Loneliness is a cloak you wear

As I was doing dishes tonight, I was listening to my iPod and a Cher song I had completely forgotten about played. Taken from what is probably my favorite Cher album, It's A Man's World, "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" is one of those Cher songs that, when you think about it, is perfect for Cher. Made famous in 1966 by The Walker Brothers, it's a melancholy song that makes great use Cher's lower register. It was used to great effect in The X-Files episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus," an episode in which Cher (as well as Roseanne Barr) was asked to appear, but she declined. Cher later regretted that decision, although probably not as much as she regretted the Lori Davis informercials.

As I said, the song has a melancholy streak a half a mile wide, and it is very autumnal. As my friend Steve said, I am over this summer shit. I want cold bones and moods and rain. This song fits in very well alongside other such autumnal hits of Dan like October Project and Madonna's Erotica album. The first line alone gets me "Loneliness is a cloak you wear/A deep shade of blue is always there." Let's have a listen. This version is clearly not live, which is a shame because Cher really can sing live.



Not one to forget where her bread is buttered, Cher also commissioned a couple of dance remixes for the clubs. I have a few remixes of this song in my iTunes library, but I don't know that any of them are official remixes. They are a bit hit and miss, which is par for the course with Cher remixes. For every "Believe (Almighty Definitive Mix)" you get at least two completely unlistenable remixes. These aren't bad, but they kind of wreck the melancholy of the song, even though sometimes melancholy mixed with a driving dance beat works much better than you might imagine.

While I was listening to this song, I got to thinking about all the other people that have recorded it. Of course, you have the Walker Brothers original. Another worthy version is by Keane, who usually can nail melodic melancholy pop. They do a pretty good job on this one.



It's not quite Cher, but really, what can be? The only other version of this song I have "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" is the high-nrg version by Quantize from the Gay Classics series which puts together a bunch of songs that really don't go all that well together if you think about it . Anyway, I'm pretty sure I snagged this song off of Audioscrobbler back in the day. I'm not sure this works any better than Cher's attempts to rework this for the gay clubs, but you certainly can't fault them for trying. And besides, I have kind of a soft spot for those high-nrg covers of popular songs by unknown artists.



Still, for my money, Cher has the best version. Why? Because, as is pointed out on Twitter nearly daily, she's fucking Cher.

Related posts: Cher's It's A Man's World album revisited, as well as my post on "The Post-Modern Prometheus" episode of The X-Files.

Cher shirt

My mom and dad came over yesterday to help us get some belated spring cleaning done. We got the picnic table moved off the porch, the deck furniture down from the garage attic and various other odds and ends that have kind of needed doing for a while but we just haven't been able to muster up the ambition to do them. Every time my mom comes over, she always brings a bit of my past with her, and yesterday was certainly no exception.

In 1990, she, my brother and I all went to see Cher's Heart of Stone tour in Ames. I remember my dad was going to go but he had to teach night class or something, so that's how my brother got in on it. If you know anything about that tour at all, you'll know that it was a little bit of a let down. It was a concert full of cover songs with just a few of Cher's current songs, despite have two full albums to pull songs from. Sure she sang an Eagles song and a Gregg Allman song and a Doobie Brothers song, but why didn't she sing more CHER songs? Isn't that what we paid money for? Clearly, she learned her lesson as the Believe tour was very hit heavy and the only cover was a kick-ass version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It was so kick-ass she did it again on the Farewell Tour.

At any rate, my mom found this shirt that we must have bought at the show 21 years ago, and naturally, she brought it to me.


I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with a shirt with a 24" image of Cher on it (wear it to bed? Give it to Anna to use as a nightgown?) and then I decided, much like the Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt, if I can't wear a Cher tour shirt to Des Moines Pride, where the hell else can I wear it?

So if you stop by Heidi and Marie's booth the weekend of June 11th and 12th in downtown Des Moines, chances are you'll see me with a 2 foot image of Cher on my chest.

Orbits, suns and planets

Winter's Bone was on last night's agenda. It was the last of the Oscar movies we had a prayer of seeing, which would have left us with only Black Swan, The Fighter and 127 Hours unseen (as far as Best Picture nominees go) as we head into next weekend's Oscar show. We bailed and watched last Monday's House instead. Honestly, I think it was a better choice because I'm just not in the mood for depressing movies. Real life, it seems, is depressing enough as it is without actively seeking it out.

The other reason it was a good choice was because it fit into what seems to be an overriding theme of the week. As House gets a bit long in the tooth, the medical mystery of the week is less and less intriguing and I'm more frequently drawn in by the secondary storylines of the episodes. As Heidi pointed out, putting House and Cuddy together really should have ruined the show, but for some reason, it works better than ever. This week's episode was really all about loneliness. The patient, who could inexplicably remember every single memory since puberty had isolated herself due to her inability to forgive anyone for indiscretions. Wilson, still burning from his breakup with Sam, gets a cat rather than jump out into the dating fray again. Taub has failed a pathology certification exam and is sentenced to having Foreman as a tutor, only to realize that, when Foreman extends the offer for him to stay at his place, living by himself in a fleabag motel in the wake of his separation was not the most ideal thing in the world.

A song played at the end of the episode that I had to go and search for the minute the credits rolled. It took a little bit of Googling, but eventually I figured out it was Wilco's "How To Fight Loneliness." I liked it because it was of the indie ilk that seems to always make the unofficial House soundtracks but don't frequently make my own personal soundtracks. I also liked how it could be interpreted in more than one way - the most obvious being that fighting loneliness is all about faking it, putting on a veneer for the world to see while inside you feel exactly the opposite. However, I think the more accurate interpretation (at least for me) is that if you smile all the time, laugh at every joke and fill your heart with smoke, you may actually end up attracting the very things that counter it, bringing more people into your orbit and taking the edge off the lonely feelings that seem to affect many of us, whether we admit to them or not. I think things like Facebook and Twitter, while helping us to connect with each other have, oddly enough, left us feeling more lonely and more out of touch. I can say for myself that there are many times I've thought about taking a week off of both FB and Twitter, just to see how I felt. Maybe I'd focus more on other things? Or would I be pushing away the things that "How to Fight Loneliness" urges you to attract?

