The Women

A theatre local to me will soon be producing "The Women," by Claire Boothe Luce, written in 1937. I thought I'd give it a read and then watch the show when it makes it to the stage.

I'm about halfway through the script right now - I read a little bit each night before bed.  Here's a couple of thoughts so far.  First, there are about 30 characters in the play, and they're all women.  That's awesome.  There's a lot of class differences explored in the play, which centers on an upper-class lady discovering that her husband has been cheating on her with a shop-girl/gold-digger.  She gets all kinds of advice from her friends and from her mother, most of which consists of "oh just tough it out, don't confront him, he's just a man, they all go through this, he's just going through something, don't make a big deal of it, he'll get over it," etc.  There are a ton of peripheral characters that put in their two cents on the issues as well - in one scene, the wife is in a changing room at a store, and the mistress is in the adjacent changing room, and the fitters keep bringing different outfits in for the women to try on - the wife doesn't like the flashy, sexy outfit, so they take it over to the mistress, who loves it and can't wait to try it on for the husband.  The fitters and models all know what's happening before the wife and mistress discover they are neighbors, and all of them chime in after the confrontation to say how they would have done things different.

One of my favorite scenes so far involves two servant girls re-enacting the 'I want a divorce' conversation between the wife and the husband.  It's important to the play to know how that conversation went, it was a fun way to get the servants perspective, and a great way to continue not having any men onstage.

There are parts of the play that are a bit dated and would be a challenge to put onstage exactly as written in the script - such as an early sight-gag where some women are at a spa and wearing mud-masks, and the 'colored maid' looks out from a back door and the stage directions specifically state that the audience won't realize that she's not also in a mud mask at first.

I'm interested to see how the story turns out - I doubt the wife and husband will get back together, since it doesn't seem like that kind of play.  The one  part where all the women seem to agree is that in the world of the play, women have to try to make men happy to get what they want out of life.  They all have different ways of going about it, and some are a bit more jaded about the whole thing than others, but that seems to be what it comes down to.  So, will the wife find a way forward that doesn't revolve around making a man happy, or not?  

I'll update this post in a few days when I finish the play, and again when I see the play in February.

UPDATE:  Finished the play last night.  Still thinking about the ending, but not because it was profound or anything.  Essentially, the first wife learns how to be vicious, and uses some sneaky tactics to get her husband back from the mistress/second wife.  The message on the surface of the play appears to be that women have to put up with men's faults so they can get what they want out of life.  It seems a bit bleak, but maybe that was the message that was most needed in 1937 America - or most viable, I suppose.  As a play, I feel like it fails in today's world to fulfil it's potential.  Even though there are dozens of characters in the play, all women, the entirety of every conversation and conflict is about the offstage men. Even though Mary (the first wife) is the onstage protagonist, her husband Stephen feels more like the central character.  The narrative hinges on his actions offstage as much as on Mary's action/inaction onstage.  I guess another way to look at how that's a problem is to apply the Beschdel Test to the play - yes there is more than one named female character, yes they talk to each other, but I'd have to give it a careful second read to determine if they talk about anything besides men.  Maybe a handful of offhand comments about one of the women being a writer and going on a trip, but even that is in the context of a larger conversation about her marriage problems.

I'd like to think that maybe that's the point of the play, maybe, that it was an expose for women at that time about how crazy it is that their lives have to revolve around men.  But I don't know - I don't have enough information about the context of the play or the life of the playwright, or who she and the play inspired, etc. to know if that's possible.

So, it'll be interesting to see how it's staged by a community theatre, and what the approach and reception will be.  

Reading some plays

I've started a project to read more plays.  I've been writing plays for years and years, and I've done okay as far as that goes.  I'd like to be a lot more successful, but you know, who wouldn't like that? I used to read a ton of plays all the time, but it's been a long time since I really dug in and read scripts.  Looking back at my reading choices, I tended to read plays in a pretty narrow zone:  Modern plays by European men.  Sure I've read a ton of the classics, too, but I consider most plays written more than a hundred years ago to be of more academic interest than anything.  Many plays written in the last century are also primarily of academic interest, as far as that goes.

I'm a writer, so I look for 'living threads' that run through a play, to inspire me to write something along that same thread, or in the direction it suggests.  It's like mining, and hoping to find a vein of ore.  You go through a lot of slag before you find that vein, and then you follow it wherever it leads, until it's tapped out or until the way becomes too dangerous.

So, I'm looking for new threads to follow and explore, and that means reading and watching new plays, and plays outside of my usual zone of interest.  I want to hear new and interesting voices, voices from different perspectives, from all over the world.  I want to discover things.

So I made a reading list of 100 plays, and loaded it with playwrights from all sorts of places and perspectives.  It's still a little heavy on straight white guy pieces, but I'm keeping my eyes and ears open for more plays to add to the list.  If there's a play you think I should read (rule: it has to be published and either in a library or for sale someplace) feel free to comment with your suggestions.

All that being said, the first play I read was "Harvest" by Manjula Padmanabhan.

Harvest:  A sci-fi play about a young man in a crowded, third world city who decides to become a donor of organs or other body parts for a wealthy woman in the West.  Basically, she outfits his apartment with all the comforts and conveniences she thinks he needs, as long as he adheres to a strict diet and stays healthy. And when the time comes that she needs a new organ of some kind, he'll provide it.  His mother and wife live in the apartment with him, and while his mother is completely sold on all the wonderful new comforts to be had - their own bathroom and shower, for example, and a television set - his wife is less enthused.  Her anxiety isn't about his eventual, possible demise, however, it's that she's in love with her husband's brother, who has decided that being a prostitute is better than being a living donor.

There is a lot of great stuff in this play, in particular the relationships between the characters.  The Western woman is kind a of distilled, extreme version of all the worst aspects of a well-to-do woman who thinks she's doing the family a kindness with this arrangement, treating them at times like friends and at other times like pets.  Overall, the storyline of the organ donor come to fruition in a fairly standard way, without too many surprises.  It required a bit of exposition at the end, which I usually try to avoid if I can when doing some kind of reveal, but it's always a temptation to have your antagonist start monologuing.  The wife, Jaya, becomes the true protagonist of the play and shows great strength and resolve at the end.  Overall, I'd give it a 7/10 on my purely arbitrary scale.  It was mostly solid, it had some interesting ideas and characters, and it gave me a few ideas to fiddle with as a writer.

