This is the state of my mind today. I have six outstanding bids in for two sets of four-night passes to what will be one impossible ticket. (You don?t need to know math to puzzle through that last sentence.)
Fingers crossed, Jason and I will get tickets for all four nights of Phish at Red Rocks this summer. More fingers crossed that our friends Fred & Jewel and Jim & Kate also get tickets. Hell, for that matter, all fingers crossed that scalpers and haters are shut out entirely and only those most deserving get tickets.
But wait, would I be on that list?
Scratch that, let?s just go with Plan A.
23 March, 2009
19 March, 2009
The Roller Coaster
Last night, Jason and I spent the evening at a funeral home saying goodbye to his Grandma who died Saturday at the amazing age of 94. It is customary for Catholics to have open casket wakes the day before a funeral and today is the funeral so last night, Grandma was in attendance. I spent most of the evening in the kitchen of the funeral home. Lifeless bodies make me nervous.
Everyone from Jason's family was there except his brother and sister-in-law in Arizona who had very good, job-related reasons to be absent. Jason's grandma had two children and he hadn't seen the family branch from his uncle's side since he was in his single digits so I was a little overwhelmed by the Whole Family Reunion thing.
The members of the family who organized the wake brought out some old family albums from his grandmother's life with pictures of family life that ranged from, I would say, the late 1800s up to a picture from our wedding and Jason's younger brother's wedding. Some of those older photos were Fabulous. We think our digital point-n-shoots now take good pictures? These pictures were just as good but with less technology. And back then for some of those old pictures, you paid a pretty penny to have them taken so that you could have only one picture of yourself to pass down. How many pictures of myself have I thrown away while spring cleaning?
While sitting in the kitchen, avoiding the room with Grandma in attendance, Jason began receiving urgent phone calls from various friends. He ignored a couple of them but then got curious as more calls came in, so he stepped out to answer one of the calls.
Within a few minutes, he appeared in the doorway and gestured for me to come out with him.
"They're releasing 4-day Red Rocks passes on TicketMaster now!"
Turns out that someone, at some point this evening, had pushed the More Info button on the TicketMaster page for the Red Rocks onsale that is supposed to lead to information about when the tickets go on sale. That button will turn into a Find Tickets button next Thursday at 10 a.m. But instead of leading to information, it led to a Captcha page where TicketMaster is supposed to weed out the Bots from the Humans with a word or phrase that you have to type before moving on to a waiting screen. And once the Captcha was entered, the waiting screen appeared and after about a minute or so, the Purchase Tickets page came up.
Was it intentional? Was it a mistake? Two biggest questions of the night, only asked After people got the confirmation page and email that they had just purchased 4-day passes.
One of the calls Jason received was from a friend who assured us she had us taken care of but we knew of a couple of friends that needed to be taken care of so I ran out to the car to grab my phone. I thought I might have a chance at getting through TicketMaster on my Dare but Verizon's web service isn't accessorized enough to get through Java and Flash requests. So I called my friend Stacey.
"Are you by a computer now?"
"Yes, why?'
"Can you go on TicketMaster and search Phish Red Rocks? People are getting tickets now - there's some sort of mistake or something."
So she heads to the page and sees the More Info button. As a TicketMaster veteran herself, she knows that means that it isn't onsale yet so she tells me so. I tell her to click the More Info button. She is more and more shocked at each subsequent page that comes up that she shouldn't be able to get to but can. When she pushes the Submit button with my credit card information, neither she nor I expect it to go through, but it does.
Holy Crap, I have 2 4-day passes to Red Rocks. Holy Crap.
I head back into the funeral parlour, avoiding the front room where Grandma is, with a huge smile on my face. Totally incongruous to the surroundings and our reason for being there. I managed to duck my head in time to avoid being seen by a mourner, but couldn't erase my smile.
For the next two hours, Jason and I talked quite a bit about the possibility of this going through. Ever the realist, I presented a pessimistic viewpoint and gave reasons for why I thought this way. Jason is much more of an optimist than I but even he was questioning the likelihood of this actually sticking. Despite our personal views on whether or not it would stick, however, we were both very excited and hopeful that yes, it would actually be *that* easy.
When I got a chance, I checked out bank account online (my phone can do that, at least) and the money was listed as pending. Holy Crap.
I was heading off to bed when the cancellations started coming in for our friends and acquaintances. I haven't yet gotten mine - the email went to Stacey since she completed the transaction under her own account - but I know I will. According to a TicketMaster-employed source on one of my message boards, this was a huge error in event scheduling and, as soon as it was discovered, TicketMaster's I.T. Department scrambled immediately to correct it. Supposedly, the source is going to fill us in more around lunchtime when he can escape from the all-day meetings (oh, to be a fly on those walls today) and let us in on details. It doesn't matter much; the upshot is that it was, in fact, a mistake and that all orders are canceled, all monies will be returned and all of us will have to return to stroking our lucky idols whilst placing our lottery orders. And when/if those come back unfulfilled, all of us will be taking a break from our jobs a week from today at 12 p.m. mountain time to overload TicketMaster's server in an attempt to get those damn tickets back in our hands.
