Remixology: My 10 Favorite Madonna Remixes, Part 1

Back in February, P.Viktor and I made lists of Madonna songs that should have been singles, and we had such a good time that as soon as we finished that post we were already trying to figure out what our next joint post would be. We tossed around several ideas - many of which we will probably get to as the year goes on - but a Twitter conversation about the Orbital remix of "Bedtime Story" made us realize that the next post had to be about Madonna's remixes. I used to be all about remixes, but as I've gotten older, they pack a significantly smaller punch than they used to, especially considering the sheer volume of crappy fan-made ones. But trying to narrow it down to five choices proved impossible, so we went with 10 each. I'm going to post mine in two parts to diminish the chances that people will see a long post and just skip it. P.Viktor did his as a podcast, which you can find here. And now, here's my first five in no particular order (title hyperlinks are to YouTube videos when I could find them):

1) Secret (Junior's Luscious Club Mix)
Up until the mid 90s, most of Madonna's remixes (and most remixes in general) were nothing more than extended album versions, only occasionally shaking the song up and adding in previously unheard bits. In virtually no instance did the song completely transform before your eyes. This changed with the Junior Vasquez remixes of the kick-off single from 1994's mostly-meh Bedtime Stories, "Secret." The urban R&B groove is stripped away, and seconds after the 90s club piano starts, you know that this is most definitely not the album version. The tempo is kicked into high gear and Junior patented hand claps are all over the place. While the song is definitely ready for the dance floor in this form, it has a good dose of respect for the original version of the song, which is still one of my favorite Madonna songs. Even though it uses Madonna's original vocal, it is so much more than the album version with a generic beat box thrown behind it.

2) The Beast Within (A!O Words of the Prophecy Mix)
"The Beast Within" is itself a remix of sorts. The last track on the "Justify My Love" CD maxi-single, it's an interesting and somewhat self-indulgent track which alternates between Madonna reading from the book of Revelation and the chorus of "Justify My Love." It was always a bit of a head scratcher for me, but it intrigued me because I love Madonna's speaking voice on it. Madonna apparently also really likes it because it's been featured on two of her tours. While researching this post, I realized that I had completely forgotten about the "Synagogue of Satan" mini-controversy that blew up around "The Beast Within." So many controversies, so little time.

This fan remix completely omits any "Justify My Love" mention and instead, samples in the 45 second song that Madonna submitted as the theme for the extremely short-lived TV series "Wonderland." The sample is nothing but Madonna humming (which puts me in heaven) and the effortless juxtaposition of the two unrelated songs never ceases to amaze me.

3) Don't Cry For Me Argentina (Miami Mix)
Released back in the days prior to the massive fan sharing of leaked tracks, these remixes were so heavily sought after by me that when I did finally find the import CD single in an Iowa City record store, I almost didn't believe I had found them. Perhaps knowing that it would be required by law for her to record a dance version of the best known song from Evita, an 8-months pregnant Madonna went back into the studio to completely rerecord the vocals and what resulted was something that I can't really imagine dancing to but is amazing nonetheless. Accentuated with a heavy Latin beat and and the cries of the descamisados chanting "Evita! Evita! Evita!" it was instantly campy yet utterly fantastic. These remixes were the buzz of the fan board I was on back in early 1997, but were only available on import discs. By the time Warner Bros. got around to releasing them here in the U.S., most fans had already snapped them up and sales were not that great. Still, it managed to eke out #8 hit on the Hot 100 which is not too shabby considering it got pretty much zero radio airplay.

4) Music (The Young Collective Club Mix)
The remixes of "Music" are really a puzzle for me. Between the 9 official remixes of "Music" and the 10 zillion fan made ones, you could easily listen to "Music" all day every day for at least a good couple of months. The trouble is, most of the remixes of what is a very important song in her career are not that good. I think that most of them suffer because the original song is so perfect - perfectly simple and short, one of her latter-day classics worthy of the canon. But the Young Collective Club Mix from the Music CD maxi-single rises to the top of the pile for me. At a nearly interminable 13:18, it tries even my patience. Yes, it gets more than a little thump-thump-thump than I think I would have liked, but it's one of the few remixes of "Music" that I felt like really respected the original song, using most of the lyrics rather than ignoring the verses in favor of the chorus. Other remixes did more original things with the instrumentation, but at the end of the day, it's this straight forward club mix that is the definitive remix of "Music" although the "Music Inferno" mash-up really gives it a run for its money.

