Amy Winehouse has been found dead. Not a surprise, not in the slightest. She officially becomes another member of the Stupid Club, whose members the pop-culture have immortalized for members contributions to entertainment, as well as their over-indulgence and untimely demises.
Has this:
Been inspired by this:
Gotta wonder but I have my doubts… Just cuz it’s The Beatles we’re talking about. And even IF they did announce at tomorrow’s event, it’s not like fans haven’t bought the CD’s or ripped MP3′s of songs from the Fab 4 they really want… Meaning unless there is something new from #3 Abbey Road on top of the iPod event, it’s just inevitability coming to realization if they are part of the announcements tomorrow.
The St. Petersburg Times gave me my closeup (as Cecil B. DeMille was not available)
it was Thursday night where I think I turned a corner on my funk. I am not in a good place still, but part of my turn for the better was finding a song that I identified with that wasn’t entirely a mope. It said exactly what I was feeling.
I’ve known it for years but with thanks to mumbled lyrics by Mick Jagger (a lot of spoken word recitation) and the dreariness of the tune itself, the epiphany of the lyrics just don’t come through as strongly as they should.
Indeed, it’s a gorgeous lyrics that I so identified with from the song Out of Tears.
It’s the second verse that captured me… That and of course the lyrics in general. It’s not because of the sadness, the personal loss that’s on display. It’s how that second verse ends…
I won’t drink
I won’t eat
I can’t hear
I won’t speak
Let it out
Let it in
All this pain
From within
And I just can’t pour my heart out
To another living thing
I’m a whisper
I’m a shadow
But I’m standing up to sing
In the face of all that despair and sadness, there is a defiance. I won’t keep suffering this, life goes on and I revel in that knowledge.
At least that’s what I take from it.
During the day Friday, just casually listening to my iPod… I had my moral rebound completed with a song that I should consider cliché in it’s uplifting message to me by now. Not uplifting per se but turning-the-corner… from what I took from the lyrics of Out of Tears, George Harrison and the Beatles Here Comes the Sun was the perfect compliment. Better times are ahead… The winter has passed.
It was a couple of years ago that I was wondering just what Michael Stipe was singing about in the R.E.M. classic “Losing my Religion”. For the prudes or the ultra-religious, the title might suggest the song is about a conflict in faith of the Divine. It’s a crisis of faith, indeed, but it’s faith in ones own self and self confidence.
In simplicity, it’s about someone not able to work up the courage to talk to the object of their affection:
So I’m on Pandora — I have been here a few times in the past trying to find similar music to what I love as a way to introduce myself to new music.
The problem is more times than not I get introduced to stuff that doesn’t sound at all similar to what qualities I like in a song.
For instance, tonight I started with the Doors and Moonlight Drive — The deep baritone vocal from Morrison, coupled with the trance like bridge section from Manzarek and the jazz style drumming from Densmore make this song a classic to me. Those are the qualities I am endeared to in the music.
What I get are songs that are probably comparable in structure but not too comparable – to me – to what the song invokes with the mood. A song that invokes the pace. A song that simply makes me do a double take that I want to hear again.
I tried You’re Going to Lose That Girl by the Beatles next. Again, the genome project picked up on the structure of the music and not so much the mood that’s set. The pace of the song doesn’tseem to carry over in the suggestions, nor does the vocal harmonies, nor the rhythem bae of the song that doesn’t overstep it’s bounds… But mostly it’s the vocals that are most catchy with the song.
And wasn’t catchy at all with the suggested songs that followed. I know, I am asking for a tough act to follow with bands that can compare to the Beatles or songs that can compare to the Beatles but there has to be something out there. This is a 43 year old song for god sake…
I did have a better time when I tried surfer instrumental rock (Walk, Don’t run gave way to soem great music) but that’s instrumental all the way. That’s how Pandora is supposed to work.
Maybe I’m just too picky with music…? Or maybe I am just doing this wrong.
I dunno…
Making a pop song out of Stairway to Heaven? 8 minutes condensed into 2:40? If you’ve never heard Stairway before, you might actually buy this as the standard.
So I’ve had my artificial means of hearing hooked up and running for more than six years now… I don’t brag about it much or talk about it much because every time I get confident in something audio-wise, I then get into a social situation and end up getting sent back to feeling outside the hearing world again because I can’t understand the conversation.
Of course, I can revel in the fact that I can enjoy music again. I have been able to for some time as I think it’s been a tool for me to adapt back to the hearing world in one way or another. Sort of like a personal configuration utility for my brain — I remember how certain songs sound or certain tones I should be listening for — a cymbil crash perhaps, maybe the backign orchestra section jumping in during the refrain to “Hey Jude” — and press myself to hear these things. I use it as a gauge to see how well I am doing.
That took on a new dynamic last month as I had two cords, termed as Personal Audio Cables – sent to me by Cochlear Corp. These two wires — for personal media players or hi fi stereos/TV’s/computers — let me connect my body-worn speech processor directly to the aforementioned objects so I hear the tones or the music directly instead of trying to sort things out through a set of speakers.
But lets dispense with the technical crap. I got these things in January and I unpackaged one of the cables. I connected it to my PC speakers and then turned on iTunes… pulled up a song and started to play…
You seen the Matrix?
That scene where Neo gets combat training information uploaded to his head by Tank? It was kind of like that.
“Hey, I think Mikey likes it. Want some more?”
“Hell Yes!”
Now, nothing beats hearing and feeling music coming through the air and through the speakers. Nothing beats listening to smething in surround sound (for example) where you feel the sound waves and it adds to the effect of whatever you are listening to.
