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For nigh on twenty years, this question rattled around MamaKitt’s brain: “Who is the first guy in the duo ‘Chem and Mao’? And why would I be carrying a picture of him?”
Seriously. I didn’t figure it out until probably five years ago. Now I feel the tiniest (and very undeserved) hint of pride when I hear the lyric correctly.
That is all I have for today. I hereby decree next week Mad Gabs Grab Bag Gab Week (MGGBG Week), in which each of us must pluck a song from our daily commute for the other to weigh in on. It doesn’t have to have special meaning or make us think of the other person. We’ll just see what comes up! Ooh the intrigue!
It’s gonna be a wild day at work hereabouts, so I sadly have only a moment for le blog. As I drove to the office this morning I heard this, and wished I was:
Oh Art and Paul. “The Guys,” as they were known in my house as I was growing up. So young and sweet.
This? Not particularly sweet, but entertaining in its own way.
I feel sure that somewhere on this blog we have kvetched and moaned about The Doors. But I can only find a passing reference by TGOTS to the odd experience of seeing Oliver Stone’s movie with our Russian exchange students.
My Doors associations go like this: When I was seven or eight, my sister was dating a sweet boy whose favorite song was “People are Strange.” When I was twelve or thirteen, my mother informed me that “Hello, I Love You” was a Beatles song, a fact I repeated to either my cool friend or my cool brother, who laughed and set me straight. When I was sixteen, there was that viewing of The Doors with The Russians, and the movie was godawful, and Jim Morrison getting a blow job from poor, sweet Meg Ryan in the recording studio* made him repugnant to me, and by the time he died, approximately seventeen hours after the movie started, I was glad.
Then when I was twenty-five or so, I met this nice fella whose favorite group in the entire world was The Doors. He was a friend of a friend. I remember very clearly driving with him in Maine, on the way to the Yarmouth Clam Festival, and telling him how much I despised the group.
Well, it’s a decade later, and that nice fella is now my permanent fella. He still loves The Doors, though perhaps a degree less than in his youthful days. And I still despise them, though perhaps a degree less than in mine.
In fact, I’ve decided there are four Doors songs I like. “Peace Frog,” which I heard this morning, is one of them; the uptempo beat combined with the horrific images of blood-filled streets just says Sixties to me, and I enjoy it despite myself. “Back Door Man” is another; I like the boozy obscenity of it (but it must be noted that this is an old blues song, not a creation of Morrison et al). “Love Her Madly” is a third, but I think it’s mostly because I laugh when he says “don’t you love her as she’s walking out the door,” picturing myself leaving to protest my fella playing one too many songs by the group.
The last one the fella introduced me to, and I think that was the moment I uncurled my fist and let go of my 100 percent hatred for Jim. “I Will Never Be Untrue” has a hint of old blues about it too, but from what I can tell it’s original to the group. It’s pretty, and it’s funny (“I will never stay out drinkin’ later than two … two-thirty”), and it makes me wish for just a second that I could have seen old Jim perform.
But then I hear “The End,” and all the other poetic blowhardy nonsense, and I’m back where I belong, on the anti-Doors side of the street.
* I might be remembering this wrong. But I’ve decided to not spend any more time this morning Googling “Meg Ryan blow job.”
More often than not, when I hear the insistent thump-thump of a club song, I feel a wave of relief that I am not out in a club, trying desperately to get laid.
My reaction is not fair to clubgoers, who have many other reasons for subjecting themselves to those loud, hot, dark confines. Like a love of music and self-expression! And also a love of getting laid.
Oh, I’m just a claustrophobic prude, is all. And secretly I adore a lot of the thumpy songs. I also think it takes real skill to write and produce them — so deceptively simple, yet possessing the power to get hundreds of people at once to wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care.
Anyhow. This morning I treated myself to a little Black Eyed Peas, since it had somehow been a while. There they were, all boom-boom-pow-y and Auto Tune-y and Will.i.am-y (p.s. just saw him on Sesame Street, looking like he intended to have a serious conversation with his agent after filming wrapped), and then Fergie busted out with an exhortation I’d never noticed: “People in the place!”
It was intended as a universal “hey you,” I’m sure, but sounded so generic as to be meaningless. And so calculated as to be … well, brilliant, I guess. Because those people? In that place? They want more, more, more.
About this time of year I start reminding myself that I love democracy, wouldn’t give it up, am proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free, etc.
I need this sort of reminder because as we edge up to November, I am haunted by my radio and television and all the terrifying campaign stories and ads they carry. The sniping, accusations, and doomsday scenarios echo ghoulishly throughout my days and nights. The endless commentary, analysis, and forecasting on even my beloved NPR start sounding like warty witches cackling over a bubbling cauldron. (And that’s even in years when we don’t have one candidate denying her witchy identity and another who looks like nothing so much as a zombie.)
I know politics are part of democracy. I just don’t know that I have the stomach for them.
My normal M.O. is to listen to NPR while I have my coffee and get ready in the morning, and then to scan all the local stations during my commute. Today I turned off the NPR after about two minutes and enjoyed my coffee in silence — I just couldn’t take all the manic elections talk.
As I drove to work, I enjoyed the way my scanning radio would skip right over that chatter. It also gave me the “Monster Mash,” which cheered me right up.
Happy almost-Halloween, y’all. Tricks to those who ramble endlessly about nothing, those who pursue public office for personal gain, and those who find their own advancement in denying the rights and humanity of others; treats to the thoughtful, the intelligent, the welcoming, and the voters.
Wah wa-oooooo.
These three things have I learned this morning:
1) The song “Get It On” — perhaps you know it by its U.S. title, “Bang a Gong” — was covered in 1985 by Power Station, some sort of supergroup containing members of Duran Duran and Robert Palmer.
