Seven songs from my summer (so far)

The one good thing about having a computer crash that requires you to completely reinstall everything is that, even though you lose your iTunes play counts *sob*, you find yourself in the unique position of totally shaking up the Top 25 Most Played playlist. Some of the most interesting songs are in mine right now - the top song has a mere seven plays. So I thought, what the hell, let's do another seven songs post. They're always fun and if you aren't careful, some of you might find a present in your inbox. Here we go.

1) Carrie Newcomer / Before & After
Very much in the vein of Mary Chapin Carpenter, this is so much more a fall song than a summer song. If you listen closely, you'll even hear MC squared on harmony vocals.
Choice lyric: I've lived on fumes and religious corn flakes.



2) Madonna /Run
If the "Broken" demo didn't exist, it'd be the hands down best Madonna demo out there. A nice mix of William Orbit blips and bleeps with a very rocky guitar. Straight forward vocals by Madonna make this better than anything on Hard Candy. I read somewhere once that Madonna's voice is remarkable only in its familiarity and I feel like that's so true here.
Choice lyric: Don't ask me to slow down/I don't wanna go down/You won't catch me lookin' back/Coz people like me don't live like that.



3) Annie / Me Plus One
Probably my favorite song that spells (which is a post all its own), I've never cared much for most of Annie's other stuff, but this is perfection.
Choice lyric: Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. F-F-I, Mrs. C, Mrs. U-L-T. If ever there's a girl that could rock your world/Then that girl sure is me.



4) Blondie / Love Doesn't Frighten Me
My favorite song on Blondie's fanfuckingtastic new album (I like it 100 times more than No Exit and The Curse of Blondie combined), I still can't get over how little Debbie Harry's voice has aged.
Choice lyric: All this nothing is real something/It's time spent.



5) Duran Duran / (Reach Up For The) Sunrise
I have gone on record in several places that Astronaut is my favorite DD album - heresy in DD circles, I'm sure. But there simply isn't a bad song on that album and the first single is very indicative of the album as a whole.
Choice lyric: You can touch the sunrise/Feel the new day enter your life.



6) Erick Macek / Aries Man
I have my friend Bess to thank for introducing me to Erick Macek. He's kind of a cross between Jason Mraz and Eric Hutchinson and although that's kind of the last thing this world needs, his stuff really works for me. I downloaded this on a whim because of the astrology reference. Now if someone would just do a song called "Gemini Man."
Choice lyric: You gotta learn to be patient/And feel the pride/Cuz I'm an Aries Man inside.

7) Chesney Hawkes / The One & Only
Total soft spot for this song. It feels like an 80s song even though technically it's 90s. We never heard from Chesney Hawkes again, but this was enough for me. I always love a song that makes you feel good and this one does it for me. I remember listening to it during my darkest moments trying desperately to make myself believe it. And what do you know? It finally worked.
Choice lyric: No one can be myself like I can/For this job, I'm the best man.

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.

The song goes on

One of my favorite songs of 2007 was Mary Chapin Carpenter's "On With The Song." It was the first song in the Best of 2007 year-end list and together with Debbie Harry's "Two Times Blue" was probably the co-song of the year for me that year. "On With The Song" is an example of something that rarely works - an angry political rant wrapped up in melody and lyrics. However, just because it rarely works doesn't mean that it hasn't been tried time and again, usually with embarrassing results. But as I said in 2007, leave it to Chapin to find just the right way to combine her anger at the Bush administration with her ace songwriting skills and a killer country-pop hook.

The song was written in response to the Dixie Chicks debacle in which Natalie Maines said at a London concert how they were "embarrassed that the President of the United States was from Texas." This seemingly off-hand statement infuriated many of their fans and country radio as a whole. I always applauded Maines' courage but was left scratching my head by it. Had she stroked out and momentarily forgotten who their main demographic was? The response was predictable. The Chicks were banned from country radio, their CDs piled up in parking lots and run over by payloaders in much the same way that disco records were burned at the end of the 70s. All this and the resulting fallout is documented in the highly recommended documentary Shut Up & Sing.