Whatever the answer, I'm not convinced that's entirely right either. Really, the best commentary on this sort of thing comes from Stevie Nicks...like that should surprise anyone. It's another song that has been in heavy rotation recently - "Planets of the Universe." It's one of my favorite Stevie Nicks songs, one that has been around forever but finally found a home on Trouble in Shangri-La. It is angry and biting and, naturally, mostly about Lindsey Buckingham. Not having been in a relationship with LB, it has broader meaning for me. When I am at my loneliest, when it feels like the world has shut off just when I'm wanting interaction and there's just no having it, I take an incredible amount of solace in this song. Because here's what Stevie says:

And the planets of the universe
Go their way
Not astounded by the sun or the moon
Or by the day
You and I will simply disappear
Out of sight
But I'm afraid soon there'll be
No light

What it says to me is that we are all just like those planets. Sometimes our orbits cross or approach each other, but in the end, we are all on our own path. The best that we can hope for is to share a sun and that we stay in each other's sight, because ultimately, we have to do it on our own. I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that others will fill that gap that almost everyone feels. Maybe for some, it does. But I think for the vast majority of us, the other people are really like the other planets - in their own orbits. I think the best marriages are made of two people whose orbits intersect but remain their own, bouncing off an energy that encourages them to live their lives while still keeping the other in sight.

In last week's episode of House, House says to the patient who is looking at certain death without a kidney transplant, "it's ok, everyone dies alone anyway." Of course, he stole this from Cher who famously sang "sooner or later, we all sleep alone." I'm not sure if he's right or not, but I don't know if that's the point. I think the best we can do is make peace with it and welcome those that enter our orbits, no matter for how little time it might actually be. I don't think I'm there yet, but maybe someday I will be.

(I double dare anyone to find a blog post that mentions Wilco, Stevie Nicks AND Cher.)

Best of 2010: Songs of the Year

I'll admit that I kind of didn't want to do this post this year. Reasons for that stemmed almost exclusively out of laziness (it takes forever to write these), but then I decided my year-end best of CD which I give out every Christmas was too fucking good not to share. The first round of CDs go out to close friends this weekend so I figured that now would be as good a time as any to reveal the contents. Many of these songs came from the summer which was a fantastic summer for music. This list is 17 songs long, I'll keep my comments as brief as I can. The final CD will have one more song - the retro song of the year - but that post is proving harder to write than I anticipated and will probably see the light of day next week sometime. So without further delay, here we go. (Sorry pop children, no Robyn. I just can't do it.)



1) Get Outta My Way / Kylie Minogue
Usually, these lists are in no particular order, but the #1 song on this list is the #1 song of the year for me. No other song even came close to defining 2010 like Kylie's "Get Outta My Way" did. I was obsessed with this song in the late summer and I still play it like it came out yesterday. It fit Kylie like a glove and I predict it will be a Kylie classic despite its poor chart performance even overseas. The lyrics were empowering and kiss-offish in just the right way. It also had a video that I dissected in a late summer post that reduced me to a screaming fangirl in a way that only Kylie can. Not since 2007 when Debbie Harry's "Two Times Blue" dominated my listening has a song come so close to wrapping up the whole year in 3 and a half minutes. "Get Outta My Way" did just that and for that reason, it is 2010's Song of the Year.

2) King of Anything / Sara Bareilles
I wasn't sold on Sara Bareilles' first album, although I did like "Love Song." I picked up her second album Kaleidoscope Heart on Amazon MP3 for $1.99 on the strength of "King of Anything." If there's anything I like, it's a defiant kiss-off song, and "King of Anything" delivers that in spades. Intelligent lyrics and a piano driven melody don't hurt it either.

3) Telephone / Lady Gaga & Beyonce
Is Lady Gaga backlash about to start now that I've finally given in to her charms? My daughter and I adore this song - we sing along to it in the car all the time and she knows the lyrics better than I do. It does what every fantastic pop song should do - burrow into your brain and never leave. Easily the best phone song since "Hung Up."

4) Shame / Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow
It's kind of fashionable to hate on this song, but I really really like it. I think it's the fact that it's a duet between two men which I feel is something of a rarity. The song is not going to cure cancer but it's catchy and cute and sometimes, with pop music, that's all you really want. I also enjoyed the Brokeback Mountain-ish video. Those two guys (who are, for the record, both straight) really just need to get a room.

5) Jona Vark / Gypsy & the Cat
My friend Steve is the only reason I know about Gypsy & the Cat. He thought I might like "Jona Vark" since it was "very Fleetwood Mac-ish." He was right and I've played the hell out of it in the last quarter of the year. G&tC have an album out that is only available in Australia and I think I'm going to have to figure out how to procure a copy. Cool electronic music that doesn't leave your head hurting when you listen to it.

6) Rocket / Goldfrapp
What if Goldfrapp had recorded the soundtrack to Xanadu? I think that with their album Head First which was one of 2010's first perfect pop records, you get at least an idea of what it would have been like. I heard "Rocket" very early on in 2010 and it has stuck with me all year.

7) Oh No!/ Marina & The Diamonds
Another song that Anna has really taken a liking to, Marina Diamindis is one of my favorite new artists of 2010. This isn't surprising as she has a big female voice most people are used to me loving pretty much instantly and she is classically beautiful as well (check out the "Shampain" video if you doubt me - or better the "Hollywood" video.)

8) Hormones / Tracey Thorn
"Hormones" is the most bittersweet song on this list (quite a feat considering Mary Chapin Carpenter is represented here as well.) A mother's ode to her daughter whose hormones are "just kicking in" while hers are "just checking out," the bittersweet is surrounded by a great melody and other lyrics that can cause dads to see the women in their lives with respect. As the dad to a daughter who is "only half grown up," it sure resonates with me.