I have various people helping me place lottery orders because I know my chances with TicketMaster on the work T1 next Thursday are very, very slim. I would love to have more. If you have about $450 room on a credit card and want to help me out, I would love you forever and ever. Or if you have a lucky idol you want to throw my way, that works too. Sigh.
Everyone from Jason's family was there except his brother and sister-in-law in Arizona who had very good, job-related reasons to be absent. Jason's grandma had two children and he hadn't seen the family branch from his uncle's side since he was in his single digits so I was a little overwhelmed by the Whole Family Reunion thing.
The members of the family who organized the wake brought out some old family albums from his grandmother's life with pictures of family life that ranged from, I would say, the late 1800s up to a picture from our wedding and Jason's younger brother's wedding. Some of those older photos were Fabulous. We think our digital point-n-shoots now take good pictures? These pictures were just as good but with less technology. And back then for some of those old pictures, you paid a pretty penny to have them taken so that you could have only one picture of yourself to pass down. How many pictures of myself have I thrown away while spring cleaning?
While sitting in the kitchen, avoiding the room with Grandma in attendance, Jason began receiving urgent phone calls from various friends. He ignored a couple of them but then got curious as more calls came in, so he stepped out to answer one of the calls.
Within a few minutes, he appeared in the doorway and gestured for me to come out with him.
"They're releasing 4-day Red Rocks passes on TicketMaster now!"
Turns out that someone, at some point this evening, had pushed the More Info button on the TicketMaster page for the Red Rocks onsale that is supposed to lead to information about when the tickets go on sale. That button will turn into a Find Tickets button next Thursday at 10 a.m. But instead of leading to information, it led to a Captcha page where TicketMaster is supposed to weed out the Bots from the Humans with a word or phrase that you have to type before moving on to a waiting screen. And once the Captcha was entered, the waiting screen appeared and after about a minute or so, the Purchase Tickets page came up.
Was it intentional? Was it a mistake? Two biggest questions of the night, only asked After people got the confirmation page and email that they had just purchased 4-day passes.
One of the calls Jason received was from a friend who assured us she had us taken care of but we knew of a couple of friends that needed to be taken care of so I ran out to the car to grab my phone. I thought I might have a chance at getting through TicketMaster on my Dare but Verizon's web service isn't accessorized enough to get through Java and Flash requests. So I called my friend Stacey.
"Are you by a computer now?"
"Yes, why?'
"Can you go on TicketMaster and search Phish Red Rocks? People are getting tickets now - there's some sort of mistake or something."
So she heads to the page and sees the More Info button. As a TicketMaster veteran herself, she knows that means that it isn't onsale yet so she tells me so. I tell her to click the More Info button. She is more and more shocked at each subsequent page that comes up that she shouldn't be able to get to but can. When she pushes the Submit button with my credit card information, neither she nor I expect it to go through, but it does.
Holy Crap, I have 2 4-day passes to Red Rocks. Holy Crap.
I head back into the funeral parlour, avoiding the front room where Grandma is, with a huge smile on my face. Totally incongruous to the surroundings and our reason for being there. I managed to duck my head in time to avoid being seen by a mourner, but couldn't erase my smile.
For the next two hours, Jason and I talked quite a bit about the possibility of this going through. Ever the realist, I presented a pessimistic viewpoint and gave reasons for why I thought this way. Jason is much more of an optimist than I but even he was questioning the likelihood of this actually sticking. Despite our personal views on whether or not it would stick, however, we were both very excited and hopeful that yes, it would actually be *that* easy.
When I got a chance, I checked out bank account online (my phone can do that, at least) and the money was listed as pending. Holy Crap.
I was heading off to bed when the cancellations started coming in for our friends and acquaintances. I haven't yet gotten mine - the email went to Stacey since she completed the transaction under her own account - but I know I will. According to a TicketMaster-employed source on one of my message boards, this was a huge error in event scheduling and, as soon as it was discovered, TicketMaster's I.T. Department scrambled immediately to correct it. Supposedly, the source is going to fill us in more around lunchtime when he can escape from the all-day meetings (oh, to be a fly on those walls today) and let us in on details. It doesn't matter much; the upshot is that it was, in fact, a mistake and that all orders are canceled, all monies will be returned and all of us will have to return to stroking our lucky idols whilst placing our lottery orders. And when/if those come back unfulfilled, all of us will be taking a break from our jobs a week from today at 12 p.m. mountain time to overload TicketMaster's server in an attempt to get those damn tickets back in our hands.
I have various people helping me place lottery orders because I know my chances with TicketMaster on the work T1 next Thursday are very, very slim. I would love to have more. If you have about $450 room on a credit card and want to help me out, I would love you forever and ever. Or if you have a lucky idol you want to throw my way, that works too. Sigh.