In "On With The Song" Chapin sings about all the people this song ISN'T for. It's not for people who blindly follow jingoistic bumper stickers telling you to "love it of leave it" and "you better love Jesus" and "get out of the way of the Red, White & Blue." It's not for the ones who gladly swallow everything their leader would have them know. It's not for the ones with their radio signals calling for bonfires and boycotts. In amongst all this, she manages to distill the frustration many of us felt during the Bush years, when it felt almost dangerous to espouse liberal ideas for fear of being called unpatriotic or a traitor to the country. It was a time when I watched with stunning disbelief as we went to war in two countries, cut taxes for the most wealthy of Americans and an American city was left to drown. Fortunately for us, this song was not just for the Dixie Chicks. It was for us as well - "this is for the ones who stand their ground when the lines in the sand get deeper/And the whole world seems to be upside down/And the shots being taken get cheaper."

I always wondered how this song would play in the post-Bush years. When Barack Obama was elected on a wave of progressive hope in 2008, I wasn't sure it would resonate like it did in 2007 when I first heard it. I felt that it might feel a little anachronistic and dated now that it seemed like we were heading into a time when it was no longer scary to be a liberal.

Boy, was I wrong.

I heard this song while sitting in flood traffic here in Ames a couple weeks back. Listening to it, I was reminded that, if anything, this song is even more relevant now than it was when it was released. We're living in a time when FOX News and conservative ideology attempts to drive the national conversation away from real issues and toward inflammatory nontroversies. Birthers, death panels, Ground Zero mosques - make no mistake, all these things divert attention from the real issues. They are dressed up in sexy, scary language so as to dominate the news cycle for weeks. The mainstream media seems to have consumed the Kool-Aid as well. They would have you believe that Obama is a left-wing extremist. All you need do is ask people who really ARE on the left-wing fringe and they'll tell you he's nowhere near lefty enough. Even someone like me who identifies as liberal but not wildly so is at times infuriated with his willingness to compromise his principles. Even with a Democratic president, it's a scary time to be a liberal. Again.

As long as the Sarah Palins, Newt Gingrichs and the Tea Party have control of the airwaves, this song will never lose its relevance. Why is it not surprising to me that Carpenter would write an angry political song that transcends its own time period?

And even though it's still not easy being a liberal, I take comfort in the final lyrics of the song - they apply to so many situations in life.

This isn't for you and you know who you are
So just do what you want 'cuz I know that you can
But I gotta be true to myself and to you
So on with the song, I don't give a damn.

She's that good, folks.

Seven songs for a summer night

In an attempt to jump start myself back into more regular blogging, I thought I'd do the old "seven songs you're into right now" meme. Some of these are what you might expect me to be listening to right now, others may surprise you. And only one of these is a current release.

1) You're Nothing Without Me / Belinda Carlisle
Reading the Belinda Carlisle book got me on a Belinda kick (or was it the other way around? Really, it hardly matters.) This little-known track from her little-known album Live Your Life Be Free is one of my favorite Belinda tracks. I always think of my friend Jeff when I hear this song - "you're nuttin' without me...you're nuttin' without me."



2) It's Here / Kim Wilde
Kim Wilde is dramatically underrated. Her output is also amazingly uneven, but when she is good, she is oh-so-good. I had never heard this song until just recently - and it has vaulted into my top 5 Kim Wilde songs. Infectious in a way that only pop songs from the late 80s/early 90s can be, it has a soaring chorus and a killer middle eight. As XO so rightly put it, great albums are full of songs with great middle eights.



3) Snowbird / Mark Eitzel
It's no secret that I'm a bit of an Anne Murray fan (more on that later.) Guess what, I am so over the mockery, I can't even tell you. Her voice is pleasant and I have fond memories of hearing her songs from my youth. Mark Eitzel's take on her first hit, "Snowbird," slows it down some, but it certainly doesn't detract. It does what any good cover should - put it's own stamp on the song while making you appreciate the original all over again.

4) Come On Come On / Mary Chapin Carpenter
Truth be told, I never much liked this Mary Chapin Carpenter song. The last song on the Come On Come On album, it ended the album with a whimper rather than a bang. But as a friend of mine put it, "songs are like clothes, not always great when they're brand-new, a bit too stiff and shiny. After you've worn them a while, you can realize all of a sudden how nicely they fit." This is certainly true of "Come On Come On" - it suits my 38 year-old self so much better than my 21 year-old self. It's a perfect example of a sad song that really leaves you a little bit better off than when you started.



