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It’s raining here in my fair city today — just another in a seemingly endless series of gray days over the last few weeks. I know this means spring is on its way … it just seems to be taking its time getting here.
I especially wanted sunshine this past weekend, because my mother was visiting from Maine and I wanted us to be able to do fun things in nice weather. Instead, we got a blizzard. And though we did do fun things after the snow stopped falling, we did them in gray, gloomy muck.
Oh well.
Our weekend, in addition to / in spite of being gray, was very fun and quite musical. During the storm we alternated shoveling excursions with painting projects in my house, and kept the tunes going the whole time. My mother, to my enormous delight, is in love with Cee Lo Green, so we played a lot of his latest record. I also played the Decemberists and Mumford & Sons for her, and got her to watch Elizabethtown — a movie I love for its music and interest in music as much as anything else.
And as we left a semi chi-chi restaurant on Friday night, and “Folsom Prison Blues” came through the speakers, my funny little mama danced her booty out the door. She wasn’t the only one enjoying a little Johnny either: In the few feet from our table to the exit, we passed two other diners singing along.
It was a lovely weekend all the way around, and made me wish (yet again) that I lived closer to my parents and could spend time with them more often. But since I couldn’t stow away in my mother’s car and head back to Maine with her, I just made sure she had the Cee Lo CD to help the long freeway miles pass more quickly.
It’s not music, but as much as anything, it’s the soundtrack of my youth. So I’m compelled to mark its disappearance in this blog.
It’s a big, honking, very Mainah voice, bleating from my radio and television, as far back as I can remember. But friends, that voice is no more. Jolly John has left the building.
Even those of you not fortunate (well …) enough to grow up hearing his nasally Maine holler proclaiming the bargains (baaaaahg-inns) to be found at his car dealership can probably imagine Jolly John by conjuring memories of small town auto dealers in your own areas.
Jolly John was a huckster and carnival barker par excellence, with bad hair and bad clothes and a voice that might make you run screaming for the hills. His greeting was a hearty “Hi ho!”; his catchphrase was “I’m not jolly unless you’re happy!” And I’m probably wearing the rose-colored glasses again, but I kind of think he meant it.
At least one of Jolly John’s car lots was right near Funtown USA, and I remember being enchanted as a child not only by the approach to the amusement park itself, but by seeing — in real life! — the home of TV and radio’s Jolly John. It seemed special and rare — like being in the neighborhood of a celebrity, which he most certainly (in my small world) was.
So I was awfully sorry to learn that Maine had lost one of its biggest personalities, and that I would no longer hear his voice honking out of my car radio when I drove into my native state. Almost as much as crossing the Piscataqua River, it was a signal that I was home.
WOW it has been a long time since I heard any Amy Grant. But I totally heard “Baby Baby” this morning. AND COULD SING EVERY WORD.
Have I mentioned, in this blog, how I worked in a hardware store for a while in high school? Only briefly, it seems. But I totally did. And Amy Grant takes me back there.
From the winter of my sophomore year in high school through my first winter break in college, I worked at a once locally owned, making-the-transition-to-a-franchise hardware store. It was an institution in my small town, and had, within my memory, been an all-purpose general store like the kind the Ingallses frequented in the Little House on the Prairie books. My dad bought lumber and nails there; my mom bought our jeans and turtlenecks and shampoo there as well. When I was little, and the store was in its second (of three) sites, I used to entertain myself at the massive Matchbox car display near the counter while my parents did their errands; when I turned 9, no fewer than three of my friends gave me Strawberry Shortcake necklaces purchased at this place.
I worked at the store in its third site, when it had mostly mutated into any old chain hardware store. It still had traces of its old mercantile character, though. We still sold greeting cards and sewing supplies; you could still outfit yourself in chamois shirts and work pants (if you happened to be the size of our meager offerings). The place was run by the son and daughter of the original owner, and staffed largely by older folks and high school kids — ladies at the register, gentlemen doing the “real” work at the back.
I mostly ran the register and stocked shelves, but I managed to learn a fair bit about hardware and lumber. I even remember some of it — handy now, as a homeowner. My parents, who were still restoring the old house where I grew up at the time, were delighted to get my employee discount, and I was grateful for the flexibility the daughter-boss gave with scheduling. She always worked around high school practice and rehearsal schedules, and even let me go away for other summer jobs then come back to the store during the school year.
The old ladies I worked the registers with cracked me up, and I became quite close to one of them. I waited on all kinds of local characters — parents of classmates I’d known for years, people from my church, skeevy contractors and good ole boys, old timers who’d been shopping the store their whole lives. And since the store was in our town’s only shopping center, I also got to see a good deal of my friends who worked at the nearby grocery store, pharmacy, pizza parlor, and video store. I could tell, when I drove or walked into the shopping center parking lot, who among my acquaintances was working, based on the cars in the lot.