9) Wonderful Life / Hurts
Hurts is so hard to figure out. I like their odd Pet Shop Boys meets Johnny Hates Jazz sound, but a little bit of them goes a long way. Their song "Better Than Love" made my summer list, but when it came right down to it, it was the more melancholy "Wonderful Life" that's had more staying power. It is kind of a cousin to Black's "Wonderful Life" in that you almost believe that it really is a wonderful life.

10) The Way I Feel / Mary Chapin Carpenter
So many good songs on The Age of Miracles, so little space. "The Way I Feel" is perhaps the most authentically Chapin song on the album in that it highlights her uncanny ability to marry her smarts and way with a lyric with a country-pop hook. This is a perfect driving song and whenever I listen to it in my truck, I just want to hit the road and drive for the horizon.

11) Broken / Madonna
There were enough Madonna leaks this year that it was almost as if we got a brand new album. Most of the leaks were of dubious quality and many were cast-offs from American Life (read: not very danceable) but "Broken" was a notable exception to this. Recorded during the Celebration sessions, this song is classic latter-day Madonna. Her voice is low and commanding and the chorus is as memorable as anything she's done in a long time. Miles better than just about anything on Hard Candy, I'm glad this saw the light of day.

12) History / Groove Armada (featuring Will Young)
Bubbling over with sexual energy, "History" is what Will Young really needs to be recording now. As has been pointed out by others, his songs seem oddly neutered. Not so with this. It was another January 2010 song that survived 12 months of really good music to earn a spot here. Here's hoping Will's rumored all-dance album takes a cue from this song.

13) Raise Your Glass / P!nk
I am oddly resistant to P!nk. Even though I like most of what I hear from her, I always feel like she's the token female artist that people that don't like female artists very much feel okay in liking. Why I let that perception keep me from enjoying P!nk's pretty good music is probably my loss. That said, "Raise Your Glass" is my favorite P!nk song since "Don't Let Me Get Me."

14) You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me / Cher
As the first new Cher song in almost a decade, it could have been 4 minutes of cats screeching and meowing and it would have made this list. Happily, it was a solid ballad the likes of which we haven't seen Cher do in a while. Complete with dance remixes, this whets my appetite for the long awaited new Cher album (no release date yet.)

15) Be My Thrill / The Weepies
I didn't like The Weepies Be My Thrill album as much as I liked Hideaway, but this is definitely a standout track that has got a lot of play as summer turned into fall this year.

16) Turn On The Radio / Reba McEntire
This is the second year in row that a Reba song has made this list. Do I dare declare that I am in the midst of a Reba renaissance? Time will tell, but this song had me at with the cheeseball line "Try to call, twitter me, text until your fingers bleed." And when the video ended up featuring Reba as the ultimate cougar, I knew this song would end up here come December.

17) Any Which Way / Scissor Sisters
Half a year after it came out, I'm still kind of warming up to Night Work. I don't know why - it's really everything I love about cheesy pop music and the Stuart Price factor which made Confessions on a Dance Floor and Aphrodite so appealing is hard at work here as well. That said, "Any Which Way" was an early favorite. It's also the only song from the year (that I know of) to mention L'Eggs pantyhose. That kind of obscure reference more than earns it a spot on this list.

And besides, I just wanted another excuse to post the picture of the Scissor Sisters' Night Work album cover - the album cover that launched a thousand "that was my senior picture" jokes.

Many of you can be expecting the CD with these tracks (plus one) so you can get your 64 minutes of Dan at any time you so desire.

Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear it. Keep it clean. Or don't.

We haven't seen the last of her

I honestly don't have time for a proper post tonight. I've survived the to-be 9 year-old's birthday party today. It was actually kind of fun. She got this game yesterday from her aunt and uncle called "Bling Bingo" which we played at the party. If this pharmacy thing I'm doing doesn't work out, well, at least I know I have a fall back career as a bingo announcer.

But I did find this tonight - a new Cher song. FINALLY. It's from the movie Burlesque which I heard referred to this weekend as "how can this movie NOT be a flop?" I don't care, it looks cheesily bad and seriously, it has Cher in it so you know I'll be there. But getting new music from Cher has been like getting water from a rock these last 10 years or so, so this is a good thing. The song is "You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me" and is a cheesy Diane Warren ballad, but hey, I'll take what I can get.



Now if we can just get a new album!! I don't care if it's full of Diane Warren schlock. Well, actually I do, but I'll forgive it because it's Cher.

A better post tomorrow. A certain 8 year-old in my house turns a year older.

Happy happy joy joy

It's 2 days till Christmas and we're due to get ice, rain, thunderstorms, and heavy snow all before Saturday. The next thing you know, there'll be a tornado. Anyway, I work Christmas this year which always causes this outpouring of grief and sympathy from people but really, I haven't worked it since 2006 so it really is my turn. And I do have the weekend off so no big deal.

So since the weather it so much crap, I took advantage of the last day at home and finally watched "The Post-Modern Prometheus," a 5th season episode of The X-Files. It had been built up by many an X-Phile, so I was half waiting for it to be disappointingly underwhelming, a victim of my own lofty expectations. I am happy to say that nothing could be further from the truth. It was everything I love about The X-Files - intriguing, unpredictable and a little bit scary. While the mythology arc of The X-Files is endlessly fascinating to me, sometimes it's these one-off episodes that stand out the most.

For those that don't know, "The Post-Modern Prometheus" is an homage to the Frankenstein story. Frankenstein's Monster is, in this case, The Great Mutato. He is the product of genetic experimentation gone horribly awry and as a result, he has been hidden away from the rest of the townspeople. All he wants is a mate, someone to be wih and to spend his life with. The pursuit of that goal, through some rather questionable tactics, is what leads Mulder & Scully to town.