5) Alone In New York / Chatham County Line
I'm not a huge fan of roots music or Americana, but I recently discovered Chatham County Line via my friend Jason and boy am I glad I did. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and Dolly's bluegrass albums were top notch (it's Dolly, what do you expect?) but apart from that, I just have never really gotten around to listening to much of it. This is a standout track fromt he Wildwood album, it's a sober and melancholy affair, setting itself apart from the pop frenzy that has really characterized this summer. Much like October Project, I wish I had discovered them in the fall because, really, this is autumn music through and through.



6) Trouble in Shangri-La / Stevie Nicks
Stevie shimmered back in 2001 with her most classic-Stevie-Nicks-sounding song since who knows when. Obtuse lyrics + great melody = Stevie at her best. It almost makes me wonder if this song wasn't from the vaults - with Stevie, anything is possible. But it is latter day Stevie that didn't just not disappoint, it made you think that maybe she still had some spark and fire left in her after all. Props to Matt for putting this song back on my radar for reasons well known to him.

7) Who's Leaving Who? / Anne Murray
So about this Anne Murray thing. I discovered this song, as I have blogged before, when two friends independently of each other sent me a link to a download of the long out of print vinyl 12" single of this 1986 Anne Murray song. Talk about getting out of your pop-country rut - she is positively synth-tastic on this song. It's almost, as Heidi put it, "disco Anne Murray" (which ranks a close second to her comparing Debbie Harry at the True Colors Tour to "Anne Murray gone hard.") And then, I discovered the video. It's non-embeddable (bastards) but seriously click the link. The crowd at the Anne Murray show I went to was nowhere near that animated.

And guess what? This is my 1,400th post. As Cher would say, follow this you bitches!

Grown up for grown ups

I stayed up late last night for the sole purpose of being able to do the digital equivalent of midnight shopping at a record store. I think the last time I actually went to a midnight release was 1998 when I went out to Wal-Mart in Iowa City to pick up Ray of Light. Midnight releases may seem antiquated in light of the rise of digital music, but there I was last night in the moments leading up to midnight, refreshing the Amazon.com page that would hopefully contain the download of Mary Chapin Carpenter's The Age of Miracles.

This has been one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the year so far for me. I have written about Carpenter so much on this blog that those who are not fans are probably sick of it. But guess what, it's my space and my rules so here we go. I've been reading all sorts of reviews of the album this morning in an effort to gather my own thoughts and decide which direction I want to go with this post. Many of the reviews said much more eloquently what I was already thinking, and to simply regurgitate what other folks have said seems disingenuous at best and outright plagiarism at worst. In a way, there's a danger in talking about this album on the day of its release. It's almost too early to review the album as I've only listened to it all the way through once.

But I can't put this review off. There are albums that take their sweet time to connect and then there are others that do it instantly. The Age of Miracles is very much the latter type of album. Part of the reason for that is because Carpenter doesn't mess with her formula much. You know exactly what you're getting into and while there aren't tons of surprises, it is as I have said before, like reuniting with an old friend and the conversation picks up right where it left off the last time you met.

All the reviews I've read this morning have hit the same notes. This is a somber outing for certain, and many of them are still pining for Carpenter to cut loose like she did back in her Nashville hit-making days and do another "Down At The Twist & Shout" or "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." She seems so resolutely uninterested in doing that. Read interviews with her and you'll see that she is a profoundly thoughtful person, someone who's been through the music industry machine and is now comfortable with the path she's on even if it doesn't make tons of money or generate chart hits. My favorite review of the album - and the one that resonated most with me - is the one at PopDose. Reading the review, you can tell that the reviewer really gets Carpenter. He makes brief mention of the hits, but then says something like "...at their best, Carpenter’s songs fill you with a bittersweet melancholy that somehow leaves you with a smile." I couldn't have said it better myself.