17 March, 2009
The Cover Song
How many of my last posts have been about music? As you can see, I am clearly a music junkie. I am obsessed with Sound. So, I figure, I might as well continue in the same vein and return to the almighty soundtrack. It's only about half-burned now, we need to fill this sucker out.
One of my favorite things about music, both recorded and live in concert, is the way in which artists express their respect and appreciation for other artists: The Cover Song.
I have several albums devoted to this genre on my iPod - various artists singing Elton John & Bernie Taupin tunes on the great album Two Rooms, various other artists putting their own voices to the epics from the Grateful Dead on one of the first CDs I ever purchased: Deadicated. I've got an entire album covering Cole Porter as well as a live recording of the Jamband supergroup Brain Damaged Eggmen covering the Beatles and Pink Floyd. It's a win-win situation for me: I get to hear Brendan Bayliss of Umphreys McGee singing Dear Prudence from The Beatles. Buy one, get one free.
As well, it's always interesting to see what spin a band or singer will give to the cover song. Will they play it true to the original artist or will they make it their own frankensteined version that is just as good but not the same?
Phish - I'm sure you've heard of them, perhaps I've mentioned them a time or two in this blog? - has devoted an entire holiday to this genre four times in the 90s (and I can only hope will continue the tradition a fifth time in 2009). They don a "musical costume" on Halloween, paying their deep respect to an entire album for the second set of their typical three-set Halloween shows. And while they attempt to play the album true to the original artist, it isn't ever difficult to hear Phish in the music.
In 1994, the first year of the musical costume, Phish started out at the very top covering The Beatles' White Album. The next year, a couple of my friends attended the Halloween show in Chicago to experience The Who's Quadrophenia after some teasing of Michael Jackson's Thriller. (I know I am a child of the 80s, but I applaud Quadrophenia and the decision to merely tease Thriller. They could not have pulled off Michael Jackson's opus and that is not necessarily meant as a criticism.) In Atlanta, in 1996, they covered The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and then the last one, in Las Vegas, the only one I attended, they covered Velvet Underground's Loaded. Many of the fans in the audience were disappointed that they didn't cover Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (they covered it a few days later - tongue-in-cheek, raised eyebrows and all that - at the very under-attended show in Utah), but I felt that I had received a little gift I hadn't expected at all: previous to that show, I didn't know a lick of Velvet Underground but with that particular costume, Phish introduced me to and helped me gain an appreciation for something I likely would not have otherwise heard. That's the very best outcome of The Cover Song.
One of my three favorite cover songs, I heard as a cover song first.
Back in the 90s - oh so long ago - when I lived with three roommates in Chicago, I shared an obsession with a couple of my upstairs neighbors: the Indigo Girls. I had been listening to the Girls since I'd lived in San Francisco and randomly purchased their self-titled album on cassette. I wore that cassette out, I enjoyed their music so much.
When I met and got to know my neighbors, I discovered this about them also. In order to expand my Indigo horizon, one of the neighbors, Missey, loaned me her 1200 Curfews double CD (a mish mosh of many of their best tunes, live, studio, in-studio) and I fell head over heels for one of the songs in particular, a cover of Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue.
I don't know how I hadn't heard this song before. After hearing it that first time, I seemed to hear the Dylan version on the radio at least once or twice a month. It is possible I had heard it but it hadn't registered because I find Dylan's voice worthy of changing the channel? But I consider the first time I heard the song to be credited to the Indigo Girls.
I will give Dylan this: he is by far, the very best troubadour modern America has. Tangled Up in Blue is a sad kind of story about two people who once had great passion but over time drifted apart in time and space. And barely recognize each other when they have a chance run-in later in life. Like many of Dylan's best, it isn't a short song. If he has a story to tell, he needs the time to tell it and this song can linger, but that's a good thing. I want to keep listening to it.
The Girls definitely put their own mark to this song around the fourth refrain when they push the song into an intense, slow blues rhythm and Emily sings the stanza - where the two characters in the song find themselves at the place they left off but older and as different people - with a raw voice not holding back. By the end of the song, I feel like I've been lifting weights for an hour: dog-tired and head-high. Every time I listen to it. Still.
I've heard Tangled Up in Blue covered by another band, another great version. I would choose the Indigo Girls' version for the soundtrack because theirs was the first version I heard, and still my favorite. And this other band sings another of my favorite covers that I will attribute to them even though I mention another band covering this song earlier in the post.
Of course, I had heard Dear Prudence before. I've owned The White Album on CD since high school and if my mom hadn't "stolen" it from me when I went off to college, I probably would have worn it out by now. On the album, Dear Prudence was one of those songs that contributed to the Whole but didn't so much stand out on its own to me.
But when I heard the Jerry Garcia Band play Dear Prudence on their Live album, oh wow. It's a completely different song. Paul and John are the ultimate lyricists. Their music is good, but it exists as a background player to their amazing lyrics in The Beatles' catalog. The Jerry Garcia Band realized this and brought that background to the front in a nearly-twelve minute live version of the song.