This episode shines because of strong writing and the strength of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in their roles. Anderson, as Scully, is always the skeptic, the foil to Mulder's unfailing belief. At one point in the episode, Scully asks "Is there anything you don't believe in, Mulder?" which he (wisely) never answers. Additionally, Cher plays a rather substantial role in the story, after we find out that The Great Mutato is a huge fan of Cher's, based upon her portrayal of Rusty Dennis in Mask.

I've mentioned in previous X-Files posts that Mulder & Scully are always written so serious and the characters always have to play it so straight that when they do get a chance to be funny or let their hair down a bit, it's jarring at first and then such a relief. We don't get quite the "funny" in this episode that we got in "Detour" or "War of the Coprophages," as the subject matter of the episode doesn't really lend itself to comedy. Instead, what we get is joy and happiness that is also frequently denied the viewers when watching Mulder & Scully. Mulder especially, never seems to smile, and Scully is equally serious. But at the end of "The Post-Modern Prometheus," you get a glimpse this. Mulder & Scully inexplicably take The Great Mutato to a Cher concert (a lookalike playing in the tiniest venue EVER), and while the excitement and joy in The Great Mutato is obvious, you can see it in our intrepid FBI agents as well - especially Mulder. Have a look:

I love how much he is smiling in this photo. And then, many X-Files fans probably got what they wanted when Mulder asks Scully to dance. I still don't buy the sexual tension between them - I mean, yes, it's there, but it feels almost incestuous.



The only way this episode could have been improved is if the producers had gotten their original wish and had Roseanne Barr and Cher cast in the episode. Both declined citing scheduling conflicts, although I remember reading somewhere that Cher regretted not appearing in the episode. The song placement felt oddly like a commercial for Cher's It's A Man's World album, but since the episode aired a full year and a half after the release of that album, we can chalk that up to me being cynical.

One of the all-time best episodes.

Genes at work

Anna did this project at school that she brought home on Friday. It is so cool, we hung it up in the dining room.


My favorite part, however, is the part where she listed her favorite songs. Here's a closeup. (click to make bigger)


I don't think you need any further proof to verify the fact that this child does indeed carry 50% of my genetics. And clearly, she inherited ALL the good stuff. Even though I'm a bit plus/minus on "Single Ladies", the other two get my definite seal of approval.

I don't care, with Cher you can't go wrong

It's been a Cher kind of Labor Day weekend. As I've detailed before, it's not all that hard for me to get on a Cher kick, for there's just so damn much to choose from, it hardly matters what your mood is - there's invariably something there for it. I listened to Cher pretty much all morning yesterday, and vowed today that I would listen to something else. Alas, the underrated "Love & Pain" is playing in the background as I write this.

I stumbled across something in my iTunes library that I had completely forgotten I even had. It's the version of "I Got You Babe" that Cher & Sonny Bono performed on David Letterman back in 1987.



I love this because it perfectly sums up the complexity that is not only Sonny & Cher, but any two people after a divorce or a breakup who try to remain friendly. And I remember it being one of those "who would have ever thought THIS would happen?" moments. I still think Cher has missed the boat by not performing this live with a virtual Sonny. Cheesy? Of course, but the audience would have eaten it up.

I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I'm also exceptionally fond of this performance of "I Got You Babe".



If it were Madonna doing this, I would be embarrassed for her. But it's Cher. She can do pretty much whatever the hell she wants. I am much more forgiving of Cher's perceived missteps than I am of Madonna's - perhaps because I expect more from Madonna. I'm also just beyond-the-pale excited whenever there's new material from Cher that I really don't care how good or bad it is. She's one of those artists whose passing will be Michael Jacksonesque for me, even if she lives to be 160. I do wish she would record a new album though, but I just don't know if that will ever happen. She seems to be content releasing greatest hits albums. And perhaps she has earned that right. She has been, as she said, an evil frickin' diva for 40 frickin' years.

(Now, if someone would just get their act together and release The Cher Show on DVD, I'd be a happy man.)

Walking the borderline

As I was walking home from work last night, "Walking In Memphis" came up on the iPod. For the record, it was the Cher version, not the Marc Cohn original. I know that Heidi prefers Cohn's version, but Cher's version is just so good. Th reason it's so great is because it's so unexpected (even though the remixes suck beyond words) and Cher really made it her own without disrespecting the source material. Anyway, it got me to thinking about how, years ago, when I was in school at Iowa State, Jeff and his then girlfriend Holly and I all renamed "Walking In Memphis" to "Walking on Campus" because we felt like that pretty much summed up our lives at that point.

There were grand plans, if I recall correctly, to give the song all new lyrics, but I don't think it ever happened. The one that I remember was how "saw the ghost of Elvis" became "saw the steps of Beardshear." Beyond that, nothing. But listening last night, I was amazed that we never changed "They've got catfish on the table" to "Porcupine meatballs on the table" - porcupine meatballs being a favorite of the ISU food service at the time.

Oddly enough, I have also rediscovered The Chapin Sisters' cover of Madonna's "Borderline". Actually, I am amazed at how many times this song has been covered. (Confidential to Casey Stratton: Have you ever thought of covering this song live?) Listening to that song made me think of how my brother Ryan rewrote that song a la Weird Al when were kids, changing it to "Front Line." He had the whole song changed with it sung from the point of view of a soldier in a war. Sadly, the only part I remember is "you just keep on spilling my guts all over the front line." What can I say? We were kids. And we thought we were brilliant.

It's no secret that "Borderline" is one my favorite, if not THE favorite, Madonna song. I think it's just a perfect glimpse of the brilliance that was to come out of her. Not to get started on my "Celebration" video rant again, but if that video contained even one drop of the brilliance in the "Borderline" video, I would have been so much happier.



And that little outro is probably my favorite 6 seconds that Madonna ever recorded.

See, I'm not all sour on Madonna! Just lazy Madonna.

We're gonna need a special locker for the hat

I have never seen this picture of Cher before! It was on her last.fm artist page this morning.

If anyone knows the origin of this photo, I will be forever in your debt (my hunch is that it is from around 2001, but Cher has had red hair off and on for the last 20 years, so who knows.)