Simply put, her music is a balm for my soul and that's no overstatement. I remember being 22 and just getting into her music and being almost embarrassed by how she was reading my mind. It's good to know that 17 years later, she still has that capability. I will admit to liking the songs with a bit of a punch vs. the languid ballads because I've always admired how she can marry the her obvious intelligence and way with a lyric with a catchy melody. And oddly enough, for those wishing for a follow-up to an earlier hit, she does this of sorts with the song "I Put My Ring Back On" which serves as a bit of a sequel to "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." Both songs speak to the difficulties that can plague even the best of marriages although the songs couldn't end any more differently. It's definitely my current favorite track. That's not to discount the ballads though - "I Was A Bird" and "Iceland" rank up with some of her best work.

I always say that Carpenter is thinking man's country. Make no mistake, this is a grown-up album for grown-up people. Heidi always says that despite the fact that I'm in the later part of my 30s, I'm still a consummate boy. She's right you know, and that boy has kept me more grounded than you might expect and I'm very fond of him. He's the part of me that is still giddy over Madonna releases and loves the thump-thump of a Freemasons remix. He's the part of me that spent 2 bucks on a Q*bert game for the iPad yesterday. But I also like the grown up I've become, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Carpenter for that - as unintentional as it was on her part. Reconciling the two is not always easy, but I think the last line of PopDose's review sums it up best.

I think [the album is] full of that bittersweet melancholy that makes Carpenter’s work so great. It feels like traveling — heavy with the loneliness of not yet being where you want to be, and brimming with the hope that you’re almost there — and it moves you with a grace that makes the whole thing sound easy.

And that, folks, is the miracle of Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Countdown to Chapin

I blogged it way back in February, but the day is nearly upon us. Next Tuesday, Mary Chapin Carpenter's new album, The Age of Miracles, will be released and in anticipation, I've been spending way too much time watching MCC videos on YouTube.

Everyone knows "Down At The Twist & Shout" (a song I feel like she regrets) and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." But there is so much more to her than her hits - some that people might not know. Here's a couple that really hit home tonight. Carpenter's official YouTube channel has smartly allowed embedding. Sony/BMG however, where a lot of her videos are found, are still so worried about the possibility of piracy that they have not yet figured out that it's free publicity.


"House of Cards" is from her 1994 album Stones In The Road and is, as I have said frequently, the most upbeat song I've ever heard about broken homes and the facade of suburbia cracking. It's also one of the few truly uptempo songs on the album. How Carpenter marries the serious subject matter with the easy country-pop music is just amazing to me. And the video is such a product of its time. It's a wonder to me that anyone still bothers with videos.


I just love "You Win Again." As one of the YouTube commenters said, it's one of the best "I am someone!" songs out there. This video isn't as good as the one for "House of Cards" - but Heidi, you should watch it because it's set in VEGAS BABY. She has a tragic haircut but lyrically this song is just fantastic. My sister always used to mock the part at about the 2 minute mark where she sings "Last night I dreamed we were standing here at the corner of love and heartache." Dramatic? Yes. But who cares? It works.


The video is nothing special, but "Almost Home" is one of my favorite of all of Carpenter's songs. It came in between A Place In The World and Time*Sex*Love - albums that both disappointed for their own reasons - but this sounded the more like classic MCC than we'd had in a while.

I was talking to a friend in e-mail tonight about Carpenter's new album - sound samples are up on Amazon MP3 - and while it sounds like it will be a bit more subdued than its predecessor, it sounds great and I can't wait for Tuesday.

Miraculous

We are getting another foot of snow today. A friend of mine only half-joked that today was his 34th death-defying snow commute of the season. Normally, I like snow and winter, but right now, when I look at it, I find myself almost angry at it. Winter has been fired so many times this year that the joke is getting old because no one's joking anymore. I don't know what to do with all the snow on, in and around the driveway. The icicles hanging from the edge of the house look like daggers. If we weren't already getting new gutters in the spring, we would be now. Those who doubt climate change are simply not paying attention.

Amongst all this, my friend Lucas sent me a link to some great news. Come April 27th, there will be new Mary Chapin Carpenter.