5) Give It 2 Me (Paul Oakenfold Remix Edit)
I think it's funny how what I perceive to be Madonna's worst albums (Bedtime Stories, Hard Candy) have produced some of the best remixes, whereas her best work has translated very poorly into remixes (see pretty much all the Confessions remixes.) Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Oakenfold remix edit of "Give It 2 Me" which was available with the pre-order of Hard Candy on iTunes. As I have said before, this remix turns a somewhat clunky attempt at R&B into the dance song it should have always been. It also removes the horrific "get stupid get stupid get stupid" bridge. This version of "Give It 2 Me" was an essential song when Heidi was writing Double Blind (which is released on April 9th!) so now even Anna knows it. It's remixes like these that really make me think about what could have been with Hard Candy if she had decided to stick with her more traditional dance/pop route rather than do what she did. Based on this remix, it would have been heaven.

Part two coming tomorrow...

I'm gonna get you, yes I am!

When I was in college, I had a roommate who was totally into the 90s dance/R&B stuff. You know the music of which I speak - songs like CeCe Peniston's "Finally," Black Box's "Strike It Up," La Bouche's "Be My Lover" and Snap!'s "Rhythm Is A Dancer." There are countless others and at the time, they all sounded about the same to me, but that hardly mattered when you were out and pleasantly buzzed by cheap beer. And even though it's getting to be 20 years on (!), they still sound pretty much the same. But it still doesn't matter. Whenever I get 90s nostalgic, trashy 90s Eurodance is usually what I reach for first.

My favorite of all these songs is a song that I spent the last 5 years of the 90s trying to track down. I remember my other roommate singing along with it in the car, and the only things I remembered from it were the lyrics "Why waste your time/You know you're gonna be mine," a rap breakdown that started "Yo DJ pump this party!" and a vampish part that went "da da dat da doo da da/da da dat da doo da da da." I recall searching AltaVista like crazy for this song, trying to identify it. When Napster hit, I tried every permutation of "Yo DJ pump this party!" and "Why waste your time" that I could muster to completely no avail.

Then one day, I got extremely lucky and stumbled across it while searching 90s dance music compilations on Amazon. By then, Napster was defunct, but Audiogalaxy wasn't, so I went and got the song. I remember bragging to my sister about how I had found this song I had been looking for so long. Turns out, she knew it all along and all I would have had to have done was ask her and all the hair-pulling could have been avoided, even though a part of me enjoyed the thrill of the chase.

The song in question? Bizarre Inc.'s "I'm Gonna Get You."



The version of the song I got from Audiogalaxy was not the version I remembered, so about a year ago tonight (I went through my massive Gmail archive to find out for sure), I put out a call to some friends of mine to see if anyone had a better version of the song. As one of those guys said, this is why it pays to have gay friends. Not only did he have a better version of the song, he had THE version of the song I remembered. It was 1993 all over again.

Over the last few weeks, I've been vetting songs for the latest installment of the CD I make with Matt and Bess - the theme for this one is guilty pleasures. "I'm Gonna Get You" didn't quite make the cut as I'm not really embarrassed by it. But it sure does take me back.

(thanks to XO and Robbie whose Twitter conversation has inspired this fit of 90s nostalgia)

What might have been

I have bitched A LOT in this space about how I really do despise the Hard Candy album art. Actually, it doesn't stop with the album art, but every. single. photo. inside the CD booklet as well. As Jeff put it (in his patented "I wish I had thought of that!" way), she seriously looks like she is recovering from a bout of violent stomach flu or diarrhea (or maybe both) in all the photos. The worst offender is probably this one.

She has a very "pass the Imodium!" look if you ask me.

Anyway, via Boy Culture, some of what would have been the Hard Candy album artwork has finally leaked and, as usual, Matthew Rettenmund is right and they kind of make her look a bit ridiculous. However, I think that it is FAR AND AWAY preferable to what we got.

