an introvert gets excited about things. Harrison was probably an introvert, and I feel that, and I feel that low-key excitement. It’s no less joyful for not being an explosion of confetti and balloons.

I chose this song today because yesterday I took my teen daughter into teen-daughter heaven, what you probably know of as a store called Claire’s. I have had some fun times finding little doo-dads (doo-dads, am I 100 years old?) at Claire’s, but the three or four times I have been there in 2023 I have been assaulted, every single damn time, by the same two songs, one a country western song, and one a pop song, both of which are guilty of crap formulaic song writing and being ear worms. I will not name the atrocities lest they attack you too. I sentence them to exile from the planet. And clearly neither song writer ever listened to George Harrison.

So, I am using George today, to lift my mood in a gentle “I might have a hangover” way, and also because George can be heard over and over and exterminate those earworms without becoming one himself, because George would never do that. George has mad skills. And I love George with ELO, on his own, with The Beatles, and really quite a lot with The Traveling Wilburys, a band that was much too short-lived.

And, on that note, I want to introduce you to another George song that I adore:

“Give Me Love” almost always brings me to the edge of tears, and not because of the lyrics. The music is sweet, and sad, and… oh I dunno. It’s just something.

It’s good to have gentleness in the craziness of life. George gave us gentleness.

Rest well George. Thanks for all the gentle sweetness.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 11

“Would you welcome now, to the midnight special, the fabulous Bee Gees!”

“Nights on Broadway” is one of those wonderful “stalker” songs from the 60s and 70s. If you’ve ever been stalked, it isn’t even remotely funny, so, ignore my rude post, and I apologize. And, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (not all of which I was alive for), and probably many decades previously, stalking was A-ok. It was how a young man professed his obsessional love for HIS woman. Got it? It was okay; nobody thought anything of it beyond, “Why is she being so cruel to the one who truly loves her?” I’ll tell you why, now, as a grownup, in hindsight, it’s because of the stalking.

Yes, yes, okay.

But, this is a freaking great song! And so just ignore the stalker bits and take the words with a grain of salt.

Robin reminds me of Neville Longbottom, and he dances about as well as I would expect Neville Longbottom to dance, but as Jamal says in this video, he isn’t using anything artificial to get himself to those high notes, and neither is Maurice.

Maurice is, IMHO the cutest Bee Gee, which of course does not count their absolutely scrummy younger bother who was not in the group, Andy Gibb. Whatever genetics were doing in that family, they got it perfect with Andy, but Andy, sadly, did not survive Rock & Roll.

I love, BTW, watching Jamal watch the Be Gees. Jamal’s kinda scrummy too, easy-on-the-eyes, and he’s adorable watching music he hasn’t heard before.

I’m just trying to keep the whole “stalker vibe” going you know.

And I just have to wax poetic about the harmony going on here. The Bee Gees usually have three layers of vocal going on, which makes sense. And I really enjoy singing along to this one and jumping from branch to branch, level to level. I’ve become a mezzo in my old age, but once I get warmed up, I can still hit those Maurice high notes. “Oh yeah yeah. Yeah!”

Because of those levels, it’s a song most singers can sing along to. You just find your range. It’s there.

I love the idea, too, of blaming the behavior, the “out of control” on the nights on Broadway. I have had those moments, more when I was younger I admit, where I was so pumped up and excited (nothing to do with booze or other substances, this pumped-up must come from your own endorphins), that I felt sure that something magical was going to happen, or that, if I did something reckless, like grab someone and kiss them, it would not be my fault.

I actually did grab someone and kiss them once. Adrian Smith (I think it was Smith) had gone to Paris with me and a bunch of other kids in 9th or 10th grade. In Paris I was many things that I really enjoyed: I was proficient in the language (at the time) with a good accent; I was free of my f-ing parents; I was free of my “boring weirdo nerd” status in high school; and I was, for the first fucking time in my life, autonomous, because my French teacher was a delightfully absentee landlord. I went wherever I wanted in Paris, and my friends followed because I was the best at French, reading maps, navigating subways, and asking for directions, and I also had a lot of ideas about where we should go.

Getting on the plane to go home was like walking to the gallows for me. It was like I had finally been able to breathe, and the universe was insisting I get back in the damn box. I could have cried my heart out the whole flight home, surrounded by other kids who had had enough, and could not wait to get back to Mom and Dad. I failed, I knew it, when that plane took off, because I could not, the whole time I was in Paris, come up with a plan to escape the school trip and stay in France. It was, I think, my first time realizing I could get out of my co-dependent family situation, but I didn’t have the smarts to figure out how I would: get work, get a place to live, avoid the authorities, and, most of all, hide from the long arm of my mother. As good as I was at all those other things, I was hopeless at saving myself. In fact, I think I’ve only just got there now, in my old, mezzo-soprano fucking age. *sigh*

When we got off of the plane in Philly, the parents of all of us were there, and mine were in my face. They wanted me to be soooo excited to see them. They wanted me to be more interested in them than anything else. And my mother wanted me to tell her every detail of the trip, because I wasn’t allowed to have private adventures.

At some point, feeling like my life had ended and I’d never be free again, I came upon fellow student and traveler, Adrian. He stopped to say something to me, and I walked up to him, slid my hands up his cheeks and into his hair, and pulled his face to mine, and laid one on him, just like in the movies. Just like you would expect a person to do in Paris, of course. Just like that guy in that photo from when the war is over, and he just kisses that nurse, and she just has to take it, accept it, give in to it, because it’s all beyond anyone’s control, but it is loose and reckless in a forgivable and not at all stalkery sort of way.

Yes it is.

And you can blame it all, on the nights on Broadway.

When you’re “singing them love songs, singing them straight to the heart songs.”

I wonder where Adrian is today. I certainly wasn’t in love with him, but he was a very nice guy, and I was in love with the me who could just lay a guy out with a kiss. I wonder if that girl’s still in here somewhere.

Ultimately I think what I did with all the co-dependence and control was to find a way to live with it. A therapist once told me that we’re all in a rubber fence with our families, and maybe even a rubber cage is better to say. We can never be free. Not all the way. And some don’t have families they need to be free of, and others do. And those that do probably learn to live inside the lines, a bit of a shrunken life, or they escape in some other way, which could be substances, and was for my brother, and I am glad, as boring a human as I may be, that substances was never where I went to pop the top on the cage. If someone keeps yelling at you, and you just walk away, well, you’ve pretty much taken the weapon away. But, I don’t think you can go back. I don’t think you can accept the cage sometimes and ignore it others. I think, in all honesty, I finally just realized the cage was a construct, like the Matrix, that I no longer needed to believe in.

Or maybe I just got swept up by the “Nights on Broadway.”

May you not stalk or be stalked, but may you have a little romance with yourself, and if you get a little tipsy on love, may you be able to blame it all on the “Nights on Broadway.”