Good ol' 70s prog

More work-related explorations of prog.  By work-related, I mean that sometimes when I'm at work I like to listen to random prog albums while I crunch data.  That's one of the things I do at work - take big chunks of numbers from a variety of places, and put them into a new place, and then compare the numbers to each other in different ways to learn things about stuff that is interesting.  It sometimes takes several hours to work through a set, so having some fun, strange, interesting, meandering music to drift along on is quite nice.

So, yesterday I discovered a couple of albums that I'll be listening to again for sure.  The first was Satin Whale, and it was pretty solid.  Sometimes youtube just loads up something else after one video is done, and sometimes it doesn't.  In this case, a new album started playing.  It was by a band called Steamhammer.  I liked it better than Satin Whale.  That's some solid musical exploration right there.

There really seems to be an endless supply of early 70s prog bands and albums, from all over the world.

Old Friends

I just finished a new short play I'm called "Old Friends," and it's probably one of the darker things I've written in a while.  I think it's pretty good, though, and it's back in the scifi realm for me, which I enjoy exploring.  I'm excited to start sending it out to some contests and theatres, to see what kind of response it gets.

Immediately after I thought of the name, I was reminded of the old Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name.  Although the song has very little in common with my play, besides the name, it was kind of fun to listen to it while I was working on the play.

So, here's Old Friends, and a couple other S&G selections:

Hazy Shade of Winter:

America:

Ghost in my machine

Totally random album showed up in the side-bar of youtube while I was listening to Chelsea Wolfe.  So far it's pretty good.

It kind of reminds me of some older King's X at times, with the vocal harmonies and the precision metal guitar work.  I don't know, what do you think?

Kings' X has lyrics and albums that sometime conjure Christian images and symbols, but the band resists that label, more so lately I guess than when this album and "Faith, Hope, Love" came out.  Ghost, by contrast, appear to be straight up Satanists, although their identities are not publicly known, and they, like Daft Punk and Buckethead, only appear on stage with masks on.

Band's bands

I hope I put the apostrophe in the right spot.  Whatever.  There are some bands out there that it seems like are most appreciated by other bands.  And probably a subset of hipsters who enjoy knowing that a popular band actually gets a lot of inspiration from some obscure band from the seventies or something.

I think a lot of times, these bands push some boundary or other that most casual listeners aren't aware of, so what they hear are songs that sound a little strange, rather than songs that are doing something unique.  But then members of a band, being more aware of all the things that are easier and harder to do, musically, listen to these same songs and realize that something was happening there.  Inspired, they take these strange sounds and refine them in a way that is more listenable to more people.

One band that I was thinking about this morning that I think falls into this category, is Wire.  They've been making music since the late 70s.  Their first concert, apparently, was the first time some of the band members had played their instruments.  It didn't go well.  But they stuck together and learned to play music together as a band.  They've been through some crazy incarnations over the years, and are still producing music now.  Here's a selection of my favorites:

'Strange' from their first album Pink Flag, later covered by R.E.M.:

'The Other Window' from Chairs Missing:

'Ahead' from the Ideal Copy, their fourth studio album.  I love this song:

They just released a new album earlier this year, so I haven't had a chance to really listen to it yet, but don't let that stop you from tracking it down and giving it a shot.  It's self-titled.

Not my three favorite songs

Even if I'm not drawn to a piece of music personally, I start thinking about the kind of person that would be drawn to that music.  It's a fun way to develop characters, I've found.  Take three songs and think of the person who would have those as their top three songs.  It works really well whether you use three really similar songs or three totally different ones.  It's kind of like the restaurant game, where you look at strangers a few tables away and try to come up with their backstory.

So, for those of you who like a writing prompt, here are three songs to associate with a character. Name/Age/Sex?  What do they look like?  How old are they?  Where did they grow up?  What do they do for a living?  What do they want to accomplish?  What's stopping them?

Uriah Heep - The Wizard

The Cult - Big Neon Glitter

Mother Love Bone - Stargazer

fIREHOSE

In high school a bunch of my skater friends were really into Red Hot Chili Peppers.  This was about when Mothers Milk came out, but a lot of the guys had Uplift Mofo Party Plan in heavy rotation in their stereos, too.  I became particularly attached to Mothers Milk for a while.  It had a kind of punk/rap/funk thing going.  The first song on the album, "Good Time Boys" has a line in it that goes "...tell you 'bout the band called fIREHOSE!"

I figured that any band that RHCP sang about was probably good, and probably a lot like them.  While it's true that fIREHOSE is indeed good, they are not actually much like Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Since this was in the dark ages before the internet could tell me what a band sounded like before I bought the album, I just saved up my money and bought the fIREHOSE album fROMOHIO.
On cassette.

At first I was really disappointed.  But, I'd spent money on it, and I was always looking for something that could be my kind of music, differentiated from my brother and my cousin, who had some solid musical circles they were exploring.  My brother was particularly into Sonic Youth at this time, and my cousin was deeply into the Doors.  So I kept giving fIREHOSE a shot, and they started to grow on me.  My favorite song on the album ended up being two songs in a row - "What Get's Heard," a kind of funky spoken-word thing followed by "'Nuf that shit, George," a 2+ minute drum solo.

Going back, I think fIREHOSE has more appeal to me now than RHCP does.

the Jam

I was listening to the Jam today, surfing through their greatest hits and looking for gems.  I'm mostly familiar with their song "That's Entertainment," which is awesome.  They've got some great earlier punk tracks that I know I'll be going back to, but the song that really leapt out to me was English Rose, an amazing and lovely song that really broadened my view of the Jam.  I want more.

And in case you need a little refresher:

Let's go

I was looking on ebay for my two favorite Bauhaus albums on vinyl, "Burning from the Inside," and "The Sky's Gone Out."  These were key albums in my teen years, and through them I discovered Love and Rockets, Tones On Tail, and the solo work of Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash.  I also had a cassette of David J's called "Songs From Another Season," which I never really got into.  Having found music that I felt was uniquely mine amongst my friends, I wanted to be a completionist, so I worked on getting every Bauhaus album, every Love and Rockets album, and all the solo work and side projects.  Being very poor, and also this was before the internet was a place where you could at least listen to music if not download it easily, I did not succeed in my quest.

Now that I enjoy getting things on vinyl, I'm interested in gathering some of my favorite albums from that time of my life.

A side effect of shopping for one or two records is that many people on ebay are selling lots of records.  So naturally I take a look at what they've got for sale to see if there's anything else I could add to my potential purchase and save on shipping.

I spotted a copy of "The Sky's Gone Out" for sale, and checked the sellers other offerings, and located a couple albums by bands I'd never heard of, but which turned out to be pretty good.  One of those was "The Reducers," from the mid-80s and the other was "The Shocking Blue" from around 1969.

and

Black holes

I was all prepared to make an awesome list of songs and/or albums with "black holes," as the theme, but google failed me.  The band Muse has their song "Supermassive Black Hole" from the album "Black Holes and Revelations," and that pretty much fills up any google search that includes keywords like "songs about black holes."

