Colder chests

As I continue to build my Spotify account, I stumble across moments. A few days ago, I mentioned here a song I'd almost forgotten about that reminds me of my young motherhood days. Yesterday, I suddenly remembered a song from my earlier days in Ottawa.

I used to volunteer at the library at the elementary school where my daughters attended. When elder daughter was there, the librarian was a twenty-something who actually introduced me to Launchcast.

This song, recommended to my Launchcast account about fifteen years ago, reaches into me like a hook, and I can clearly see the study in our house on Springfield Road, feeling the aloneness and the grey cold outside.

Older chests reveal themselves
Like a crack in a wall
Starting small, and grow in time
And we always seem to need the help
Of someone else
To mend that shelf
Too many books
Read me your favourite line
Papa went to other lands
And he found someone who understands
The ticking, and the western man's need to cry
He came back the other day, you know
Some things in life may change
And some things
They stay the same
Like time, there's always time
On my mind
So pass me by, I'll be fine
Just give me time
Older gents sit on the fence
With their cap in hand
Looking grand
They watch their city change
Children scream, or so it seems,
Louder than before
Out of doors, and into stores with bigger names
Mama tried to wash their faces
But these kids they lost their graces
And daddy lost at the races too many times
She broke down the other day, yeah you know
Some things in life may change
But some things they stay the same

Memories coming around like comets

Since the demise of Launchcast about ten years ago, I have longed for something similar, and tried three or four different platforms, including Spotify.  None of them quite took.

However, elder daughter has been honing her Spotify for some time now, and this week,  I decided to give it another try.

My hope is, like Launchcast, it will lead me to new (to me) music, but of course, this involves programming it with stuff I already know.  A pleasant side-effect is the stumbling on to songs I'd forgotten, such as this Mary Chapin Carpenter composition, which was a favourite when my little girls were little girls.


Another side effect is the pleasant at-home feeling that familiar music gives this new (to me) home.

As for new (to me) music, I've already made half-a-dozen or so promising discoveries, which I may share here - should I find myself short of time, which is likely.

...and it's gone...

I spent a bittersweet last evening with Launchcast April 15th. Some Launchcast sessions are mediocre; some send wonderful song after wonderful song. This last listening was a good example of what I'll be missing from Launchcast: a mixture of favourites, bearables, and at least two songs that were new to me and may go on to being favourites. The first of the latter is Umfazi Omdata which I think means "old married woman", so it's obviously my song: and the second is Maura O'Connell's rendition of The Blue Train. I can't embed this one, but the version of YouTube is a particularly fine one with Maura O'Connell singing with James Grant and Nanci Griffith, so do use the link if you have time.

Among these final seventeen songs on my Launchcast station, I was sent a number of songs I'd rated over 90 such as: Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of a New Day) (a nice live version from 1977 here), and:Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered by the unsurpassed Ella Fitzgerald (here, sadly with the saucy Cole Porter lyrics cleaned up), and: my absolute favourite Simon and Garfunkel song The Only Living Boy in New York. This song also appeared, as you may guess from the embedded video, in the movie Garden State which is a film I sat through, thinking all the while: "I bet I would have loved this when I was twenty..."

I even got to hear Never Let You Go by Three Eye Blind. I understand that as a discerning music lover, I'm not supposed to like Three Eye Blind, but I do. And I love this song (but can't find a decent video of it). The last song I heard on my Launchcast station was What I Like About You by the Romantics. Perfect.

The next day, my worst fears were realized. Not only has Yahoo dismantled the player, but they've taken down the lists for each personalized station. I had anticipated this and had transferred all songs I'd rated above 78 to Last.fm. Still, my ratings of over 15,000 songs, over 900 artists and over 600 albums are gone. Yahoo claims that the video station at my account has my Launchcast ratings in mind, but a video station is simply not the same thing, and I don't see them sending me much that is new, except a hell of lot of commercials and promotions.

Nope. You're blowing it, Yahoo. I'm off to Last.fm which, from earliest indications, will have more of a British bent to it, along with some other differences which I might discuss later. After the ballet, of course.

Transferral, transition, transfixion, transcendence...