I can remember the Where of discovering this song, if not exactly the When: the apartment I shared with three roommates in Chicago. One of them owned this CD and occasionally interrupted the constant stream of Phish to play it. Oh how I wished for many years that I had stolen that CD from him when I moved out but it's never a good idea to get Tim angry so it was probably best I didn't. And after so many years apart from that beautiful song, I found the CD at a Disc Replay and purchased it. That version of Dear Prudence is now safely permanent on my iPod.
One evening not long after the purchase of the long-sought album, I set the iPod to wake me up in the morning with this version. I'm a snoozer - when my alarm goes off, unless I have very exciting reasons to wake up that day, I hit that snooze button four or five (or seven) times till I can finally motivate enough to rise. All the while, waking my husband who doesn't need to get up nearly as early as I do.
That morning, the iPod went off and I heard the first few notes of Dear Prudence, and I just stopped my hand that was reflexively heading for the snooze button. The volume was at a perfect level to enjoy the song without - hopefully - waking my husband as well. I laid there for the nearly-twelve minutes dreaming through the bouncy rhythm and Jerry's perfect voice, smiling and waking gently rather than the usual blare and jump weekday mornings tend to be.
At the end of the song, when my hand softly pushed the Alarm Off button, my husband turned to me and said That was very nice before falling back to sleep.
We went to Jamaica in December, for the Caribbean Holidaze festival put on by Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits. The best memory from that week comes from the last night, the Brain Damaged Eggmen show. Each night before, we had arrived a little too late to the shows to grab a lounge chair and enjoy the music from a horizontal perspective and my great hope was that we could do just that for this last show which I knew would be heavy on The Beatles and I really just wanted to listen and not be body-conscious as I sometimes am when I am standing or dancing.
We got there a little late this evening as well and would not have found extra lounge chairs if not for the brief downpour that chased off many of those formerly lounging. We chose two chairs a-ways back, nearer to the crashing waves than the stage. I'm a huge fan of ambiance.
Five songs in, the Eggmen play exactly what I was hoping and expecting to hear. I leaned back, closed my eyes, concentrated on the combination of waves and music and let go. They played a shorter version of the song than JGB but with added ambiance, it became a different song to love just as much. A cover of a cover.
When I was a kid, I was allowed to stay up late for only two television events each year. The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music. Now, this was back in the day before HBO or even VCR -gasp!- so if you wanted to see either of these movies, you had to wait till ABC or CBS had their yearly television event. I still have a love for each of these movies because of their associations with the good parts of my childhood. I own the CDs of both of these soundtracks. I randomly find Oz and Sound songs in my head throughout the day. I don't mind them there.
Perhaps the best of all these songs, certainly the most famous, is Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It is a sweetly sung melody that captures peoples' hearts even as it annoys them dreadfully. I have always liked it for that ability. Part of me would like to think I have the same qualities.
Watching the television show Scrubs one day, I heard a version of this song that knocks out the annoyance factor and actually makes me want to put this song on a soundtrack. And when it catches in my head, I don't want to bang my head into a doorjamb till it's out. Because I love the song, and I love Judy Garland, but I don't so much love Judy Garland singing that song.
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is the singer of the version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that I love. I don't know who he is, I have never heard anything else by him, but his version pulls the song up off the ground and sends it soaring above the rainbow as the lyrics have been requesting all these years. After listening to this song on my iPod, I have sometimes pushed Back and Play because this is a song I can listen to twice in a row. Even though it is a cover, it isn't faithful to the original and thus stands entirely on its own. I would never listen to Judy Garland's version twice in a row voluntarily.
I think when an artist performs a cover song, s/t/he/y are openly flattering the original artist or writer of the song. And whether they have intentions of being faithful to the original or quite the opposite, there's nothing in the rule book that says the original version must always be the best. Sometimes a person may start a work of art that another person is supposed to finish. It may be the original artists' destiny to simply put the framework out there so that the artist performing the cover can make it beautiful. I have many more examples of this but these three are definitely on the soundtrack as the best.
___________________
One of my favorite things about music, both recorded and live in concert, is the way in which artists express their respect and appreciation for other artists: The Cover Song.
I have several albums devoted to this genre on my iPod - various artists singing Elton John & Bernie Taupin tunes on the great album Two Rooms, various other artists putting their own voices to the epics from the Grateful Dead on one of the first CDs I ever purchased: Deadicated. I've got an entire album covering Cole Porter as well as a live recording of the Jamband supergroup Brain Damaged Eggmen covering the Beatles and Pink Floyd. It's a win-win situation for me: I get to hear Brendan Bayliss of Umphreys McGee singing Dear Prudence from The Beatles. Buy one, get one free.
As well, it's always interesting to see what spin a band or singer will give to the cover song. Will they play it true to the original artist or will they make it their own frankensteined version that is just as good but not the same?