I was talking with a friend last night and I can't even remember how Cher came up. It shouldn't surprise me though because conversation with my friend is very easy and stream-of-consciousness. Anyway, in this conversation, I was reminded of my favorite Cher quote. She famously said, when referring to Madonna, "she could afford to be a little more magnanimous and a little less of a cunt." As has been pointed out by other bloggers, at the time Cher said that, Madonna probably deserved it. I would pay cold hard cash to find a YouTube clip of it, but I'm not even sure it was in a TV interview.

*sigh* At least we have the hat.

Balance

I wrote a good-sized post over on Heidi's and my other blog tonight and as I was trying to figure out how to embed a video into a Wordpress blog post, the entire fucking thing vanished into the ether. I swear I saved a draft before I navigated away from the page! I can probably recreate it in some form or another, but that event pretty much sealed the deal for me that I will never move this blog to Wordpress.

Not really related to that, but I imagine it could follow from that, I have been wanting to blog but have found that I have really lacked the will to do it recently. I know it's something that every blogger goes through, for regardless of the number of readers and/or commenters, blogging is essentially a solitary activity. I'm cool with that - I love having complete creative control and not really answering to anyone other than myself.

But that also means that I have to come up with everything I write about and, I'll admit, I have been having a difficult time with the balance on the blog recently. By that, I mean that I feel like the music and picture posts are too frivolous and not really matching my overall mood all that well. Posting things like that doesn't seem like I am being very true to myself (at least the current version). Big long posts that try to articulate thoughts I'm having end up either seeming like too much information or are just not all that interesting. Posting heavy stuff all the time upsets the balance that I strive for on this blog.

It's much like the best relationships I have, which tend to be a delicate balance of the serious and the not-so-much. Too much of either one ultimately annoys me. But fortunately we have Le Chatelier's principle: If a chemical system at equilibrium experiences a change in concentration, temperature, volume, or total pressure, then the equilibrium shifts to counteract the imposed change. Even though it's supposed to apply only to chemistry, it also applies to relationships and blogging and life in general. Oddly enough, most of the fundamentals of thermodynamics also do. There was a guy I knew in college who I always said was a living example of Le Chatelier's principle as his natural equilibrium was depressed and moody and he had an uncanny knack for turning any good things that happened to him into bad, thus restoring his equilibrium.

And since this got a bit heavier than I originally wanted, here's my attempt at balance. It's the only Meat Loaf song I really like, and it's because it's perfectly balanced out by Cher.



(actually, I kind of like that "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" song as well, but really, it's just the "hose me down with holy water" part that I like.)

Truckin'

I went out tonight to pick up our crotch crock pot from Jess. I took my truck because it was beyond time to get gas for it. It was seriously running on fumes - I had been afraid that I didn't have enough gas to get out of the ramp at work today. I brought my iPod with me and a couple different songs came on.

The first was an old Cher song from the Prisoner album called "Boys & Girls." (stream) The second "Never Go Home Again" from the new RuPaul CD Champion (so much better than it has any right being.) I found the disconnect between me listening to those songs while driving a big old burly truck very amusing. Once again, failing to live up to gender stereotypes.

Say what you will about my musical choices, at least my truck doesn't have truck balls, which I didn't even know existed until last weekend.

Hurts, scars, wounds, mars

A couple weeks back, I managed to get myself on quite a Cher kick. Part of it was because I wanted to boost her past Kylie Minogue on my overall last.fm charts, making her my 4th most listened to artist and also because I had listened to quite a few covers that Cher did in preparation for the covers CD project that I was working on with Matt and Bess back in February.

It is so easy for me to get on a Cher kick, it's not even funny. Pretty much all you have to do is mention the woman's name and I'm all "Oh, I have to go listen to Cher!" I think the reason for this is because Cher's back catalog is just so gargantuan and covers virtually every genre that there is literally a Cher for every mood. Whether it is the "jingle-jangle" music (as Heidi refers to it) of "Gyspies, Tramps & Thieves," the 70s disco of Take Me Home and Prisoner, the new wave of I Paralyze or the dance diva of Believe and Living Proof, Cher's music can find its way in just about any time.

But my favorite of all of Cher's phases is, without a doubt, the faux-metal leather Cher of the late 80s/early 90s. And it is to this era that I most frequently return to. For me, it is the one that feels most like home. It kind of stands to reason because it was during this time that I really got into Cher. My mom had always liked Cher, and I grew up watching Sonny & Cher, but when Cher made an attempt at a music comeback on Geffen Records in the late 80s, I scoffed. Surely this would not work. Cher was an actress now. But then I heard "I Found Someone" and I was hooked. (Years later, my then-3-year-old daughter would have the same reaction. Stop the paternity test.)

Cher recorded three albums for Geffen between 1987 and 1991 - Cher, Heart of Stone, and Love Hurts. Heart of Stone is frequently cited as the best of the three, but for my money, it's Cher and its we-can-talk-it-over-baby-woman-to-man, givin'-our-love-a-fightin-chance Bon Jovi/Desmond Child/Michael Bolton mishmash that gives me the most bang for my buck. There is just something so damn fun about the cheesiness of that album. Plus I love how Cher's then boyfriend Rob Camilleti (the Bagel Boy of tabloid lore) is in all the videos from that album.

If Heart of Stone is the Hero, then Love Hurts is widely regarded as the Goat. Surprisingly, when I was on my Cher kick, I really got into Love Hurts. My friend Jeff famously despises this album. Although he did like the song "Love & Understanding" (which we dubbed "Time, Love, Tenderness & Understanding" because we had initially confused the title with the Michael Bolton song of a similar name), he just couldn't handle the rest of the album. I still have vivid memories of him reading the track list off of the CD at my house that summer of 1991 -"'I'll Never Stop Loving You?' - gag! 'Could've Been You?' - could've been a better song, Cher." He always would say that Love Hurts hurts.