There is still the unnerving emphasis on her crotch, but she at least looks healthy! I love how the windswept shoulder length hair and the prevalance of white makes her look like a naughty angel (but with a soft side)! The photos were still taken after what I believe to be ill-advised plastic surgery. I never expected Madonna to give into the vanity of stardom, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking on my part.

I remain hopeful that the next phase of Madonna's career, no matter what it is, will show her embracing her age rather than running screaming from it.

Shining light

I am STUNNED at how good Annie Lennox's new song "Shining Light" is. Right now, all we have is a radio rip of it, but it is assured a spot on 2009's year end list. It is going to be on her greatest hits set which is coming out in February. Even though it is a cover, it is classic Annie.

It has been a long time since I bought a no-frills greatest hits disc. Honestly, I don't think they're really all that necessary any longer. I could have sworn that ChartRigger expounded on this, and I'm still convinced he did, but most fans can put together better best-of sets than labels. But Annie is smart - throwing in a DVD of her music videos. Now THAT I will pony up the cash for. Even though it doesn't have, as XO lamented last year, the "Money Can't Buy It" video.

*sigh* Now if we can just get the Savage longform video on DVD, all will be well with the world.

We started singin'

Matt, Bess and I have this CD club type thing that we do on roughly an every-other-month basis. How it works is we each contribute 4 songs that are either in heavy rotation or that we particularly like. We limit it to 4 songs each so as not to overwhelm the other listeners and to force us to choose the songs carefully. The result is a 12 song CD that is composed of three different people's musical tastes. After the CD has been distributed, discussion commences. Our tastes are all over the map, but oddly enough, each CD really turns out well and they are great fun to receive and discuss.

This time around, I came up with the brilliant (if I do say so myself) idea of contributing only cover songs. I really love cover songs, but there are so many bad ones that separating the wheat from the chaff gets a bit overwhelming. In my opinion, what makes a good cover song is taking a song and kind of turning it on its ear. Doing a note for note remake of a song is not only dreadfully boring, it is also lazy. (Notable exceptions to this rule do exist, but they are just that -- exceptions.) Since it's usually my job to contribute a Madonna song to the CD, I got to thinking about covers that Madonna has done, and there really aren't very many. There's "Fever" from Erotica and "Imagine" which she did on the Re-Invention Tour. She's also mashed "Billie Jean" into a live version of "Like A Virgin" and "Just My Imagination" into "Rain" on the Girlie Show.

And then, there's "American Pie."

Madonna |MTV Music

"American Pie" completely embodies the reason why I believe Madonna doesn't do many covers in the studio. I'm not sure whose idea it was for Madonna to record the Don McLean song about the day the music died, but I remember hearing about it and kind of getting a sinking feeling. There are many things that Madonna can do, but by recording "American Pie", she was about to find a new talent - pissing off classic rock fans en masse. William Orbit put in his requisite blips and bleeps and Madonna, to her credit, reinterpreted the song in a very post-Ray of Light Madonna way, thus fitting in with my criteria for a good cover.

But the thing is, it's not a very good cover. Fans of the original song were up in arms over Madonna's treatment of their beloved classic. In the process of recording "American Pie", she eviscerated the song, removing God-knows-how-many verses. Really, she had to because there was no way that radio would play the full version (and as it turns out, they didn't play what she did record very much either.) Although the a cappella version performed in the cemetery is the single watchable scene in The Next Best Thing, it's one of those songs that I really wish she hadn't recorded.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy it from time to time. But in the pantheon of Madonna songs, it is definitely in the lowest 10th percentile of songs. Which means she'll probably trot it out on tour in a couple years.

I think that part of the problem is that Madonna has such a bigger than life persona, even at this stage in her career with white-hot fame decidedly behind her, that when she tries to do covers, the cover always gets caught up on the Madonna and it becomes Madonna singing someone else's song, rather than her being able to make it her own. Celebrity karaoke anyone?