I only really started this search because I came across this prog album by The Neutrons called "Black Hole Star," and was enjoying it's qualities.   And then I thought, "well, there's the Muse song, and there's "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden... surely there's a few more... But if there is, it'll take me a lot more time than I have right now to find them.

As a consolation, here's an album that couldn't quite make this non-list, but which is also good:

White rabbits

I think a lot about synchronicity.  Not the Police album, but the concept.  In particular, when some random piece of information floats into my life, and then within a day or so I see that same information again in a completely different context.  Does this happen to you?  One day you read a word like "nacreous" in a book or something, and you're like 'that's a crazy word, what does it mean?' and then you look it up (if you're a big nerd like me) or just wonder about it, and then a few hours later you're listening to the radio and the announcer talks about the nacreous sheen on the inside of oyster shells.  Why is the radio announcer talking about oyster shells anyway?  I don't know, it's just an example!

Anyway, two days ago I heard "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane for the first time since I was a teenager.  Seriously, it's been over twenty years.  Of course, that opening bassline, and the marching drum beat is so iconic and memorable it took all of one second to know what song I was listening to.  Where was I when I heard the song?  At an indoor climbing gym.  I never really thought of Jefferson Airplane as being great climbing music, but there it was.

Yesterday I was wandering through an antique store at lunch, and nearly tripped over a stack of records propped against the base of an overpriced dresser.  The record on the front of the stack was Surrealistic Pillow, by Jefferson Airplane, which is the album White Rabbit is on.

I didn't buy the album, because it was in terrible shape.  But it got me thinking about synchronicity again.  I don't really feel like two instances of information appearing in close proximity is enough to be amazed or dumbfounded over.  I mean, we're seriously bombarded by information of all shapes and sizes all day every day, it's no wonder it doesn't happen more often.  I think if I got four or more random instances of the same obscure and unlooked for piece of information within 24 hours, I'd be more inclined to consider the potential for a conspiracy, but until that happened, I'll just treat it as a gentle prompting from my subconscious to listen to this old song again and enjoy some pleasant teenage memories.

Buckethead and friends

Back in college, in... the 90s... I had a friend who was really into Buckethead.  I'd never heard of the guy before, but I was kind of fascinated by this story of an amazing guitarist that only appeared on stage with an empty friend chicken bucket on his head, and a creepy mask.  And clothing, too, I mean, it's not like he's only wearing a chicken bucket.

Anyway, he had this import album called Bucketheadland, and he played it for me a few times.  It's crazy and epic and bizarre, and Buckethead can play the guitar like a madman.  I don't understand why he feels like he needs a bucket on his head.  It makes it harder for me to take him seriously as a musician.  On the other hand, listening to him play guitar makes me forget he has a bucket on his head.  It's a weird one.

It might feel like work at times to listen to the whole thing, but fortunately for you the first six or seven minutes of the album is all you need to discover his epic genius.  The Giant Robot Theme is so awesome I could easily get teary eyed imagining giant robots entering some field of battle to fight huge aliens for the future of Earth.

Now, at that time I also learned about a band called Praxis, which was a loose collaboration of different artists, including Bootsy Collins, John Zorn, and a Japanese noise artist named Yamatsuka Eye.  I got to hear their album Sacrifist, and immediately fell in love with the song Rivet, which was written in part by Buckethead.  Hey, scream along if you know the words!

Learning a little more about Yamatsuka Eye, I realized that I'd actually heard something else by him back in high school, when an Italian exchange student who came to live at my house during my junior year brought his cassette of Naked City's album Torture Garden.  Although I appreciated that album conceptually at the time, it was the kind of thing I could only listen to for a few minutes at a time.  Go ahead and try a little bit of it for yourself.

New car, new music

Okay, it's new to me, even if it isn't new new.  I loved my car, it was great and it worked great and I had it just the way I liked it.  Sure it had some built-up layers of junk that had accumulated under the seats, but I had all the CDs I like in the glove box, and it was just comfortable.  Then someone ran a red light and sideswiped me, and even though there wasn't a lot of damage, there was enough that it was totaled.  Great.  I get to do my least favorite thing in the whole world, which is shop for a car.  I don't like buying from car dealerships, because even the most pleasant experience feels like a sham.  I don't like buying from private parties, because even though most people are probably fine, I'm worried I'll get the one that's trying to sell me a lemon.

Whatever.  I got through it, and now I have a car to drive again, and that's great.  More importantly, it has a good stereo, and it can play CDs, and I can also plug in... my ipod!  Wow.  I've arrived.

I forgot to put all the CDs back in this car this morning, and I don't have an adapter cable yet, so I was stuck listening to the radio, where i heard an old Shins song, and I was reminded that I like the Shins and I should listen to them again.

"New Slang" was pretty big for a while there, especially after that movie Garden State came out, but I think one of my favorites was/is "Kissing The Lipless," from their second album Chutes Too Narrow:

Deep Cuts

I am digging this album by The Knife.  Also, "Deep Cuts" is an awesome album title, especially from a band called "The Knife."  Maybe it's a little on-the-nose, but whatever.  Of course, an album called "Deep Cuts" should probably have actual deep cuts on it - old B-sides and collected never-before-released live tracks from random concerts.

Vacation find #3

Well, on our trip through Spain and Portugal we stayed in seven different cities, and found records for sale in three of them.  Seville had actual record stores, Lagos had a music store, and Segovia had a collectibles store that was mostly coins and stamps, but also had some antiques and a small box of records.  Here in the states, if you go into a shop and it has a small box of records, it's usually not worth even looking in - they tend to be dusty cast-offs with broken covers and scratched vinyl, something the store-owner's neighbor pulled out of their attic or something.  I've seen water damaged, broken, scratched, coverless records for sale for five bucks, right?

Not here.  These records were all in pristine shape - flawless, glossy vinyl from the 70s.  We found two great singles here, one of which is by a band called Yoyi.  The single is "Bananas."  The B-side is a song called Copacabana, but it's not the Barry Manilow song, it's their own psychedelic Cuban funk song.

Bananas:

The cover is what sold us on the record, but the music keeps bringing me back for more.

More vacation finds

In Lagos, Portugal we happened on a shop selling CDs and DVDs, and discovered they had a couple boxes of records, too.  The LPs were all 5 Euros per disc, and the singles were all 1 Euro, so we bought five singles, mostly based on the cover art or the name of the band or the songs.  My favorite find out of this group was from a funk band called Fresh Meat, with their single "Hobo."  I just love the word 'hobo,' so how could I resist, right?

