somniloquence

My intoabar assignment is amazing! I picked Bucky Barnes as my character who goes into a bar and meets someone from either Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Schitt's Creek, and I got Bucky meets...Rosa Diaz, and I am very excite!!1! about this. You know that Rosa and Bucky could bond over so very many things. I have only a small germ of an idea, though, so if you have some sort of interesting prompt, I'm listening. I can't guarantee that anything is going to be the magic idea, but I'm not super impressed with my own, either. Minimum word count is only 500, though, so it doesn't have to be something super complex.

I caught a little bit of the movie Blinded By the Light on the free HBO weekend last week, and I was a little flummoxed by it because the part that I saw was mostly pretty cute but the new wave guy at their school was criticizing the main character for his Bruce obsession by saying that Springsteen is "dads' music" and "it's 1987." Like, wtf? Born to Run came out in 1975, my dude, and unless all your fathers were siring children at 12 years of age, not hardly. Like, yes, lots of kids their age were into new wave and power pop, but there were plenty who were also into classic style rock & roll, and Springsteen was actually at the height of his popularity in the mid-'80s. Born in the USA was released in '84, and it was a megahit of much greater proportions than any other album he'd done, even his critical darling Darkness on the Edge of Town or The River.

I was in high school when Born to Run came out, and I remember how much of a backlash there was for being a Springsteen fan at the time, because of the Time and Newsweek cover thing. His first albums were very much under the radar, and he just wasn't super well known until Born to Run came out. He started playing large arenas pretty quickly after Born to Run, but when it first was released, I saw him at a very inexpensive concert in a fairly small venue by his later standards. But he didn't become such a household name until the early mid-'80s, so it's very very weird to me that they were saying that in the movie.

And of course, now I've got about three Springsteen songs kind of on permanent earworm rotation in my head.

Yay, it's More Joy Day! I'm mostly just working, so not really any chance to spready joy. To counter that, I made a pretty poppy peppy playlist to share. It's not, like, a work of staggering genius but I hope you enjoy it.

Apparently, Dreamwidth won't let me embed it, sigh. This site...I just can't even.

You can find it here on Spotify

x-posted from tumblr:

I wrote a scene in my recent fic Don’t Wait Up for Me where Bucky’s kind of almost half-dancing around the room and Sam asks him to teach him some of his old dance moves. In my head it was Little Red Corvette. 1999. All the Prince songs that are full of such joie de vivre that you can’t help but move to them, all on one of Sam’s favorite playlists.

I cannot really believe that he’s gone. We keep losing all these artists who have made such a difference in our lives, brought us so much joy and insight and beauty. 

Gakked from lithiumdoll:

1) Discover the #1 single in your country of origin in the week you were born.
2) Find it on YouTube.
3) Post it on your LJ/DW page without shame. Or for some of you, with shame.



How awesome is it that one of my favorite song/artist combinations was #1 that week?

I have been so out of it with preparing for this proofreading workshop and dealing with my dad, the contractor, and some terrible news about a friend that I hadn't even heard my beloved Clarence Clemons had had a stroke. And now today I saw in batdina's journal that the Big Man has passed away, and I am as devastated as if he was my own friend. I always felt like he was. There was just something about him that made you feel like, if you'd seen him in concert or had the chance to catch him at the stage door (as I did once) and say hey, you knew him and he was your best buddy.

My favorite story moments with Bruce and the E Street Band when they performed live were always the tall tales he'd spin about the Big Man. And Clarence always played that up, too. He took that natural ability to perform and used it in film, too, with appearances in some movies and a small role on The Wire.

I wrote a bit about my love for a quiet performance of Thunder Road back in November. You can hear Clarence on the triangle in it, but otherwise it's just Bruce and Roy Bittan. It was always the big blowout numbers where the Big Man shined the most. That sax has meant so much to me over the years. That great, deep voice has too. The world was sure a better place for having him in it.

Here, have a little Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. I love that 40 years later, these guys are still doing such a great job. Every time I saw this performed, Clarence did something on the "kid you better get the picture" line, often pointing at him, or wagging his finger, or something. Damn.

The other day, I was talking with some of the Media Cannibals at a bash about song stories for Yuletide, and how I didn't get it. Nobody else did, either, and we were discussing the ins and outs of what you would do for a song to make it into a story. Like, I can get possibly taking an actual song that's a story and doing something with it. But your average pop song, I just don't get it. How do you make a piece of fiction out of it? Sandy mentioned "Jack and Diane" and I was saying that I could potentially see it for something like "Thunder Road," since Bruce Springsteen actually talks about Mary and her past. But is the narrator Bruce himself? Or someone else? And do you make him up, or what?

For some reason lately, "Thunder Road" has been on my mind, anyway. Maybe I should have made it a request for Yuletide. But the version that's been on my mind has been the "acoustic" version that's just him and The Professor, Roy Bittan, the piano player for the E Street Band, performed at the Roxy in 1975. I have never in my life heard such a beautiful slow version of a song before, and have never since. It's probably, I would wager to say, my favorite song in the world. If I had to pick three desert island songs, that would be my first one.