The converse is also true in that I think that good covers of Madonna's work are few and very far between. There are some big exceptions - Darren Hayes' "Dress You Up", Ofra Haza's "Open Your Heart", and Chapin Sisters' "Borderline" spring to mind right away. I'm sure there are others (help me out here, fellow Madge freaks) but most of them are just bad ideas from the start. And again, it's extricating the song from Madonna that proves to be the hardest part. Madonna's own songs are so much part of her, part of the entire Madonna package that whenever anyone else tries to cover her work, I can't forget the original. Part of that is the insanely strong visuals that are attached to the vast majority of Madonna's work. I sometimes wonder if covers of Madonna songs are easier for casual fans to swallow as opposed to us uberfans that have immersed themselves in her music for a quarter century.

So Madonna and covers - a contentious relationship all around. There probably won't be a Madonna song on this CD that Matt, Bess and I put together, but there are a lot of other cover songs to choose from. And because I can, here's Duffy doing "Borderline" - one I discovered while You Tubing those other videos.

C...A...N.D.Y.

(In the interest of full disclosure, this is likely to be long. Just so you know.)

OK, it's time for me to get my butt in gear and blog the concert. The Sticky & Sweet Tour was the fourth Madonna tour that my good friend and Madonna partner-in-crime Jeff and I have been to and our first Madonna concert in Chicago since our first one, The Drowned World Tour. I'd like to say that it was something cosmic that led us to come full circle on Madonna concert locations this time around, but mostly, it was just the date that fit in best with Jeff's school calendar. We were also kind of looking to avoid having to fly, and Chicago was by far the closest that she was coming to Iowa.

We arrived in Chicago around 6pm on Saturday. Jeff and I were staying in the western burb of Naperville, mostly because hotels are MUCH cheaper in the burbs than in the city and also because the further west you stay in Chicago, the shorter the drive home on the day you leave. Anyway, we got there that night and checked into the hotel. Afterwards we went out and scouted around downtown Naperville looking for food and other diversions. We eventually found both and then headed back to the hotel where I watched my first full episode of SNL in over a decade.

The next day we headed into the city and spent most of our time in Boystown/Lakeview which is one of my favorite parts of the city. Our main destination was Borderline Music, which is a small record store that is a must-stop for me every time I go to Chicago. Named after the early Madonna hit song, it is a virtual treasure chest of Madonna CDs, vinyl and other memorabilia. But it is not limited to Madonna. If it is dance-pop or a gay icon, you can almost certainly find it in this store. It is great fun to shop in, although I'll admit the last time or two that I have gone I have not been as tempted as I was the first few times. Jeff picked up a couple of CDs (Hard Candy Extended Mixes and the Sticky & Sweet Tour Demos) but I left empty-handed. We ate at a little greasy spoon where I got my required Chicago hot dog and then it was time to go pick up my Blogger buddy Yuri, who was staying in a vacation apartment with his wife down by the Sears Tower.

This is where the trip got a bit tricky. On Halstead Street, while headed out to Lakeshore Drive, I managed to somehow mistake a right turn only lane for a parking lane and ended up turning out in front of a very large U-Haul truck. I heard and felt the thump and presumed the worst. Dear God, I have wrecked the car in Chicago. I stopped the car and looked at the damage and, while not bad and certainly not of "wrecking the car" caliber, it was still something I wish had not happened. There was no damage to the guy's U-Haul (he was probably going all of 10 miles an hour when he hit me) and it was clearly my fault so we went on our merry (well, maybe not so merry) way.

We got down to Yuri's place and picked him up and went back to Borderline. I was still rather unmoved and almost left empty-handed AGAIN, but ultimately, I picked up Guy Oseary's book of photos from the Confessions Tour for 40 bucks. First edition hardcover, and really, I just loved the Confessions Tour so much I thought, why the hell not? And as a bonus, I was given the album flat of Hard Candy, even though I had gotten into a disagreement with the owner of the store as to whether or not the Hard Candy album cover is worth a shit.

We grabbed some pizza and then headed for the show. There were some tense moments where I deviated from my map and didn't know exactly if the road I was on would connect to 90/94 or if it would simply go over it or under it, but I trusted my instincts and we made it intact (with only one brief trip through the ghetto that surrounds the United Center thanks to me not being in the right turn lane after exiting the 290 West to Damen Street.)