It's a catchy funk song from the 70s, but I don't think it was very popular.

I was on vacation

Record store shopping in other countries is just as fun as it is here.  In some ways, more so!

Whenever I go to a new place, I try to find a record store.  Once I'm there, I try to find a record or single on vinyl from a local band.  This isn't always easy, but most record stores have a "Locals" section of their inventory, and I'll just browse through that until I find something that looks like it might be good or interesting or at least in a genre that I enjoy.

In Seville, Spain, my daughter and I went to a couple of record stores, and bought one full album and three singles, all of Spanish bands.

The full album was the first Cerebros Exprimidos album, "Mas Suicidas," which promised to be a punk/hard-core album by a band in Seville.  It turns out they're actually from the island of Majorca, but maybe they live in Seville now.  Not sure.

Here's a song from the album, with a great image of their album cover.

I'll post more links to other record finds soon - we picked up 10 or 11 records on our trip through Spain and Portugal, but I haven't heard them all yet.

Dude, you rock!

I look back at my youth, making mix tapes, and I think I've romanticized the whole thing.  It was labor intensive, and the people I gave the mixes to never quite seemed to get all the hidden messages I was putting in with my song selections.  Either that, or I regretted my song decisions later but it was so much work making the tape that I just gave it to them anyway.  I remember once I made a mix tape for a girl that I kind of liked.  One of the songs I put on there was by this Dallas band called Last Rites that was playing in the late 80s/early 90s.  I found them on a compilation album that I picked up cheap at Hastings, called "Dude, You Rock!" Actually, here's the track list from that cassette:

Course of Empire - God's Jig

Three On A Hill - Overdrive

Decadent Dub Team - Makin' Funky Money

Rigor Mortis - Grudge F---

Loco Gringos - Texas Ranger Man 

Scam - The Culprit

Shallow Reign - Walk With Me

Sedition - Sedition

Lithium X-Mas - Love Buzz

Hash Palace - Let's Get Lost

Reverend Horton Heat - Speed Demon

Last Rites - You're So F-----n Great/Train Girl

End Over End - Bringin' It Down By Hand

Anyway, I put "You're So F'in Great" song on the mix, because it's chorus was basically "You're so f'in great, but I suck!"  About forty times in a row.  It kind of summed up how I felt about her.  But then I was worried that she would think I was trying to say something with that song, so then I wrote her a letter explaining that that song didn't have anything to do with anything.  It was one of those "the lady doth protest too much" moments.

I wish I could find that song, but so far it's not coming up anywhere, on youtube or anywhere else.

So I think I'm a convert to the CD burning mix list world.  Super easy.  Easy to change the order, to add or subtract, to think about it for a few days and get back to it, to throw something together for a drive, to toss some tracks on a disc to introduce someone to a band you like.  Maybe I like that it means less - then I don't worry that I'm sending a message with the medium, as it were.

Here's "Texas Ranger Man" by the Loco Gringos, from Dude, You Rock!

I kind of wish I still had this cassette, since some of the songs don't seem to be available any other place.  Apparently it was also released on red vinyl - that would be pretty cool to have.

Dark Day

I just discovered Dark Day a couple days ago.  Reminds me of Tubeway Army, a bit.  I wouldn't mind picking up this album.

Rakta, Chastity Belt

Found a couple of all-girl post-punk bands that I'm enjoying a lot.  One is the sort-of local Seattle-ish band Chastity Belt (yeah, go ahead and search for them on ebay without narrowing to "Records" first.)  They're pretty awesome.  Vinyl is on the way in the mail as we speak.  The other is a Brazilian all-girl band called Rakta.  Kind of doom, kind of chant, kind of noise, kind of awesome.

Here's the official video for "Time To Go Home," by Chastity Belt:

Now listen to the new 7" Single from Rakta:

Awesome, right?  Right?

3 Girls Bakery music

I was in Seattle not too long ago, and went for a mosey down at Pike Place Market because, you know, tourist.  It's hard to decide what to eat down there - especially in the late afternoon on a Saturday when various things are shutting down.

We went into Three Girls Bakery, which has been there for a long time, apparently.  I got the last last last last bowl of chili out of the chili pot.  I don't know if that was a good idea.

I got the chili because they were out of french bread, so the french dip sandwich I wanted was kind of off.  It's hard to have a French dip on regular bread.

As I ate the chili, I couldn't help enjoying the music that was on.  Kind of hard rock, kind of punk, kind of something I felt like I should have heard by now.  Not having Spotify, I was forced to talk directly to the people working there, and found out it was Thin Lizzy's final album, "Thunder and Lightning," from about 1983.  It reminded me a lot of AC/DC, Van Halen, and the like.  Arena-sized guitar rock.

My familiarity with Thin Lizzy up until then was their early stuff on Jailbreak, which I used for a scene in my novel, and with some of their hits, like "The Boys Are Back In Town," which makes me think of a cross between The Cars and Elvis Costello.

Anyway, the end result of all this is me exploring this band that's gone through some significant evolutions, with different band members cycling in and out, and moving from one sound to another, which is good for me to think about as I write the stories about my fictional band.

Thin Lizzy - Thunder and Lightning:

Garage Sale Find

I stopped at a garage sale this weekend, always on the lookout for obscure ephemera and old records. Most of the time, old records at garage sales fall into one of several genres:

• Christmas
• Gospel 
• I've Never Heard Of That Singer

And often they are

• Overpriced
• Musty
• Scratched up
• Missing the sleeve
• Missing the record
• A laserdisc

But sometimes you get lucky and find things that are interesting enough to want, in good enough shape that you could imagine holding on to it and playing it sometimes, and cheap enough to take a chance on if you're not sure.

At this garage sale, they were selling a box of records that included a bunch of recordable records.  These were used by people back in the 30s and 40s maybe? And were sold with a variety of uses advertised, including recording things off the radio, and recording messages to send to loved ones.  A little research revealed that there used to be vending machines in various touristy places, like atop the Empire State Building, where you could record a message and have the record come out with your recorded voice on it.  Then, apparently you could send it home as a vocal post card.

Most of these recordable records were either blank or really beat up, but I did find one that had tracks on it, and looked playable without too much trouble.  My daughter and I cleaned it up as best as we could and put it on the turntable...

And it was apparently some music recorded off the radio back in the forties or so.  Big band kind of stuff.  I was hoping for voices from beyond the grave.  Like this: https://archive.org/details/James_Whitcomb_Riley-Out_To_Old_Aunt_Marys

Maybe next time.

