Tag Archives: Music

Literature is Everywhere

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I’m researching my next blog post, and I have The Last Waltz on, when suddenly I’m in junior year of high school again: some dude is standing on stage between sets of The Band’s last concert, reciting the opening stanza of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Looks like it wasn’t just ELHS that assigned its students to commit Chaucer’s prologue to memory forever and ever. This man’s English teacher would be proud for spreading the literature love. “Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote,” indeed.

By the way, this movie is as awesome as I’d heard. Joni secretly singing background vocals on Neil Young’s “Helpless” is my favorite so far.

The Media of a Merry Christmas

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My love for the Christmas season runs deep. I’m lucky in that our family Christmases were fun and full of people I love. I know a lot of people have to struggle through a Christmas dinner of intoxicated relatives, inquisitions on their personal lives, and a replay of every fight they ever had with their siblings. I’m fortunate; we all get along and we’re happy to see each other. Especially now that we’re grown and living in various places across the country, we appreciate having the one time of year when we get together and celebrate in much the same way we have since I was little.

Welcome to my home -- currently a winter wonderland

So I’m off to Michigan in a couple days for a little church, a little eggnog, and a lot of contented lounging about the house. In the meantime, I get in the holiday spirit with a bunch of Christmas media — music and movies that make me smile every year. What kinds of things do you listen to and watch each December?

For movies, the list goes something like this (in no particular order):

A Charlie Brown Christmas
While You Were Sleeping
A Christmas Story
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Scrooged
It’s a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
Home Alone
How the Grinch Stole Christmas

There’s a little more pleasure in others’ pain there than you’d think/hope for a Christmas list, but ah well. I said we were a happy family, not a particularly kind one.

The music! Of course there are the hours of angelic choirs singing hymns from across the centuries, and there are also the old standards from the last 60 years. And the entirety of the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. But there’s the other category — the dance party Christmas music. Seeing as how I just threw a wildly successful Christmas party, I take it upon myself to give you a playlist of excellent, non-cheesy tunes that’ll keep everyone grooving long after Santa shimmies back up that chimney.

Run, Run Rudolph–Chuck Berry
This Christmas–Donny Hathaway
Purple Snowflakes–Marvin Gaye
Father Christmas–The Kinks
Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas–The Eels
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree–Brenda Lee
Merry Christmas, I Don’t Want to Fight–The Ramones
Jingle Bell Rock–Bobby Helms
Blue Christmas–Elvis Presley
Santa Claus is Coming to Town–The Jackson 5
Soulful Christmas–James Brown
I Want a Beatle for Christmas–Becky Lee Beck
Merry Christmas–The Ramones
Boogie Woogie Santa Claus–Patti Page
Santa, Teach Me to Dance–Debbie & the Darnels
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)–Darlene Love
Just Like Christmas–Low
Baby It’s Cold Outside–just about anyone, but I like the new one from Marah
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus–The Ronettes
All I Want for Christmas Is You–Mariah Carey
Jingle Bells–Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters
Merry, Merry Christmas–Koko Taylor
White Christmas–The Drifters
Feliz Navidad–Jose Feliciano
Christmas Wrapping–The Waitresses
Santa’s Beard–The Beach Boys
A Fairytale of New York–The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
What Christmas Means to Me–Stevie Wonder

Under no circumstances should you ever play Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime.” Your guests will immediately feel transported to the blue light sales on the night after Thanksgiving, and nothing spells the end of a party quite like a claustrophobic feeling of synthesizers and commercialism. If you want to have a Beatle on your playlist, go with John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over),” which is a lovely tune and sentiment all in one.

What’s on rotation at your house?

Merry Christmas, a belated Happy Hanukkah, joyful solstice, and happy holidays. I’ll be back with further adventures in travel, music, and the like after the New Year. Safe travels to you all!

And family — little full, lotta sap. See you soon.

Best Music of 2009

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Dearest fellow travelers, what say we get a head start on all those end-of-year lists. Music critics, the genuine article, are currently hunched over their laptops in tiny coffee shops all over Brooklyn, carefully crafting their annual odes to the best tunes coming out of the British and American scenes. I am not one of those critics, but I am hunched over my laptop in my Chicago bedroom, throwing together an inaugural celebration of some of my favorite music from this year.

Let me tell you how cool I am: I’m so cool I don’t care what’s cool. I live in an oppressively hipster neighborhood, and I’ve attended the Pitchfork Music Festival for the last three years running, but that doesn’t mean I love Beyonce ironically. In fact, it bothers me when kids too cool for school profess to love something ironically. I love that woman’s music wholeheartedly, and I bet you do too.