I am always so pleased by new Mary Chapin Carpenter. The woman could sing the yellow pages and I would listen. According to the press release, the songs on the new album, The Age of Miracles, were written in 2007 when she was recovering from a pulmonary embolism. They explore pretty familiar territory for Carpenter - love, relationships, etc. Listening to the sound samples on the Rounder site, it sounds like this album will be more Between Here & Gone in that the focus is on slower, more pensive songs and less of the spitfire that characterized her last record, The Calling. We'll see how it goes although I like the sound of pretty much everything. In April, I may not be in the mood for slow and pensive, but I bet I'll find a way. I always manage to.

There will also be a national tour - hopefully not to be canceled by an life threatening illness this time around. I would love to be able to get to that show although I've heard mixed reviews regarding her live performances.

In the meantime, you can download what appears to be an officially sanctioned mp3 of one of the songs "I Was A Bird" from this site. You can also download an album sampler ("I Put My Ring Back On" is an early favorite.)

April 27th can't come soon enough. And by then, most of this snow should be gone.

Halcyon days

Fall wears on here in the Midwest. It's actually warmed up a bit but since I worked overnights, I missed my window at getting some of the outside stuff that requires warmer temperatures done as the weather forecast for the rest of the week is rain, rain and more rain. Well, as Joni Mitchell would say, nothing can be done. We just hope for another warm day and me with a little more ambition.

Mary Chapin Carpenter is not really a fall artist for me. I started consuming her music in January of 1994 and her back catalog really went on to define that late winter and spring for me. Still, she has a bit of an autumn vibe to her music, probably because she released Stones in the Road in October of 1994. It was the first album of Carpenter's that I bought as a new release and therefore is notable if for no other reason than the time of year in which it was released.

I was in college when this album came out and thought I was poor but really had no idea. I remember buying the cassette single of "Shut Up And Kiss Me" because I had rationalized that I wouldn't be able to afford Stones In The Road. This is likely because I had just dropped a wad of money on Barbra Streisand's The Concert and Madonna's Bedtime Stories loomed large on the horizon. So, I figured, I'd rather spend $2.99 or whatever cassette singles sold for than $15.99 on the full album.

As you probably can predict, I ended up spending $18.98 + tax because I caved and bought the album on the day of its release. I still have the CD, but the cassette single was given to Good Will ages ago. (along with all my other cassette singles - what was I thinking?!)

Stones in the Road has aged better than I thought it would. I remember getting it and being a little bit disappointed. It is certainly a more solemn affair than Come On Come On. I admire that it did not try to copy its predecessor's winning formula. Additionally, I have always found Carpenter's introspection exceedingly attractive, sexy even. Say what you will about introverts, but still waters do run deep. Overall, the album suffers from, as this Entertainment Weekly review said, OFAS (Overly-Ambitous Followup Album Syndrome). Not much seems as effortless as "Passionate Kisses" or "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" or even "Only A Dream". I felt like the album was TOO introspective, buckling under the weight of socially conscious lyrics and quiet guitar picking. I kept waiting for her to cut loose, which she never really did, except for the previously mentioned "Shut Up & Kiss Me" which feels every little bit like the song the record company forced her to record and shove on the album in order to guarantee a radio hit.

But like I said, time has been kind to this album. Part of that is that it was, in my estimation, the last really good Mary Chapin Carpenter album for a decade. The two albums that came between Stones in the Road and Between Here and Gone were substandard by nearly anyone's definition, although there were a handful of good songs on each of them. But what has really served it well is that which worked against it to begin with - the introspection seems real and true. Carpenter is earnest in her songwriting and delivery, but she rarely if ever veers into maudlin. That's not an easy thing to do. "House of Cards" is the peppiest song ever about broken homes and the facade of suburbia. Who would have ever thought that she could get a whole song - and a good one at that - out of a newspaper article regarding the death of John Doe No. 24 ?

As always, it's my relationship to the music that defines it for me. As I have said before, Carpenter arrived at a pretty critical time for me. I remember reading back in 1994 a particularly unfriendly review of one of her albums (probably Come On Come On), with the reviewer stating that Mary Chapin Carpenter must be hell in a relationship, always wondering how things are going. Even though that sentiment was pretty mean-spirited, I had a moment of self-recognition in that statement. I don't get that vibe from her anymore, nor do I get it from myself. I always like to think that as Carpenter has matured, so have I. While I certainly have no personal connection to her, we seem to be on similar spiritual journeys. So when I think about a song like "Jubilee", which I vividly recall listening to on an Iowa City bus, I can see the growth. In "Jubilee", Carpenter sings:

'Cause the people who love you are waiting
And they'll wait just as long as need be
When we look back and say those were halcyon days
We're talking 'bout jubilee

I think that even then I knew that I'd look back on those days like that, but I was mostly amazed that "halcyon" was an actual word. For all I knew, it was just the name of a drug. However, as I've said before THESE are the good old days, and therefore are those same halcyon days.


