‘Music’ Category

  1. Let me rock you Chaka Kahn

    November 4, 2007 :: 9:18 pm

    Category Geek, Movies, Music | Tags: | 1 Comment

  2. A Few Covers

    August 26, 2007 :: 7:59 pm

    Crazy cover songs I’m listening to tonight:

    Van Morrison and Roger Waters singing “Comfortably Numb” live. Eh. I’m not wild about this cover; it sounded exactly like the original album version of “Comfortably Numb” (nice) but with Van Morrison’s voice (just weird).

    Echoing Green covering Figures on a Beach’s “Accidentally 4th Street (Gloria).” Awful cover. I adore the original but this just sounded like something you’d hear at 11 p.m. in a gay dance club and then immediately forget. Quick story about Figures on a Beach: In college in the early 1990s, I was a vice president of the Campus Activities Board and the powers that be sent me to a national convention where bands and other acts performed in showcases, trying to get colleges to bring them to campus. On the trade show floor, where all the acts’ managers had booths, I was perusing a list of the talent that one company represented, and when I saw Figures on a Beach listed, I asked the manager about them, as I was rather a fan. He was quite shocked and said,”Really? You like them? They’re friends of mine and I kind of just put them on there for kicks!” Too bad they cost double the budget for our entire year.

    Boy Least Likely To singing George Michael’s “Faith.” Freaking weird! I don’t like the original version, and I almost skipped right past this cover, but the hypnotic combination of the smooth-voiced male and female singers harmonizing throughout, and an instrumental chorus of slide whistles, a xylophone, and one of those little wooden clacker things that makes a zzzzZZZZPPP! noise, sucked me in.

    “Mad World” by Gary Jules, originally Tears for Fears. AMAZING. I like it even better than the original. It’s just Mr. Jules and a muted piano. I think that this was on the Donnie Darko soundtrack (one of my favorite movies).

    Jonathan Coulton covering “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Brilliant! If you weren’t actively listening to the raunchy lyrics, you’d probably let your kids listen to it, it sounds so bland and safe! It’s middle of the road soft rock with maybe a twinge of country, and it sounds like The Feel-Good Song Of The Year! I love this especially because the original is one of those things that Kathryn and I love to listen to REALLY LOUD in the car with the windows down, singing along and laughing hysterically. Have a listen. Or, if you want to hear the whole thing (and you do!), download the Coverville podcast where it’s played in its entirety.

    Johnny Cash, “Hurt,” originally by Nine Inch Nails. Or, “Johnny Cash OWNS Trent Reznor,” as the kids say. The way the guitar builds in intensity at the end is stunning, and Johnny manages to put forth as much emotion as Trent Reznor, but without all the screaming.

    Category Music | Tags: | No Comments

  3. The Police! In Concert! I Was There!!

    June 27, 2007 :: 9:47 pm

    I have just three words.

    Stewart.
    Fucking.
    Copeland.

    Forget Sting. Stewart was truly the star of the show. My god, can the man play drums!! He played like he was 20 years old! He played like he’d played those songs every day of his life since 1983! He is so fast, so precise, so incredibly talented. He had an enormous drumkit on stage as well as a secondary one behind him that included all manner of interesting hand percussion, xylophones, little hanging bells, and a full sized gong. He’d switch back and forth between the two sets during some songs, and it was fun to guess whether he’d make it to the other set in time. (He always did!). He also looked amazing, in white pants and a tight black and red shirt.


    Jason Janik, Dallas Morning News

    The concert was FREAKING AWESOME. It was such a cool experience to see one of my favorite bands in concert, a band that initially broke up before I was even old enough to go to concerts.

    My only real complaint is that it wasn’t six hours longer. :) My voice was trashed last night and this morning from singing at the top of my lungs.

    Andy Summers was also in top form, and although the guitar solos seemed a bit shorter and slightly less energetic than maybe I remember them being, he still kicked ass, especially considering he’s quite a bit older than the other two.

    Sting can’t sing as high as he used to, which makes sense considering that he’s in his mid-50s. He did take some of the verses of some of the songs down an octave to accommodate, which was a little disappointing since I think a lot of the power of the original songs lies in that high yell.