So, after all this, we finally made it to the concert. Once we got the car parked and got inside, we got in line to get buy the tour merchandise. It cost pennies to make and they sell it at 10,000% markup. However, like lemmings, we buy it anyway. I bought the tour book and the coffee mug (natch) and a little magnet. Total of 55 dollars. Jeez. All to feed the Madonna machine (and her divorce lawyers.)

We took our seats but I had another engagement. I knew that my one of my favorite Madonna bloggers (and fellow Debbie Harry fan) Matthew Rettenmund was going to be at the show as well. I took a chance and e-mailed him prior to leaving and asked him if he'd like to meet up and he was more than willing. He gave me his cell phone number and around 8, we were texting back and forth trying to find each other. Eventually, we met up. He's a wonderfully gracious fellow and it was great to meet him. So not only did I get to meet Yuri (who has been a long time pal via blogging), I got to meet yet another blogger! (XO, we wish you had been there as well!) That does not happen every day.

Madonna was, of course, fashionably late. She started around 9PM which was just about what Yuri predicted (I was predicting 9:20.) But when the lights went down and the music for the intro started, the crowd went wild. The opening animated sequence that led into "Candy Shop" was great. It was a bit like the opening credits to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and set the tone for the opening segment quite well. Before we knew it, the revolving platform came all the way around and revealed Madonna sitting on her throne. It was not quite the disco ball - nothing ever will top that - but it was a good entrance and kicked the show off well. I still am a bit embarrassed by how much I like "Candy Shop" but it is kind of one of those songs that is so bad it is good.

Far and away, my favorite segment of the tour was the "Old School" segment which featured Madonna doing the long rumored double-dutch jump roping in high heels. Starting with "Into The Groove" and winding through new and old stuff with remarkable finesse, it rivaled the opening segment of the Confessions Tour in quality. Included in this set was the rocked-up "Borderline" with Madonna doing her guitar playing. I did not miss out on my chance to sing along with 30,000 other fans to a 25 year old song that has not been performed live in just about that long. It was a great moment, right up there with the similar singing of "get up on the dance floor!" from "Vogue" at Re-Invention. And "She's Not Me," a new song from Hard Candy that I had been warming to was FANTASTIC, with Madonna beating up look alikes from various stages of her career while classic images played on the screens behind her.

My first moment of stunned awe came during the beautiful performance of "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You." Sitting on top of a grand piano, surrounded by transluscent screens upon which images of rain were being projected, Madonna was dressed like the grim reaper and performed what is perhaps my favorite song off of Hard Candy. This "gypsy" section also featured "La Isla Bonita" but really, for it being the 58,000th live performance of this song, it was pretty good. It was also pretty much the same performance that she did at Live Earth, so it's a bit lazy recycling that, but who can blame her? One big surprise of the evening was a very heartfelt performance of "You Must Love Me" from Evita. We expected it to be terrible, but it was actually VERY good.

The last segment of the show started off with Madonna in football gear (ill advised, IMHO) singing "4 Minutes" along with holographic images of Justin and Timbaland. I have been famously NOT a fan of "4 Minutes" but this performance was pretty good. The highlight of the last act, and arguably the whole show was "Like A Prayer." As Yuri would say, it was off the chain. Between the performance of this classic song and the words and images being projected up on the screen which included quotes from religious texts that highlighted just how similar all world religions really are, well, I'm not ashamed to say that I was profoundly moved. It was the point in the concert that many of her detractors would accuse her of being pretentious but the fans lap up.

Ultimately, the last act of the show was also its weakest, mostly because we had to suffer through yet another version of "Ray Of Light" which was not all that different from its Confessions Tour incarnation and a completely bastardized "Hung Up." Removing the synths and the ABBA sample and replacing them with crushing electric guitars was not a stroke of genius. And "Give It 2 Me," while a rousing closer, seemed a little too much like "Hung Up" from the Confessions Tour.

