SPIRIT IN THE SKY - OLD ROCK MEMORIES  

Date: Tuesday, 8 June 2010 @ 8:43PM

Oh man. I was feeling so good coming home on the bus this evening as the radio was turned to a classic rock station. It made me reflect on just how awesome my music tastes are, if I can be so bold. I often live in indie music world but I love that guitar solos stir my soul. I listened to 2WS a lot as a kid and my dad's music tastes influenced me a little. I caught him a few years back listening to a best of Cream! I was totally impressed. Anyway, I just downloaded Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenhaum. I love it. It reminds me a lot of my dad... and those times when I got on with him. When I was young, I loved it when I caught him singing along to songs. He hardly ever sang out loud because he claimed to have a bad voice. [Actually, it was really bad. He sang at church and I always tried to sing louder than him to drown out his bad voice. :P] But I love that it reminds me of him and I love that this song is about Jesus! Win!

Anyway. So here's the song. I'm not just an indie girl. I'm a rock girl. I'm also a jazz girl. I'm also just me! Awesomely open to so much beautiful music. :)


Norman Greenhaum - Spirit In The Sky




Enjoy!

ESSIE JAIN - DAY TROTTER  

Date: Monday, 7 June 2010 @ 8:15PM

I go on about how awesome Day Trotter is fairly frequently. I love walking into the site and exploring musicians at random. Essie Jain is one of those who I stumbled upon and now love. I have been feeling kind of sad/low/broken/discouraged lately and her music feels like arms cradling me.

Music lately has been moving at a slow, leisurely pace. New music is welcomed into my collection but not played to death or blared loudly. I have been enjoying my music by night lately too. I discovered a slightly quicker route home and so I have often been tempted into walking home after work instead of waiting 30+ mins for the bus. These night walks, instead of being tiring, are reinvigorating. I am used to walking home and it's nice to have it back. I love the time spent with music, my thoughts, the trees in the street, the quiet stillness of the chill evening. I sing quietly to myself and I smile up into the trees overhead. I'm crazy about those kinds of things, those stolen silent moments alone with music and trees. I don't think I'll ever grow out of it.

Day Trotter has also given me Harper Simon. He's Paul Simon's son and I love his song Wishes and Stars a lot. I wonder to myself what he means by, 'It don't matter, there are more wishes than stars'. But it doesn't matter, the tone of it is suitably sad and discouraged for my mood. I'm sure there will be times when I need music for dancing to but for now, these musicians make nice companions.

REGINA SPEKTOR - IN CONCERT, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE  

Date: Wednesday, 28 APRIL 2010 @ 9:51PM

So the hour is creeping by and I'm expecting a phone call from a friend so I'll try and be brief. I had an amazing night out with Tom last night. Regina was just one aspect of that. I met Tom at Circular Quay after work and changed out of my work clothes and into my indie kid gear. We had dinner at Waggamamma, which was my second time and Tom's first. Their food is delicious. It was a lot of fun trying to eat their noodles with the chopsticks only. We had so many fails. Tom was better at it than me, but messier. Definitely not a good first date location for those with only moderate chop sticks skills. However, we are seasoned lovers and can quite happily slurp and make messes in front of each other and still remain delighted with the company. *grin*

So dinner, then gelato, then drinks at the Opera House. But when we go up to our box there are people in our seats! So we compare tickets and we realise we had bought tickets for Wednesday not Tuesday night! Oops. So rather than go home and come out again we went to the box office and exchanged the tickets for another location... err, right at the back. We didn't suffer too greatly though. The concert hall in the Opera House surrounds the stage and Jupiter One and Regina both faced us at various times and acknowledged our less than advantageous presence. Regina in opening made us laugh a bit, saying that she'd never sung with people surrounding her before. She said she liked it but that she probably would feel different if we were all hostile towards her so she said, "Please don't turn hostile". I giggled.

The first half of her show was a little disappointing but that was to be expected. She played a lot of her new stuff from her album Far. I don't like that album so I sat there waiting for her to play her old stuff. Highlights: Ode to Divorce had my eyes brimmed full of tears. She made the story of the song come alive and it ached my heart. She played That Time and Tom and I were dancing in our chairs. It's so hard not to let loose and dance and sing along but it's kind of difficult in fixed seating. I really enjoyed Music Box and the cute little piano accompaniment. I still love the line 'it was greatest voyage in the history of plastic'. She even got the words wrong part way through and stopped saying, "Shit I forgot the words to my own song". Oops, we still love you. However, for even a few of her old songs Regina kept Jupiter One on stage to accompany her. That was less fun. Their drummer was way too enthusiastic. Oh and speaking of annoying. The crowd! The crowd was horrible, they kept shouting out crap. For example, in Laughing With someone yelled "you tell them Regina" right at the end. I mean, please. Someone kick that douche bag out.

Regina was sweet. She said she wanted to do something special for the night so she did her nails for us. They were bright red. Then after a song she said she was not quite used to them and was feeling a little dazzled. She was cute but didn't seem very comfortable and seemed more intent on playing the next song than on chatting with us. For that I was a little disappointed. I guess it's the nature of the venue though, being at the centre and having everyone looking down on you... She loosened up when Jupiter One wasn't on the stage. She even played the guitar (for That Time) and played keyboard.

