Jackie and Georgia

Hold the Cigarettes ....

but please give me a car and month vacation for a road trip.



I'm really burned out and I don't know that a few days in San Diego is going to fix that. I hit a wall of stress and anxiety about a week ago and have been trying to carve out some peace for myself since then. The moments of peace have brought me closer to recognizing that I've felt this way before.

I'm tired.
I'm not content.
I'm rootless.
I feel stuck where I am.

Also, if the Road Trip Fairy is reading this and takes requests: Can I please have this one?

Winner Takes It All

Sorry ABBA, you do not meet my criteria for rock 'n roll so none of you are even contenders for best jumpsuit. No, I can't list my criteria but I know it when I hear it.

Winner Takes it All but you guys just get the booby prize of occasionally making my running playlist.

What Music Criticism Could Be

I just got around to listening to this NPR interview with Anthony DeCurtis about his book Blues and Chaos: : The Music Writing of Robert Palmer.

I've been thinking a lot (and writing and deleting a few posts about) my frustration with my own writing and my own (lack) of ideas and insights. I have a tendency to journal and recollect rather than add anything to my listening experience or understanding of music.

In the interview, Anthony DeCurtis, in talking about music criticism, says something like:

It doesn't have to be somebody's first draft, which is most of what I think I read online... a lot of it has passion, a lot of it has conviction, a lot of it is smart but none of it is particularly well written.

The Hair, the ears, the smoke, the lyrics..... ahhhhhhhhhhhh haaaaaa

A week or two ago I was talking to a friend who gave me the stink eye about 80s new wavy music and Depeche Mode in particular.

A day or two later I heard Somebody while eating gyoza lunch.



I don't care how creepy and crazy the lyrics are ... I still love Depeche Mode.
And I'm adding this to my list of the post punk use of piano songs and some day will write a fabulously insightful and intelligent article about that.

Too Busy

I've been too busy or too tired to write lately.
All I've got to offer for a week or more is :

1. I had a very fun dream last night that I was Kelly Garrett and I had either fallen in love with or I was pretending to have fallen in love with a man who was a helicopter pilot. I was in some sort of net under a helicopter and wearing skis, waiting to jump off and ski down a hill. It was very exciting and my dream had a 70s TV show, wocka-wocka, smooth-jazz soundtrack. I blame this dream on:

A. my recent searching for sorority girl infanticide movies
B. a New Yorker article I read about a crazy couple who tried to save elephants in Africa (and either let their son ride in a net under a helicopter or disposed of bodies by dumping them out of a net beneath the helicopter
C. the fact that I need a date


2. I'm disturbed that I've heard Isley Brothers Who's that Lady while out an about town lately and I am 100% certain it is because of those stupid mop commercials.

3.
I am fascinated with David Bowie's mime (say that in your mind as meem, please)fascination. Like absolutely everything involving Andy Warhol, that is about 5 times too long. I hope you just watched the first minute or so. Either way, you earned yourself a treat. Go listen to David Bowie's Andy Warhol.

4. finally, I've had several episodes of what I call "doggy ear" lately. Where I hear squeally noises and high pitched buzzes. I figure it is related to those sounds that younger people hear and old people can't. I'm crossing over to old lady ears and some sounds are dying.

Butter Lamb

I've been looking all morning for an online recording of the Agnus Dei the way I like it sung. We did a suburban Catholic Church version that was sung in the round:

Lamb of Gaaaahd, you take away, the
(lamb of Gaaaahd, you take away the)
((lamb of Gaaaahd, you take away the))

No luck though, so I will leave my Easter post at a butter lamb.

Morbid Baby Mystery

About six months ago, my sister came to visit and we were watching some sort of BBC or PBS mystery when I had a memory of a plot. I'm not sure if it was a book I read, a Charlie's Angels episode (RIP John Forsythe!) or a Four O'Clock Movie. The plot details are hazy.

The setting is a private all-girl's school or sorority.
There is a former student or female detective who goes back to investigate.
I think there is some sort of building project that uncovered an infant's skeleton that was put down a chute of an old building.
I think there is a matron in the building, maybe a wealthy donor, who ends up being the girl who killed the baby. Or maybe the baby was stillborn.

This seems specific enough to find but I haven't found anything that seems right so far. Every few weeks I think about it again though.

Last night I downloaded a recorded book by Catherine Aird called A Late Phoenix:

Decades ago, Germans bombed the village at Lamb Lane. But now redevelopment is under way. During the excavation, a workman finds the skeleton of a pregnant girl with a bullet lodged in her spine. The trail is definitely stone cold when C. D. Sloan takes on the case.

This is not the right plot, although I think I did read it at some point during college, but it inspired me to look a bit harder. I've just spent my morning reading the plot summaries of Charlie's Angels episodes. No luck, but I did find these that may have mixed in my mind with other plots from other bad TV shows and 70s movies:

Episode 65 Teen Angels: When a murder occurs at a posh all-girls school, the Angels assume false identities only to discover a ring of girls involved in drug and alcohol abuse. Guest star: Audrey Landers

Episode 79 Angels on Campus: Tiffany and the Angels return to college when several of Tiffany's sorority sisters are kidnapped. They uncover a white slavery ring with links to a handsome professor and Tiff's college house mother.

Speaking of infanticide and 70s movies ...



More music videos should include creepy dioramas and mannequins.

He's Got Nets in the Sky

Listening to Dear Companion by Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore this morning while putting an arm roast in the crock pot, drinking a big pot of tea and cleaning house. This is a great rainy morning.



I like a good record store performance: if I had the money, time and a car I think a road trip to visit still open independent records stores would be tons of fun. I'd buy one CD and one magazine per visit and then listen to the new-to-me music on the drive to the next town and read the magazine at the dinner breaks.

Zombie Liturgical Dancers

The first 4 minutes of this left me speechless. It's too bad it turned into a medley. A medley with Cher.