Still, I thought the concert was amazing and SO much better than I was expecting, especially since I am so lukewarm to Hard Candy. However, the tour has made me rethink a lot of the harsh words I had for Hard Candy. I still think it is mediocre and no Confessions on a Dance Floor and that Madonna is capable of MUCH better, but it is not terrible. I still cannot fucking stand "Incredible" and "Spanish Lesson" is still ridiculous, but I came to appreciate the album a lot more thanks to the live versions presented in the tour. And sometimes, it takes a live performance to get the song to the right spot in your head.

Leaving the United Center proved to be tricky as we waited for 45 minutes in the parking lot before hitting the expressway to take Yuri back to his apartment. It was far too short of time to spend together. I would have liked to have hung out with him more! I am happy to say that he is a great guy and damn lot of fun to hang out with. And we both share the same aversion to parallel parking. Brothers from another mother indeed.

And with that, Jeff and I were off to Naperville.

It's funny...every time Madonna tours, I say to myself "Oh, I went the last time, I don't need to go this time." Yes, it is expensive but the woman earns the price of those concert seats. And especially Sunday night, she was in such good spirits, smiled more than I have ever seen her smile during a show and engaged the audience in a very un-Madonna way. While I still think I liked the Confessions Tour better, this one probably took the place of Re-Invention in the number two spot. She never fails to amaze me in concert. There is something so surreal about being in the same room with Madonna, even if it is an arena the size of the United Center.

Next time, though, I'm joining the fan club so I can get those primo floor seats.

(all photos of the tour courtesy of madonnalicious)

Autumn non sequitir

It is a cool, dreary, rainy autumn day in Iowa. I have to work in an hour but have had a full day already. Part of the morning I helped out at Anna's school where the 4 kids in Anna's reading group got to go to the library to start a research project on an animal they don't know a lot about. Anna is researching wolves. Their job was to write 4 questions that they'd like answered about their animals, and then the teacher is going to write 4 more. I had to discourage one of the kids from asking the question "How do lions kiss?" by gently telling him that the questions had to be something that they'd be able to answer. He swore that he saw a picture of lions kissing in the book he was using, but we couldn't find it so he changed it to something else. Then I was off to an appointment and then back to the house where there was no shortage of things to do - laundry to be folded, dishes to be washed, a mattress to be flipped, etc.

I'm a mere three days from Sticky & Sweet and I'm excited to be going. It should be fun even though it is going to be expensive. There's no way around it and mostly, the money has already been spent so I am not going to allow myself to sit and worry about it and wreck what promises to be a hell of a lot of fun. It is odd to be going to a Madonna show so late in the year. All of the other tours have ended long before October, so this is a new experience for us. I may actually have to wear a coat! And there's a 20% chance of flurries on Sunday! Strangeness. Added to the fun this time around is Yuri who is flying to Chicago tomorrow to join us on Sunday. He has not seen a Madonna concert since Blond Ambition, and (as Jeff and I have said) we'll try not to hate him for having been at Blond Ambition. I'm sure there will be no commentary on the blog about this weekend at all.

It will be fun, there's no doubt. But what I really need is a week off to do nothing. However, I fear even that might not be enough.

I have been watching this documentary on Joni Mitchell on Netflix watch-it-now. I've been watching it kind of in segments as it's been hard to find time to sit down and watch it, plus the whole watching it at the computer is kind of a pain. Anyway, 2008 will probably be the year I truly discovered Joni Mitchell and I have been meaning to blog about her for months. It just hasn't happened for a thousand different reasons. What I will say is that "Stay In Touch", a latter-day Joni Mitchell song from the Taming the Tiger album, fell into my life at just the right time and it keeps on being relevant. I keep on coming back to it. It fits my life right now in more ways than I can count.

Also, apropos of nothing, I'm growing my beard a bit longer as my Halloween costume requires sideburns and I refuse to buy the ones that stick on. It is itchy. And I feel very Grizzly Adams, even though it is a few millimeters long.

And with that, I am off to work. Sticky & Sweet or bust.

(autumn leaves via)

Oooh, my bella donna

The other day, an odd looking package arrived in the mail addressed to Heidi. I couldn't figure out what it was and, to my knowledge, we were not expecting anything. It was from Grand Rapids and I only know a couple people that live there, but thought that certainly they would not be sending us anything in the mail! Amazingly, I did not make my standard joke that any unexpected package likely contains anthrax. What can I say? I was off my game that day.

