I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.
Not a super exciting week in the shuffle, not as much to highlight this week.
The title of the post comes from: Ladytron ‘Destroy Everything You Touch’ This song came out around the time that we bought our new house before selling our townhouse. Here’s a tip–don’t do that. Between anxiously waiting for someone to buy our townhouse (while paying two mortgages) and some serious work-related stress, this song helped the anger bubble up in a safe way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtqGoHouoE0
Here is the weekly summary:
* Songs listened to this week: 98 (there was a 20 minute or so segment of an old radio show “Off the Record” featuring the Police this week so that didn’t help the numbers)
* Completed: 34%
* Number of double shots: 3 (The Beatles, The Police * 2)
* Number of triple shots: The Police (2 were ‘Roxanne’, the original and one live)
The live version was a bootleg from the reunion tour’s stop in Cleveland, which I attended with my brother (seemed fitting to see a show with him, since I would have seen the Buffalo Synchronicity show with him, if our Mom had let us go). I usually skip the reunion tour bootlegs, because they are a little hard for me to listen to. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful that they did the tour and finally gave me a chance to see them live (since my only other chance was evilly and cruelly denied me by my mother, have I mentioned that?!?). But some of the song “Stingifications” bothered me (songs were slower, Sting was doing a lot of scat type vocalizing/mumbling, both of which annoyed me). So I’m not sure I ever heard this ”Roxanne’ bootleg before.
On the bootleg, Sting’s voice sounds rough. I totally give him props for going for it though (I don’t mind key changes to save an aging voice, but I do respect someone, like Geddy Lee, for example, who just goes for it anyway). Anyway, about 1:30 in, after a couple of lines where his voice cracked, Sting seems to mutter “I can’t even sing this one,” and lets the audience sing for a second. This is strange, because I was THERE at that concert and don’t remember the voice cracking or the comment. I found Sting’s comment so charming on the bootleg that it actually made me feel a little bad for complaining about his performance on the tour (I actually started arguments about this on the Police online forums during the tour, I’m so skilled at connecting with people!).
Since I had no memory of this singing difficulty or comment from the concert, I did a search on You Tube to clarify. Luckily I found a short video that actually contains the right part of the performance. The voice breaks are harder to hear on this video, so maybe the bootleg was produced in a way that made the vocals more clear. Sting’s comment comes around 0:39, and in the video is harder to make out and since he walks away from his mic, almost looks like he was just encouraging audience participation. What do you think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5TCu54ju-Y
* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running: 17% (great running selections this week, it was a miracle!)
* Song I forgot to mention last week: The Police ‘Spirits in the Material World’
Dave’s guitar teacher runs what he calls “Jam Class” for his students to live out their rock star fantasies. They even played a show at a local bar in December (check out Dave in the background–he’s behind the singer some of the time–in this video, also check out the charming lyrical addition towards the end: “Rendition… Guantanamo… Waterboarding… Done Dirt Cheap!”). Apparently they are working on new songs for another show in May and one of the new selections this go ’round is ‘Spirits.’ So I’m…concerned. I just can’t imagine this going well. The guitar teacher plays drums for his students’ “band,” and he does a wonderful job, but he is a guitarist and this is the Police we’re talking about. Stewart’s drumming is…uh, well, it’s hard, no???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0QqktKc1d4
* Number of songs that I’m so totally deleting: Apollo 440 ‘High on Your Own Supply’ This song is awful. I’d never gotten through it before and now I understand that I wasn’t missing anything. Why must I always rip an entire CD?
* Best Dave mix song: Sprites ‘I Love You, You Retard’
Dave was right on with this selection, about male doofiness. He’s a genius, but can’t remember a phone number.
* Random memories:
Nine Inch Nails ‘Legend of Zelda’ I wish that the video were more than just the audio. Hearing the Zelda music takes me right back to my Mom’s living room where I sat on the floor playing Zelda for hours, until my ass went numb. “Downward thrust!” We also enjoyed referring to the process of the fairy replenishing Link’s hearts as “wanking.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWbdgPEUa0
Dead Can Dance ‘American Dreaming’
WBER played this a lot during my first year of grad school. I remember hearing it all the time when I drove back and forth to school, contemplating life (which went something like: “what the hell am I doing?”). I fell into this program. I didn’t know what to do with my life and one of my professors recommended me for this program. I applied mostly because it seemed like I had no other option. My school offered a 3-2 program where you could finish your undergraduate degree in 3 years and then the Master’s the last 2. My course of study to that point had not been the most wise, from a career building stand point, so this Master’s seemed like the thing to do. The first year I felt in over my head (I had always imagined my senior year being filled with courses like “Underwater Basketweaving” and creative scheduling to maximize days off, but instead I was taking challenging courses five days a week, starting each day at 8:30am, with abundant homework) and not sure at all that I wanted to finish. This song matched the feeling I had at the time of being adrift. The first line is my favorite, though I interpret “the promised land” in my own way.
“I need my conscience to keep watch over me
To protect me from myself
So I can wear honesty like a crown on my head when I walk into the promised land”
For me, this is about my own personal sense of honor.
Then there’s:
“We’ve been too long american dreaming
I think we’ve all lost the way
Forlorn somnambulistic maniacal in the dark”
I definitely had the sense I was sleepwalking through my life trying to get through grad school, I fought with myself over whether to quit several times over the first two semesters. When I successfully finished the first of the two years, I knew I just had to buckle down and finish. The early days of my career were spent living apart from Dave, who was still finishing his graduate degree. While I have many happy memories of those years and the new friends I made, I felt like my life was on hold waiting for Dave to arrive. I thought the day would never come, but somehow it’s been over 11 years since Dave moved here and it flashed by so quickly it’s frightening. I don’t want to sleepwalk through life, that’s partially why I started writing here, just to document things, to be more conscious of how I spend my time (for instance, having to basically re-write this post when WordPress decided to not save most of my last edits before publishing!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEaJcJqt2Q0