Phish - I'm sure you've heard of them, perhaps I've mentioned them a time or two in this blog? - has devoted an entire holiday to this genre four times in the 90s (and I can only hope will continue the tradition a fifth time in 2009). They don a "musical costume" on Halloween, paying their deep respect to an entire album for the second set of their typical three-set Halloween shows. And while they attempt to play the album true to the original artist, it isn't ever difficult to hear Phish in the music.
In 1994, the first year of the musical costume, Phish started out at the very top covering The Beatles' White Album. The next year, a couple of my friends attended the Halloween show in Chicago to experience The Who's Quadrophenia after some teasing of Michael Jackson's Thriller. (I know I am a child of the 80s, but I applaud Quadrophenia and the decision to merely tease Thriller. They could not have pulled off Michael Jackson's opus and that is not necessarily meant as a criticism.) In Atlanta, in 1996, they covered The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and then the last one, in Las Vegas, the only one I attended, they covered Velvet Underground's Loaded. Many of the fans in the audience were disappointed that they didn't cover Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (they covered it a few days later - tongue-in-cheek, raised eyebrows and all that - at the very under-attended show in Utah), but I felt that I had received a little gift I hadn't expected at all: previous to that show, I didn't know a lick of Velvet Underground but with that particular costume, Phish introduced me to and helped me gain an appreciation for something I likely would not have otherwise heard. That's the very best outcome of The Cover Song.
One of my three favorite cover songs, I heard as a cover song first.
Back in the 90s - oh so long ago - when I lived with three roommates in Chicago, I shared an obsession with a couple of my upstairs neighbors: the Indigo Girls. I had been listening to the Girls since I'd lived in San Francisco and randomly purchased their self-titled album on cassette. I wore that cassette out, I enjoyed their music so much.
When I met and got to know my neighbors, I discovered this about them also. In order to expand my Indigo horizon, one of the neighbors, Missey, loaned me her 1200 Curfews double CD (a mish mosh of many of their best tunes, live, studio, in-studio) and I fell head over heels for one of the songs in particular, a cover of Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue.
I don't know how I hadn't heard this song before. After hearing it that first time, I seemed to hear the Dylan version on the radio at least once or twice a month. It is possible I had heard it but it hadn't registered because I find Dylan's voice worthy of changing the channel? But I consider the first time I heard the song to be credited to the Indigo Girls.
I will give Dylan this: he is by far, the very best troubadour modern America has. Tangled Up in Blue is a sad kind of story about two people who once had great passion but over time drifted apart in time and space. And barely recognize each other when they have a chance run-in later in life. Like many of Dylan's best, it isn't a short song. If he has a story to tell, he needs the time to tell it and this song can linger, but that's a good thing. I want to keep listening to it.
The Girls definitely put their own mark to this song around the fourth refrain when they push the song into an intense, slow blues rhythm and Emily sings the stanza - where the two characters in the song find themselves at the place they left off but older and as different people - with a raw voice not holding back. By the end of the song, I feel like I've been lifting weights for an hour: dog-tired and head-high. Every time I listen to it. Still.
I've heard Tangled Up in Blue covered by another band, another great version. I would choose the Indigo Girls' version for the soundtrack because theirs was the first version I heard, and still my favorite. And this other band sings another of my favorite covers that I will attribute to them even though I mention another band covering this song earlier in the post.
Of course, I had heard Dear Prudence before. I've owned The White Album on CD since high school and if my mom hadn't "stolen" it from me when I went off to college, I probably would have worn it out by now. On the album, Dear Prudence was one of those songs that contributed to the Whole but didn't so much stand out on its own to me.
But when I heard the Jerry Garcia Band play Dear Prudence on their Live album, oh wow. It's a completely different song. Paul and John are the ultimate lyricists. Their music is good, but it exists as a background player to their amazing lyrics in The Beatles' catalog. The Jerry Garcia Band realized this and brought that background to the front in a nearly-twelve minute live version of the song.
I can remember the Where of discovering this song, if not exactly the When: the apartment I shared with three roommates in Chicago. One of them owned this CD and occasionally interrupted the constant stream of Phish to play it. Oh how I wished for many years that I had stolen that CD from him when I moved out but it's never a good idea to get Tim angry so it was probably best I didn't. And after so many years apart from that beautiful song, I found the CD at a Disc Replay and purchased it. That version of Dear Prudence is now safely permanent on my iPod.
One evening not long after the purchase of the long-sought album, I set the iPod to wake me up in the morning with this version. I'm a snoozer - when my alarm goes off, unless I have very exciting reasons to wake up that day, I hit that snooze button four or five (or seven) times till I can finally motivate enough to rise. All the while, waking my husband who doesn't need to get up nearly as early as I do.
That morning, the iPod went off and I heard the first few notes of Dear Prudence, and I just stopped my hand that was reflexively heading for the snooze button. The volume was at a perfect level to enjoy the song without - hopefully - waking my husband as well. I laid there for the nearly-twelve minutes dreaming through the bouncy rhythm and Jerry's perfect voice, smiling and waking gently rather than the usual blare and jump weekday mornings tend to be.
