It’s a good Friday, Tune-Up fans. The universe is moving in our direction, and things are looking up. My air conditioner, which you may remember from Tuesday’s post, is getting removed today (maybe even put into a box! Crazytown!), friends who are looking for jobs are getting interviews, I scored a major professional victory (to which Señor Boyfriend, when hearing about it, responded with “HUGEATHON!”), and the U.S. soccer team advanced to the knock-out rounds. I think we all deserve a little celebration today.
So, okay, England didn’t win yesterday. Neither did my softball team last night (but we left it on the field, guys, we left it on the field – especially Kathleen, who bit it on the way to first and crawled the rest of the way to the bag and made it like the boss she is). It was 97 degrees with 100% humidity and only one of the rooms of my house has air conditioning right now. I have a chest cold that makes me sound like phlegmy Paul Robeson. And I’ve got a best bud out west who’s wondering (completely rationally) what life’s deal is.
BUT. In the plus column we have the following:
Today is Friday.
The mighty falling early in the World Cup makes room for awesome other countries to advance and we might have a very cool match on our hands with some first-tme winners.
We’re playing softball again next week (and against a truly odious team – like, literally the worst team ever) and have a good shot at kicking their ass.
The one room in my house with AC is my bedroom, so I’m sleeping very happily.
Mr. Yankette finds the sound of a phlegmy Paul Robeson alluring.
My best bud is also a cat-like badass.
So I’m take the long view. Like the man says: “It’s cool when you freak to the beat – but don’t sweat the technique.”
Mr Scruff is a legitimately good DJ. This song is a pretty good song – maybe a little repetitive and pointless, but it’s got a good groove. So what’s so embarrassing about this song?
Anyone reading this blog on a PC knows exactly why this song is so embarrassing. It’s because this is one of three or four songs pre-loaded onto the Windows Media Player as sample pieces. I don’t know why they did that. All I know is that, one day, when I had to work at another facility and I didn’t have my own music with me, I hoped against hope there would be something already on the Windows machine I had to use – and, God bless America, there was. I listened to this song on repeat for eight hours.
Wood varnish, modern dance, and New York City. Those are the three things that come to mind when I hear this.
Wood varnish: I am seven. My mom refinished…man. I lost count of the number of things she refinished in the house I grew up in. Our beautiful old upright piano, tables, chairs. Not to mention all of the other home improvement projects she had going on. A Michael Jones cassette was part of the music rotation she would put on the paint-splattered radio-tape player that kept her company when the fumes were too strong for a kid to deal with. Michael Jones was soon supplanted by Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and I took “Pianoscapes” for myself. It heavily influenced my own early compositions. Don’t get me wrong – this music isn’t that great. But what it did do for a little kid writing her own stuff was make it okay to experiment with melodic changes, time signature changes, and rhythmic changes. It also made it okay to write “songs” that were more than ten minutes long. You’re welcome, neighbors.
Modern dance: I am ten. I took a bunch of different styles of dance when I was a kid but modern dance was the only one that I really got into because – surprise! – there aren’t a whole lot of rules. Perfect. One homework assignment was to create our own dance and set it to music. The person who came up with the most popular dance (decided by a very public vote) would choreograph a whole group routine. I used “Tapestry.” I did not win.
New York City: I am thirteen. For my thirteenth birthday, I got to go to New York City and visit my godmother. She lived by the courthouse in Manhattan and worked in the fashion industry. She was (and still is), very tall and very glamorous. She took me shopping to buy my very first make-up (Clinique – what’s up). She bought me my first pair of black cigarette pants. We ate escargot and went to the theater. It was incredible. We also went to a bookstore that had a CD section and I bought the CD version of the now six-year-old cassette tape. I put it on her CD player when we got back to her enormous apartment and I remember walking around her very modernist two-bedroom, looking at the city lights glowing in the dark, with this piece pouring out of the speakers. That’s a very happy memory.
The beat of the first few seconds of this song just kills me. It’s like a very Euro-flavored disco version of Dr. Who. Erlend Øye is a great pop artist from Norway who has been part of a number of other bands (remember Royksopp? Remember their song “Poor Leno?” Yep, that was Erlend. Ever hear of The Whitest Boy Alive? Erlend.). His voice is like soy milk – very smooth, pretty devoid of flavor, but surprisingly tasty.
It can take a long, long, long time to figure things out. The sermon in church this Sunday*, preached by the absolutely marvelous Stan Fornea, talked about this at length. Specifically the idea of mystery, and how we as Christians, and American Christians to boot, are problem-solvers: we don’t like dealing with the unknown. We like certainty and facts. We apply this to the religious sphere by attributing things to God that aren’t really God’s problem. As hard as it is to swallow, some stuff might just be completely random.
I think this is absolutely maddening and also delightfully freeing. To not have to ascribe meaning to a screw-up, a bad day, a good day, a human interaction, any of it – to not have to dig around in the dirt for some ultimate purpose – means we can throw up our hands, say “aw the hell with it,” and try again. Or not! Devoid of the suffocatingly cloying “everything happens for a reason” maxim, a fluke is just a fluke. You’re not destined for anything. We aren’t forced to give a damn. It’s kind of great.
“How come I end up where I’ve started? How come I end up where I went wrong?”
Who knows. But you get to decide whether, and how, you want to figure it out.
*Yeah, it says Luis Leon; it’s Rev. Fornea. Trust me. Also – you’ll have to trust me on this too – Rev. Fornea preached without notes. He’s amazing.
Okay – first of all? I know the drummer. That drummer is a friend of mine. (And you, sir, are no drummer.) That drummer is a total badass and just about the nicest person you’ll ever meet. So, now you, by extension, know the drummer. You see once again why reading this blog is a good idea.
And second of all, this band is seriously incredible. How they manage to have a sound that’s tight and at the same time so gritty, I’ll never know. I’ve been a blues band myself it’s hard to sound…right. You don’t want to sound too polished because that’s inauthentic. The blues is earth-bound and cracked and held together with tape. But if you sound too sloppy, then you just sound like you suck. Bad Influence does not suck. Anyone who knows me knows that’s a pretty big compliment. Rock on, gentlemen. And all y’all who like these guys, go to http://www.badinfluenceband.com for tour dates and other stuff.
This song goes out to two dear friends of mine who are today beginning their cross-country moving trip to resettle on the west coast. (Pro tip: if you want to speed past the odd and theatrical intro, the music starts at 0:57.) Westward, ho, dudes! Pedal to the metal – no parking on the dance floor.
The Daily Tune-Up 