Following the suggestion of Rullsenberg, I have set up a free account at Last.fm and have spent the last three days "life-boating" songs from my list at my soon-to-be-no-more station at Launchcast, the one I've been building up for over five years. This may take some time; I have over 15,000 songs rated at Launchcast, and although many are duplicated, quadruplicated and more (depending on how many albums they show up on), I don't know if I will make it through the songs I actually like by the 15th.

While I transfer, I've been slowly working out how Last.fm works. I'm not allowed to say how much I like a song, album or artist, for example. I can either "love it", simply save it to my station without comment, or ban it, whereas at Lauchcast, I had the option of rating something up to five stars (or banning it), or in my case, rating out of one hundred. Last.fm has the interesting feature of embedding YouTube videos at the individual song sites. At least, it does for some people. I tried linking several times when I saw no video available although I knew of one at YouTube. I entered the URL, a green icon came up, saying "Video added". Yet, when I checked later, still no video was there. I wonder if I have to have a paid subscription or something...

One of these was for the devastating second movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. This piece has been much on my mind as I've been viewing a repeat of the documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution'. (I was watching the British version narrated by Samuel West; the one shown on PBS had Linda Hunt doing the narration.) Every time they launched into a heartrending description of slaughter, it was signaled either by Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, or by the opening chords of the second movement of the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. My elder daughter, working at her homework while I sat in horror by the television set, turned and asked: "Why do they always play this music when someone is dying?" She didn't just mean the documentary. Both pieces figure in the screen version of Wit, starring Emma Thompson as a John Donne scholar succumbing to ovarian cancer. (As an aside, if you haven't seen Wit, you must. The play won a Pulitzer Prize. I've seen both the play and the movie. They're not easy viewing, but they're transcendent in every sense of the word.)

I gave elder daughter a quick and inadequate history of both pieces of music, and later discovered she had saved a YouTube video of the Gorecki piece to her account.
Here it is:
When I hear it, I find myself transfixed where I am. The opening chords are based on a Polish folk melody, but brim with the spirit of youth. Then an oppressive chord on the strings takes over, and over it the soprano starts, very low: "Mama.....don't cry...." As I understand it, Henryk Górecki heard of a prison in southern Poland where, amongst the hundreds of messages scratched on the wall by prisoners facing torture and death by the Nazis, there was a poignant message from Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna who was imprisoned there in late 1944: "O Mamo nie płacz nie—Niebios Przeczysta Królowo Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie" (Oh Mamma do not cry—Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always)
He said that among all the messages of fear, anger, despair, this simple message from an eighteen-year-old girl really stood out, in its lack of self-concern. There seems to be evidence that Helena Wanda survived her ordeal and married a Roman Pawlik, but the vast majority of Nazi prisoners didn't. So I sit when this music begins, unable to move, thinking of the children led into the Nazi abattoirs, with and without their mothers, and of the children being exploited, tortured, murdered today. I'm really glad Helena Wanda's mum got her back.

The sun always shines on the ophthalmologist

The skies are never overcast when I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Almost sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it? Nope, every time I go to see the eye doctor, the sun is blazing in a cloudless blue sky. Since my appointment is always in March, this generally means that there are freezing winds screaming up Sparks Street directly from the Ottawa River which is bobbing with chunks and pans of ice this time of year. With my pupils dilated to bad-art-puppy-dog size, I have to remove my glasses (my contact lenses being out of the question), and slap on sunglasses, then grope my way up the street, squinting at street signs and traffic signals. I spend the afternoon in front of the computer wearing reading glasses over my regular glasses. Luckily, no one is home. When 2:30 arrives, I once again slap sunglasses over my leaden eyeballs and grimace in what I hope is a friendly fashion at the vague shapes that may be people greeting me.

My horoscope was a very gloomy one this morning, which is doubly disturbing since it comes from the normally witty and cheery Georgia Nichols. Today, she told me: I'm not going to kid you. This could be a challenging Monday. ("It was Monday. It was Monday all day.") Powerful forces from within you might make you feel uncomfortable about something. You might not even know what's going on. (I don't even know what's going on.) It's time to let go of something. (But what?)