    He looked amazing, too, in tight black pants, knee high buckle boots (hello, 1980s!) and… well, what looked like an old white t-shirt full of holes and with cut off sleeves. Like maybe he’d rolled out of bed and forgotten to change his shirt. But shirt, schmirt, whatever; sometimes he doesn’t even wear one! I hear tell that in some cities (sadly, not Dallas), Stewart comes to the front of the stage and announces “And now, Sting is going to take off his clothes. And if he doesn’t, *I* will!”

    Of course, most of what they played were the radio singles (almost the entirety of Every Breath You Take: The Singles), but they threw in a couple of gems that made me very happy.

    Overall I was very pleased with how they performed most of the songs. Some were a bit of a disappointment, such as Walking in Your Footsteps: one of my favorite songs but it seemed like they just mangled the performance of it. It was too slow, and a little weak. This was also an example of a song where Sting didn’t go up to the right octave (like the verse that begins “Hey, mighty brontosaurus, don’t you have a lesson for us”), and it just seemed a little low-key and powerless.

    They completely ROCKED on most of the songs, though, especially So Lonely, Synchronicity II, King of Pain, Driven to Tears, and Next To You.

    I found it kind of amusing that they slowed down the tempo of a couple of the songs, most notably Truth Hits Everybody, which is supposed to be just lightning fast. Don’t know if it’s because one or more of them has difficulty keeping up with that pace, or if they just wanted to do something different. At any rate, it was a little strange.

    Here is what they played, although not necessarily in order:

    Message In A Bottle
    Synchronicity II
    Can’t Stand Losing You
    Bed’s Too Big Without You
    De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
    When The World Is Running Down
    Wrapped Around Your Finger
    Walking on the Moon
    Walking in Your Footsteps
    Voices Inside My Head
    Truth Hits Everybody
    Invisible Sun
    Roxanne
    King of Pain
    Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
    Every Breath You Take
    Driven To Tears
    Don’t Stand So Close To Me
    So Lonely
    Next To You

    Every concert you go to, there are always a handful of songs that you are just hoping and praying that the artist will perform, but they don’t. I really was hoping to hear I Burn For You, Tea in the Sahara, Secret Journey, Synchronicity I, and Murder by Numbers. And beyond that, it would have been great to hear the little-heard Omegaman, Hungry For You, No Time This Time, Man in a Suitcase, and Bombs Away.

    I was really glad to see that it looked like the three of them were having fun onstage. At one point after they’d left the stage, Sting and Andy came back and Andy started in on the guitar part (wish I could remember which song it was!). Stewart came flying out onstage, leaped at his drumkit, and began playing JUST in time… and Andy grinned at him and Stewart grinned back and pointed one of his drumsticks at Andy like “JUST in time, buddy!” Almost like Andy had started the song before Stewart was ready just to see if he’d make it in time.

    A couple of times Sting either forgot the lyrics or sang the wrong ones (such as in Don’t Stand So Close To Me), and what was really great was that he cracked up as the audience sang the CORRECT lyrics back at him.

    And, of course, the E-yo’s were everywhere!! My friends and I used to call that “The Mating Call of The Police.” E-yo-oh… e-yo-oh…. e-yo, e-yo-yo-yo… and it’s variant “Rio… riay… riay-oh!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listed to Regatta de Blanc or the end of Walking On The Moon.

    I do also have to mention that the opening band, Fictionplane, is fronted by none other than Sting Jr. Doc and I were calling them the Little Police. He’s blond, looks just like his dad, sings and plays bass for a 3-man band… hmm, sound familiar? I think that if my dad were that famous, and I had talent in the same area, I would do everything in my power to differentiate myself from him (different instrument, at the very least) to try to be taken seriously as a musician in my own right. I’m not saying that they were awful or anything, but it was quite forgettable mediocre rock.

    All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had at a concert since… well, I can’t remember when. I’ve seen some amazing shows in the past few years (especially Aimee Mann, Peter Gabriel, and Elvis Costello), but none of them had the insane energy that this one did. I was bouncing up and down in my seat the entire time and singing as loud as I could.

    Good times!

    Category Music | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Caught red-handed showing feelings

    June 10, 2007 :: 3:11 pm

    I’d forgotten how much I love Pink Floyd’s film “The Wall.” We saw it at the Inwood last night at midnight with Brittney and Chris. We weren’t the oldest people in the audience but we definitely fell in the high end of the range.

    Near the beginning of the film, someone’s cell phone rang. The girl sitting in front of me turned to her boyfriend and asked, quite seriously, “Was that in the movie?”

