So, for today's Rewind, I give you my favorite songs I like to sing along to. If I'm being really honest, it's more like songs I think I can sing the hell out of.
They're mostly one-hit wonders, but such good stuff. Oh, and these videos are some 80's gold.
First up is one of my all-time favorite 80's songs evah. T'pau's "Heart and Soul." Best line: I used to have a lover with a Midas touch. IF I HAD A NICKEL, PEOPLE.
Next would be my theme song, "Goody Two Shoes" by the one and only Adam Ant. Best line: You don't drink, don't smoke/What do you do/The subtle innuendos follow/There must be something inside.
This one would be a duet. It's "Obsession" by Animotion. It's the song that spawned a million stalkers -- if you listen to the lyrics, it's nuts. The video makes exactly ZERO sense. Best line: My fantasy has turned to madness /And all my goodness /Has turned to badness.
Lastly, totally not a one-hit wonder and completely the opposite of the other videos today -- The Commodores with "Nightshift." I love this song. Major love. When I sing this one in the car it's dangerous, because I have to do the hand motions. It's a fab song, more subtle than "Brickhouse," (obviously) and it's about Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, who both passed away in 1984, the year before this song came out. The Kerry Blog is all about musical education, is it not? This video is perfect. The outfits at the end SO remind me of Isaac from the Love Boat, it's good times. Best line: At the end of a long day/It's gonna be okay/On the Nightshift.
Regina Spektor is getting quite a bit of attention of late and it's all well deserved and wonderful. She has a great story and I thought you might like to hear what her Wiki says:
Spektor was born in Moscow, USSR to a musical Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and amateur violinist.
Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Russian college
of music and now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York.[1]
Spektor learned how to play piano by practicing on a Petrofupright that was given to her mother by her grandfather.[2] She was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union.[1] The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine and a half, during the period of Perestroika, when Soviet citizens were permitted to emigrate. Regina had to leave her piano behind.[3]
The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not
leaving the USSR, but they finally decided to emigrate, due to the
ethnic and political discrimination which Jews faced.[4]
By now y'all know I love my quirky pianists. Spektor is most certainly the quirkiest and most eclectic girl in the music industry that I know of. Not to mention wildly talented as well being a lovely vocalist who doesn't have to dress up in outrageous costumes or make the tabloids for attention. Her music speaks for itself.
Her 2006 album Begin To Hope is superfantastic. Here's "Fidelity" from that album.
I went back and forth over whether to share this next song with you or not. "Samson" is a jewel. It's my favorite song of the past few years (period) and it's one that can make me cry and I strangely identify with and just adore it. I play it often. "You are my sweetest downfall/I loved you first/Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth" just kills me. You'll have to hear it, but I think "you are my sweetest downfall" may be the most poetic phrase I've heard in years. The "beneath the sheets of paper" part reminds me of my unpublished novel (sigh). So, that's my song. Maybe you'll like it too.
Spektor's latest album, Far is out now and the current single is "Eet." It's lovely.
And the perfect song to listen to after "Eet" is "Dance Anthem of the 80's" for the -eet sounds. Here's a fabulous live clip.
So, that's my Regina Spektor post. I hope y'all enjoyed it as much as enjoy her music.
Those of you who know me well know that I love everything about the written word, typeface, fonts, color, printing, and imagery. Letterpress is the one medium that combines all of those things in an organic way that is unlike anything else I've seen. Maybe it's because I learned to type on an actual typewriter and not a computer, but I love the feel of paper, I like ink, I adore the uniqueness that is only obtained by doing something by hand.
I've been dabbling in computer graphics for a couple of years now, self-taught in Photoshop Elements, and I enjoy it quite a bit, but there is nothing like paper and ink. A year ago, I drew an image for the ScrapFest! t-shirts and I hadn't had that much fun working on a project in years. I love a Papermate Felt-tip Flair pen in a multitude of colors, they make me happy.
Over the past week I've been looking for inspiration for the new ScrapFest! print materials we send to our vendors and I'm tired of the over-worked look I see so much in posters lately. A few years ago, I saw a feature on Hatch Show Print, a letterpress shop in Nashville, on the Martha Stewart show and I Googled them. I knew I liked the look of letterpress, but I was blown away with the work they've done and decided I needed to pare down and do something in the vain of Hatch Show Print.
Here's a great little documentary on Hatch Show, so you'll see what I'm talking about. Their work is a who's who of country and rock music, and they do custom work for weddings and all kinds of cool stuff. Take a look.
In the words of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock: I want to go to there. I was in Nashville a couple of years ago and SO wish I would have gone to Hatch Show Print. I need one of those monoprints. Need. I think a trip to Nashville is in order, who wants to come?
So, all this digital work I do is great and all, but there's nothing like touching the stuff. That's why I'm getting this little letterpress for myself. Yeah, I'm getting it.