All perfectly true, of course. It being the first day back at school for both daughters after March Break, I was in a fit of gloom over taking younger daughter back to the mine-infested obstacle course of class projects, presentations, field trips and rituals from here until June. I was however, strangely comforted by a rare dream involving David Tennant. Nothing erotic, you understand. We were walking companionably down a crowded hallway in what I presume was a hotel, and he was clad in an adult-sized replica of younger daughter's pajamas. He kept reaching back to take my hand to guide me through the throngs of people and the combination of this gesture and the pajamas was rather endearing. He had just come back from some public event in Berlin where he'd been doused with water and become rather cross. I've mentioned before that my dreams rarely make a lick of sense. I think I prefer it that way.

The Launchcast Death Watch continues. Here's a bit of what I listened to over the weekend, with my ratings out of a hundred:
Why? 50 - Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman (1988)
What I Like About You 100 - The Romantics, The Romantics (1980) The link I've provided here is to a well-edited Doctor Who fan-vid done by some sweet young thing who thinks this is a song by The Ramones. This is the risk you take when ripping off music from Limewire...
Gyasi Went Home 68 - Bedouin Soundclash, Sounding a Mosaic (2004) (Can/Con) These guys are from Kingston which is on Lake Ontario, and is about an hour by train from Ottawa. The video I've linked to has them gabbing about the song for about a minute and a half, but the song itself is worth a listen.
My Maria 100 - Brooks and Dunn, Borderline (1996) I loved the 1973 original by B.W. Stevenson, but this is a wonderful cover, and I must confess, despite not being a huge fan of country music, I think Ronnie Dunn is one long cool drink of water...
All I Want Is You (Live) 70 - U2
Once in Love With Amy (from Where's Charley?) 100 - Ray Bolger Alas, there is no YouTube link to Ray Bolger's rendition of his signature tune. Lisa Rullsenberg suggested this weekend that I check out Last.fm, so I transferred 252 of my favourite artists to my profile there, and, on a whim, typed in Ray Bolger. And up came this song, which bodes well, although I think it will take me some time to figure the site out.
A Dream, A Dream, A Dream 47 - Bert Jansch
Symphony #6, Movement III 81 - Beethoven
Lonesome Blues 50 - Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1926)
Goin' Out West 56 - Tom Waits, Bone Machine (1992)
I Drove All Night 70 - Cyndi Lauper, Twelve Deadly Cyns. . . . (1995)Always liked this video, also this cover of the Roy Orbison song.
Quien (Who) 50 - Tish Hinoiosa, Cada Niño/Every Child (1996)
For a Job 47 - Peggy Seeger, An Odd Collection (1996)
This Traveling Around 50 - Lyle Lovett, It's Not Big, It's Large (2007)
Laughter 50 - Jack Rouse, Home (2000)
The End of the Tour 65 - They Might Be Giants, John Henry (1994)This is just a taste of the song by the quirky band which takes its name from one of my favourite movies.

When I was a Boy 96 - Dar Williams, Out There (2001)
One of my very favourite Dar Williams songs:
I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I'm glad he didn't check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight.
I lived a whole life in one night.
We saved each other's lives out on the pirates' deck.

And I remember that night
When I'm leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe,
someone should help me.
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don't know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, "Get your shirt,"
I said "No way, it's the last time I'm not breaking any law."

And now I'm in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more.
More that's tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me.
That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat.

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees.
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they've got implants to put in,
they've got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting...that I was a boy too.

And like the woods where I would creep, it's a secret I can keep
Except when I'm tired, 'cept when I'm being caught off guard.
And I've had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I'm with about the other life I lived
And I say, "Now you're top gun, I have lost and you have won."
And he says, "Oh no, no, can't you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do.
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you."

Continuing my Launchcast Lament

In keeping with my whinge over losing Launchcast as of April 15th, I made a note of each song that played on my Launchcast station last night and how I rated each one. Roughly half were new to me and a third were from Canadian artists. (Yes, I know that Rufus Wainwright was born in the US; he was raised in Montreal by his Canadian mother, okay?) I used the rate out of 100 option because the five stars aren't exacting enough for me. Anything below 50 means I don't care for it (the degree of dislike increases with the smallness of the number, obviously). 50-59 means I don't mind hearing it again; 60-69 means I'd like to hear it again; 70-79 means I care about hearing it again; 80-89 means I must hear it again, and 90 and above means I stop what I'm doing to listen and sometimes even shove back my chair and sing and dance in front of the computer. (Luckily, you will be spared this.) Yesterday evening was a good evening, only one song below fifty percent. I've provided some YouTube links to some of them in case you'd like to listen along to what was playing on Lily Father's Joy's Station:
Water's Edge - 79 - Cyndi Lauper, The Body Acoustic 2005
Sleepwalker - 74 - Wallflowers, Breach 2000
You Stole the Sun from My Heart - 65 - Manic Street Preachers, Forever Delayed: Greatest Hits
My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors - 83 - Moxy Fruvous, Bargainville 1993 (Can/Con) I'd just like to point out at this juncture that one of the members of Moxy Fruvous is my younger daughter's speech therapist's nephew. No, I don't know which one.
Awkward Game - 59 - The Cash Brothers, How Was Tomorrow? 2001 (Can/Con)
Willie's Fatal Visit - 50 - Jeannie Robertson, Classic Ballads of the British Isles
God and Country - 68 - Blue Rodeo, Diamond Mine 1989 (Can/Con)
Everybody Loves Me, Baby - 98 - Don Mclean, American Pie 1971
You Are Everyone - 60 - Dar Williams, Promised Land 2008
Drinkin' Days - 63 - Slaid Cleaves, Wishbones 2004
Land of Canaan - 54 - Indigo Girls, Strange Fire 1987
Going to a Town - 50 - Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars 2007 (Can/Con)
The Night Pat Murphy Died - 70 - Great Big Sea, Great Big DVD and CD
2004 (Can/Con)
Needle in the Hay - 50 - Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith 1995
Andy, You're A Star - 61 - The Killers, Hot Fuss 2004
If I Should Fall From Grace with God - 80 - The Pogues, If I Should Fall From Grace With God 1988
Walk Around Downtown - 83 - Cheryl Wheeler, Different Stripe 2002

Sigh. I suppose I can go back to listening to The Q online, but I will miss having somewhere to list what I like and dislike. You may want to steer clear of this blog for the next three weeks; I'll probably be doing a number of moanfests like this one. (Beats facing what really going on...)

Oh crap.

The axe has fallen, or is in the process of falling. I checked my Yahoo! mailbox (which I do less frequently than my regular email) and there it was. Yahoo, in its wisdom and mercy, is discontinuing Launchcast in Canada as of April 15th. It's not as if I wasn't warned, but I had hoped that we'd somehow been overlooked up here north of the US border.

To wit: Yahoo! Music is changing its strategy to be more aligned with the needs of our music users. We are moving our current Music offering away from being mainly a radio-streaming service and opening up Yahoo! Music to the rest of the Web to give you the best information, music videos, pictures and news about your favourite music genres and artists. They also assure me: Starting now, we will begin removing selected LAUNCHcast Radio stations from the Yahoo! Music Canada site. LAUNCHcast Plus stations will remain until April 15, 2009, at which time all radio stations will be removed from Yahoo! Music Canada. We will continue to offer you the most comprehensive music-related content, features and information on the Web, including our extensive music video catalogue, blogs and music information pages. In addition, we plan to launch the new-look Yahoo! Music over the next few months, which will showcase the 'best of the Web' in music for our users.

Horse hockey. What this actually means, Yahoo, is the station I've carefully been building up for the past five or six years, that has been introducing me to all kinds of music I wouldn't ordinarily hear, will have its plug yanked in three and a half weeks' time. Well, you murderers,I plan to make its final days the happiest it's ever had, visiting every day,sharing fond memories, bringing flowers and chocolates...

Seeing as Launchcast doesn't actually eat chocolate, I guess I'll be really bloated and splotchy by mid-April.

Damn you, Yahoo.

Frozen in time

I'm posting this as quick as I can because: a) we've been viewing another possible school for younger daughter today and b) Google denied me access to my blog earlier because it thought I was spyware or something. I did my "mommy" approach to computer glitches; I switched the damned thing off at the source and started all over again. ("If you can't play nicely, we'll forget the whole thing.) That has seemed to work for the nonce, but I'm posting before Google gets cranky again. After all, I only have three days of posts to do; it would be a shame to stumble at the finish line.

A couple of days ago, I was talking about how I was introduced to the music of Dar Williams through my Launchcast station which is still playing for me here in Canada. As this shortest-but-still-the-damn-longest month draws to a close, my mind has been very much on her song "February". It's not my favourite of her songs (that would be "It Happens Every Day" or "When I Was A Boy"), but the sentiments of the song go with the Ottawa weather of this time of year which rolls from frozen moonscape wastes to dirty, agar-like slush and back again.

I found a rather nice video on YouTube set to the song, but it's very rural (as is the song, I guess), so I'll follow up with some rather more urban snaps I took early in the month and yesterday on Ash Wednesday:
I threw your keys in the water, I looked back,
They'd frozen halfway down in the ice.
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners,
Even after the anger, it all turned silent, and
The everyday turned solitary,
So we came to February.

First we forgot where we'd planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that we'd planted at all,
Then we forgot what plants are altogether,
and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting and
The nights were long and cold and scary,
Can we live through February?

You know I think Christmas was a long red glare,
Shot up like a warning, we gave presents without cards,
And then the snow,
And then the snow came, we were always out shoveling,
And we'd drop to sleep exhausted,
Then we'd wake up, and it's snowing.

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "That's a crocus,"
And I said, "What's a crocus?" and you said, "It's a flower,"
I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?"
You said, "I still love you."

The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store,
My new lover made me keys to the house,
And when we got home, well we just started chopping wood,
Because you never know how next year will be,
And we'll gather all our arms can carry,
I have lost to February.

It takes a lot of love to survive February, and I suspect that that particular love didn't because her new lover has made her keys for the house. That's my challenge for today; not losing to February. Oh well, it will be over soon. And then it will be the horror that is March in Ottawa. Sigh....

Feeling like an ash hole

I'm eating cold sausages and bacon rashers left over from last night's pancake feast. Ash Wednesday today, so the Resident Fan Boy will give up coffee for the next forty days and compound his sacrifice by making coffee for me after dinner. This evening, if the weather is not treacherous, he will take the dried out fronds of the palm leaves that have been stuck behind a picture frame above the computer and get smudged with the ashes at church.

In the meantime, I climb the hill to younger daughter's school, trying to take arty pictures of February devastation.As I bring younger daughter to her locker, I take the opportunity to congratulate Guardian Angel on her award.
"What award?"
"The book review award."
"I won an award?"
At this point Russian Prodigy, a rather nasty piece of work who has been known to speak to younger daughter as if she's an imbecile when people are watching and stuff snow into her boots when they're not, appears from nowhere, fixes me with an alarmed stare and declares: "She's not supposed to know! We were told not to tell her!"
I return her stare and say: "But the parents got an email about it yesterday! There was nothing in it about it being a surprise!" Indeed, the lengthy and rather poorly punctuated message had appeared on my monitor the previous morning. Why on earth would they send such a notice and try to surprised the recipients more than 24 hours later? All the same, I leave the school under a cloud, and feeling rather upset and disgruntled, am halfway home before I remember I was wanting to take pictures of the stuff I missed en route to school.

While I'm snapping, I see a regular on my street, a book under one arm and her trusty dachshund under the other. It's a mystery, of course. The book, that is.
"They end well," she shrugs apologetically. "That's why I like 'em, I guess."
"Yes," I say, being a P.D. James fan and of not much else in that genre, "Justice prevails."

I wind up in the coffee shop to scribble and sort. I'm re-examining two of my favourite books about writing, both by Henriette Anne Klauser: Writing on Both Sides of the Brain and Put Your Heart on Paper. She's since come out with two more books and all are available at my library. A guy in one of the booths making business calls is intrigued and asks if I'm a writer. "Not for money," I smile ruefully. I've just read in one of the books: "The difference between a writer and an author is Page 53."

The coffee shop seems to be tuned to an easy-listening satellite station this morning; they're playing The Carpenters and that ghastly "I Am Your Lady" song from the Eighties, which would easily make the Songs I Loathe list. Before I'm driven out, though, a James Taylor ditty that I do like comes on (I don't like all of James Taylor's stuff, but he did write some lovely songs), and it just happens to be another one of the songs Launchcast sent me when I first began listening to my station. Here's the video for it, and check out who's singing back-up! Feeling a little less ashen, I make my way into the salty morning.

Anticipatory Grief for Launchcast, Part Two (with some double-dipping)

Shrove Tuesday, so the fridge is stocked with sausages and bacon to go with the pancakes this evening. I want to continue my elegy for Launchcast (which is still playing for me and letting me rate songs here in Canada). Here are some more songs and/or artists that I only came across when Launchcast sent them to my player:

6. - from the 1994 album The Snake, Shane MacGowan and the Popes. Love the song; the video is pretty, but makes me feel quite chilly, watching Sinéad tramp through waterlogged sets in her bare feet (and golly, she's heavily made-up for such a pretty girl). Purists undoubtedly prefer the 1986 Cait O 'Riordan/Pogues version: which is a bit meatier, but I think one usually prefers the version one hears first.

7. From Shane MacGowan without The Pogues, we go to The Pogues without Shane MacGowan: There was a rather splendid Doctor Who fan-vid of the second season set to this song, but it seems to have disappeared from YouTube.

8. Here's another double-dip: That's the version I first heard on Launchcast, but I can't resist this earlier 1989 version with a very Eighties video: Bit Proclaimer-ish, isn't it?

9. - from the 1981 album Face Dances. Don't know how I missed this Who gem the first time around which actually sounds very un-Who-like, although it sounds a lot like Pete Townsend.

10. - from the 1981 album Making Movies. Yes, I know. Perhaps it's because I'm not that crazy about Dire Straits (I don't mind them, but I don't turn up the radio when they come on), but I never heard this one until it turned up on Launchcast. Heartbreaking and beautiful.

11. - from the 1988 album Modern Lovers 88 A song that expresses exactly how I feel about Harpo Marx:
Well when Harpo played his harp, it was a mystery
All the laughing stopped back to the balcony
Chico, Chico, sure to please
Now let's watch him shoot the keys
When Harpo would play his harp, all was still

When Harpo played his harp, it was a dream, it was
Well if someone else can do it, how come nobody does?
Groucho, Groucho, fast as light
Some talk like him but not quite
When Harpo would play his harp, all was still, still

Well Harpo Harpo
This is the angels and
where did you get that sound so fine?
Harpo Harpo
We gotta hear it
One more time

Harpo Harpo
We're in the galaxies and
where did you get that sound so fine?
Harpo Harpo
We gotta hear it
One more time

Do you remember what he would do sometimes before he played?
Well he'd look up to the sky and he'd look the angels' way
Harpo Harpo, when you start
Tears of joy inside my heart
Harpo would play his harp and all was still

I gotta hear it one more time. Here's Harpo in Horse Feathers, the first Marx Brothers film I ever saw. I was seventeen and instantly smitten; all Harpo's mania disappears, and the real man appears before our eyes: The lovely lady is Thelma Todd who also appeared in my very favourite Marx Brothers flick Monkey Business. She was brutally murdered a short time later.

12. Finally (there's more, but I'll only do them if I run out of post ideas before my last day of NaBloPoMo on Saturday), Dar Williams: There's a fan-vid featuring the original recording from the 2000 album The Green World, but it focuses on a Big Brother participant for some reason, so I'm sticking with this live version. Dar Williams was someone I was almost completely unaware of before Launchcast sent her along to me, but I just love her songs with their marvelous lyrics:
I wonder if Yoko Ono
Ever thought of staying solo
If she thought of other men and
If she doubted John Lennon
Worrying that he'd distract her art

Sitting in the Apple sessions
Giving John her music lessons
Challenging the warring nations
With her paper installations
Did she guard her Yoko human heart

Well, they could talk about me
Yeah, they could talk about me
Throw me to the velvet dogs of pop star history
But I won't be your Yoko Ono
If you're not good enough for me

Some will give their love for fashion
Others trade their gold for passion
I don't have the goods to start with
Never had the reins to part with
Still, I hope you take me seriously

'Cause I think I could go
Deep as the sea of Yoko
You don't know a person like me
I could sell your songs to Nike
And for all you know
I could save your soul
As only true love can change your mind
Make you leave your screaming fans behind

When John called the wind an opera
Making love with every chakra
When he said her voice would carry
And when he whispered old Chuck Berry
Only then would Yoko set him free

Fame will come and vanish later
Transcendental love is greater
I think if we had this somehow
We'd be feeling famous right now
We'd be saying love is all you need

Sounds a bit like a riposte to The Barenaked Ladies, doesn't it? Good. Managed my Can/Con for today...

Anticipatory Grief for Launchcast, Part One

In a recent post I mentioned my Launchcast Station, and a fellow from Minnesota calling himself CPL Poker Podcast and League wrote in to tell me that Launchcast is no more. This was a surprise as I was listening to my Launchcast station at the time, but I checked the internet and it seems Yahoo has sold Launchcast to CBS stations and they've merrily dismantled all the US personalized stations. Although this news appears on the Yahoo.ca financial news page, there's no word yet about whether the Canadian Launchcast stations will be dismantled.

I have to assume that they eventually will, which would mean my five years of rating 961 artists, 634 albums and over 15,000 songs will disappear in a poof, so I've been listening to my station as never before. My station has a mix of rock, folk, and classical with a some hints of jazz and show tunes. I'm not likely to find anything like it anywhere, am I? Furthermore, the Launchcast system sends music it thinks you will like based on your ratings. Often, they're horribly wrong (ever had books recommended to you by Amazon?), but often they send gems. I hear music I might not have heard otherwise, and songs from established artist that I've managed to miss. Damn.

Anyway, I thought this morning, I'd post some songs I first heard on my Launchcast station, provided they are available on YouTube. I think it makes up about a baker's dozen, so I'll do roughly half this morning:

1. -- from the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I find the fan-made video provided with this song a bit distracting and not much to do with the song. I imagine it being more about street people, but I'm probably wrong too. This song came up on the Billy Bragg fan station at Launchcast, and eventually led me to purchasing both the CDs Billy Bragg did with Wilco covering Woody Guthrie songs.

2. I completely missed The Stone Roses and their psychedelic sound the first time around, possibly because I was having babies. "Waterfall" is merely representative; I like a whole bunch of their songs.

3. I can't embed this next one which is "Dark Eyes" sung by Judy Collins and written by Bob Dylan. His version appeared in his 1985 album Empire Burlesque, and according to Wikipedia, he needed to write a simple track to close the album:
He returned to his hotel in Manhattan after midnight, and Dylan apparently said later:

"As I stepped out of the elevator, Sarah Bernstein was coming toward me in the hallway - pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat - high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart. She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she'd been beaten up and was afraid that she'd get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. 'I'm just dying for a drink,' she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world."

The brief, chance encounter inspired Dylan to write "Dark Eyes," which was quickly recorded without any studio embellishment. Structured like a children's song, with very rudimentary guitar work and very simple notes, it's often quoted for its last chorus: "A million faces at my feet, but all I see are dark eyes."

Once again, this fan-vid doesn't seem to have much to do with the song, but when I first heard it, with Judy Collins' vocals, I imagined Europe just after the First World War. So there yer go; we hear what we hear.

4. -- from the 1980 album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School (Zevon also had just the best album titles). I was vaguely aware of the song "Werewolves of London", but Warren Zevon, rest his soul, is another singer/songwriter I managed to miss. I just love his stuff, and it's all because Launchcast kept sending it to me on my radio station. I've not the only one who loves Warren Zevon, this next offering is a tribute:

5. -- from the album Bark. I bought this CD based on two songs that appeared on my Launchcast station: this one and "I've Had Enough of You Today". Blackie and the Rodeo Kings is a kind of super-group comprised of Canadian alternative rock/folk/country artistsThe quality of this weird and rare video is highly dependent on whether you click the "watch in high quality" option, so you may want to click on this video and go do that.

That'll do for now. I'm sure I'll be scrabbling for post topics later as I head into the final week of marathon posting for NaBloPoMo, so I'll post the rest later.

Bad songs say so little

Okay, the snow banks are crusty and filthy and the edges are littered with doggy-do. I dropped off younger daughter at school really late, and her last words to me, delivered over her shoulder as she stood in the middle of her classroom were: "It's not going to be a great day..."

Seeing as I'm in a crappy mood anyway, I thought I'd adopt a really poor attitude and muse about songs I hate. As almost none of you know (because this was from a really early post when no one was reading my blog), I have a Launchcast station. Usually I concentrate on how it delivers my favourite songs, along with songs it thinks I will like, but it also has a feature where you can, with a click of your mouse, tell it "Never play this on my station again". Of course, if I'm feeling particularly cruel, I'll rate the song at 30 or lower which accomplishes the same thing, just to show how much I dislike and disdain a particular thing-purporting-to-be-a-song.

I thought I'd run a few selections past you today. Now, usually I provide a link or a YouTube video to illustrate musical selections, but these are songs I can't stand, that set me diving at the radio to switch it off, so why torture you? If you're determined to torture yourself, you're welcome to google these things...

This is not a comprehensive list. There are millions of songs I hate. These are titles that occurred to me while sitting in the coffee shop this morning, paying bills. (Another mood-killer.) The seventies are over-represented. Maybe my next post should be There really was good music available in the seventies; it just won't be evident by perusing this list.

Here we go, hold your nose and plug your ears:

1. Hotel California by The Eagles. One of the most pretentious songs ever written, with a melody that goes nowhere. Launchcast has something called "Fan Stations", and I made the mistake of playing The Beatles Fan Station. It played "Hotel California" three times. In half an hour. (A really good idea when selecting a "Fan Station" at Launchcast, by the way, is choosing someone you like who isn't that popular. Stone Roses work well, as do Billy Bragg, or Lyle Lovett. Forget The Proclaimers, their fan station just plays eighties drek. Not that all eighties music was drek -- uh another possible post: There really was good music available in the eighties... I think I'm getting side-tracked because I don't want to list the next one...)

2. Double-whammy here. Kashmir and Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. I actually used to like these songs, but they've been played to death, and they go on and on and on...

3. For the Love of Him by Bobbi Martin. I feel guilty even mentioning this song, because it's sunk into obscurity and it needs to stay there. Trust me, it was awful. Syrupy, banal, anti-feminist. (Shudder)

4. Another double-whammy: Feelings and My Way by anybody. Cheap shots, I know. Why, why, why are these songs popular?

5. Any song about oral sex. I'm looking at you, Aerosmith. Yeah, yeah, it feels good, it's natural and without it, life would be less pleasant, but the same can be said about taking a dump. I don't want to hear a song about it, okay? Maybe mention should be made of "Going Down" by The Stone Roses, which, admittedly, is a lovely melody; in fact, it's the prettiest little ditty about cunnilingus ever. The problem is... It's about cunnilingus, people; let's not sing about it.

6. Black Water by the Doobie Brothers. I didn't much care for this song in the first place, but there's a really, really disturbing scene in St Elsewhere which is otherwise one of my all time favourite TV series: It's when Boomer is trapped in his apartment with a psychotic rapist/murderer who has been released from prison. Boomer is tied up and gagged in a chair, while his wife is bound and gagged to the bed and the creep starts singing "Black Water". (Double shudder.)

7. Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. Because it drives me cra-a-a-a-ze-e-e-e...

8. The Reason by Hagendaz Hoodenhof Hoobastank. Never has a group name suited a song so well. This is one of those songs that spoiled a summer for me. The radio just kept playing it, and those over-grown adolescents kept whining, whining, whining....

Can we stop now? Looking at this highly unscientific and disorganized list, I see that it consists of songs that I loathed from the get-go, and songs I grew to despise through overexposure. Now, just because I hate to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth and a buzzing in your ears, I'll offer you a song that falls into the second category --- but has been redeemed by my very favourite fan-vid creator The Big Blue Meany. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this woman is a genius, and only she could take an over-blown, overplayed song like "Drops of Jupiter" and turn it into the perfect musical rendition of what happens to Donna in the fourth season of Doctor Who:
Hope your day is shaping up into something better.