    Sigh.

    Doc’s cluster headache cycle is just not going away. No screaming bad ones, but he has a headache almost constantly since about February. Saturday we went to three different health food stores looking for this capsaicin nasal spray which is said to help with migraines and anecdotally with some peoples’ clusters too. The first one was just a distribution center in an office park (closed), the second one was Roy’s Natural Market (closed on Saturdays… seriously, WTF?), and Whole Foods did not carry it. We may have to order it online.

    Our Whole Foods trip wasn’t a complete wash though; we spent a long time staring at the fabulously gorgeous desserts in the dessert cases. They are too pretty to eat. I just want to look at them all day! I purchased a new bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castile Soap. I love this stuff. The label, if you aren’t familiar with it (and if you’re not I suggest you read it!), will lead you to the conclusion that dear old Dr. Bronner was nearly all his pancakes short of a stack, but by God (pun intended) he can make some damn fine environmentally friendly non-sodium-lauryl-or-laureth-sulfate-containing liquid soap. It’s expensive but a little goes a long long way.

    Category Headache, Movies, Music, Shopping | Tags: | No Comments

  5. First Born Unicorn

    June 3, 2007 :: 8:50 pm

    On Friday night, Doc and my Mom and I watched a nifty old movie, “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.” Tony Randall plays Dr. Lao, Medusa, the Abominable Snowman, a serpent, Pan, Merlin, and Apollonius of Tyana (the blind seer). It also stars Barbara Eden, pre-Jeannie. I love the classic special effects – cheesy and obvious to our 21st century eyes, but undoubtedly stunning for the time.

    Also, we discovered that the line in the chorus of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” is, indeed, “FIRST BORN UNICORN.” Seriously. “First born unicorn, hard core soft porn.” I just… I have no words. How can I possibly have words to describe that?

    Category Movies, Music | Tags: | 1 Comment

  6. Whatcha gonna do with all that junk?

    April 11, 2007 :: 10:03 pm

    OK, so I don’t know if you’ve heard the Black Eyed Peas’ song entitled “My Humps,” (the one that goes “whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?”) but I just recently heard it all the way through for the first time and saw the video. I’ll go on the record and say that oh my god this has got to be one of the most insanely stupid songs I’ve ever heard.

    “My lovely lady lumps?” Did she just sing the words “Tryin’ a feel my hump, hump. Lookin’ at my lump, lump.”?!?! And NOT crack up??!

    It’s not like there is any shortage in this world of vacuous songs that encourage women’s use of tits and ass to further their own materialistic desires and/or boost their rock-bottom self esteem (“my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,” anyone?)… but SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. Is “lady lumps” not the most asinine phrase you have ever heard? I don’t know whether to laugh or feel horribly embarrassed.

    Anyhoo, the point of all this is, my brother alerted me to a BRILLIANT cover of this song by Alanis Morrissette. She managed to make it sad and haunting in tone, which is incredibly amusing when she sings something like “I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk, get you love drunk off my hump,” and the video is a fantastic parody. Check it out…

    Category Music | Tags: | 1 Comment

  7. Every Tape Tells A Story

    March 8, 2007 :: 7:09 pm


    When I was in middle and high school, during the dark ages of the 1980s, it was a common occurrence to see a long string of cassette tape fluttering on the side of the road, trailing away from a broken and discarded mix tape.

    Mix tapes, for teenagers in love, were not given lightly. A tape full of songs with pointed and poignant lyrics was a gift to be analyzed for hours; what did the selection of THOSE particular songs mean? Why were they in THAT order? And creating a mix tape for your objet d’amour was an hours-long exercise in subtleties.

    So to spot one of these fragile magnetic love-poem-collages in a ruined state, littering the roadside, tossed out of a car window in a fit of pique, always made me a little sad: this was concrete evidence of love gone wrong.

    Category Memories, Music | Tags: | No Comments

  8. 11-Eleven! at the 500 Cafe

    March 6, 2007 :: 11:05 pm

    Doc is in the middle of a huge project, converting our VHS tapes to DVD. This is 11-Eleven (consisting of Doc, Dave, and a Mac 512K) at the 500 Cafe in Dallas. The show was this wonderful mix of music and performance art, complete with smoke, hairspray, and Baby Bleeds-A-Lot.

