fun

Worldly Wednesday: “Hang ‘Em High,” Jackie Mittoo

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Jackie Mittoo was a baller keyboardist from Jamaica.  This is my favorite song of his, and has been on heavy rotation today, seeing how I need continuous energy injections for this last leg and the last leg of this trip.

Sort of apropos of this song, I want to call your attention to an interesting story going on this week.  In a suburb of Denver, Colorado, this week, a group of high school students staged a walkout to protest changes to how American history is taught.  The local school board had voted to turn the dial down on certain portions of American history that, according to the school board, “encourage or condone civil disorder.”  I think these students are gutsy heroes.  Civil (emphasis on civil) disobedience is one of the highest forms of patriotism because it shows you are actively engaging with your country.  To read more, go see the good people at the Christian Science Monitor.

 

Sacred Sunday: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” Etta James

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One more week.  One more week on the road.  One more week of living out of a suitcase.  One more week of hotels and hotel food and hotel smells and hotel lamps that are inexplicably hard to figure out how to turn on and hotel bathtubs that are pointlessly shallow.  Gotta get the blood up.  Can’t start flagging now.

Throwback Thursday: “La Folia: Rodrigo Martinez,” Anonymous

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This piece was written two years before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” to “discover” “new worlds.”  (“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus ran into land that already existed filled with people who had been living there for eons” doesn’t make as easy or memorable a rhyme.)  Regardless, it’s neat to hear music that was playing around that time.

Termagant Tuesday: “Hawaii,” New York Ska Jazz Ensemble

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Aloha, Tune Sharks!  Your intrepid blogger is in delightful Honolulu this week — for work.  (I know, right?)  What with the six hour time delay, I only now had a moment to send you a musical postcard.  I hope its weirdness will make up for my tardiness.

 

Throwback Thursday: “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” Bernard Herrmann

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Ok, perhaps I’m going out on a limb posting this as a Thursday song, but I have always believed film scores can fall into the classical bin. So there we go. Tune Sharks, meet Bernard Herrmann. Herr Herrmann composed this in 1958, towards the middle of his career. If this suite sounds at all sounds familiar or reminds you of something else, it might be because this was written three years before Leonard Bernstein wrote the music for “West Side Story.” Herrmann was a prolific film composer, first writing the score for “Citizen Kane,” most of Hitchcock’s films, including “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho,” and Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.”

Now that I’ve left you with a few interesting factoids, I’m getting on a plane. Toodle-oo!

Termagant Tuesday: “Don’t Panic,” The Quintet of the Hot Club of San Francisco

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So, get this, Tune Sharks.  I have to figure out how to pack for an almost three-week-long trip that will involve three stops, three states, three entirely different climates, two conferences, one week-long meeting, and…a rodeo.

HOW DO I PACK FOR THAT.

Beyond that ridiculous question, how do I ready my house for that absence?  Do I really have to eat all of my yogurt?  How about my granola?  Do I have to Lysol my baseboards or can I just do my countertops?  What about moths?  What about the ghost who opens my cabinets – should I duct tape them closed?  Can ghosts peel off duct tape?  What about the slight gap between my air conditioner and the world outside?  Should I plug that with socks?  Will I have enough socks left over after I pack my rodeo socks?  Do I even own rodeo socks? What the hell are rodeo socks?  Do hotels have dry cleaning or will I have to bring every suit I own?  And when did I lose the international traveller part of myself for whom a 19-day trip would be child’s play?  But seriously – moths?

Balls.

Salubrious Saturday: “Higher in the Sun,” Nora En Pure

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There’s a guy I sing with in my choir who is expecting his first child with his wife this October.  We had a baby shower for them today.  I remember their wedding shower a few years ago.  Continuity is a lovely thing, and it’s touching to be able to be a part of so many of one person’s milestones.

Funk Friday: “If You Don’t Get It The First Time,” The JB’s and Fred Wesley

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This morning, I was so spacey that I stepped off the wrong train (the yellow) to wait for the right train (…the yellow) because I thought I was on the wrong train (the green) and as such I’d need to change at Mt. Vernon Square for the right train (the yellow).  And then the yellow came, again, but I couldn’t get on because only the front half of the train doors opened, and I was at the back half, so the train just…left.

Then I finally, miraculously, got to work, and was in line to purchase my bagel and cream cheese, and the guy in front of me had just gotten his change, when another employee said “I can take you over here,” and “over here” was in the absolute back of the store.  Ohhhhkay.

Yesterday I absolutely killed it in a presentation to one of my directors and got a bushel of kudos, after a few weeks of crazy stressing that I was going to bite it, and months of anxiety before that thinking I wasn’t making any progress.  But I was.  …Huh.

My point?  Nothing is static.  Everything changes.  Just keep breathing.  And maybe get a trombone.  That seems to help, too.

Termagant Tuesday: “Glow Worm,” The Mills Brothers

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Okay, so, first of all, sorry this is so late.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, you should know that I’m typing this with nine fingers.  No, not because I was born with a hideous deformity, but because my boyfriend throws frisbees at about 94 miles an hour and I caught it funny.  So my pinky finger is splinted.

Now that we’ve got the pity part out of the way – doesn’t it suck that summer is (apparently) officially over?  It sucks.  Notwithstanding the insane heat, blah blah blah, but man.  Summer nights.  What do we get with summer nights?  GOW WORMS!

Wait.  Dammit.  Nine fingers.  GLOW WORMS.  There we go.  Glow worms!  Fireflies!  I spent the long weekend at a cabin by a river and I saw plenty of little lightening bugs zooming around at night while my friends and I were out looking at the stars.  This seems an appropriate song to close out (more or less – don’t worry, it will still be hot in November, thanks global warming) the summer.

In addition to loving this song, I also love the Mills Brothers, so today, because of that, and because I am so horribly tardy (what did you find to listen to?!), have a two-fer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFFgD0xgi-M

Funk Friday: “The Birthday Party,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5

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An original member of Yankette Nation and one of my very best friends is celebrating her birthday today.  I wish more than anything I could celebrate with her and buy her lots of obnoxious, expensive cocktails.  I will settle for sending her Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5.