Anyway, we opened it up and it contained a treasure.

It is my very own vinyl copy of Bella Donna! As it turns out, my friend Mario had read my post on The Wild Heart where I was lamenting the fact that the only one of Stevie's first three albums that I did not have on vinyl was Bella Donna. He had a few in his store and sent me one. The note inside (addressed to Heidi) was to save the album for a special occasion, but unfortunately, it did not work out that way!

However, I love it and it is in great condition. It is probably my favorite of all of Stevie's album covers, if for no other reason than those impossibly high-heeled boots she is wearing. The album is a classic. I have written about it before, but am probably due to revisit it sometime soon. Which means I'll write about it in 3 years.

Also in that package was another surprise, no doubt inspired by my music meme post I did a while back where I revealed my fondness for the music of Helen Reddy.

So, thanks to Mario, I am now in the indefensible position of owning three of Helen Reddy's studio albums! ;)

Thank you Mario! You made my day utterly and completely!!

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.)

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and it's been a pretty good one so far. Nothing too terribly exciting, but it was good nonetheless. We finally made it back to church after what I swear is a two month absence. It was good but not quite what I was looking for. However, that's the chance you take when you're Unitarian. Since there is no such thing as a "typical" UU service, you just never know what you're going to get. We biked there and it rained on us on the way home, but the fact that I could bike there and back WITHOUT getting crushing chest pains tells me I'm in better shape than I thought (and it's a 4 mile ride round trip!)

Anna was so pumped about Father's Day. I kind of knew what I was getting from her. She had wanted to get me a hammock because she remembers hanging out in a hammock at my brother's house in Phoenix. Photographic evidence below:

(P.S. - I hate that picture of me, but I was sick so I was not at my best.)

However, hammocks were quite expensive - 80 dollars, if you can believe it - plus we didn't really know where we would put it. So instead, she went with this:

Wise move. It is harder than I anticipated, but we're learning slowly but surely.

I always feel a little bit guilty about Father's Day because it's like my family gets double-whammied from my birthday and then Father's Day right on its heels. Usually I tell them not to do much for Father's Day, but they don't really listen to me.

Happy Father's Day out there to all the other dads that read this blog - specifically Matt, Yuri, & TKT, but anyone else that I might be forgetting. And to my own father as well, who I know reads these pages of inane chatterings.

Hopefully Anna doesn't end up thumping me with an ashtray as I sit and demand my Father's Day cake. Because if that's the case, I'll have to come back a la Nathan Grantham. It's Father's Day, Bedelia!! Where's my cake?

The great divide

For those of you that don't know, I like Matthew Rettenmund's blog quite a lot. I have referenced his blog on several occasions on these very pages. He is, first and foremost in my mind, the author of the indispensible (if now hopelessly outdated) Encyclopedia Madonnica. I always enjoyed leafing through that book and have half a mind to go find it and pull it out to read before going to bed tonight. But anyway, he has also written a couple of fiction novels including Boy Culture, which was made into a feature film last year and serves as the the namesake of his blog. I have nearly added him to the blog roll several times, but there's one trouble. A quick perusal of his blog reveals post after post of men in various stages of undress, some to the point of being NSFW. And I don't want any of my mammoth readership (all 7 of you!) to be inadvertently fired from their job by going to his blog from work!

So what keeps me going back to the blog as I'm not interested in that kind of eye candy? For starters, he is a great writer whose blog is full of pop culture witticisms frequently concerning Madonna and Debbie Harry, which I can't resist. But it's not all pop culture and half naked guys over there. He has a lot of very insightful posts about important issues. And one of them came up the other day.

I saw this post a couple days ago in my Google Reader and starred it as I was reading on the fly and wanted to make sure that I came back to it and gave it a proper read. I finally got around to reading it today, and it affected me much more than I thought it would. The post concerns an editorial done by author Paul Monette for Playboy magazine back in 1993. For an editorial written nearly 15 years ago, it reads a lot like something that could have been written last week. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Click on the picture on Matt's blog post and read away.