1a) That cover is the version I heard this morning. How did 25 years go by without me having heard this? Furthermore, how did I not know there was once a supergroup containing members of Duran Duran and Robert Palmer? The mind reels.
2) The lyric is not, as I have thought all my life, “You dirty, sweet, no-mind girl” but “You’re dirty, sweet, and you’re my girl.” I guess I slightly prefer the real one, but they’re both kind of ookifying, if you ask me.
3) Entertainingly, if you read a bulletin board where people are discussing this song and lines like “you got a hubcap diamond star halo,” the general consensus is, “We have no idea what these lyrics mean … but there’s no question what they mean. Heh heh.”
Happy dirty, sweet Monday.
1. Who did “The Bug” first: Mary Chapin Carpenter or Dire Straits?
2. Who did it better?
3. What is the significance of Mary Chapin Carpenter in my musical education?
4. How many times, and where, have I seen MCC in concert?
Answer 1: Well, it was Dire Straits (this is what I heard on the radio this morning), but only by a few months. I heard MCC’s version first, and was tickled by it (and by all of Come On Come On, really — I mean, “I Feel Lucky”? Classic.).
Answer 2: I suppose this one’s up for grabs, but since I associate the song so strongly with MCC, I can’t help feeling like she takes the win. The dry Mark Knopfler delivery gives the thing a good vibe, to be sure, but I like MCC’s sass and humor.
Answer 3: Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of those singers I first heard during my summer camp staff years, and as such will always remind me of old wooden cabins and boardwalks in the dark Maine woods. For me, Come On Come On is a huge part of the soundtrack of the summer of 1992, those first months of liberation after high school and before college.
Answer 4: I have only once seen MCC in concert, but it was with my beloved Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Dar Williams. These ladies put on a great show, and I watched it from the steep balcony of a majestic old theater, trying to talk myself out of feeling like I was on a date with a dude for whom I knew it was totally not a date.
You know, I have never owned a Mary Chapin Carpenter CD, but I might have to go download Come On Come On. I haven’t heard most of its songs in years, but just looking at the track listing I can hear them all with brilliant clarity in my head. “The Bug,” “I Feel Lucky,” “Passionate Kisses,” “I Take My Chances” — love them. And love the apparent thru-line of fortune and misfortune and living life to the fullest — nice message, MCC.
OOH plus I just remembered that maybe the first thing I ever saw of her was a performance with Beausoleil — a Cajun group I first saw live in a nearby high school’s auditorium with my high school (or junior high?) French class. The following is not what I saw — but it’s still a great number.
So yesterday I went on a ramble about David Gray after hearing “Babylon,” and didn’t end up talking about what I meant to talk about: the weird recent discovery, in the back of a closet, of an unopened David Gray CD.
This was a gift from someone with whom I had a complicated relationship back in my previous life. We were acquaintances, then colleagues, then started spending lots of time together, then could barely speak to one another. Part of this ridiculously dramatic cycle was due to upsetting circumstances beyond our control, but part of it, I fear, was me.
I seem to have a tendency to fall madly in love with some people — and then, sometimes, horribly out of love with them. This is more often a platonic impulse than a romantic one; though I’m straight, I fall into these enthusiastic relationships with both men and women. I get all excited about their attention and friendship, and that’s all great, but then — in more cases than I’m wholly comfortable admitting — something happens, my enchantment dims, and I feel let down by the object of my affection.
I don’t know if this is because I’ve been dazzled by the good bits and blind to the lesser bits and given my heart too quickly, or if it’s that I’m too needy, too glad for new attention, and too inclined to be excessively hurt when that attention alters or fades. It’s probably the latter. It’s also true that I have failed to perceive, early in some of these (hmm, or many) friendships, that my new friends are equal-opportunity friendly people — that the same attention they were giving me they gave to everyone else who crossed their path. That discovery always made me feel dumb and embarrassed — like I’d given my heart foolishly to faithless others.
ANYWAY. This whole thing happened, briefly, with the giver of the David Gray CD; it was fleeting and exciting and then … not. And I’m pretty sure the CD gift was meant as a peace offering, but our relationship never recovered.
I’m no longer upset about this particular friendship, though I am about the circumstances that killed it. This was not, actually, a case of disenchantment, but one where my friend’s choices and behavior about something else entirely caused me to rethink his character.
And that’s probably unfair, but for all the times I align with someone fast and foolishly, I have an equal or greater number of deep and real and permanent bonds with people I love and admire beyond all words – and if those people are attacked or hurt, as they were in this instance, my allegiance is absolutely to them. I may not always pick friends judiciously, but when forced to pick sides, there’s no question, for me, about who truly matters.
This song grabbed me by the (nonexistent) lapels this morning and forced me to stop scanning. But why? I have no quirky anecdote to attach to it. No harvested memory, no semi-profound thoughts. It’s just one of those songs that feels fundamental, that I know contributed somehow to my early music education.
As I listened to “That’s All” this morning, I tried to guess when the song actually came out, embedded in my pre-conscious as it seems to be. I figured it was later than I thought, but still early enough that I was a wee thing, so I chose 1982, when I was 7. Turns out it was released in 1983 and didn’t really become a hit in the U.S. until 1984.
Which surprised me, because by then I was fairly aware of people like Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper and all those other people you associate with the pop surge of the ’80s. Anyhow, Genesis was clearly right there in the mix.
In fact, I got to thinking about how Genesis and then Phil-solo were nigh on inescapable during the ’80s and ’90s. That dude was a serious Hitmaker, was he not? There had to have been two or three top hits a year for a while there … and while I pretend I’m above them, you could leave me alone in a room with a Genesis/Phil soundtrack and I’d be satisfied for quite some time.