    Category Doc, Memories, Music | Tags: | No Comments

  9. Got tickets! Etcetera

    March 1, 2007 :: 9:37 pm

    WOOHOO! I am now the proud owner of two tickets to the Police concert in Dallas in June!! Through an odd set of circumstances, I was able to obtain them through a special ticket pre-sale. I think that I will also try to get some tickets at the regular sale on Saturday, to sell on eBay and make my money back.

    You seriously don’t want to know how much I paid for these tickets. I have NEVER spent this much money on concert tickets before. I sure hope that it will be worth it.

    Recent updates:

    I got a promotion and a raise at work, and to go along with that, I also get an employee of my very own: a junior designer. I will be shaping the mind and talents of a young artist. Wish me luck!!

    Tuesday night I went out for dinner and drinks with Kathryn and Yvonne. I had a fantastic time. It was lovely patio weather once again, and great company.

    Today is Brittney’s birthday. Happy birthday, if you’re reading this!!!!!

    We visited our tax man this evening. We owe the government more money than we paid for our down payment on our house (we planned for it, and have enough). Ah, the joys of self employment. At least it wasn’t quite as big a bill as we’d thought that it would be.

    I got an e-mail from a researcher at the USDA Wind Erosion Research Unit in Kansas, asking permission to publish the photo I took of the dust storm last Sunday on their web site. Pretty cool, eh?

    I just made myself sick trying to take a spinny chair photo for my photo of the day. I had to stop because my tummy was churning dangerously.

    I just realized that the word “etcetera” contains “cetera,” as in the singer Peter Cetera of Chicago fame. So I wonder, if your name was something like Edward Thomas Cetera, you could go by E.T. Cetera. That would be pretty damn funny.

    Category Music, Photography, Storm, Weather, Work | Tags: | 3 Comments

  10. Something Inexpressible

    February 12, 2007 :: 7:45 pm

    Hell has frozen over: The Police have reunited after 24 (ish) years, and are going on tour. Now, will they be able to stay together long enough to make it to Dallas?

    June 26, Dallas, TX, American Airlines Center. I’ll trample elderly people and small children in order to get tickets to this show. Outta my way!

    The Police broke up before I was old enough go to any of their concerts. But my second concert was Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles tour in October of 1985. My friend Sarah’s older brother Shawn took us, and our moms came along as chaperones. I was mortified.

    I have a theory as to why the Police are reuniting after an eternity of solo work. None of them can possibly need the cash, as they have all done very well for themselves since the 1980s, and I don’t think that they are back together for good or are working on any new Police material. I think that it might be because Sting has become a shining star on the easy-listening adult contemporary stations… and maybe he needs to prove to himself that he can still ROCK.

    I hope he can.

    Category Music | Tags: | 3 Comments

  11. I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL

    January 1, 2007 :: 10:12 pm

    Holy cow, I’m white and nerdy!

    Category Geek, Music | Tags: | 2 Comments

  12. Doc

    December 6, 2006 :: 11:42 pm

    Doc and I met at least twice over a span of several years, before we became friends or started dating. I think that if we had tried dating earlier than we did, it likely would not have worked out. Both of us — but especially me — had personal issues to work out, and I had some growing up to do and hard lessons yet to learn.

    The first time was during my junior year in college. G. and I went to a concert in Dallas one weekend at a club, and I can’t remember who the headline act was but one of the opening bands was a local act called Au du Voir. After the show, we went to Denny’s, as was our tradition, along with Au du Voir, G.’s boyfriend TM, and a friend of TM’s who had long pretty brown hair and a goatee, little round glasses, a long coat, and was walking with a cane. I remember thinking he was attractive and very sweet but I was dating someone at the time so I didn’t give it a whole lot more thought.

    The second time was when I was home for the weekend from school, and G. invited me over to her mom’s house one night to watch “Barton Fink” with her and TM and TM’s friend Doc. Once I met him I remembered him as the nice guy from that night at Denny’s. I was too dense, apparently, to realize that it was sort of a set-up. I don’t remember too much about the evening other than I was extremely tired and I fell asleep on the sofa during the movie.

    In February of 1995, well after TM had achieved “asshole ex-boyfriend” status, G. and I moved into our first apartment as roommates. We had a housewarming party shortly thereafter, and G. asked me if she should invite Doc (sans TM, of course). I remembered him from our previous meetings and said sure, he seemed nice. He came to our party, dressed sharply, smelling fantastic, and he brought us a gift: three paper bags containing tiny dried rose buds, frankincense, and little orange suction dart guns. I thought he was cute, and very nice, but he was seeing someone at the time and I was still casually involved with PCN.