While I will agree that the caliber of the songs on Love Hurts doesn't even come close to the ones on Heart of Stone, it was still a pretty good Cher CD from that time period. She tackles Nazareth on the title track, covers a Kiss song, and there is no Michael Bolton penned song to be found on the entire thing! It does, however, contain Diane Warren schlock, but somehow, Cher legitimizes it. "Save Up All Your Tears" is still one of my favorite Cher songs - and the video is...well, I'll let it speak for itself.



So in the final analysis, the well had kind of run dry for Cher by the time Love Hurts came out, but I still think that the album is unfairly maligned. It was the last of the leather Cher albums, and because of that, it will always look upon it with favor. It was also the last Cher album for something like 5 years - with It's A Man's World bridging the divide to dance diva Cher and the ubersuccess of Believe.

The appeal of Cher is so simple. As Charlotte's not-gay boyfriend said in an episode of Sex & The City - "She's a survivor!" She has been counted out more times than anyone and come back just as many times. I do wish I had the chance to see her in concert out in Vegas this summer, but the timing is all off. I also wish there were plans for a new album. At 62, she's not getting any younger. Since she hasn't recorded anything new since Anna's birth, I'd say it's time. She's one of those artists (along with Madonna and Stevie Nicks) whose passing I will truly mourn.

But in the meantime, what a body of work to enjoy!

Not the least bit Suspect

I am off work today preparing to work the weekend but am also down for the count with a doozy of a cold. Not the "oh my God I'm so sick"-type cold, but the "prone to random sneezing fits, post-nasal drip"-type cold. So I took advantage of the time and used it to watch a movie that had just recently been brought back onto my radar - the 1987 Cher/Dennis Quaid film Suspect.

I had not seen Suspect in forever - I think it was the early 90s when I rabidly watched all of Cher's movies in a week or two - so I remembered nearly nothing about it. I remembered that Cher was a lawyer, that Dennis Quaid was a juror and that there was a murder trial and that Cher and Quaid's characters worked a little too closely together than a defense lawyer and a juror on said defense lawyer's case should be. But that was it.

The movie itself has aged quite well. Cher is very good in it, but she is Cher and not Madonna. Say what you will about Cher, but she took being an actress very seriously. There's still an element of "oh that's Cher" that she can't quite shake but she does a better job of it than Madonna ever did in most every movie she ever did. I think that Suspect is probably the best she ever did of disappearing into a role, with a close second being her turn as Rusty Dennis in Mask. And Cher is beautiful in this movie as well. I am pretty sure that even at that point in the 80s, she had been altered by the plastic surgeon's knife, but it is much more subtle than what she has now. The beauty at least appeared more natural.

The movie reminded me of how Cher really squandered her acting career on the Lori Davis hair care infomercial. There she was, Best Actress Oscar winner for Moonstruck (which I still think was the "oops! we screwed up!" Oscar that she should have gotten for Mask), and she decided to do an infomercial that became the butt of jokes for years to come. I don't think she has really had a credible movie role since then - certainly no starring role.

Oddly enough, I found myself obsessed with Cher's handwriting in the movie! Liam Neeson (who plays the man she is defending in the case) is a deaf-mute so consquently, she has to write on paper and blackboards and other such things. I was always thinking to myself "OMG! That's Cher's handwriting!" And it wasn't like it was a handwriting double because you saw Cher write it! Crazy, but that's how my brain works.

A great way to pass the morning - totally worth watching if you haven't seen it in a while. But it totally made me wish that Cher would record a new album!

Babs, Gregg and Cher style

My friend Matt sends out a pop culture trivia question from his desktop calendar to a whole slew of us pretty much every day. I am kind of hit and miss with it, averaging probably 8-10 correct responses each month, but last Thursday's question was right up my alley.

What duo failed to strike gold in 1977, with the album Allman and Woman: Two the Hard Way?

For me, this was completely easy. It was Gregg Allman and Cher - who were married for about 2 minutes in the 70's. That is one of those random bits of odd pop culture that I have ramming around in my head, waiting for its moment in the sun. So when I responded correctly, Matt e-mailed me back saying that he had a sneaking suspicion that I would get that one right.

Funny thing though is that I had never actually heard Allman and Woman. I did know that it was pretty much panned by every single critic around so that probably meant it would make my ears bleed. But, true to form, I didn't let something like that stop me and after all it WAS Cher. It is not available on CD, but it is quite readily available around the internet. So it didn't take me long to actually get a copy for my iPod. (An aside: This is the reason that it is completely beyond my comprehension that music goes out of print in this day and age. How hard would it be to slap this up on iTunes? Then they would have had my money.)

How is it? As you might expect, it's not very memorable, but Cher sounds good. Her voice has the timbre of most of her 70s recordings which is kind of a love-it-or-hate-it type quality. He attempts at southern rock are always a bit laughable, but hey, what can you say? Cher has this ability to transcend being bad, because even when she's bad, she's at least campy so you have that as the consolation.

My favorite moment (besides its vaguely Buckingham Nicks-ish album cover) is, hands down, the song "I Found You Love." This is not because it is a standout track musically, lyrically or otherwise. The reason it is so fantastic is because Barbra Streisand also did a version of this song on her Streisand Superman album from 1977 (the Ogilvie home perm gone bad, short white shorts, long tube socks album.)

Listening to Gregg and Cher do their version has (predictably) caused me to pull out Streisand Superman which I have not listened to in I-can't-even-tell-you-how-long. I had forgotten how truly bad that album was! Talk about an album that lives up to its bad album cover. Still, I have just finished listening to the whole thing. *sigh* A study in contradictions. Such is my life.

My final thought on Allman and Woman is on its title. Could you even begin to imagine the furor that would result from someone putting out an album titled *So and so* and Woman today? Would that even make it out of committee? For the love of all things holy, I would certainly hope not.

Who knew something as innocuous as a trivia question from a calendar could unleash something like this?

(Heidi and I should totally go as Allman and Woman for our Halloween party. Too bad we have even better costumes already.)