Exploring metal

More often than not I like the idea of metal more than the execution of it, but lately I've been finding inroads and enjoying some great metal bands and songs.  I've always liked Torche, of course, but they seem a little different than the metal I'm thinking of.  Metal that I've tried out recently includes: Amon Amarth, Gridlink, Deafheaven, Kvelartak, and Opeth.  Here's one song from each of those bands, but Opeth - Deliverance is my favorite, and I find myself going back to it pretty often, finding new things in it and just enjoying the hell out of it.  Solid.

Opeth - Deliverance

Amon Amarth - Deceiver of the Gods

Gridlink - Constant Autumn

Deafheaven - Dream House

Kverlartak - Blodtorst

Blade Runner Soundtrack

I've written about Vangelis before, but they're worth exploring in greater detail if you like their work.  I have a great affinity for interesting, ambient, electronic music that inspires the imagination, and Vangelis does that better than many other artists in this genre.  Don't get me wrong, they've got their share of tracks that fall short of my ideals, but when they get it right, it's really really right.  Certainly their album Spiral has a lot to recommend it, and some of the tracks on Albedo 0.39 are tremendous.  More recently, I've been enjoying listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack, which I can enjoy both for the music and for the memories of watching an amazing movie.   Apparently, there are some different versions of the soundtrack that have been released over the years - this is the "Esper" edition.  There are longer and shorter versions with more or less music on them, also.

Capitan Y Tennille

I thought I was getting the first Captain and Tennille album on vinyl, in great shape, for fifty cents. Instead, what I had in my hands was the re-release of the album with all the songs in Spanish.  Still pretty excited.

It makes me think of that Simpsons episode where Homer buys a snow plow, and Barney buys a bigger snowplow, and gets Linda Rondstadt to sing the theme song.  And they're sitting in a hot tub, and Linda says she thinks she might do a Spanish version.  And sings it.  I can't find a youtube video of it, sorry.  You'll just have to track down and watch the whole episode.

The Romeos? Never heard of them.

Digging through the 50 cent bins at Everyday Music in Portland, I found a variety of little gems this weekend.  By 'gems' I mean things I wouldn't have bought for much more than 50 cents.  In the mix, a Barry Manilow album with Copacabana on it, the first Captain and Tennille album (as a gift for a friend), and an album from 1980 called "Rock and Roll and Love and Death" by a pop/rock band called The Romeos.  I'd never heard of them, but I liked the cover, so I gave it a shot.  I'd love to share it with you here, only I haven't been able to find any of the songs on that album on youtube.  Crazy, right?  But here's a representative one of theirs, called "Crazy No More":  

Both the sound of this band and the title of their album remind me of an old Godfathers album I've enjoyed over the years called "Birth, School, Work, Death," as well as some Replacements tunes.  It's all in that '80s rock/alternative rock transition time, maybe.  Is "Rock" even a genre by itself any more?  I mean, it's a style of music, but it seems like the moment a band emerges in that style, they're immediately maneuvered into a narrower, more easily described genre or subgenre, like punk, pop, metal, prog, lofi, goth, etc.  When I think if "Rock" bands, I think of the Godfathers:

And the Replacements:

Superman

Over the years, I've heard several different songs about Superman - either the character or the concept of 'supermen.'  The most recent addition to this list is "Superman" by Barbara Streisand, on a record my daughter picked up at the Goodwill.  I like "superman" as a topic - it can be so easy to fall into common superhero ideas, but anyone who's read comic books in the last twenty years knows that being a superhero is an experience filled with agony, alienation, and self-loathing; the weight of the world on your shoulders and just because you have these powers it doesn't mean your mind is up to the challenge of being super.

Here's four favorite superman songs to help you rise above the crisis:

Laurie Anderson: O Superman (For Massenet)

R.E.M.: I Am Superman

Flaming Lips: Waiting For A Superman

Barbara Streisand: Superman

Writing Update

Well, it's time for a little progress report on the writing front.  As far as my novel goes, things are moving along at a nice pace, I think.  Earlier this year I found an agent, and we've been working on my submission package, which includes a long and short synopsis.  She also had a few suggestions on parts of the book to work with, including a great idea for the end that I really enjoyed exploring.  About a month ago, I sent the manuscript to a copy editor, and I just got it back from her with all kinds of little changes to approve, so I'll be working through those in the next week.  Once it's ready to roll on that front, my agent will start sending it out to her contacts in the world of publishing, and we'll see what happens.

Honestly, I don't know what to expect.  Actually, I know what I do expect - rejection!  But so far everyone seems to like the book and I keep getting a lot of encouragement.  So I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, and even expect to be accepted.  That's not easy.

On the playwrighting front, I've had another theatre accept one of my short plays for production in a summer festival, so that's fun.  I don't think I get any money for that, so that's less fun.

Something upbeat to keep us all groovin':

Do you remember?

I want to like it, and now I love it

Do you ever find yourself listening to something and thinking to yourself, "Well, a lot of people like this.  A lot of people are saying this is good."  And the reason you're saying that, instead of "Wow, I really like this," is that you want to like it, but you don't.  I've had that experience plenty of times, and I'm sure you have too.  What's great is when you hear something and dislike it at first and then come back to it later and just love it to death.

That was my experience with the band Deerhoof the first time I heard their music.  At first, I thought it was all chaotic, and there wasn't anything stable to hold on to.  Then I thought the chaos was an illusion, and in fact the music had structure, just on a larger or deeper scale.  Like if someone found a pattern in pi after looking through trillions of digits, right?  Then I realized the search for the pattern was a red herring, that there was a kind of anti-pattern at work.  Then I saw them in concert, and watched them perform these chaotic sounding songs note for note and beat for beat.  Even the really jarring, random sounding parts.  It kind of blew my mind.  Here's a song called "Scream Team" that I think is both accessible and representative of the rabbit hole that their music can be:

Another band that I had to warm up to was Black Moth Super Rainbow.  I saw them open for the Flaming Lips once several years ago, and just couldn't figure out what was going on.  It was bizarre.  Plus, I wanted to see the Flaming Lips, and they played an awesome show that night, so I almost didn't remember that BMSR was there.  Years later I heard their album Cobra Juicy, and it's become part of my Top Ten Albums I Could Listen To Pretty Much Whenever.  Check out "Like A Sundae."  It's a great example, and has some of my favorite synth work, at about 2:54.