Most of that article focuses on the rampant homophobia that was so pervasive in the 90s and, in many ways, is still present today. Although it is no longer okay to make "fag" jokes, it still happens. People who wouldn't be caught dead telling a racist joke have no problem telling a joke that denigrates gays. It is my prediction that when we look back on this time 50 years from now, we will be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves for using the Bible to deny people basic human rights, for not looking past our differences long enough to realize that we all carry the common denominator of being human, whether we be gay or straight or somewhere on that continuum in between.

But what got me the most were the last couple paragraphs of the article. In those final paragraphs, I believe there are words of wisdom that all men could benefit from hearing. Here they are for those of you that didn't do your homework and click on the article (and for those of you that want to read them again - they're amazing.)

We all have closets to come out of. Gay isn't the enemy of straight. Heterosexual men have told me for years that, since college, they have no male friends to talk with. The emotional isolation caused by fear of intimacy is indifferent to sexual orientation. We're not boys anymore, trapped in the insecurities of the schoolyard. Our common enemy is ignorance, a sex-phobic bitterness and name-calling purveyed by those that are jealous of the joy of others because they have none of their own.

...As gay and straight men, we can help one another over the great divide. We make terrific friends, we queers, perhaps because we have traveled so far to reach the free country of the heart. All men deserve to live there.

Reading those words is a bit painful, in the way that seeing yourself in something can be shocking and uncomfortable. There was a time in my life when those words were my life. And in many ways, they still are. I'm sure many men can identify with them. Men are not conditioned to be honest with each other and in many ways, most of us are not ready for the kind of emotional intimacy and honesty that Monette is advocating here.

But I think there is a lesson there for all of us men, gay and straight. I am lucky in my life that I have several male friends, gay and straight and in between, that I can talk to. I know my limits with most all of them. I have no idea if they'll be in my life forever or for a few more minutes. But even if they aren't around in 50 years or 50 seconds, they're in my life right now and I'm going to enjoy them for the time that they are in my life. There was a time in my life that I really felt like the odd man out - not really able to talk the sports talk and having odd interests like Madonna and pop music and other such stuff. But with the people I have in my life right now, it feels like I just got home, as HRH Madge herself said. You all know who you are and I will not embarrass anyone by calling anyone out.

I think that the bottom line is that men have to help each other. And, like so many other things, we're not programmed for that. Hell, we don't even like asking each other for help, so how can we ever accept it? That's up to each and every guy out there. Including me. I don't know - these kinds of things fascinate me, because relationships are as fascinating as they are ephemeral.

And with that, I'm off to curl up in bed with my Encyclopedia Madonnica. I am still sick and have two more evening shifts to get through.

Because I'm sick, a blog roundup

In the place of a real blog post (I have been sick and also am working like no other), I decided this morning that I would present a "best of blogs" that so many of my buddies do on theirs. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (I guess), here we go.

D'Luv has an fantastic post on Madge's "I'll Remember." God, I love that song. It's like what "This Used To Be My Playground" would be if it were, well, good.

Donna Summer's first new studio album in 17 years was out on Tuesday. I defected from iTunes to Amazon mp3 to buy it. I have to admit, it's XO's stunning review of Crayons that pushed me over the edge and prompted me to purchase it. A music review that puts things in historical context? Perfect.

Matt questions the basic biology behind the parentage of Freddy Krueger. Oddly enough, I kind of thought the same thing as well.

Yuri gives us a preview of Kylie's upcoming X tour. I sure wish she would tour America, but with Madonna and Cher concerts in my future in the next 365 days (not sure about Cher yet, but 99%), I don't know that I could do it. Too many divas, not enough time (or money!)

Paul dedicates an entire blog post to Cathy "Cathedral" Dennis! I have not listened to Cathy Dennis in ages, although didn't she co-write Kylie's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head"? I always loved "Just Another Dream" - did Rick Astley sing on that or was it just my imagination?

And last but certainly not least, TKT doesn't have much good to say (or much to say at all) about the new Indiana Jones movie.

Off to work. Naturally, I was sick on my day off and am well enough to go to work the next day. As Yuri would say, SUCKAGE!