(Who says men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses? I totally would!)

MCC mix tapes

Once upon a time - probably back around 1994ish - I had this Mary Chapin Carpenter mix tape that I had made for my Walkman. It was made up of 90 minutes of songs from her first four albums, and damn but did I play the hell out of it. What I remember most about it is how I would listen to it while I studied at the Iowa Memorial Union. It was kind of a difficult time in my life, one that was full of transitions as perceptions that I had and assumptions I had made were turned upside down and I was forced to reevaluate quite a few things. It was an isolating time that eventually played out okay, but still, at the time, it was hard. I had the tape for years after that winter and spring that it was played ad infinitum, and whenever I listened to it, it always took me back to those times.

That tape has long since been lost - probably thrown away in one of the many great cassette tape purges I've had over the last 10 years. I never even got to make an iTunes playlist out of it, and I know that I could never recapture the tape itself. Sure, I could probably get most of the songs, but there was something magical about the sequencing on that tape, something that I could never hope to recapture. I do remember that the first song was "I Feel Lucky", the last song was "Walking Through Fire" and the first song on side two was "How Do." Beyond that, I can't remember.

I have written many many times before that for me, Chapin's music is like an old friend - a friend who is part melancholy, part introspective, part self-aware, and ultimately utterly amazing. My friend Matt just did a podcast on "timestamp songs" which basically boiled down to songs which were either influential in your life or evoked strong memories of a certain time period. I would have a hard time coming up with specific songs, but I think that Chapin's body of work is like that for me. She evokes such specific emotions, such a specific state of mind.

Those emotions and that state of mind are not always pleasant. I look back on my life 15 years ago and damn, but I was a mess. High maintenance and too worried about most everything. There are still shades of that 22 year old, but mostly he has been banished. And what's great about it is that as I have aged, her music has changed almost in lockstep with me, so that it remains relevant, even though I am very far removed from the lonely kid that fell in love with her music to start with.

But if I ever want to get back in touch with him, all I need do is cue up her music on iTunes, and there I am. It may sound masochistic, but really, it isn't. To know where you're going, you must never forget where you've been.

Most all of Chapin's videos have the embedding disabled on YouTube (rat bastards.) Here's one that doesn't. Naturally, since I'm including it in the post, it was from that time period and on that tape.



And if the woman ever tours anywhere near here, I'm there.

And then there were none

My last living grandparent died on Thursday. Gladys Newcomb was 87 years old. Her death was peaceful and was right after lunch. It is hard to feel sad about the death of someone who has lived such a long life, especially someone who, in my mind, changed tremendously with the loss of her longtime husband a year and a half ago and was longing to be with him again. Yet, we still mourn. It's what we do when someone dies. We all do it in our own ways but mourn we must. There's no way around it.

My grandma had been in a nursing home for the last year or so and had been in hospice care for the last couple of months. I managed to make it up to see her a month or two ago, which I am now very glad I did. When I saw her, although she had stopped wearing the wig that she had worn her whole life and was very frail, I still could recognize the woman that I remember so well.

As I detailed in my post about my grandfather's death in Jaunary of 2007, it's never how someone was at the end of life that sticks with us, for that is only a brief moment in a lifetime full of memories and stories. And as per usual, I will always remember my grandmother as a soft spoken woman who was dedicated to family and took the job very seriously. She was also the person who gave me my very first Star Wars action figure (Hammerhead, IIRC) I loved her very much and am very glad that I made a point to tell her that and to kiss her on the cheek the last time I saw her. And while her passing is not unexpected at her advanced age and in her declining health, it is still difficult for me.