If you like that, check out the next song on the album, the more abrasive, strange, and amazing "Hairspray Heart"

Also, BMSR has an official video for Hairspray Heart, which is truly disturbing.  Seriously.  omg bmsr wtf?

First page, writing prompt, whatever

On a blog that I read, a challenge was issued to write what's considered a forbidden scene in fiction: your character looking at themselves in the mirror and describing what they see.  Forbidden probably because it's an overused and amateurish device for describing your character.  

Here's what I wrote:

"Is it a mirror or a window? I used to wonder. Is a mirror just one of a billion tiny connections between this world and the next, where everything is almost exactly the same as this one, atom by atom and moment by moment? 

She'd look at me and wonder the same thing. We had lived every moment of our lives in parallel, in lock step. We had looked into each other's eyes a thousand times and known... known? Yes, known... that we were not the same person and yet no random act, no sudden movement, no lunge forward, fade back, sudden drop to the ground, punch at the glass or bizarre face could break the illusion that we were the same. 


I knew that one day we would be different, and she knew it too. I had tried to imagine what it would be, the clue that would prove it. A pimple on my cheek instead of my chin? A slightly different shade of red on my lips? A single hair falling across my eyes while my reflection's remained in place? 


But I had never imagined this."


I kind of like it, and I've been thinking about it since, imagining what the change could be.  Given that the mirror world can only be minutely different from this world, what could have happened that would have caused a change in the Other's appearance without deflecting them from the lockstep path they're on with the girl on this side?

Here's some things I imagine:

1. Someone shot at her - in this universe they missed, in the other universe, they grazed her cheek.  In both universes there was a scramble for cover, a search for the shooter, and fleeing to the safety of home.  No cops, no doctors.

2. Some kind of flesh eating disease, just starting.

3. A person in the room behind the Other.

4. A message on the mirror, but no Other.

Hm...

Weekend listening party

I went to my brother's place for dinner this weekend, and we spent most of the evening listening to records.  That's actually normal for an evening there, but in this case we were on some kind of record listening adventure, playing single sides and digging deep into the collection.  As a result, my daughter now has 3 new albums atop her must-have list of vinyl:

I was about 16 I think when I heard this the first time, and really loved it.  Back then I had it on cassette and I think I just listened to the first side and rewound it over and over again.  Listening to both sides, I was pleasantly surprised at how good the second side was.  Maybe "pleasant" is the wrong word to associate with MLWTTKK, but you know what I mean.

Ah, INXS.  I know every song on this album by heart. "Never Tear Us Apart."  So many tears shed, quietly, by myself.  SHUT UP!

There's a lot of familiar material on this album, even for people who've never listened to it - parts have shown up in movies, commercials, tv shows, etc.  This album is solid gold, and worth listening to in its entirety.  On vinyl, it's a double album.  We started with the second side of the first record, which kind of threw me for a loop.  Do you ever have that experience, being jarred out of the normal order of things and having to reorient?  Kind of like seeing someone you know from work when you're at the grocery store.

Rock stars solving problems

One of the interesting stories I uncovered during the writing to Gilly Frank was in regards to various tour difficulties Yes experienced in the early 1970s.  In one case, they had to cancel a show in Scotland because the van with their equipment broke down, and then the van that came to replace it also broke down, as did the third van.  In my mind, I can imagine this all playing out as an episode of some Spinal Tap style sit-com.

Actually, that would be an incredible sit-com, now that I think about it.  Just imagine:  It's 1971.  A rather eclectic prog rock group suddenly finds themselves rocketing to stardom.  The sit-com would follow their adventures.  Not like a mock-documentary, though.  I think that's over done, and would be too close to Spinal Tap.  No, just good storytelling, drawing on the rich heritage of rock history, with it's endless supply of bizarre antics and absurd situations.

Okay, so the other key event in Yes's history that I put into the book was that the first concert of their American tour in 1971 was cancelled because someone stole their sound equipment.  They had 9 shows scheduled for California for about a 10 day stretch, and the first show was cancelled because a bunch of their equipment was stolen.  That's a story that I love imagining - not the event itself, but the ripple effect from the event, the response from the band and the crew, the scramble to find replacement equipment, etc.

I think there's something interesting to explore with bands: when the persona that band members use on stage and in public is compromised by situations gone wrong, where responding as a rock star would respond doesn't do anything to solve the problem and only makes it worse.  On the other hand, responding in a practical way and getting things fixed might destroy your rock star mystique and diminish your image in the eyes of fans.

The Psychology of Song Selection Among Friends in Karaoke Environments

One of the musical topics of the day revolved around songs people sing at karaoke, and at open mic type events.  I imagine there's a psychology dissertation to be written around karaoke music selection.

Let's see... there's Positive Psychological and Interpersonal Effects of Karaoke, which was presented at the 12 Annual Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.  Sounds like a party.  But my ten second use of Google Scholar did not return results that suggested there's been a serious study of the psychology of song choice in karaoke situations compared to open mic night situations.

Here's my theory:  Most people who sing karaoke don't take karaoke very seriously.  But most people who sign up for an open mic night take open mic night seriously.  Most people who sing karaoke look at it as a way to have fun with friends, blow off steam, and belt out songs they love or hate.  People who do open mics are looking for approval from the audience.

So the result is people choose different songs for karaoke than they would if they were trying to impress people.

5 Songs I Would Karaoke If I Ever Got Around To Going Out To Karaoke:

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) - Journey

The Final Countdown - Europe

You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman - Aretha Franklin

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

We Built This City - Starship

I also might choose any other song by Journey, plus most songs off the first Cars album, and Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'"

Cluster and the Cars

I've been listening to some early experimental electronic music from 1972 by Cluster.  The album is called "II," and is filled with cycling, rolling, loops of electric sound, wave upon wave, minute after minute.  While it's not the kind of thing I'd throw on a turntable at a party, it is the kind of thing I'd listen to and think about the kinds of sonic imagery that can be created with electronic devices in music.  I can imagine moments of this album serving as a springboard for more accessible works - it's the kind of thing that might inspire other musicians to push their boundaries a bit in this direction, and add pieces of this crazy landscape to their music.  Maybe.

Oddly enough, this makes me think of the first Cars album.  It's full of great power pop classics.  At the time, people used to joke with the band that they should have named their first album "The Cars Greatest Hits" because so many of the songs were huge hits.  What's cool about the album was that the band loved to experiment with new technology and equipment on their songs.  They'd find some new thing and just start fiddling with it, and add some new sounds to the song they were working on.  So no, they didn't make anything like Cluster, but they're a good example I think of a more mainstream band using experimentation in their work to push their own boundaries and expand the abilities of their fans to listen to new sounds.