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

This last weekend was Capital City Pride - delayed by the deluge from this June. I was not sure how Pride would play in autumn, but surprisingly, it was great fun, probably even more so than in the summer. A lot of that had to do with the fact that it was not 95 degrees and more humid than Dagobah, although it was still quite warm for October! Pride is always such a fun event, Anna really gets into it and the atmosphere is just so...well, it's hard to describe because while it's inclusive and celebratory, it is also very Midwestern.

Anna and Heidi rode on the One Iowa float. One Iowa, for those that don't know, is the group that is working their tails off for marriage equality here in Iowa. It still strikes me as odd that Iowa would be on the front lines of gay marriage, but then again, Iowans are pretty practical people so it really shouldn't come as a surprise. This was Anna's first time on a float and she hurled candy with the best of them. She even made sure that she threw a box of Dots my way (one of the small ones, not the big ones you get at movie theaters!)

One of the big highlights of Pride this year was Michelle Knight who is one of Iowa's premiere Cher impersonators. I have to wonder how much competition she has, but still, that is one dead ringer for Cher. Here she is riding in the parade, with "Believe" pumping out of the car. Even though the style (faux metal 80s leather Cher) and the song (late 90s dance diva Cher) were at odds, it still worked.

Of course, Anna HAD to meet Cher. We even got a picture!

Cher's comment to me right before the photo was being taken: "Oh, wait, let me hide the beer!" Anna's comment to me after the photo was taken "Dad, did you know that's a boy dressed up as Cher?"

The thing I love about Pride year after year (this is my third, Heidi and Anna's fourth) is that even though it is primarily the same thing each year, it is something that is so incredibly important to me. Supporting the gay community is something that I cannot feel more strongly about. I have long since forgotten why I got involved in LGBT rights issues, but there is no better way to get me riled up than to be idiotically homophobic. Part of it is that I have found a kinship among the gay community that has eluded me most of my life, but mostly, it is because I cannot stand to see basic rights that I take for granted being denied to people that I count as family.

Some would argue that I am using my daughter as a political pawn, not all that dissimilar to that moment in the Dixie Chicks movie where the little girl says "The Dixie Chicks suck!" But I can't imagine raising her any other way. Ultimately, if I'm wrong, I'll have to answer for it, but for now, I make the best decisions I can. And besides, she just likes to dress up like this.

I have no idea how much longer she'll want to do that, so I savor every year that she does it.

As my parting shot, here's Michelle Knight as Cher doing "If I Could Turn Back Time." I felt bad for her because she hardly got to do her routine, so many people were giving money! I doubt she had a problem with that though!



(full photo show on Facebook. I'll upload all of them to .mac eventually.)

From the mouth of Cher

I have one thing: Do everything you can do NOW. I should have done all those things, I went "*tsk* Should I do this? Should I do this?" To hell with it! Do it! You can always look back and go "I shouldn't have done that!"

I heard this while getting ready for work this morning listening to the Farewell Tour on the iPod. We should always listen to Cher. Whenever you find yourself wondering what you should do, just ponder this T-shirt.And then do it.

What a wise woman.

It hasn't been long enough

A few weeks back, Heidi went with our friend Jess to see Missy Higgins live at People's Court in Des Moines. But the biggest surprise of the evening was that she actually enjoyed the opening act more than the headliner. The opener was Eric Hutchinson, and as soon as she got home, she told me I needed to check out his music. Actually, I had already done that because I saw that Jess had updated her Facebook status to "...needs to check out some Eric Hutchinson when she gets home" or something like that. What I found is a singer-songwriter very much in the vein of Jason Mraz and Ben Folds (both of whom, for the record, I only sorta like) but with his own style lurking just beneath the surface.

Apparently, Eric Hutchinson was signed to Madonna's now-defunct Maverick Records and his record was set to be released right as Maverick imploded and was absorbed back into Warner Brothers. Consequently, it didn't get released. But he finally has a full length album available called Sounds Like This and it is a great debut. It is a compact little record, clocking in at just under 38 minutes, which is so refreshing in the days of 79 minutes albums just-because-they-can. His song writing is quite good and the arrangements are catchy. It sounds like he doesn't have too much trouble with the collaborative process, which can be tricky sometimes for singer-songwriters because even though he is on an independent label, his debut is not self-produced. [Edit: Looks like his label is a subsidiary of Warner Bros., so it's not quite as indie as I thought.]

Highlights on the album for me are the opener "OK, It's Alright With Me", "Oh!" (which many have compared to something a young Billy Joel might record), and "All Over Now." But really, the whole album is solid.

Honestly though, if you want to know what sold me on Eric Hutchinson, it was the story Heidi brought home from the show. During the concert, he mentioned that one of his songs "It Hasn't Been Long Enough" would have been a good song for Cher in the Believe era. The audience was apparently unconvinced that Cher could turn this acoustic ditty into a disco stomper circa 1999 complete with vocoder. So he proceeded to prove it. (not from the Des Moines show, but still, you get the idea.)



A man cut from the same cloth as me (at least in that respect!) Now I wish he would record a full version of that!

Anyway, check out Eric Hutchinson. He's well worth your time and money. Plus his CD is $7.99 on iTunes (and $6.99 at Best Buy!)

My next 10 songs

A couple days ago, this post arrived in my inbox via Matt, who had also forwarded it to Bess. I read it with great interest as lists of songs always pique my interest. Because I am me, I started wondering what my next 10 songs would be. So, I emailed both Matt and Bess and suggested we do this on our blogs. Today I put the iPod on shuffle (all 5600+ songs) and here's what came up, plus or minus a few that I didn't really have all that much to say about. It's quite a motley mix of stuff, but the common thread through all of these is me. Naturally. Because it's all about me. ;)

Planets of the Universe / Stevie Nicks
What a latter-day Stevie classic this is, although it has taken 30 years to get it recorded (the original demo is called "No Light.") Her voice is great and it is lyrically one of the stronger songs from across her career, certainly of the 2000s. "You will never rule again the way you ruled me!" she screams at the scorned lover. High drama worthy of a fellow enneagram 4.