I grew up completely saturated in music — my grandfather composed hymns, my parents hold up the church choir, my sister writes songs that play to standing ovations. We probably had one of the first CD players in the country (don’t worry, purists, Dad’s still got his turntable) and I spent much of the summer of eighth grade categorizing the over 1,000 CDs in my father’s collection. I can read music, play piano, and sing harmony (as well as a soprano can force herself to sing harmony). (I can even make choral singer jokes!) I love music for how it moves me and how it makes me move. I don’t love everything that comes along (ask anyone who’s ever tried to play me a Foreigner song); one of the best parts about being a music lover is figuring out what combinations of beats, tunes, and often words get you excited and what combinations don’t. I don’t trust people who say they like everything, or who lay claim to eclectic tastes. Almost every time, that’s code for not listening to enough music to figure out what they care about. Being a discerning listener is the first step to being culturally conversant, and BONUS, it’s fun!

Sessily (she of the fantastic guest post) recommended this book and book review to me: Matthew Cheney’s review of Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and if you are looking for my Christmas present, here it is. From what I can tell, Wilson’s book is all about how we make our cultural tastes and how we can move away from negatively exclusionary to positively discerning, from a hierarchy of art to an appreciation of arts, and that’s increasingly becoming my aim in my own life and my conversations with others.

Which is all to say: I titled this Best Music of 2009, but really, it’s my Favorite Music of the Year. What follows is not comprehensive by any means, but it is enthusiastic. Nothing is in any particular order, and I didn’t try to have a certain number of albums or songs for any category, as that seems limiting and arbitrary. Enjoy, and definitely leave your own favorite music/links in the comments!

FAVORITE ALBUMS

These are the albums I’ve been listening to over and over again, with no sign of getting bored.

Passion Pit – Manners
dance, dance, DANCE!

Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse — Dark Night of the Soul
It’s about time these two got together, and the guest list is quite impressive.

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Probably the best candidate for this year’s “it really works well as an ALBUM, not just a collection of songs, y’know albums used to mean something” piece from the critics of the land.

Black Moth Super Rainbow — Eating Us
Triiiiiiiiippy. And less expensive than actual drug trips. (So I hear. Not that I’d know, Mom.)

Bat for Lashes — Two Suns
I never really listened to much Tori Amos, but this sounds like what Tori Amos sounds like in my head, only less awesomely political and more awesomely sweeping.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware
I have yet to hear anything by this man that I dislike, and this album is no exception. It’s a relaxed, generally happy album, with lots of twangy guitar.

Antony and the Johnsons — The Crying Light
Gorgeous.

Yo La Tengo — Popular Songs
They have yet to go wrong, and you gotta love the audacity of that title.

Speck Mountain — Some Sweet Relief
A local band my friend played in for awhile, Speck Mountain sounds like Mazzy Star for the new century.

Phoenix — Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
All those hipster assholes are hailing this as the album of the year and probably the decade, and while I quibble with those who call it straight-up rock (it’s a bit polished and electronic for that), I can’t argue with the appeal of those guitars and hummable melodies.

FAVORITE TRACKS

Hmm, so many fuzzy, feedback-y, atmospheric albums, and then a whole bunch of danceable tunes right here.

Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp”
Give us a new album already!

Kid Sister—“Right Hand Hi”
I never heard it the first time ‘round, and the album only just came out, so it’s an ’09 tune to me.

The National — “So Far Around the Bend”
New album next year, which is pretty exciting. Also, I am dating the band as a whole, which is pretty exciting.

Bell X1 — “The Great Defector”
I heard it on the radio and thought it was a Talking Heads tune.

BBU — “Chi Don’t Dance”
Don’t stop, can’t stop, won’t stop the beat.

Jay-Z featuring Kid Cudi – “Already Home”
I much prefer this to the New York song (and no, it’s not because of New York!); it’s that gently driving beat and the muted horns, I think

Cascada – “Evacuate the Dancefloor”
Let the music take me underground, indeed.

FAVORITE HALF-ALBUMS

I love about half the songs on this album pretty fiercely (examples included), but can’t get into the album as a whole. That might change on repeated listens.

St. Vincent — Actor (“Actor Out of Work,” “Save Me From What I Want”)
The Dirty Projectors — Bitte Orca (“Stillness is the Move,” “No Intention”)
Neko Case — Middle Cyclone (“Prison Girls,” her cover of “Don’t Forget Me”)
Girlyman — Everything’s Easy (title track, “Storms Were Mine,” “Tell Me There’s a Reason”)
Andrew Bird — Noble Beast (“Fitz and Dizzyspells,” “Natural Disaster”)

POSSIBLE FUTURE FAVORITES

I haven’t listened to these enough to make an informed decision, but I’m really liking them so far.