Listen to the first moments of "Let The Good Times Roll."  Or the whole song of "I'm In Touch With Your World."  I love that song - so zany.  The guitar and drum are just a backdrop to an endless array of weird things they must have found lying around the recording studio.  That's what I imagine anyway.

Mellow Mellow Mellotron

One of the subtler throughlines of my novel Gilly Frank's Record Collection involves an early piece of musical equipment, a Mellotron.  Leading up to and during the writing of GFRC, I learned a lot about electronic music of the late 60s and early 70s, and it's been a lot of fun picking out the sound of different electronic instruments.  Before, my concept of a synthesizer was pretty basic - I thought it was an electric keyboard that could make other sounds, too.  Like one of those little Casio keyboards everyone had in the 80s, with four drum machine buttons and buttons for "Trumpet" and "Xylophone" or whatever.  That's not actually the case, and the more I learn, the more I really love these fascinating musical instruments and the impact they've had on modern music.

Anyway, have fun exploring old electronic prog - there's a wealth of rock music history just in the instruments.  Go over to wikipedia and read up on mellotrons, check out this list of the Top 10 Mellotron songs, and listen to a few tracks to pick out it's unique qualities.  Here's a couple of my favorites:

What are those opening notes in "Strawberry Fields Forever?"  A mellotron:

Here it is again, sounding very different, in "And You And I," by Yes.  It comes in at about 1:27, but there's another great use of it at around 4:25 or so.

Playwrighting: It keeps you up at night

This doesn't happen to me very often, but there are times when I'm writing where I am unable to sleep because I can't stop trying to figure out some piece of the puzzle I'm trying to solve.  A lot of writing is about solving puzzles, at least for me.  Here's this complex set of circumstances, characters, relationships, desires, places and things, and I want to find an elegant solution, something that accounts for the variables and provides a way forward.  It's a little like mathematics, only the goal is to solve each problem in a new way, and achieve a different outcome.

Anyway, last night I finally got to bed and I was staring at the ceiling thinking about the last moment of the full-length play I just finished writing.  It's a haunted house play, and I'm hoping to appeal to high school drama departments with it. Here's the funny thing about high school drama departments - they have the one thing that very few other theatres have, which is a large number of participants. Sure, there are thousands of actors who would like to be involved in larger, professional productions, but those theatres can't afford to produce plays with 20 actors in them.  Or even 12.  Or 8. Most of the time, the criteria for new plays to be considered by most theatres is 6 or fewer actors, with the emphasis on fewer.

For playwrights, this just means adjusting how and what you write to appeal to the market - so there are a lot more plays being written that have casts of 2, 3, or 4 people.

This doesn't work super well for high schools, which generally have anywhere between 15 and 50 kids who want to participate in some way in a production.  So large ensemble cast plays appeal greatly to them.  Older plays tend to have less of what we would call adult content, so those appeal as well.  

So my goal right now is to see if I can write great plays within these parameters:

• Ensemble cast with between 15 - 25 distinct parts
• More than half of the characters are female
• PG rated in terms of swearing, sex, and violence
• Most of the major characters are high school aged
• Not too serious

So I've just finished my first attempt:  "The Haunting of Blairmont House," which has 19 distinct characters.  There are 6 'main' characters - 4 girls and 2 guys that tell each other ghost stories about the Blairmont House and then decide to break in and spend the night.  The other 13 roles are members of a ghost chorus that plays various bit parts in the ghost stories, haunts the house, and as a chorus, makes low-level moaning sounds.

Once I get it into a little bit tidier format and order, I have a couple of people that I can send it to who are looking for high school plays for their schools, and see what they think.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Covers, covered

Fun thought experiment:

Which songs would you like to hear covered by which bands/artists?

Examples:

"I'd love to hear The Damned - Shadow Of Love, covered by Michael Buble."

Or

"You know what would be great, dude?  Simon & Garfunkel - Sound of Silence, covered by Deafheaven."

It seems like a lot of bands will cover one song or another during a concert.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling like an idiot during whatever concert I'm at, I'll request "Hot For Teacher," as a kind of long-running joke that only I appreciate anymore.  It goes back to college, and a friend of mine who was a guitarist in a band called Kruster's Kronomid.  I tried to get him to play Hot For Teacher at almost every gig.  People do dumb things in college, don't you know?  Fun fact:  The drummer for Kruster's Kronomid was Jason McGerr of Death Cab For Cutie.

Some of my favorite covers that already exist include:

or this old favorite from my youthful explorations of punk:

And how could I forget this one, which is guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye unless you have no soul:

This one is... different:

 

3 more Prog album discoveries

Looking down the barrel of a long day of number crunching means plugging in the headphones and surfing youtube for prog albums I haven't heard yet.  I listened to Druid last week, and Eloy a couple weeks ago, and of course there's an endless supply of Yes to discover and rediscover, but the magic of youtube is the sidebar of suggestions that comes up.  Half of it is a bizarre hodgepodge of video suggestions based on the viewing habits of my kids, and the other half is music.  Here's what I discovered during my work day today:

Gryphon - Red Queen to Gryphon Three

There's 4 songs on this album, and the back of the cover shows a picture of each of the band members playing their instrument.  One of the guys - Brian Gulland - is playing a bassoon.  There's some great keyboard progressions in the songs, and some unexpected bassoon breakdowns that take the album down a road that makes me think of trippy cartoon soundtracks of the 70s.  That's not a bad thing.  These guys were exploring something.


Fruup - Future Legends

Whoa.  There's some serious jamming going on here.  Some screaming too.  Frantic moments interspersed with ethereal calm, followed by some more great jams.  I like these guys.

Nihonjin - Far Out

This is pretty sweet prog rock out of Japan from 1973.  I hear a lot of Pink Floyd's influence in here, but it's definitely got its own sound overall, drawing from some traditional Japanese music in places.

Earth + Wind + Fire = Awesome

I ran a 10K this morning.  I know, I know.  Not the best way to spend a morning.  I've been out of practice for a couple months, and it kind of snuck up on me, so it wasn't the most pleasant of fun runs for me.  But, I got through it and enjoyed some orange slices and free beer afterward.  Also, there were some live bands who played during the after-race festivities.  They were fine, but what caught my attention was the music being played between the acts - Earth, Wind and Fire.  So when I got home I very naturally went down the rabbit hole of disco funk and had a very pleasant journey.  I don't remember which EWF song was being played at the race now, but here's one of my favorites from the 'research' I did today:

Torche it

Work work work.

Lots and lots of work today.  No time to chat.

Listening to the new Torche album helps me stay focused.