There are probably more stories of the hardware store to tell, but all I really meant to say was that the easy listening station that was always playing there was always playing Amy Grant. Hearing her puts the smell of sawdust and paint in my nose, the taste of York Peppermint Patties (always available in a bowl at the counter) in my mouth, and the dry, waxy feel of handling shopping bags and shipping boxes on my hands. It’s not altogether unpleasant.
Good morning, and happy apres President’s/Presidents/Presidents’ Day to you all. Ye olde blogge will be a little light this week, what with the holiday and MK living it up in sunnier climes, but we’ll all survive.
I’m here today to talk to you about Adele and “Rolling in the Deep.” I played that song LOUD on the way to work this morning, and it made me awfully happy. Didn’t even mind (much) that the route that usually has all green lights had all reds today. Do I need to add Adele to my Good Music to Explore list?
I’m mildly familiar with this song, and know the critics love the Adele, but that’s about all I’ve got. Today I fixated on the sort of gospel moment in “Rolling in the Deep,” and got all nostalgic for the gospel phase I went through a couple years ago. (PS can we talk about how Patty Griffin won the Grammy for Best Traditional Gospel Album for Downtown Church?)
I definitely need more gospel in my life, and I may need more Adele too. Encourage me? Wave me off? I’m all alone on the Auto Tunes this week, reader[s], so chime right in. Preferably while waving a tambourine.
In my family, there’s a little joke (I use the term loosely) that there’s one sure way to know you’ve crossed the border into Maine: ceaseless repetition of “Amie” on the radio.
I grew up with this treacly tune, which apparently peaked in popularity (at #27!) the year I was born. Mostly I thought nothing of the fact that it was still in heavy rotation twenty years later. After all, most of the musical stylings on offer at the time shared that trait.
But it became clear, from the eye-rolling scoffs of my sisters and soon-to-be brother-in-law, that somehow “Amie” was different. That it literally was not played in any other state in the union. That only such a backward place as Maine would continue to treasure it.
I can attest that that is not quite true, as I heard it this morning in Massachusetts. Then again, the two states used to be one. And I can’t rightly say I’ve ever heard it played elsewhere. In fact, when the fella and I made our epic cross-country return from the West Coast, we crossed from New York into Massachusetts — and promptly heard the song on the radio. Laughingly, I told him The Rule.
The degree of truthiness is questionable, but I like The Rule, and I like the picture that the song puts in my head of the vast arch of the Kittery bridge, and the various trips home that required a crossing there. (As a child, I once caused much mirth by expressing surprise when my mother told me we had crossed from one state into another: “But we didn’t cross a bridge!”)
Aaaaand speaking of travels, I am taking the much-dreamed-of trip to sunnier climes with Jr. next week, so I shall be absent from the blog. With hope, “Amie” will be absent as well.
Even though it seems MamaKitt wrote about it not so long ago, when I heard the Jeff Healey Band’s “Angel Eyes” this morning I thought WOW there’s a blast from the past. And, immediately after that, my stomach remembered the song, and went into the oh-so-familiar knots of junior high / high school dance angst. (PS: Dance Angst is going to be the name of my band.)
I don’t even have a specific memory with this song — but I remember VERY well the flutters occasioned by the opening notes of slow songs at these dances, and “Angel Eyes” would have been a staple in my early years of high school. Just as I’ve written about Bryan Adams’ “Heaven,” a song like “Angel Eyes” sends me uncomfortably swiftly into a time warp to younger days and nervous moments — moments that, apparently, left deep impressions, if not scars.
Ah, well.
It appears the song came out in June of 1989. This would have been the end of our freshman year in high school (ooh, and in the midst of MK and I being on opposing sides of an epic teen girl rivalry). I would have been working at the ice cream shop and babysitting at the lake; I would have been just gearing up round 2 of romance with the boy across the baseball field and enjoying reuniting (non-romantically) with the just-graduated older boy. So chances are pretty good I swooned for “Angel Eyes” and every other ballad that came my way in these heady days.
Goodness gracious. I’d like to think I’m more even-keeled and less sensitive than I was then, but … I’m not even sure that’s true. I’m definitely not as cute or lucky with the boys.
And can we trust Wikipedia that this song was co-written by John Hiatt? Whom MK and I would go on to love in later years? Who knew?
So I too am still stuck on yesterday’s “Born This Way” post.
Here’s the thing: Yesterday was a nutty one for me at work, and I realized immediately that I had written a bit of a mess of an entry. VERY SORRY ABOUT THAT.
But later on, I realized that not only was what I’d written a mess, it also failed to include the pertinent memory the song inspires in me. I’d started off right with the entry title, but failed to follow through. Pfft.
ANYWAY: “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen” is one of those Gaga puns that at first makes me groan, then makes me grin — because I believe she makes these bad jokes winkingly, in a way few pop stars bother to do. She’s like a corny dad — or like my corny dad, at least — trying to get a rise out of her listeners with blatant cheeseballsiness.
And this particular pun makes me think of when MK and I tickled ourselves with the coinage of the phrase, “I’d rather be a fruitcake than a tart.” It was late in high school — I almost want to say it was the day after our senior prom, but that could be invention — and we were talking on the phone. I was perched on our old house’s back stairs, the cord stretched as far up into my room and away from the kitchen as possible, in my usual telephone position. I am sure MK and I had countless phone conversations like this, dissecting some bit of gossip or other, laughing ourselves silly. I don’t remember how the expression came up, but I remember thinking it was pretty great, and we were pretty clever, and being glad to have a friend with such a good sense of humor.
Now, how good “I’d rather be a fruitcake than a tart” actually is, is obviously up for debate. We haven’t said it to each other in years. But for at least a moment, the play on words made me extremely happy, and if there’s corn or cheese involved SO BE IT.
And now I am hungry for Doritos and pastries.
My dear compatriot’s post of yesterday led me down a bit of a diva-anthem-listening road, and I have to say I’m kiiiiiiiind of taken with “Raise Your Glass,” which I heard again this morning.
Traditionally I have harbored an ambivalence about Pink the depths of which are unchartable. But I do believe she’s winning me over.
That said, I winced a little at her use of the phrase “nitty gritty” in the song, because everyone knows that refers to a lady’s private parts. Right? Right?
Wrong, it seems. This information was imparted to me by a wise older sister somewhere along the line. But a little Googling suggests that in fact the phrase has even weirder connotations: it might or might not refer to slave ships, and has long been considered controversial for that reason.
No mention of lady parts, although I didn’t want to risk the various search phrases that further research would have required. You mean, big sisters don’t know everything?
Whatever the hell she’s singing about, Pink might possibly rock, and she made me oddly happy with her totally manipulative video, especially the school-dance wallflower bit that begins at 2:13.
In my brain today, James Taylor = twisted bra strap.
A lovely June day, 1988 I believe it was, and I am standing at the back of our high school parking lot, which has been transformed into seating space for that year’s graduation ceremony. (Side note: I’m glad the school realized, some time between then and 1992, that the soccer fields out back made a more appealing outdoor venue.)
I don’t have any particular attachment to anyone who’s graduating, just an eighth-grader’s fascination with upperclassmen and pomp and circumstance. So it is that I stand there on the edge of the blacktop, in the shade of a tree, with a friend and her older boy cousin from out of town. We watch as these glamorous creatures win awards, receive diplomas, give speeches — one of which quoted Billy Joel’s “James,” which made me no end of happy — and sing “You’ve Got a Friend.”
At least, I think that was the year they sang that. Because I can’t hear it without being transported to that moment. Nor can I recall that moment without remembering, with a pang, two very physical things about myself. The first was a developing bullseye rash on my upper right arm that I carefully covered with makeup; my mother thought it might be Lyme disease, but it turned out to be the wonderfully named Pityriasis rosea, nothing more than a harmless, if unsightly, virus.
The second felt much less harmless at the time: The humiliation of realizing that my bra strap, which I’d carefully safety-pinned to the straps of my black-and-white polka-dotted dress to avoid slippage, had somehow twisted itself and snuck out and spent the entire commencement in full display on my shoulder blade.
When I realized this toward the end of the event, and hurriedly tried to fix it, my friend laughed and said her older boy cousin had pantomimed popping the safety pin and they’d had a good chuckle at my expense. SO embarrassing! Beyond words.
If I remembered, I would take a moment each day to give thanks that I am no longer thirteen. Or pretty much any age between 11 and 19. As it is, I’ll just be grateful this Tuesday — and try not to think too much about the fact that I’ll be having to help my child(ren) through those years before I know it.
Listen, I’m not going to enter the fray about whether Lady Gaga’s new “Born This Way” is a blatant copy of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” or not. BECAUSE IT SO CLEARLY IS.
Also, smarter people than I (me? See, I’m wicked stupid) have done excellent pieces on the song already.
All I know is this: It’s a joyful pop song, and it just might have a good message, and there’s something to be said for that. Just last night a friend of mine mentioned that her young daughters are always clamoring for more good music by female performers, and that she had a harder time coming up with stuff they all liked by women than she did by men.
I’m not saying Gaga is the answer to this problem, but she might be part of it. Theatrics aside — well, no, wait. Not theatrics aside. She seems to be interested in giving her audience an experience, and something to talk about, and if arriving at the Grammys in a giant egg or wearing an outfit made of latex gets people to also talk about gay rights and girl power, then I’m all for it.
Especially if it ALSO makes me want to dance at seven in the morning, like ”Born This Way” does.