Back in 1991, amidst the sea of grunge bands (which I hated) from Seattle that were ever-present on the radio, there was a gem of musician who appeared on my radar and his name was Matthew Sweet. His music was refreshing and happy and I loved it, and still very much love it. I remember the half anime/half performance video of his first song, "Girlfriend" and Sweet performing the song on the Regis show, which means it was either a holiday or I was skipping school, who knows. I bought his first album then and now have his music on my iPod and listen to it often.
Over the years, Sweet has kept a lower than low profile, but he's still making records and touring. His last release was Sunshine Lies, from last year and in 2006 he recorded an album of duets from the 60's with Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles. I love their take on The Beatles "And Your Bird Can Sing." This past summer they put out an album of covers of 70's duets -- how fun is that? 100% fun -- that's how much.
If you're a fan of power-pop or just love good music, I suggest you get his best-of release, Time Capsule, on iTunes right now and put in heavy rotation on your iPod, but for now listen to three of my favorite Sweet tunes.
"Girlfriend"
"You Don't Love Me"
"Time Capsule"
And because I love alternate versions of songs, a fab version of "Girlfriend" from the reissue. Enjoy.
Here's a little known Kerry fact for you: I discovered one of my still-favorite bands, The Lemonheads, by way of the now defunct Sassy magazine. Loved that magazine, but that's another post for another day.
I've been doing a lot of searching for visual inspiration for the ScrapFest! print materials, but one cannot have visual inspiration without musical inspiration, and this evening I turned to the Lemonheads for said inspiration. Here are a couple of my favorites from Evan Dando and company.
My all-time fave, "Confetti." Love love love this song.
The wonderful "Into Your Arms."
And "It's About Time." This song has great lyrics like "patience is like bread I say, I ran out of that yesterday."
I've been in a funky mood and would like to have a do-over for this week, please.
This mood brought me to my Counting Crows playlist and the song "Good Time," which is one of my favorites (my Adam, guitar, and banjo -- shut up). This song is for real. Love the lyric, "it's no easier for you some days/You wish you could tell him it'll be ok/but you feel a little shy these days/cause everybody goes away." And of course the best part of the song is the refrain over the last minute of the song, "I really love the red haired girls, I'm just another boy from Texas."
Y'all know I love my Counting Crows. I needed a little "St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream" this morning, and not just because my name is in the song. It's one of my favorites, lyrics are fun and love the mandolin and how Adam does my favorite line of the song. I'm sure you can guess it, it's not hard.
This post has been a long time coming. I've finally found LOTS of decent quality videos that allow embedding. So, the 80's Sunday Rewind is jam packed full for you today. Yippee.
The Pet Shop Boys have been one of my favorite bands since 1986. Please was one of the first albums I bought, then Disco, Actually, Introspective, Behaviour, and the other one-word albums that followed. It's always been interesting to me to grow up with a band. There are several bands I feel that way about, Pet Shop Boys being one of them, one that I've been a fan of since their first album. And being been a fan for so long, I couldn't tell you what it is exactly that hooked me. I loved the synth pop then, the almost spoken word style of singing Neil Tennant is now known for, the full sound of their songs, thoughtful lyrics -- there are so many things to love about PSB.
I thought I'd give you my favorite of their 80's tunes as well as two 80's leftovers from '90 and '91, one of which is "Being Boring," which I can't say enough good things about. I love a literary song. "Being Boring" references Zelda Fitzgerald and her quote, “...she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need
it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She
was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always
wanted to do.” Love that. PSB said the song is about the ideals you have when you're young and about growing up, and the lyrics reflect that. My favorite lines have always been:
Now I sit with different faces In rented rooms and foreign places All the people I was kissing Some are here and some are missing In the nineteen-nineties I never dreamt that I would get to be The creature that I always meant to be But I thought in spite of dreams Youd be sitting somewhere here with me
That's good stuff.
First up is the first PSB single, "West Eng Girls," then "Love Comes Quickly," followed by the capitalist theme song "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)." One of the greats, Dusty Springfield joins PSB on "What Have I Done To Deserve This," then our 80's leftovers, "Being Boring" and "Jealousy" round out the videos today. "Jealousy" is wonderfully orchestral and the vid features a fabulous fight scene at the end -- such a good video from that era. So, enjoy my Pet Shop Boys today, it's good times.
It's been one of those days. You know what I mean. I know you do. Shall I expound on my day? Okay.
Let's back up a moment. It's really a carry over from yesterday when the air conditioning was out (it's 90+ degrees here on the Northshore in South Louisiana even thought the calendar says it's October). It was hot. I am not a fan of heat. Like at all. Our a/c man is fantastic and the house started to cool around bedtime (not my bedtime, the children's bedtime), so I was in a much better mood last night.