The reason I think it is difficult is because, while I mourn the loss of my grandmother, I am also mourning the passing of yet another milestone in my life. She was the only grandparent I had left, and her death is one step closer to my own, even though I hope that day is decades in the future. We all live on this planet and then die, there's not getting around that either. But the trick is making each day count, living (as the one and only Cher muttered in "The Music's No Good Without You") each day "like it was my last." That is trite and cliched, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is not true.

Those who know me well know that I can have a significant melancholy streak, and today, it was wider than it has been in a while. It took me a while to figure it out, because I had a great night last night with a good friend who took me out for my birthday. Great food, great conversation as always, followed by Guitar Hero on the Wii. How can you go wrong? Well, my grandmother's death was obviously on my mind. This coupled with the devastating floods going on in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and the fact that I really didn't want to go to work today really did a number on me. I was a big bucket of boiling over emotion by the end of the day and while that's nothing meditation can't fix, I still felt like it came from nowhere and left me with no place to put it. It has been quite a damn long time since the melancholy streak has been in the driver's seat, and it brought back some not so pleasant memories.

There's nothing to worry about. I'm fine, as I always am. But I still am sad for the loss of yet another family member, even though we knew that with my grandmother it was just a matter of time. In the end, you always wish you had just a little bit more time.

When I was walking home from work, I decided to work with the melancholy and put on Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Between Here & Gone." It's a song abut death and change and it always gets me, no matter what. (mp3) Anyway, I heard these lyrics today and found them appropriate for the occasion.

I thought a light went out, but now the candle shines.
I thought my tears wouldn't stop, then I dried my eyes.
And after all of this, the truth that holds me here,
Is that this emptiness is something not to fear.
Yeah, I'll keep wondering how we know where we belong,
After all the journeys made, and the journeys yet to come.
When I feel like giving up instead of going on,
Somewhere in between ... here and gone

May you be at peace Grandma. You're no longer on this plane, but you're somewhere in between here and gone, for you will never truly be gone as long as your memory lives on. Sorry that this post was more about me than it was you, but you clearly inspired it.

Shouldn't I have all of this

Prompted by my recent ranking of my top 5 albums, I was listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter in as I beautified myself this morning. "I Feel Lucky" came on and I was immediately reminded of the video, which I think was one of the first videos I saw on VH1 in my dorm room at Iowa. I was tempted to post it, just for the nuts of it, but then, I got to thinking, "I wonder if the video for 'Passionate Kisses' is on YouTube?" A quick search yielded this result.



What an amazing video, and not for the reasons you would expect. It's not loaded with special effects or celebrity guests. Mostly, it's ust MCC and a bunch of anonymous people. But for whatever reason, it really got to me this morning. Chapin almost always tends a bit toward the melancholy, but this song? Pure joy. A demand to the universe that she can have it all. I love how autumnal the video is, with the leaves whipping around her. An MCC is just beautiful - and not in the supermodel way that so many stars are. She's real. She's a WOMAN and not a stick insect as Bridget Jones might say. She's another one of those celebrities that I wish I could meet because they seem so genuine, but as always, it's a good idea to keep your distance from people you admire in that way lest they disappoint.

My favorite part of the song is this part:

Do I want too much?
Am I going overboard to want that touch?
Shout it out to the night
Give me what I deserve
Cuz it's my right.

I was doing some reading last night about that North Node in Capricorn thing that Heidi was blogging and I have to remember those last three lines. So frequently, I just sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice, hoping that someone will notice. Well, guess what? All that sacrifice is a cold consolation because I'm the only one that notices. And truthfully, that's also not taking very good care of myself because if I'm not taking care of me, I certainly can't take care of anyone else.

So anyway, off to work. And to think, I didn't even hear "Passionate Kisses" in the bathroom this morning.

Five albums

My friend Matt recently posted (on his brand-spanking new blog) about the white board in his cubicle and how it serves as a bit of a water cooler in his office. Over the past couple of weeks, he and his co-workers spent time listing their top 5 favorite TV shows, and when this had run its course, someone came in and laid down a fresh gauntlet - the top 5 albums of all time. When I first heard this challenge, I winced a bit. How could I possibly narrow down the lifetime of music that really has helped shape who I am today to five records? Plus, I was immediately reminded of my sister's natural aversion to the phrase "best [blank] of all time" because seriously, have you seen every movie and heard every album ever made? Not likely.