The Clientele — Bonfires on the Heath
Girls — Album (“Hellhole Ratrace” is so great!)
The Twilight Sad — Forget the Night Ahead

MUSIC I SHOULD HAVE LOVED LAST YEAR BUT JUST DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT
Santogold – Santogold and especially the mix album she does with Diplo – Top Ranking

If you’re an imeem user, you can listen to my playlist here: http://www.imeem.com/people/81Xsn-2/playlist/4QPTbGOm/best-music-of-2009-music-playlist/

It’s free and simple to sign up, and I have yet to receive any spam from them, if that helps in your decision. I wanted to embed a playlist, but it turns out imeem isn’t supported on WordPress, and I don’t have everything on Lala yet to get a playlist there. Sorry to delay the post just to not deliver on my promise, but these technologies can be tricky. I’m pretty proud of the imeem playlist, so please enjoy!

Urge for Going

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“I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in”

— “Urge for Going” by Joni Mitchell

Autumn in northern Michigan

Is anyone else feeling the pull of wanderlust this week? I never consciously think of fall as a season for travel; I associate summer with travel because of summer vacations past. But every time I hear Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going” I am overcome with a need to shuffle out of town with the rustling leaves. Joni captures so perfectly the melancholy of autumn. She strains to break free of it by up and leaving, physically moving away from lost loves, lost seasons, lost moments, but she also revels in it the way a small child jumps into a pile of leaves, knowing the damp rot is a necessary accompaniment to the sweet smell and ticklish embrace of the swept-up pieces of red and brown.

Autumn is my favorite season, and this year more than any other I’ve heard a lot of people saying the same thing. I think part of that has to do with this particular year for weather, since we had such an abbreviated summer that any sunny and mildly warm day in the fall is greeted with great enthusiasm. But there’s also the excitement of change, the sense that whatever pattern we lulled ourselves into in the heavy heat of summer can now be broken free of. Fall is when school starts up again, which of course was set to coincide with the harvest schedule on farms, so the growing season ends as the learning season starts. I like that we still follow this schedule, even though so many of us are completely removed from the seasonal rhythms of farms, because it recognizes the cyclical nature of the year–one thing ends, another begins, and both are cause for celebration. Even as we’re breaking free of some comfortable summer pattern, it’s not that that pattern was wrong or undesirable. It’s just that its time has come and gone, and now it’s time for another pattern or set of activities.

Ask anyone in my family and they’ll tell you what a hard time I have with change, especially with traditions. One year, my British grandparents were in town for Christmas, and the flurry of activity surrounding their visit somehow didn’t include decorating the tree. No one else was bothered, but the idea of having a Christmas without this part being the same as it was every other year made me want to cry. Finally, it was Christmas Eve, and I was about ready to bury myself in the snow rather than look at that unadorned tree any longer, so between the two church services, we pulled up the heavy wooden box from the basement and hung ornaments until that tree shone. I still get teased for that one.

The Findley Family Christmas Tree, circa 2005

Which is to say that accepting change as a natural and beautiful part of life has not been easy for me. I like making lists, I like things in order, I like knowing where I stand at all times. But autumn is a great reminder that this simply isn’t sustainable. Trees that just days before were full of green life are now thinned with yellow, and soon enough they’ll be waving their bare branches at the sky. If I spend all my time mourning those green leaves, I’ll miss the joy of the yellow ones, and even the stark beauty of the spindly brown branches. Metaphors aside, it’s true in my life as well; I was heartbroken to not marry T, but I became a more interesting person who I’m happy to spend time with because of it. I thought my first job was necessary for my career and didn’t want to leave for the opportunities I thought I’d miss if I did, but when I left I moved to the city and found a good group of friends and a sane job that were more important than succeeding in a dying industry.

I’m not saying everything happens for a reason. I can’t believe that and look at the daily tragedies so many people have to endure. And Zeus strike me down if I sound like a self-help book. But I do think that many changes that I used to fear–probably even the ones I still fear–can yield surprising results. They’re not always even better results, but just as my shadow grows longer with the lengthening of the nights, they are different; change of some sort is as inevitable as summer turning into fall. This is why autumn is my favorite season. I’m reminded every year that the world is in a state of constant flux, and there’s beauty to be found in all those changes.

Of course, those changes do awaken my wanderlust, previously lying sleepy in the long, sunny days of summer. As I walk around Humboldt Park on a crisp afternoon or mix up a cup of cocoa in the evening, part of me is appreciating the sights and sounds of Chicago this time of year, and part of me is wondering what it feels like in Morocco right now. Here’s a change my teenage self would never have believed possible: I can be perfectly content where I am and still long impossibly to be a thousand miles away. For now, like Joni, I “get the urge for going, but I never seem to go,” but you and I both know that soon enough, that too will change.

The Music Don’t Lie

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There are now no doubts I made the right decision about breaking up with my boyfriend of six months — last night, while dialing through the radio, I heard all in a row: “Time for me to Fly” by REO Speedwagon, “Already Gone” by The Eagles, and “It’s Too Late” by Carole King.

The music has spoken.