At the end of the song, when my hand softly pushed the Alarm Off button, my husband turned to me and said That was very nice before falling back to sleep.
We went to Jamaica in December, for the Caribbean Holidaze festival put on by Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits. The best memory from that week comes from the last night, the Brain Damaged Eggmen show. Each night before, we had arrived a little too late to the shows to grab a lounge chair and enjoy the music from a horizontal perspective and my great hope was that we could do just that for this last show which I knew would be heavy on The Beatles and I really just wanted to listen and not be body-conscious as I sometimes am when I am standing or dancing.
We got there a little late this evening as well and would not have found extra lounge chairs if not for the brief downpour that chased off many of those formerly lounging. We chose two chairs a-ways back, nearer to the crashing waves than the stage. I'm a huge fan of ambiance.
Five songs in, the Eggmen play exactly what I was hoping and expecting to hear. I leaned back, closed my eyes, concentrated on the combination of waves and music and let go. They played a shorter version of the song than JGB but with added ambiance, it became a different song to love just as much. A cover of a cover.
When I was a kid, I was allowed to stay up late for only two television events each year. The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music. Now, this was back in the day before HBO or even VCR -gasp!- so if you wanted to see either of these movies, you had to wait till ABC or CBS had their yearly television event. I still have a love for each of these movies because of their associations with the good parts of my childhood. I own the CDs of both of these soundtracks. I randomly find Oz and Sound songs in my head throughout the day. I don't mind them there.
Perhaps the best of all these songs, certainly the most famous, is Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It is a sweetly sung melody that captures peoples' hearts even as it annoys them dreadfully. I have always liked it for that ability. Part of me would like to think I have the same qualities.
Watching the television show Scrubs one day, I heard a version of this song that knocks out the annoyance factor and actually makes me want to put this song on a soundtrack. And when it catches in my head, I don't want to bang my head into a doorjamb till it's out. Because I love the song, and I love Judy Garland, but I don't so much love Judy Garland singing that song.
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is the singer of the version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that I love. I don't know who he is, I have never heard anything else by him, but his version pulls the song up off the ground and sends it soaring above the rainbow as the lyrics have been requesting all these years. After listening to this song on my iPod, I have sometimes pushed Back and Play because this is a song I can listen to twice in a row. Even though it is a cover, it isn't faithful to the original and thus stands entirely on its own. I would never listen to Judy Garland's version twice in a row voluntarily.
I think when an artist performs a cover song, s/t/he/y are openly flattering the original artist or writer of the song. And whether they have intentions of being faithful to the original or quite the opposite, there's nothing in the rule book that says the original version must always be the best. Sometimes a person may start a work of art that another person is supposed to finish. It may be the original artists' destiny to simply put the framework out there so that the artist performing the cover can make it beautiful. I have many more examples of this but these three are definitely on the soundtrack as the best.
16 March, 2009
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday
I know ? it?s Monday, Monday, Monday today. I missed matching a Sunday event to a Sunday blog. But I didn?t want to cheat you of the Sunday story so better late than never huh?
I had a feeling Sunday would be the bust-out show of the weekend. A lot of people were talking about hitting Friday/Saturday and heading back home Sunday so they could be at work Monday morning. Hell, I had to be at work Monday morning and gave it brief thought but I had the tickets and I can?t miss a Phish show I actually have tickets for. That?s wasteful. There are music-starved children in Africa and I must think of them, it?s only right!
So the plan was: sleep in Sunday, enjoy a leisure lunch with friends, mosey on over to the line, get in and get good seats, rock out at the show, head back to the room and quickly pack, get a couple hours of sleep, wake up at some ungodly hour, get in a taxi headed to the airport and get on a plane so I could get back to Chicago in time for work (well, a couple of hours late but in time to be at work).
Sunday went according to plan.
There, that?s my blog post. A day actually went according to plan. Isn?t that exciting enough for the interwebs?
Oh whatever.
The dramatic highlight of Sunday, and I think I may have mentioned this in the very large blog post that began this, was of course the near-fight I got into with a large, shirtless man over an entire row of seats. Okay, if you know me, imagine me at my stubbornest, which I know is not a word but let?s make it one today, ok? I set my legs over shoulder-width apart, set my jaw and look you square in the eyes with a glare that says you don?t stand a chance with me. That was totally me last Sunday.
Fred & Jewel got in separately from me and after (I tried to grab Jewel and put her in front of me in line but the security guard got me before I could squeeze her over) so it was run for the seats and hope I could find them when I did (I didn?t have either cell number and would have had to coordinate with an absent-Jason in the chaos). I ran immediately for the lower Page-side towards the back of the venue seating thinking that it had the best head-on view without being all the way at the back of the venue. Unbeknownst to me, Jewel and Fred were thinking way, way forward and had I known, I might have saved myself some grief.