That aspect is lacking. But the aspect of having music beamed directly to my head? I’ll take it any day of the week. It’s been so awesome that I bought an iPod Nano and am experimenting with music I’ve never listened to before – which I wouldn’t try much when I was relying on the speakers alone.
…an ode to Suburban Hell:
Pleasant Valley Sunday
Gerry Goffin and Carole King
The local rock group down the street
is trying hard to learn their song
to serenade the weekend squire
who just came out to mow his lawnAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
and no one seems to careSee Mrs. Gray, she’s proud today
because her roses are in bloom
And Mr. Green, he’s so serene
He’s got a TV in every roomAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
here in Status Symbol Land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
and the kids just don’t understandCreature comfort goals
they only numb my soul
and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray
to places far away
I need a change of sceneryAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
here in Status Symbol LandAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Ahhhh Pleasant Valley Sunday)
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Ahhhh Pleasant Valley Sunday)
(repeat X times)
I like reading Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly (side note, Uncle Stevie — sorry but I let my subscription run out after 15+ years as a subscriber. Too much tabloidism now in the magazine and not enough industry coverage) and a couple of months ago I read Stevie’s Wonders which was King’s top 24 rock and roll songs.
The thing that got me was when I read the following paragraphs…
”Best rock songs of all time,” he says. ”That subject always starts arguments, especially if you don’t put ‘Stairway’ on there.”
I realized he was right. Especially since the idea of putting ”Stairway to Heaven” on such a list grosses me out. So I decided to take my biker buddy up on his idea. Twenty-four great songs, one for every hour of the day, picked by the Infallible Me.
I began by throwing out most of those Internet lists, because they’re full of ballads (”Tears in Heaven” as rock & roll? Oh, really?), soul (”When a Man Loves a Woman” is a great song but it’s not rock), and tunes that have been played to death. There’s also an amazing number of draggy songs on the lists, like ”Hotel California.” When would I like to hear that one again? Uh…how does never work for you?
As much as certain songs are classics — they are more pop than rock. “Hotel California” — that’s a folks rambler of a pop song (at least the live version, gotta listen to the original again but it’s soft rock if anything). “Tears in Heaven” is a ballad and not boot-stompin, shit-kicking rock. You know, the type of songs that make you want to groove your thing all over the place.
That got me thinkng of the Beatles a lot. Now, anyone who knows me knows that the Beatles have had a profound effect on me, so this should seem like only a natural conclusion. While there are plenty of songs in the Beatles library (under Lennon/McCartney, Harrison or Starkey) that could vie for a place on King’s list… It was the one song that is forever identified with the Beatles that made it: She Loves You.
King talks about how the song “gets in, does it’s business and gets out” as why it’s the top Beatles song and also shows King’s justification why a number of songs by a number of artists didn’t make the cut — they linger. They dwell. They overstay their welcome. She Loves You clocks in at 2:22. In, out, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.
Yet my opinion differs. I’ll add a little length in time to my selection versus Uncle Stevie’s choice in saying “She Loves You” ain’t the top Beatles rock’em, sock’em song. I could single out any number of songs that can be more than “She Loves You” but lets keep it the older fair simply because the Beatles of 1963 didn’t have multiple overdubs, double tracking and such. It was pure, it was simple, it was ruined by screaming fans when performed live.
At any rate, the one on my mind is more of a rock and roll classic than “She Loves You” IMHO. If “She Loves You” can be labeled a Beatles-only song (and from listening to it this morning, I couldn’t help but realize how it epitomizes the early Fab 4 with “Yeah Yeah Yeah” and the vocal harmonizing in their ooh’s), the one on my mind is the Rock God’s ode that ranks up there with classics from Berry, Holly, Little Richard, etc.
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 !
Well, she was just 17,
You know what I mean,
And the way she looked was way beyond compare.
So how could I dance with another (ooh)
And I saw her standin’ there.Well she looked at me, and I, I could see
That before too long I’d fall in love with her.
She wouldn’t dance with another (whooh)
And I saw her standin’ there.Well, my heart went “boom,”
When I crossed that room,
And I held her hand in mine…Whoah, we danced through the night,
And we held each other tight,
And before too long I fell in love with her.
Now I’ll never dance with another (whooh)
Since I saw her standing thereWell, my heart went “boom,”
When I crossed that room,
And I held her hand in mine…Whoah, we danced through the night,
And we held each other tight,
And before too long I fell in love with her.
Now I’ll never dance with another (whooh)
Since I saw her standing there
2:55 makes it a little long by Uncle Stevie’s standards but come on… This goes away from the banal love-love-love and brings you the pure primal urges of a cocky kid at a dance. Where you get stuck with the yeah-yeah-yeah’s in the refrain of “She Loves You”, the worst you suffer here is trying to figure out the answer “How could I dance with another girl / When I saw her standing there?”
Of course, “She Loves You” comes off more like a stampede in it’s delivery (just listen to Ringo Starr’s lead in on drums and that sets the tempo for the delivery of the entire song), “When I saw her standing there” comes at you raw but on target in the sense of a garage band who got recording studio time and made the most of it.
Isn’t that what Rock’s about? Get in, get out — I agree with King on this — but then you have that non-honed element that has gotta be there. Something like you’re enjoying yourself but you’re just wigging out, showing your feelings in what you’re singing. You listen to Paul telling you “She was just 17 / and you know what I mean” and you know what he means. Either if you are the guy or the girl.
Maybe you see my point, maybe you entirely disagree. Cast your vote below:
[poll=2]
You may also want to comment and leave your thought son things, that’s all right and good to. There are a ton of originals that the Beatles wrote and performed that could be listed but try not to go past 1965 if you want to list another song.