I went to bed around one. Couldn't shake the static in my brain, of course. Woke up at 5 with a migraine, took some Judy Garland trailmix and tried to go back to bed 'til 6:15, otherwise known as "time to make the doughnuts" as I say every morning when I turn off the iPhone alarm and wake the kids to get ready for the bus. No, I've never made doughnuts.
After I got the kids off, my migraine and I went back to bed. If you've never had a migraine, let me illustrate the feeling: my senses were so heightened that I could smell colors and that made sense. At 9:45 I woke up and made coffee, took a shower, put on another pair of pjs, and sat down to the Macbook Pro for the ENTIRE day. I've been working on a friend's website for about a week and this morning I decided to publish it to the web so I could work out glitches and upload mp3s and all.
Unfortunately, the interwebs hates me.
I deleted the old site, uploaded the new one, but it wasn't there. The error message on the site said something to the effect of "error blah blah blah, this page does not exist on here, fool. Contact the webmaster." This made me laugh until I choked on my coffee and yelled "this shit is bananas," which became the phrase of the day. The webmaster is an idiot. I'd fire her if it were my site.
So, I called my good friend, Frugal Beth to tell her the story because I knew she'd laugh and she asks her professional webdesigner hubs what to do and we got it worked out. Something about publishing to some file blah blah blah awesome. Site was up, buggy, but up. More issues arose, the kids came home crazy, and my friend tells me he bought the new Photoshop Elements 8. Now, I bought PSE 6 a few months ago. This kind of thing makes me crazy. I hopped on apple.com and sho nuff, 8 is out. This shit is bananas.
After putting myself in timeout for a few minutes after telling the kids to stop asking for cookies for the brazillionth time, I returned to the kitchen to see they had eaten the entire bag of Chips Ahoy. I put myself in timeout again to avoid the screaming boiling up from within, then sent the kids upstairs, sat down to the computer again and continued day-o-web frustration.
And then I pondered dinner for at least ten seconds before putting a frozen pizza in the oven (because that's all I could muster up tonight). After calling the hubs' aunt and cousins to ask them to babysit next weekend, I realized I never took the pizza out. I burned the pizza. Nothing like extra crispy blackened pepperoni.
This was not my day.
After burning the pizza, I chatted with my friend while making at least a dozen blog banners for his blog, then finally got the right size. It was bananas. The first one was 20 times too big, then too small -- it was like when I try on clothes. Typepad said it was supposed to be so many pixels, wrong. Whatev, they're smokin' crack. I again recited my phrase of the day.
It was about that time that I remembered I forgot to eat dinner, made myself some cereal, and watched Private Practice while trying to upload the mp3s. Two will not work. They must have gotten the memo that the interwebs hates me. It was at this moment that I went to You Tube for some Gwen Stefani. I'm not a fan of the Gwen, but this mix of "Hollaback Girl" with Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" is the bomb, yo. After -- no lie -- playing this video 7 times, it's been a much better evening. And come on, this shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s. Sing along with me.
So, I've been watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and he's been talking about Yacht Rock for a week.
If you're not familiar with Yacht Rock, here's part of the Wikipedia entry:
"Yacht rock" is a name[6][7] for the popular soft rock that peaked between the years of 1975 and 1984. Significant "yacht rockers" include Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross,Goldstar and Toto. In the musical sense, yacht rock refers to the highly polished brand of soft rock that emanated from Southern California during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In part, the term relates to the stereotype of the yuppieyacht owner, enjoying cocaine
and smooth music while out for a sail. Additionally, since sailing was
a popular leisure activity in Southern California, many "yacht rockers"
made nautical references in their lyrics, videos, and album artwork,
particularly the anthemic track "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. Yacht Rock music is commonly described as, "A little bit better than elevator music!"
Genius name for the genre. Love it.
Have I ever told y'all how much my hubs LOVES Christopher Cross? I know I've discussed the hubs' "taste in music" on the blog before, but really, y'all have no idea. His iPod on shuffle goes like this: Christopher Cross, Willie Nelson, Journey, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Alison Krauss, Phil Collins, Barry Manilow, The Judds, Toto, Michael Buble, lots of Abba and COMPLETELY random '80s songs. On the rare occasion when we're together in a car long enough, after a max of three songs on shuffle, I will yell "JUST SHOOT ME IN THE DAMN FACE!" I'm SO not kidding. On the Orange Beach trip, I put my earbuds in after Willie Nelson's version of "Always on my Mind" was followed by "Never Gonna Give You Up" and I yelled "JUST SHOOT ME IN THE DAMN FACE ALREADY!" Oh yes, I did. For real. I'm a great road trip companion -- ask any of my friends, but not with the hubs.
So, this Tunes Tuesday is for the hubs, who will be getting a captain's hat, sunglasses, and an ascot for Christmas so he can jam in proper attire to his Yacht Rock music. He's not getting the yacht.
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