So I run in and see an entire front row empty except for one guy ? one large, shirtless guy. So I head down there thinking it?s about 14 seats, no way he?s saving all of them.
As soon as I reach that level on the stair and start into the middle, he comes barreling over from his side of the row with his hairy chest thrust out in some animalistic, territorial, instinctual ? thing. It strongly resembled any number of nature films where the leader of whatever pack of growling animals confronts the brazen intruder. And no matter how many seats the row held, he had every intention of ridding his land of this intruder: me.
So I set myself. I know when a large, shirtless man comes at you with his chest thrust out, there is a chance of violence and I also know that you?re less likely to get bowled over if you set your feet just right.
Okay, let?s pause here because something is bothering me. And this is one of those issues that kind of has two sides of me at odds but it was something I thought much about that day. Chivalry. Now, normally, I scoff at chivalry. I think the very idea of sitting in a car while the man turns off the car, opens his door, gets out of the drivers seat, closes the door, walks around the car and opens your door for you to get out is silly and a waste of time. If you have a 7 o?clock movie to get to, there?s no time to wait for that crap. And does the woman not have arms? Is she completely unable to open a door?
But then, in times such as when a man is barreling towards me with seemingly violent tendencies, I wonder whatever happened to the world in which men bore a gentle respect for women and even if they disagreed with them, handled their opposition in a respectful, if slightly patronizing, manner.
After this incident, this is what bothers me the most. Had he turned, saw me, saw I was threatening his territory ? which was not actually HIS, by the way ? and come toward me at a normal pace, with his shirtless upper body in a relaxed pose and said, I?m sorry, I?m saving these seats for my 13 friends ? I still would have argued (nicely), I still would have been irked at the audacity of it, but I wouldn?t be nearly as PISSED as I am about it. The dude came barreling towards a girl. It isn?t right. It isn?t respectful. I should have kicked him in the balls without saying a single word just for that; taught him that if he can?t be a gentleman, then he shouldn?t even have the equipment to be a man. And yes, that isn?t very respectful of me to say or even think that but he made the first impression that he did so I can?t help but to react in the way I do.
So.
In the end, I gave up the fight. Pragmatic me surfaced and reminded me the goal tonight was to get good seats and enjoy the show. I would likely not have succeeded at either if I had stayed and fought any longer. As it was, my fledgling voice was losing even more decibels, the more I yelled at him.
With one last extended middle finger and a choice phrase I won?t utter here, I took to my heels and ran up the steps to the next level up and managed to secure five seats on that front row. I threw my hoodie over three of them and paced across the section, happy that I got front row in a section, still fuming over the encounter.
Not long after I found the seats, I spotted Fred?s red cap, blue shirt coming in and called him over. He was impressed with the seats but once he called and talked to Jewel, he said we might have better seats, he?d go check.
While Fred was gone, I watched the venue fill in. The best seats were gone so people started simply looking for enough seats together. I had a few looks my way but they saw the hoodie and they saw me standing in front of the seats not yet covered and they got the idea. In the second row, I heard a couple of guys talking about the number of seats they would need and perhaps they could grab some from the row above them to get the number they needed. I spotted a few friends and waved.
Fred returned in a few minutes saying Jewel had much better seats. Front row also, and much further down, closer to the stage. And in his opinion, we should pick up stakes and move.
No sweat off my back, I just wanted to be in good seats with good friends so I turned to the guys behind me and let them know they had five seats in the front row if they wanted them. See the difference between me and Cro-Magnon man? Respect is the most valuable tool we have and it isn?t in limited supply so there?s no need to dole it out with caution. Be free, use it anytime you want. Respect Away.
Still steaming about that guy over a week later. Not that I would remember his face because my eyes were seared by his massive, hairy chest, but I do wish I could run into him again, when I am able to quell pragmatic me. I have a few things to say.
I did manage to forget the incident that night. As I had expected, Phish played the best show of the weekend, ending with a spectacular Tweezer Reprise after releasing the XXL balloons hanging above the audience. The best part: we were seated close enough to see their faces and they wore a perma-grin all night long. As did I.
Thank you, Phish!
I had a feeling Sunday would be the bust-out show of the weekend. A lot of people were talking about hitting Friday/Saturday and heading back home Sunday so they could be at work Monday morning. Hell, I had to be at work Monday morning and gave it brief thought but I had the tickets and I can?t miss a Phish show I actually have tickets for. That?s wasteful. There are music-starved children in Africa and I must think of them, it?s only right!
So the plan was: sleep in Sunday, enjoy a leisure lunch with friends, mosey on over to the line, get in and get good seats, rock out at the show, head back to the room and quickly pack, get a couple hours of sleep, wake up at some ungodly hour, get in a taxi headed to the airport and get on a plane so I could get back to Chicago in time for work (well, a couple of hours late but in time to be at work).
Sunday went according to plan.
There, that?s my blog post. A day actually went according to plan. Isn?t that exciting enough for the interwebs?
Oh whatever.