Yelle makes music that makes Sam think

My daughter and I went to a concert last night at the Hawthorne Theatre in Portland: Yelle.  We saw her a few months ago, and decided after that show they we would see them any time they came to Portland.  Going to shows in the last year, I've added a layer to the way I engage a concert.  Writing a book in which a character is obsessed with music, and which may in the future involve live performances of music, I've started looking at shows through that lens.  How would my character view this experience?  Which people in the crowd would she pick out and think about?  How would she respond if the crowd did this, or if that happened during her show?

For example, there's this song that Yelle does called "Ba$$in" which as the title implies, has some bass in it.  The band is a female lead singer and two drummers, both men, who wear matching coveralls.  During "Ba$$in," both men came out from behind their drum sets to so some funky French dance moves involving rotating their hips with their backs to the crowd.  While they're rotating, Julie Budet is dancing around like a crazy person, alternating between hip shaking and a kind of exaggerating zombie-like stomping.

During this sequence, several members of the audience threw dollar bills on the stage, which I thought was peculiar. Was it supposed to be a compliment?  Was it ironic?  Being a rock star, she probably is greeted with many strange expressions of esteem from her fans, and I'm sure this wasn't terribly strange as far as all that goes.

But it got me thinking about my character Gilly Frank.  If she were in a band, how would she respond to something like that?  If she were in the crowd and someone she knew threw dollar bills at a female lead singer, what would that look like to her?

Here's a live version of "Ba$$in" from a different concert, but it gives you the general idea, I think:

What do you think of a band named "Druid"?

I listened to this album today.  Druid.  Toward The Sun. It was nice.  I mean, it sounded nice, and was great to have in the background.  There's some real great 'Prog Rock' moments periodically through the album, and it reminded me of some of my favorite old Yes tracks.  Long, rambling, striving, searching music.

But here's the thing: Their name is "Druid."  So I pretty much think about that Spinal Tap song about the druids the whole time, recalling the snafu with the 18 inch model of Stonehenge:

The Spinal Tap Stonehenge Scene

"No one ones who they were.  Or what they were doing."

Wizard of Oz Disco Trumpet Creepy Singing Weirdos

I've been debating whether to pick this up on vinyl.  It's for sale on ebay right now for a dollar, with four dollars shipping.  Sale ends in less than an hour.  What should I do?  What. Should. I. Do.

Here's the listing, in case you're interested.

A chorus of ghosts sounds like...

I was thinking about how to describe, in the stage directions for a play, the sound I would like the chorus of ghosts to make.

Here are some options:

"A Chorus of ghosts is heard...

1. Droning in a minor key
2. Chanting atonally
3. Droning atonally
4. Humming atonally in a minor key
5. Creating funerary harmonies
6. Creating an atonal but multi-layered harmony

"...sustained over a period of several minutes."

What's your vote?

New Plays, Soundtracks

I've been on a bit of a playwrighting kick lately, and I'm excited to see where that leads.  I just finished my first new full-length in a while, a weird comedy about love and housing.  I wrote it based on a bunch of stories people told me about strange things they'd witnessed or been part of at night in the city.  That, and a dream one of my fb friends had.

Anyway, I think an out-loud reading would be super helpful right now, so I might try and get a few friends together and see what it sounds like.

I've been thinking about soundtracks lately, namely that a great soundtrack is rare, and a great original soundtrack is even rarer.  By that I mean a soundtrack written for a film, rather than a soundtrack made by putting together some previously released songs.

I can't help thinking its because either composers haven't historically taken soundtracks very seriously, or movie producers haven't been interested in really developing that part of the film to a truly artistic level.  Granted, evidence suggests there isn't any part of most movies where the producers are interested in making something truly artistic, so there's that.

It seems like most original soundtracks are in the 'classical' line - think Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, or even the Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary (one of my all time favorites!)

However, there have been some that really break the mold.  These soundtracks can stand alone as great albums, but also bring the film they're paired with to a new level.

Suspira, an Italian horror film by Dario Argento, is one such film/soundtrack. A band called Goblin does the soundtrack, and it is AWESOME.

What are some of your favorite OSTs?

Today was a poem kind of day

Old clothes are an armor of memories

My dad's shirt is strong and stubborn and quiet

These jeans I've had for more than half my life
A reminder
I've come a long way but it's still me
Growing up in the country
Walking in the woods

The red coat I borrowed from my uncle
But never returned
Used to be my grandfather's hunting jacket
Bright red wool
Stained with grease
That time I wore it to work on my car

Those shoes
Bulbous, leather, heavy
Ancient slippers
Worn daily in the workshop
I think my brother has those now

Even socks
The heavy wool ones
borrowed during a visit
when it was colder than I thought it would be
I still have them

I wear these things
When there is work to be done
But I never wear them all together

Memories of Zeppelin

I've been thinking about how strong music can be for evoking memories and the complex emotions associated with them.  When I was about 16 or 17, I had very strong emotional reactions to a variety of songs, probably just like every other teenager.  Sometimes as a result of something bad happening, a song would get caught in the crossfire and I'd find myself unwilling to listen to it, because of the unpleasant memories associated with it.  Over the years, the initial pain of the experience has gone, but I've rarely regained any emotional attachment to the songs I lost.

The most pertinent example of this would be the song "Stairway to Heaven," by Led Zeppelin, which was a song that was played at one of the Junior Proms I went to with my first girlfriend.  She went to a different school than I did, so we ended up going to both my prom and her prom.  We had actually broken up prior to her prom, but she'd bought the tickets and convinced me that we could just go as friends and have fun.  That didn't work so well for either of us, and it kind of reached critical mass when a mutual friend of ours convinced me that I should dance with her at least once.  We danced together to Stairway to Heaven, and it was very awkward.

After that, I had a much stronger feeling that breaking up should be an absolute, and that no one does anyone any favors by pretending that they could "just be friends" afterward.  For several years after that prom, I simply avoided listening to Stairway to Heaven, although I enjoyed their other songs just fine.  I realized that this was silly when I was in my 20s, but by then Led Zeppelin had kind of fallen off my radar as a band to put on the stereo.

Secret theme songs

I love the first two minutes of this song.  The rest is great, too, but there's a lot happening in those first minutes that really get to me.  It's like a secret theme song for me.  Secret, in that if I went around telling people that "If I Go Mad" was my theme song, they might get the wrong idea about my mental state.  And it's not like it's every day.  Random days.

On alternate days, my secret theme songs include "The Sound Of Silence,"

"Fat Waves" by Torche - particularly the musical breakdown that starts about 90 seconds in:

And if it's Monday: