Category Archives: music

A Halloween playlist

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Sometimes I don’t know why I try.

So, I saw in iTunes radio a new station called Halloween Party, and I felt like listening to something different, so I clicked it. First song? Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition.” Nothing the slightest bit spooky or Halloween-like about the song. Oh, sure, the word “superstition” could be related to something Halloween-like, the actual lyrics? No.

Almost any time someone posts a so-called Halloween playlist, the songs are chosen because the titles of the song have some tenuous connection to sort of scary-ish concepts, regardless of the content of the song. If you’ve ever done such a thing, I have a news flash for you: the title of a song is not the song. There are some songs whose titles don’t even appear in the lyrics, so when I’m listening to the playlist, if I don’t happen to remember the title, the reason it has been included will be a complete mystery.

Now, you have the right to create a playlist anyway you want. If you want to collect songs together with altogether incorrect criteria and name said playlist a Halloween playlist, of course you can do that.

I happen to believe that a Halloween playlist should consist of tracks where the content of the track has some connection to ideas, moods, et cetera, that people associate with Halloween, trick or treating, monsters, and so forth. So, my 2013 Halloween playlist (yes, I make a new one each year) is:

1. “Theme from the Ghost and Mr. Chicken” – if you aren’t familiar with this comedy send up of various Hitchcock-esque movie tropes starring Don Knotts, you really need to Netflix it or something. And the organ music is suitably spooky and silly, at the same time.
2. “It’s alive!” From the Young Frankenstein soundtrack. This isn’t a song, it’s the dialog for one of the funniest scenes in the movie, when Dr Frahnk-in-steen finds out that he put an abnormal brain in the body of his creation.
3. “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown. “Everybody run! The Homecoming Queen’s got a gun!” and “…it’s like the whole school was totally coked or something!”
4. “Over at the Frankenstein Place” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
5. “”Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” Yes, the theme song from the original cartoon series.
6. “Body Snatcher” by Billy Idol. With lyrics about demons, creeping shadows, and so forth, this is where the list segues from the strictly comedic.
7. “Double Trouble” from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Spooky.
8. “I Can’t Decide (whether you should live or die)” by Scissor Sisters. Includes lyrics like, ” I could bury you alive but you might crawl back with a knife and kill me” which is definitely creepy!
9. “I Can Make You a Man” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
10. “Dark Shadows” the original eerie, spooky, haunting theme song from the ’60s gothic horror soap opera.
11. “Rest in Peace” from Once More, With Feeling, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. “Whisper in a dead man’s ear doesn’t make it real.”
12. “Funeral March of a Marionette” an orchestral piece which was used as the theme for the old Alfred Hitchcock show.

This year’s is silly and harkens to horror movies and horror-related TV shows. Last years was a bit different, with songs like “Zombies Ate Her Brain” by The Creepshow and “Zombie Jamboree” by the Kingston trio.

Many years my list includes “Monster Mash” or “Thriller.” Which are obvious choices, but sometimes obvious is good.

Watching music

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The music video is an interesting art form. I have fallen in love with songs because of their video which I might not have listened to twice if I had only heard the song. On the other hand, sometimes when I watch a video of a song I already liked I find myself flabbergasted.

But never nonplussed.

None of these videos fall into the second category.

First, an Australian singer, Kim Smith, evokes an intriguing, cabaret-like atmosphere with his new single, “Jealous”:


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Apparently I’m in an international mood this week, because next we have Brazilian singer, Thiago Pethit’s “Pas de Deux”:


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I have several of Will Young’s songs on my iPod for a while. This video, “Losing Myself,” makes me want to buy more of his music.

Music Friday

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I want to share some music again.

This first video is quite special to me. The lead singer of the bad, C.D. Woodbury, is a good friend of mine. In fact, a couple hours before I wrote this, he was sitting in my living room telling me about his week. So it’s a good friend and his band. They’re singing an original song they wrote based on a specialty of the house at this venue, which is a place I like to go. And the particular night that they premiered this song at that venue, my husband and I were there. It was the night before our wedding (where C.D. officiated), and we consider this night with good friends, great music, and wonderful food, our bachelor party. So, please enjoy this soon-to-be classic, the SauBall Blues:


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Since I opened with blues, how about a blues/bluegrass/rap fusion? I love the show this is the theme for, and this song’s awesome on its own:


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While we’re on the subject, this piece is quite fun:


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And of course I have to include a classic:


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And now we need some commentary (and more than just commentary) about a song from Stephen Colbert. Watch it all the way to the end, it’s definitely worth it!

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The thinks you will think…

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We saw a musical last weekend.

Several years ago, when Michael and I had season tickets to one of the local theatres, we saw a national touring company of Suessical the Musical, with Cathy Rigby (former Olympic gymnast most famous since for playing Peter Pan in more than one revival on Broadway and numerous national tours) as the Cat in the Hat. It was fun.

This last weekend we saw the musical performed by a bunch of middle-school kids, one of whom happens to be my godson. It was also a lot of fun. And that isn’t just my prejudice as a doting godparent.

At least some of the fun is remembering what it was like being on stage around the age, and not feeling at all as fearless as these kids seemed to be. It was quite amazing to hear the voices on a few of those kids, who did not sound like “kids” at all.

It was also fun to remember all that Seuss. The musical takes elements from a bunch of Dr. Seuss books (most prominently Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches an Egg) and weaves them together to make one story.

It would be easy to be cynical and dismissive of the play, what with the themes of accepting yourself for who you are, loyalty, and respecting others. And since people usually accuse me of being the opposite of cynical, it should surprise no one that I’m not going to go there. In fact, what I found myself thinking about most during the drive home was how easy it was to fall into the imaginary world with very simple costumes and minimal props. You don’t need a lot of special effects to believe that a group of monkeys are trying to steal a clover with a dust spec from an elephant. Just a few hints and a bit of body language is all that’s required.

Which was a good thing to be reminded of while I’m slogging away on my novel, occasionally wondering how words on a screen can compete with animation and music.

It’s the story and the characters that matter. Everything else is window dressing.

Music, part three

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Another Friday, and time for some random music recommendations from me!

This is a nice song that sounds like one should be listening to it at the end of a sunny day while sipping at a cocktail. Or dancing between cocktails:
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This one would fit in the same dance set, I think:
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I’ve been listening to this song on my iPhone for months, and loved it. I hadn’t seen the video until I wanted to share it here, and the video makes me love the song in a completely new way:
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Hot Chelle Rae is a bouncy, lightweight band whose music always makes me smile:
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And this is just beautiful. You don’t have to understand the lyrics. Just watch:

Music, part two

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There’s enough heavy, serious stuff going on in the world that I wanted to keep track of, that I have been listening to less music than usual, lately. So I thought rather than ranting more about marriage equality or any other news of the world, that I should share some music.

This is part of a project to create mixtapes covering forty years of music (1972-2012). The final project will not just include remixes of songs from the varies eras, but other sound clips. Whether you are interested in a big project like that or not, this remix of Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” is fun:

I was looking for another song, entirely, but happened across this interesting cello number that I couldn’t stop listening to:

And this one is fun:

This is just fun (even if they won’t let me embed it):

https://soundcloud.com/bombay-bicycle-club/bombay-bicycle-club-shuffle

And finally, no music post this week could be complete without Black Simon & Garfunkel:

Music

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My music listening tastes are a bit weird and all over the place. Often the old, “It’s got a good beat and is easy to dance to” are my primary requirements. Interesting lyrics are always a plus.

Sometimes my tastes are hopelessly pop:

“Cover the face! Pump the bass!”

Experiences, not things

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The ads usually pop up as Christmas time approaches: give people the gift of experiences, not things. They suggest paid excursions, theatre tickets, sports event tickets, and so on, with an appeal against consuming natural resources. As a person with a house continually crammed full of stuff that I love but don’t really have room for, I understand the sentiment.

But I’m not terribly good at following it.

While I was browsing the dealer’s den at RustyCon (a small local sci fi convention), one of the booths was filled with zillions “Rare! Hard to Find!” soundtrack albums on CD and movies on DVD. I have a weakness for soundtrack albums and started flipping through the tightly packed rows of discs. Within the first half dozen I looked at, all labeled with a price of $44.95, were two which I had happened to buy in the last year at the iTunes store. One for 9.99 and the other for 7.99.

I have no doubt that many (if not most) of the discs he had there are not available for download from iTunes or Amazon or any of the other digital music sources. And I’m sure that many of them were difficult for him to obtain. Certainly storing and transporting those enormous piles of discs isn’t cheap. So I’m not in any way disparaging the vendor.

It’s just that seeing those two albums (one originally released in 2002, the other originally released in 1975) which I had by chance purchased digitally recently made me stop to think about the situation. The reason I like owning music is to listen to it from time to time. I have a rather daunting amount of music in my digital collection, and how often any individual track is listened to is rather less often than might justify even the typical digital price of 99₵ per song. So does it really make sense to spend 45 bucks on a disc with 12 – 16 tracks on it?

I had just this last week commiserated with two friends about our shelves and shelves full of music and movies, which even though many had been digitized, we were still reluctant to get rid of because the discs now constituted the backup. But we also were all a bit frustrated at how much space they took up.

Not too many years ago I still owned a couple boxes of music albums on vinyl. I hadn’t owned a machine that could play them in a few years, so I finally admitted it was time, and got rid of them. I should mention that among those boxes was the 1975 soundtrack I mentioned above which I recently purchased digitally.

I’m afraid all this thinking about how much stuff is cluttering up the house made me steer clear of the booksellers. If I stopped acquiring new audio books and ebooks, and just focused all my reading time on the piles (multiple) of “new books to read” beside my bed, it would likely take me a few years to get through them.

I have been enjoying myself at the con. I’ve had several good conversations, attended interesting panels, and yes, I bought some things. As a person who frequently has a table with things for sale at conventions, I don’t want people to stop buying things at cons, don’t get me wrong.

I just think that I, personally, need to focus more of my enjoyment on the experience, and less on carrying home a pile of toys and such afterward.

Rhymes with cartridge

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A couple of my friends grew up as Coast Guard brats and have often told the story of the time their dad improvised a Christmas tree. I got the full story from their father today:

I was stationed up in Kodiak, and one morning a bit before Christmas I came into the office and this guy had on his desk this little bare alder branch mounted on a stand, and hanging from the branch was a drilled-out cartridge, so there was no powder or anything. And we asked him what it was, and he said, “Don’t you know your Christmas songs? That’s a cartridge in a bare tree!”

I thought it was funny, so I made one for my desk when we were stationed back at New York. And one of the other guys there was Jewish, and when he walked in he started laughing really hard and said, “Oh! That’s great! It’s a bullet in a bush!” I figured that’s pretty good, the joke works in multiple religions.

I am rotten at puns. I don’t think they’re nearly as funny as the person telling it usually does, but I don’t despise them as much as some people do, either. Sometimes one does tickle me, and the “cartridge in a bare tree” is one that always makes me chuckle. Perhaps because in this case, the person telling the joke had actually made a physical bare tree with a cartridge in it.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed this pun because the original song’s line is also believed to be a pun. This has been suggested since at least the mid-1800s that because the French for “a partridge” is “une perdrix”, which when pronounced correctly sounds very much in “on pear tree” to English ears.

The song itself is much older, it was first published in England in 1780 and even then described as a traditional Twelfth Night game. In a memory-and-forfeits game, players gather in a circle and the leader of the game recites a verse, and each player must repeat it in turn, then the leader recites an additional verse, and each player must repeat the new verse and the previous verses. This continues until someone makes a mistake, at which point he or she has to forfeit something, usually a kiss or a piece of candy or the like.

One can imagine someone in such a game in 18th Century England mixing French and English terms, and someone could easily misunderstand some of them. On the other hand, part of what made such memory-and-forfeits games fun is that the items were either funny or somewhat nonsensical.

There were many variants over the years, some of them regional. In Sussex, England, for instance, the fourth day’s gift was “four canary birds.” While several variants give the twelfth day’s gift as “twelve bells a’ringing.” Though I think my favorite twelfth gift is “twelve crowing cockerels”—it being just a bit of a tongue-twister.

And while the first day’s gift is almost always a partridge in that tree, I quite like the variant that posits “a very pretty peacock upon a pear tree.” Even though it would spoil the cartridge joke.

Although it might explain about the guy who was found, kicked into unconsciousness at a stable, with a bottle of glue in one hand and a bunch of peacock feathers in the other. Apparently he’d been told to prep some horses to be ridden in a Christmas parade, so he was trying to put some plumage on the mare’s knee.

Joyous voices sweet and clear

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Several years ago, my hubby bought me an iPod Nano for my birthday. I had been resistant to the notion of an iPod. I was used to the ritual of changing out discs in a carrying case I kept with me to use with my portable disc player, and I just didn’t quite see the point.

The funny thing was that I had iTunes installed on my computer and had imported a bunch of my music CDs into its library. One of my Palm Pilots had used iTunes to synch music, so I had given it a try. I hadn’t been terribly impressed with the experience, but I had found iTunes on the computer a bit easier to use than other music playing software, so I had kept it.

The iPod quickly changed my mind. The convenience of something that fit in my pocket and replaced both the portable player and the carrying case with all those discs should have been obvious, I suppose. I found myself importing music like crazy, because the small number of discs I’d imported before that would hardly fill the Nano’s humongous 4 gigs of space.

I spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend importing Christmas music, and wound up with about 3 gigs worth of holiday songs. That left enough room on the Nano for a Scissor Sisters album, a few Queen albums, and my podcasts. So I could set the entire iPod music collection on shuffle for the month of December. I would get mostly Christmas music, with an occasional non-Christmas song to break things up.

And, of course, the iPod carried a much larger portion of my Christmas music collection than I’d been able to carry around in that case for discs.

The following year, Apple released the very first iPod Touch about a week before my birthday. Guess what my hubby gave me for my birthday? I think he got me the 16gig model, which seemed enormous. It was enough of an incentive to get me working a bit more seriously at importing all of my music collection on disc into the computer. I don’t remember how much of my Christmas music I got imported for that second Christmas (and because of a hard disk crash a few years ago, I can’t use the “date added” information in iTunes to make a guess–iTunes thinks the date added for about half my library is the day I bought the new hard disk and started restoring from backup), but it was far less than 16 gigs, and so I had start making big playlists if I wanted to have something I could randomize to give me hours of Christmas music while working.

Christmas music is one of my obsessions. I usually start listening to it a day or two after Thanksgiving and keep listening to it through Three Kings Day. Unfortunately, my hubby is one of those people who really dislikes Christmas music, or at least a lot of it. I’ve managed to figure out a bunch he can stand, and load that up in the player for the car. Otherwise, I listen to it when he’s in the other room or try to remember to use my headphones.

My hubby’s not the only person I know who has issues with at least some kinds of Christmas songs. I know a lot of folks who have problems with the specifically religious music. As a gay kid growing up in a very conservative and uptight denomination, I understand. Some sacred music triggers memories of very bad experiences. I get that what some people hear in those songs is, “You must conform to this belief system that has oppressed you, or else!”

My particular idiosyncrasy is that traditional religious Christmas songs just don’t register that way for me. I know all the words to “O, Holy Night” in more than one language (my Latin’s a bit rusty, but…), and intellectually I get that it’s sacred, but emotionally, it’s Holiday Music, to me. It evokes the same sense of wonder I get when accompanying friends out to the countryside and looking up into the night sky, hundreds of miles from a city, where the enormity of the universe is visible just by looking up. I love singing along to “Angels We Have Heard on High” because I remember the many Christmas concerts where I either sang it or played in the orchestra. In my head, I’m singing the tenor, and bass, and alto part (and wishing I could hit all the notes for the soprano), as well as playing the trumpet and baritone horn parts.

So I get a little bit too enthusiastic about lyrics that sometimes annoy some of my friends.

For me, Christmas is a season of light. We do these things to remember that the sun will come back, to remind ourselves how much metaphorical light our friends and other loved ones bring to our hearts throughout the year, and to give a bit of light and joy to both loved ones and complete strangers.