The dramatic highlight of Sunday, and I think I may have mentioned this in the very large blog post that began this, was of course the near-fight I got into with a large, shirtless man over an entire row of seats. Okay, if you know me, imagine me at my stubbornest, which I know is not a word but let?s make it one today, ok? I set my legs over shoulder-width apart, set my jaw and look you square in the eyes with a glare that says you don?t stand a chance with me. That was totally me last Sunday.
Fred & Jewel got in separately from me and after (I tried to grab Jewel and put her in front of me in line but the security guard got me before I could squeeze her over) so it was run for the seats and hope I could find them when I did (I didn?t have either cell number and would have had to coordinate with an absent-Jason in the chaos). I ran immediately for the lower Page-side towards the back of the venue seating thinking that it had the best head-on view without being all the way at the back of the venue. Unbeknownst to me, Jewel and Fred were thinking way, way forward and had I known, I might have saved myself some grief.
So I run in and see an entire front row empty except for one guy ? one large, shirtless guy. So I head down there thinking it?s about 14 seats, no way he?s saving all of them.
As soon as I reach that level on the stair and start into the middle, he comes barreling over from his side of the row with his hairy chest thrust out in some animalistic, territorial, instinctual ? thing. It strongly resembled any number of nature films where the leader of whatever pack of growling animals confronts the brazen intruder. And no matter how many seats the row held, he had every intention of ridding his land of this intruder: me.
So I set myself. I know when a large, shirtless man comes at you with his chest thrust out, there is a chance of violence and I also know that you?re less likely to get bowled over if you set your feet just right.
Okay, let?s pause here because something is bothering me. And this is one of those issues that kind of has two sides of me at odds but it was something I thought much about that day. Chivalry. Now, normally, I scoff at chivalry. I think the very idea of sitting in a car while the man turns off the car, opens his door, gets out of the drivers seat, closes the door, walks around the car and opens your door for you to get out is silly and a waste of time. If you have a 7 o?clock movie to get to, there?s no time to wait for that crap. And does the woman not have arms? Is she completely unable to open a door?
But then, in times such as when a man is barreling towards me with seemingly violent tendencies, I wonder whatever happened to the world in which men bore a gentle respect for women and even if they disagreed with them, handled their opposition in a respectful, if slightly patronizing, manner.
After this incident, this is what bothers me the most. Had he turned, saw me, saw I was threatening his territory ? which was not actually HIS, by the way ? and come toward me at a normal pace, with his shirtless upper body in a relaxed pose and said, I?m sorry, I?m saving these seats for my 13 friends ? I still would have argued (nicely), I still would have been irked at the audacity of it, but I wouldn?t be nearly as PISSED as I am about it. The dude came barreling towards a girl. It isn?t right. It isn?t respectful. I should have kicked him in the balls without saying a single word just for that; taught him that if he can?t be a gentleman, then he shouldn?t even have the equipment to be a man. And yes, that isn?t very respectful of me to say or even think that but he made the first impression that he did so I can?t help but to react in the way I do.
So.
In the end, I gave up the fight. Pragmatic me surfaced and reminded me the goal tonight was to get good seats and enjoy the show. I would likely not have succeeded at either if I had stayed and fought any longer. As it was, my fledgling voice was losing even more decibels, the more I yelled at him.
With one last extended middle finger and a choice phrase I won?t utter here, I took to my heels and ran up the steps to the next level up and managed to secure five seats on that front row. I threw my hoodie over three of them and paced across the section, happy that I got front row in a section, still fuming over the encounter.
Not long after I found the seats, I spotted Fred?s red cap, blue shirt coming in and called him over. He was impressed with the seats but once he called and talked to Jewel, he said we might have better seats, he?d go check.
While Fred was gone, I watched the venue fill in. The best seats were gone so people started simply looking for enough seats together. I had a few looks my way but they saw the hoodie and they saw me standing in front of the seats not yet covered and they got the idea. In the second row, I heard a couple of guys talking about the number of seats they would need and perhaps they could grab some from the row above them to get the number they needed. I spotted a few friends and waved.
Fred returned in a few minutes saying Jewel had much better seats. Front row also, and much further down, closer to the stage. And in his opinion, we should pick up stakes and move.
No sweat off my back, I just wanted to be in good seats with good friends so I turned to the guys behind me and let them know they had five seats in the front row if they wanted them. See the difference between me and Cro-Magnon man? Respect is the most valuable tool we have and it isn?t in limited supply so there?s no need to dole it out with caution. Be free, use it anytime you want. Respect Away.
Still steaming about that guy over a week later. Not that I would remember his face because my eyes were seared by his massive, hairy chest, but I do wish I could run into him again, when I am able to quell pragmatic me. I have a few things to say.
I did manage to forget the incident that night. As I had expected, Phish played the best show of the weekend, ending with a spectacular Tweezer Reprise after releasing the XXL balloons hanging above the audience. The best part: we were seated close enough to see their faces and they wore a perma-grin all night long. As did I.
Thank you, Phish!
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