Back in the late '70s and all through the '80s, I was a Springsteen fanatic. I collected all the bootlegs, went to shows all over the Northwest, waited in line for tickets for days, that sort of thing. My friend and I had every book and magazine article ever published about him. This was in the days before personal computers, so you can imagine the letters that had to be written, stores to be combed, and phone calls to be made for that kind of fanatacism. When I first met the Cannibals, a bunch of them were traveling all over the place, following Led Zep on tour, and while I couldn't understand their passion for those guys, I totally understood the passion for a performer(s) that would take you all over the country to hear them play. And the funny thing is, despite the fact that I used to go to just about a concert a week, I've never really liked live music as much as studio discs, for the most part.

And of course, now I look back at that running around and going to clubs and think, wow, the stuff I was able to get away with in high school and early college. Parents today would never let their kids do what we did at that age. I was in high school when I discovered Springsteen, just before Born to Run made him a national figure, and I still vividly remember going to see him at the Paramount, just weeks before he made the cover of Newsweek and Time simultaneously and everyone was talking about him. It was the most amazing show, and I thought, wow, I don't know much about him, but I'm going to find out everything. The tickets were only a dollar-fifty! No one had heard of him yet.

When I first heard the bootleg of the Roxy '75 performance, I wanted to hear everything done that way, but of course, "Thunder Road" was the special song on that bootleg. It's stuck with me for decades -- until recently, I could still pull out my cassette tape and play it, and often I would just ignore the rest of the tape and play only "Thunder Road." Over and over again. The lyrics to that song still amaze me, the storytelling ability Bruce has and the unique way he creates these essential, particular images while embracing all the muscle and power of American rock and roll. It's like the musical equivalent of a performance racing car.

I wanted to see if I could find my tape, but for the hell of it, I Googled Springsteen and Roxy and Thunder Road, and lo and behold, some kind soul has actually put it up on YouTube. Roy Bittan is a piano genius; I took piano most of my life, and I've tried to learn some of his parts, like the gorgeous, haunting piano intro to "Jungleland" and this beautiful backup music, but it is really hard. You have to be a damn good keys master to play his stuff, and I never was.

So, yeah, this one, I could see a story for. I should make myself a Bruce icon.

Sorry it took me so long to put up the Christmas tunes I promised. Hey, it's one day before!! I get some special credit for at least not waiting till after, right? This is a mix of a few of my old favorites and some new ones. I tried to pick a few that I haven't seen in a lot of other music posts on my flist. The links will expire sometime after the new year, when I remember to take them down because I need the space on my web site. ;-) Please right click and DL to your computer (or control click on a Mac).

( Songs behind de cut )

I spaced day 6! Totally! So sorry.

You may not mind when I post the song, anyway -- I have had a hard time getting a lot of my friends to give rap of any kind a chance. I was that way too, though, in the beginning. There were a lot of things I disliked about it at first -- and still do, in terms of the insane level of misogyny and treatment of women -- but after a few years, I really began to open up to it and now hip-hop and hiptronica are among my most-listened-to internet radio stations. One of the songs that helped tip me over the edge from "eh, I don't love it" to a fan was this song, Here We Come, from the movie Strange Days. I love how it builds and builds with this crashing anger and resentment and warning, and culminates in that great bitter, wicked laugh at the end.

In a complete 180, day 7 finishes up with one of my favorite artists, Neil Finn, doing Faster Than Light from his solo album of a few years ago. This song would be among my desert island songs. i think it's one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded and that's saying a lot. The Finn brothers are geniuses, baby.

Here's a couple great noveltyish songs from the '80s that I love.

The first is a tune by a band called the Fibonaccis called Art Life that was featured in the movie Slam Dance, which I've written about here before (I can't seem to get into memories right now, as usual, so the review would come up under the movies tag, I think). It's just a mean, harsh, bitchfest of a song and I totally, totally adore it for those reasons. I especially love the "doom... we're all DOOOOMED" toward the end. I'm still peeved that they never put this divine soundtrack out on disc; fortunately, my friend saved his vinyl and another friend recorded these to MP3s for us.

The second is a little ditty by the Fabulous Poodles called Pink City Twist. My original recording of this features a segue into another song called Vampire Rock, which this MP3 doesn't have (and that I've always wanted to make a Spike vid to). Alas, the only CD recording of the Fab Poo's hits is currently running at a low price of $114 on Amazon, so I may never be able to get that again and will have to live with my original casette recording. I'm also bummed because I wanted their "Bionic Man," which would make a fantastic vid song for something like Now and Again. (Michael, if you're reading this, we need to put our heads together and figure out a Poos plan.) This song is just silly and repetitive but it has a joyous '80s new-wave nonsensical quality about it, and the payoff toward the end of the song is worth it.

So, since I've been such a lousay journaler lately that my friends list is dropping like flies, I thought I'd actually, you know, do something. So, I've deemed this moozik week and I will put up a song to share every day. (I will also put up some pics soon of the Great Garage Project, but that's boring to most.) Since I missed Monday (now is the time when projects and papers start rolling in for the class -- OMG, I'm a teacherOMFG and I have to look at papers AUGH!), I will put up two today.

The first is a rollicking bit of early almost-summer fun, Louisiana Down Home Blues by C.J Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band. I defy anyone to not want to get up and two-step to Cajun or zydeco music, cherie. The second is by that recent flavor of the month, Bright Eyes, from a collection of special recordings by contemporary alt-country and folk artists. It's called Trees Get Wheeled Away and it kind of fits my mood today. I hope you like both!