At the end, she had us clap for so so long for an encore. I was beginning to wonder if she was going to come back. My hands hurt from all the clapping but since the lights hadn't been turned back on, I figured it was worth the pain. It was a nice evening but I was not blown away. Tom told me about a Regina concert he went to a few years back that was just magic. I will see her again if the venue is somewhere smaller. I think that will make the difference... and if she releases a better album. :P

This entry was started way back in April but never got finished. I'm sick at home today (18 May) and with nothing pressing to do... so here it is... hopefully better late than never!

I THINK IT'S GOING TO RAIN TODAY  

Date: Monday, 26 APRIL 2010 @ 8:49PM

I finally got to listening to Laura's April Mix. I love the way she feels her music, the way she loves her music. I feel sometimes like music can slip its way into my soul, that it can bypass my defences. When I heard this song I started to cry. I hardly knew why. I am so tired. The bitterness of disappointment is just under the surface, waiting to well up in quiet moments. This song (I think It's Going to Rain covered by Dusty Springfield) is so quietly sad and rain has always been a powerful metaphor for me.

Once upon a time I would have responded to these kinds of emotions with prose or maybe a Photoshop image. Those days are gone and I'm just left admiring the work and words of others. So I'll feed you back these beautiful lyrics...

Lonely, lonely.
Tin can at my feet,
I think I'll kick it down the street.
That's the way to treat a friend.

Why do I love that chorus? Because I am both the tin can and the kicker. I feel like I've been treated badly by my friends but that I'm also a bad friend. It seems that as we get busier and more insular in our day to day lives our friendships become more and more important. We expect more from our friends but spend less time with them. Friendships become more of a burden and necessity. We want more efficient exchanges in emotional goods. Sentiments like: What can you give me? what will I let you take? What can I expect you to do for me? These things become an important consideration. Friends to validate. Friends to take away loneliness. Friends to fight off insignificance.

Broken windows and empty hallways,
a pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it's gonna rain today.

When I was in high school, I wrote poetry constantly. These words transported me back to one magic evening after school when the sun was setting and almost gone. I looked up at the broken/boarded up windows above the tattoo parlour and methadone clinic and I thought for a second that I saw something beautiful there. That maybe the colours in their solemn, warm, sunset hue transcended the location and broken down nature of the place. I had just spent an hour in the arms of one who I was discovering I loved and the fearful sweetness of the moment also coloured my vision. How to love in the midst of all that hurt, all that brokenness? Yet I did. I did love my neighbourhood. I cherished every tree for what it stood for as well as its presence. I clung to every drop of beauty I could wring from my existence.

I found that old poem that the first lines of the song reminded me of. I read it back to myself and it's not quite timeless. :P This is the start of it, written about seven years ago, when I was 17.

Within the perspex frame
yellow clouds and dark
blue shadows dimmed
and were captured
by hidden eyes.

Glory touched and freedom
flown, beyond the
reflection of our forms
into the darkness the
steps in alignment -
magnetised,
lit the street with their glow.

Yellow memories and
heavenly lighted dreams,
and the broken and abstract
art, dreary in it's close...

It doesn't make much sense sadly but it is kind of amusing to look back on old things. It reminds me how far I've come. How much more I have. How I am blessed with a world full of so many more colours. How I no longer have to fight for every beautiful tree. How I no longer live clinging to every good thing. I have so many good things that I don't need to be miserly with my love or fearful of it being snatched away. I used to live in Doonside/Seven Hills and go to school in St Marys. Life is so different on the North Shore and North-West. Heaps of trees! And I have Thomas and my church and work and my own place. I am not scraping for things to love and people to love me back anymore. It's nice.

Final reflections: Even though I'm still the tin can and the kicker, I'm still that bad friend and needing of friendship... that need is so different to what it was back in high school. I know my needs and rights now, I know my worth and I know how full and rich the world is. I know God. I am upset when I'm a bad friend, I'm upset when I am treated badly, but more than in those days I take my value less from those around me and more from my stance before God. I think that is a large part of why I feel so much healthier and happier and that life is richer and fuller.

BEATLES - SHE'S LEAVING HOME  

Date: Wednesday, 21 APRIL 2010 @ 9:40PM

I got several Beatles albums recently (Abbey Road, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Club Hearts Band, Please, Please Me) and I'm in love with so many of their songs. I heard She's Leaving Home properly for the first time yesterday coming home on the train. The opening line "Wednesday morning at Five O'Clock" pierces my heart with it's precision. The exact day and time she leaves... and it's her bedroom door that she closes, not the front door or the backdoor... it's not the door to her house but to her parent's home.

The other line that I find telling is, "She's leaving home after living alone for so many years". The parent's reaction to her leaving is poignant... they don't know what they've done to deserve her desertion. Oh and to leave like that, with just a note as a farewell. :( I don't think I've quite gotten over having that done to me. The parent's response, "We never thought of ourselves/ Never a thought for ourselves/ We struggles hard all of our lives to get by/ Bye bye." It's so sad. It seems they each live in their own worlds and want to love each other but are unable to cross the gap in order to make those desires meaningful. She even hopes that the "note would say more"... ah. She doesn't want to hurt them but can't find the words necessary to explain her actions.

I love the story in the song. I love the loneliness captured within it; the way the violins are used. I love the echoing vocals. I left home when I was 19 because I couldn't stay, but I didn't leave loving parents who misunderstood me. I left a mother who was disinterested. I was robbed of this kind of bittersweet farewell. The song therefore carries a sort of double disappointment for me in that I wish I had what this girl had despite her desire to run from it.

It's been 5 years since I moved out and I'll be returning to live with mum again soon. A lot has changed to allow me to even consider moving in with mum to be a good thing. Let's see what happens.