Rocket 2 U / The Jets
I haven't heard this song in ages and exactly how it ended up on my iPod I'm not sure. It's a song from that summer of '88 that had so many good songs. Can't say that this is one of the best of those songs, but it's still fun. And any song that can actually reference "All My Children" can't be all bad.

Feel For You / Bananarama
Bananarama was always much more a singles act to me, but this song from their 2005 Drama album is but one great pop song from a whole album's worth. The only problem with Drama was that it was released on the same day as Confessions on a Dance Floor (overseas anyway) so it was ignored by many in favor of the latter.

Deeper & Deeper (Live from The Girlie Show Tour) / Madonna
I think the version I have on my iPod is actually from one of the London shows. Part of the big disco set which starts with Madonna's first entrance on a disco ball (13 years before she came out of one on the Confessions Tour) and weaves its way through "Express Yourself", "Deeper & Deeper", "Why's It So Hard" and ends with "In This Life." The whole arc is really genius because it demonstrates how the advent of AIDS changed the culture. Anyway, I love this live version of "Deeper & Deeper" even though she tries to sing the breakdown part from David's Klub Mix and it just sounds like she's mooing!

Witches (Live from Uncommon Ground) / Casey Stratton
"Witches" is one of my favorite Casey Stratton songs and this was from his perfect set at Uncommon Ground that I saw in October of 2006. I am so glad that I bought the CD of the show that night because once Casey got it home and set to remaster it for release on the digital store, he realized that there was entirely too much feedback, so it never got released! The bonus part of this live version is you get to hear Casey talking about how the Chicago expressway can fuck you over and how his hair was kind of Oompa Loompa-ish that night!

Step Into The Light (Tony Moran Full Mix) / Darren Hayes
I'm not even sure how I came across this Darren Hayes mix, but it's not bad. I still prefer the original to this club ready remix (a bit too thumpa-thumpa-thumpa for even my tastes,) but it still gets the job done.

If I Could Turn Back Time / Cher
It's Cher at the height of my favorite Cher phase. There's something about the faux metal, leather mama Cher that just cracks me up! I seriously prefer this phase of Cher's career to the dance diva "Believe" phase, if you can believe that. The other thing I love about this song is that my daughter loves it. She was 3 and a half,we were in the car and this song came on. To my shock and utter delight, she started singing it. It was another "stop the paternity test!" moment, folks.

Kill You / Eminem
A little bit of Eminem goes a long way with me, and I am really not cool with the homophobic vibe that he gives off in general, not to mention the misogyny. But I kind of like him in spite of myself. If you can look past the potty mouth, he has really written some very lyrically clever songs. This is one of them. Of course, I always kind of like the f-bomb in songs, so this one is right up my alley.

Frozen (Live - Drowned World Tour) / Madonna
Two Madonna songs in the next 10 tunes did not surprise me. What did surprise me was that they were both live songs. Taken from the Drowned World Tour in 2001, this was the first live Madonna show I saw. I knew virtually nothing about the tour prior to going because of a self-imposed media blackout on all tour details. There were only two songs that I really wanted to hear -- "Frozen" and "Secret." Fortunately, I got my wish on both! This is still my favorite live performance of "Frozen," kicking off the Geisha Girl section of the tour and providing the HUGE tease of the opening notes of "Open Your Heart" at the end. Check out the video from the tour here. It was massive live.

Departure Bay / Diana Krall
And for the final track, things slow down a bit. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Diana Krall (even though one blogger I know thinks she is kind of a bitch, which may or may not be true.) Anyway, this is from The Girl In The Other Room which was kind of a (pardon the pun) departure for her. It was still jazz influenced, but it was not jazz standards like she had been performing. Instead, she wrote some of her own music, covered Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits. It's is probably my favorite album of hers still, even though her jazz standards are good as well.

Matt's 10 songs are here, and here are Bess's songs. If you want to try this, feel free. The more the merrier.

UPDATE: We're linked from the original blog that did this. We're famous!!

There's been a load of compromisin'

I would like to say that I have been wildly productive today, but the sad truth is that I have not been. I mostly have been a layabout with nothing better to do than play random songs in iTunes and search for obscure 70s Cher video on You Tube. I have been successful in the latter quest, finding some real doozies, mostly from her mid-70s variety show. There were musical numbers with the Jacksons, the Osmonds (singing a Stevie Wonder medley of all things!) and Elton John. Seriously, why is The Cher Show not on DVD? OK, it's probably due to music copyright and low demand, but I'd buy it!

But it was this one that really made me smile. Especially starting at about the 2:28 mark.



Glen Campbell and Cher! Wow. Didn't even know that existed. The only reason that Glen Campbell is even on my radar at all is because my mother is so incredibly fond of telling the story of how, as a child, I could not get enough of the song "Rhinestone Cowboy." My mom had the 45 of it (she had a ton of singles) and she's right, I did listen to it endlessly. She tells of how I would put the headphones on my ears (the big 70s kind, none of those iPod earbuds thankyouverymuch), spin "Rhinestone Cowboy" and dance around the living room, tethered to the stereo by the curly headphone cord. There's a picture of it somewhere. It's probably even been scanned but I don't have it on my computer. My father undoubtedly has it on his as he's scanned almost all of our family pictures.

It's probably one of the first examples in my life of how a song could hook me and pretty much hold me hostage. It has happened countless times since then. Music like that is very comforting to me, taking me back to a time when things at least seemed simpler. In many ways, I hope that I am providing that kind of environment for my own daughter. Not that she has to, at some point 30 years from now, write a blog entry about how dancing around to a Cher song or falling asleep to Kate Bush every night was crucial to her development, but I often wonder if home feels as safe to her as it did for me. Certainly, her life is very different from mine, the biggest difference being that she's the only kid.

In any event, here's "Rhinestone Cowboy." (Grab it while you can, limited time only.) And when you listen to it, just imagine this little guy in headphones dancing around the living room.