    We had several more parties that year and invited him to all of them. During a party over Memorial Day weekend, he was perusing the shelf of CDs in the living room, and turned around and asked us, “Whose ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ is this?!” I had been talking to someone else but immediately my focus shifted to Doc. It’s as if all other sound and people in the room faded away and he was the only person standing there. I had never met anyone before who had even heard of that record, let alone liked it. I have always felt like somewhat of a loner with my love for 70s progressive art-rock (Genesis, Yes, U.K.), and now someone who shared my obscure interest was standing in my living room! I was suddenly interested in nothing else but talking to Doc.

    We discussed music all night, even hijacking the TV in the middle of the party to watch a VHS tape of early Genesis history that I had, which he had never seen. We talked about a lot of things in addition to music, and I was finding him more and more intriguing. He was extremely intelligent, clever, funny, a great storyteller, and exactly my type, physically — long hair, eyes that crinkled up when he smiles, strong, gentle, pretty. We’d both had a little to drink, and as we were sitting on the floor in front of the TV, I found myself reaching over to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes. Automatically, without even thinking. Of course, the minute I did that I felt incredibly self-conscious: I had crossed an intimacy line and I hardly even knew him yet. I was hoping that he’d interpret it as just plain flirting, and not think that I was out of bounds.

    He already had a girlfriend (yet he never brought his girlfriends to any of our parties…) and I tried not to let myself get my hopes up too high. I was still feeling some of the trauma from my breakup with Eeyore less than a year before, and I wasn’t too interested in rushing into another serious relationship, because at that point it didn’t feel like I could survive another crash-and-burn ending. I felt fragile, and not yet trusting enough.

    From then on, we invited him to every single party we had, as well as some parties that were not parties at all. For instance, on the Fourth of July, G. and I packed a picnic dinner and drove to Fair Park. I think that it was G., her boyfriend, me, and Doc. We lounged in a grassy median in the parking lot, drank wine coolers, listened to a Boston concert wafting over the walls of Starplex, and watched the fireworks. I knew that I was more and more interested in Doc the more I saw of him, but he wasn’t seeming to get the message. Was I too subtle? Had I forgotten how to flirt? Was he just not interested in me?

    On Halloween, K1 and I dressed up in leather and fishnets and went down to the Oak Lawn Street Party along with Doc and G. K1 was leading me around by a leash attached to a black leather collar. We were VERY popular; everyone wanted their pictures taken with us. Doc dressed in black pants and fancy tall boots, a ruffled white lace shirt, and a long black Victorian coat. His hair was down and his beard was pointed into a little V. He looked amazing. The street party was very crowded so several times I took his hand to lead him through the crowd. We sat in a couple of overstuffed bars and played thumb wars.

    Later, when we were ready to leave, K1 couldn’t walk anymore because her thigh-high stiletto boots were a size too small and her feet just couldn’t take it anymore. She and G. sat on a curb while Doc and I walked back to retrieve his car, parked several blocks away. We climbed into his car and sat there talking for a few minutes, and I suddenly leaned over and kissed him. (The way he remembers it, he leaned over and kissed me. Maybe we both did at the same time!) He then said “Here’s the thing… I’ve just broken up with someone, and I need a couple of weeks to get things kind of finished up from that.” I told him that I could wait while he got things sorted out. I was just glad that he was finally not dating someone else, so I could have a chance!

    A few weeks later, we had our first date. He took me to Kostas Cafe, a Greek restaurant. I can’t remember if it was before Thanksgiving or after, but he also came over to our apartment on Thanksgiving Day, when G. and I cooked for our families.

    That was in November of 1995. We got engaged three years later (neither of us were dying to get married or anything; we both had trust issues to deal with and that timeframe seemed like a very natural progression for us) and married in November of 1999.

    We have just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Time sure does fly. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I’m not saying it’s been an effortless ride for either of us — marriage/committed relationships do take work, after all, and every couple has their particular issues — but I feel like we both have so much love and passion for each other, and we communicate so well, that we can make it through most anything.

    Category Dating, Doc, Love, Memories, Music | Tags: | 2 Comments

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