So instead, it boils down to the top 5 albums of all time according to Dan or Matt or whoever is making the list. I read his post yesterday before work and I chewed on what my answers would be for quite a while. I knew that a Madonna album would certainly make the top five. But which one? Do I go for the critical acclaim of Like A Prayer? Or the edgy Erotica? Or do I give in to temptation and name Confessions On A Dance Floor to the list? Tough stuff. And then came the problem of what would round out the top 5? To make matters worse, another stipulation of the list was naming a guilty pleasure album, "an album that you would still defend to this day." Wow, was I up to the challenge?

After much deliberation, this is what I came up with. Of course, in a month's time, I may change my mind, and there were a couple that I completely forgot about (Bella Donna would have probably been number six), but FWIW, here it is.

1) Confessions on a Dance Floor - Madonna
What can I write about this record that I haven't already written before? It merits the number one slot because I am still listening to it like it came out last week over 2 years later. In my 25 years of Madonna fandom, there is not a single album that has been played as much as this one has. From start to finish, a tour de force from Madge and one hell of an album to have to follow up come April of this year.

2) Savage - Eurythmics
Of all of Eurythmics albums, this is the one that has stuck with me through the years. I have never really wavered from it being my favorite of all of their albums, even though it was one of their least successful. Annie Lennox as the schizophrenic housewife-turned-blond-bimbo is just the perfect point to leap into the album. Fine songwriting, great production and wonderful vocals from Annie. A dark and enticing album if given the chance.

3) Come On Come On - Mary Chapin Carpenter
This was the album that got me into Chapin, and therefore, will always hold a special place in my heart. It was Chapin at the height of her commercial appeal, so some would argue that it should be demerited for that, but who says that a great album can't appeal to a large section of people? From the country-pop of "Passionate Kisses" to the somber "I Am A Town", there is simply not a bad song on here.

4) In My Tribe - 10,000 Maniacs
In one of my first forays beyond pop radio in high school, I came upon the Maniacs and In My Tribe hit me at just the right time in my life. Socially conscious thoughts set to a jangle pop sensibility. Arguably, 10,000 Maniacs never matched this record in terms of quality and consistency. And as I've written before, it contains the single happiest song ever written about seasonal affective disorder.

5) Stoney End - Barbra Streisand
Now, before anyone thinks that this is the guilty pleasure album, think again. Streisand has this enormous catalog that contains a lot of really good albums as well as some real stinkers. Her best albums are probably the hits albums at they extract the best songs from some ho-hum albums and put them all together, making them sound great. But Stoney End, for whatever reason, is an album I keep on coming back to. Streisand turns her back on standards and show tunes and embraces folk-pop-rock. Believe it or not, it actually worked, and it worked well. Riddled with memories of college for me, I am seriously considering getting a turntable just so I can play the vinyl copy I have.

And as if there weren't enough guilty pleasures in that set, my guilty pleasure album is...

The Sign - Ace Of Base
"All That She Wants" was inescapable during the fall of 1993. It sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time, but was instantly accessible. There is no better way to get your early 90s on than to pull out Ace of Base. And on those grounds alone, I will defend The Sign until my dying breath. It's an album not likely to make many best-of lists, but it sure makes mine.

So that's it. And head over to Matt's blog, okay? He's a cool dude.

Holy shit

I was poking around the Mary Chapin Carpenter web site this morning because I really haven't looked at it in quite a while, and I was reading an essay she wrote about touring - with an emphasis on touring in the summer. While I was reading this, I found out that last April, after finishing up an acoustic tour in support of The Calling, she ended up in the ER and was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism.

I remember learning about deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism when I was in school. The fact that sticks out for me is that whether you lived or died after getting a PE was as simple as the flip of a coin.

This disturbed me greatly. Fortunately, she is fine and will live to record again, but the mere thought that her music and songwriting could have been silenced so early and with such speed was, to say the least, upsetting.

It does not help that I am stuck in a huge MCC listening rut for reasons I can't quite work out. I get into her music every time the world quiets down and I get more internal. As I've said before, listening to her music is like talking with an old friend - for me anyway.

Glad you made it, Chapin. So on with the song.