It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

I have a very crappy memory about some of the strange mental exercises Kristy and I collaborate on.  Thankfully, Kristy is more inclined to recall our more creative moments (and save documents) than I am, so she was able to dredge up our attempt to a dream cast for the musical Into the Woods.  We had a few minor holes to plug in tonight, but we managed to figure out those final few  (the Steward, for example) to bring you the cast that we’d assemble if we could.  This list involved a lot of thought–weighing Willie Nelson against members of ZZ Top, evaluating what artist would be most likely to be the embodiment of a tree, splitting roles to accommodate just the right people.   And here we have it:

*Originally we had Lindsay Lohan cast here, but this was before her most recent bout of drinking, drugs and flaunting judicial orders.  Much as we know that she once had the talent to rock the part, until she can sober the fuck up, she is off the list.

** We realize that some people might have a time with a black Red Riding Hood who has a painfully white, red-headed grandma but A) we embrace diverse families because we both have them and B) if Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington could be brothers in Much Ado About Nothing, this is just as plausible.

***If Reba really doesn’t work as Grandma in workshop, we’ll swap Patricia Belcher in and make Reba the Giantess.

****Ardilla Voladora is a story for another post.

I am not a singer.  No false modesty, I don’t have a good voice and I find it a very frustrating instrument.  I sing along to the radio in the car, but the music is so loud I can’t hear how bad I am, so it’s okay.  When I don’t have something to drown me out, put it to you this way: my cat howls at me.  But, this week I realized that the small shower here at home has these awesome acoustics that are just too good to waste.  Since the piano won’t fit in the shower and it’s not good to get a wood oboe soaking wet, my only way to exercise the sounds of the space is with those pesky vocal chords.  After many attempts to reproduce any number of songs, I have found exactly one song that I can sing even moderately well without the assistance of a radio to drown out my weak points:

“New San Antonio Rose”

This signature song of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys ought to be familiar to serious country music fans.  If you are interested in rounding out your musical education with the high-points of all the major genres and sub-genres, this song ought to be somewhere on your to-listen list as a grand example of Western swing.  If you are from Texas I suspect that you might be like me where one day you hear this tune playing and you begin singing along, never realizing until that moment that you knew the words…

It was called “New” San Antonio Rose because the “old” version Bob Wills originally put together didn’t have lyrics. With the addition of words, they called it “New San Antonio Rose.”  Allegedly, the tune was, at least in part, developed when Wills decided to play the tune “The Spanish Two-Step” backwards.  FTW?  For shits and giggles I sat down and tried to play something backwards on the piano.  Um.  Fail.  So points to Bob for being some kind of crazy genius with his fiddle.

It’s been covered more times than I can count (I can name at least 5 renditions off the top of my head) by a plethora of artists and in multiple languages.  It helped rocket Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys into the national spotlight back in the day.

In the grand tradition of country-western music (and plenty of other musical genres, but this one gets the most shit for it) it’s about a lost love.  In the grand tradition of Texas, it’s dance-able.  And it’s about Texas.  All these elements have made it a favorite of mine for years.  The shocker was the part about how sing-able it is.  Maybe I should have suspected it with the number of artists who’ve performed the song, but I didn’t.  And I sure didn’t expect it to be the one song that I can maintain in tune start to finish.  Maybe it’s that the spread of the range is just right.  Maybe the tempo makes it easier to control the changes.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I usually sing it through 3 times in the shower–and the cat’s okay with it.

My obsessive play of the week is another international tune.  I decided that two versions of “Symphonie” by German rock band Silbermond just weren’t enough.  I was perusing Amazon and located a third “Orchester Version.”  More strings and (drum roll please) an Oboe (double reeds, represent!)

The song is, at its core, a rock break-up ballad.  The hook, in this case, is  ”Symphonie…und jetzt es ist still um uns” (Symphonie…and now it’s quiet around us).  It’s solid stuff, though I’m taken more by the overall sound than the lyrics.

The initial version I encountered was pretty much pure rock.  Again, solid stuff.  It helped to branch my collection of German musik into a cool middle ground between the head-banging, angry-time music of Rammstein, the synthesizer-of-the-80s-lives-on sound of the “Schlager” pop music (I love it, but I recognize it’s not for everyone) and the truly ol’ skool folk music my family brings out for holidays and reunions (think beer halls and yodeling).  I needed something that was solid rock-pop, and this (along with the rest of Silbermond’s repertoire) fit the bill.

I was even more pleased when I found the second version, still rock, but with a touch of orchestral strings.  Very classy.  The orchestral touches made the sound more melancholy while letting the guitar build up bring home the gut-wrenching aspect of a failed relationship.   I completely support cross-musical-genre-efforts, but we’ve all seen some forced disasters.  This was not one of them.  I was more than impressed enough.

Until they added the French Horn and the Oboe.

There is very little in this world that cannot be made better with a French Horn and an Oboe.  Rock ballads get better.  Symphonies reach their pinnacle.  The weather gets nicer.  Babies stop crying.  Ice cream tastes better.

No, really.  I swear.

This final arrangement took the increase in melancholy from version 2 and ramped that up, but they still retained the rock build up.  As with the second version, the combination of the classical orchestra sound worked with the rock band–no feeling of shoe horning.  The added instrumentals made the slow, quiet beginning even richer, and they even seem to play a larger roll once the guitar and drums kicked in, which is nice.  I thought the drum entry was a teensy bit heavy, but the points gained with the added orchestral parts out-weigh the split second when the transition seems too sudden.

The downside of this ear-worm is that I went looking for even more Silbermond MP3s on Amazon only to find there are very few.  The only full up album is Verschwende Deine Seit from 2004.  The rest are 2-3 track single albums (be warned, if you buy from Amazon, watch those singles albums–several are priced at $9.99 for the album, when there are only 2 tracks which you can buy individually for $0.99).  The selection of albums on CD is larger, but the prices are significantly higher.  And, unfortunately, most of the official videos from the group on their YouTube channel are geo-blocked for those of us in the USA (we deserve it, I know).

I am a big, big, big fan of The Sound of Music.  The kind of fan who has seen the film over 87 times (I stopped counting when I was about 14…).  A fact that, Kristy does not seem to hold against me, to her extreme credit.

To MY credit, I didn’t go out and buy the 45th Anniversary Blu Ray edition with bells, whistles and schniztel with noodles.  I was tempted, but I hear the 50th anniversary will come with the schnitzel, the noodles, the copper kettle, the woolen mittens, and a brown paper mystery package tied up with string (I’m hoping it will contain a kitten with whiskers).  And, since I’ve already had two different VHS versions (wore one out completely, the other partially) and the 40th anniversary DVD release, I thought I could stand to wait for the big 50.

What I failed to realize was that they also re-released the album.

The album, that, after nearly half a century, finally has my favorite track included.

For years the album to the 1965 movie didn’t have every song.  In most cases, that’s okay, but in this case, it was my favorite that was missing.  I have long had a love for the version of “Edelweiss” that appears first in the movie–as a simple duet with Captain VonTrapp (voiced by Bill Lee–in case you still didn’t realize that wasn’t Christopher Plumber) and Liesel (who really is Charmian Carr, lest the previous parenthetical had you questioning everything)–but it was never on any of the copies I had of the album (I wore out two cassettes).  The only version there was the reprise at the Festival that has the whole fam-damily, a pit orchestra with a bell player who definitely picked up the hard mallets, and half the population of Austria.  The song’s still good, but it’s not the intimate little take that I love from the earlier scene.

When I first got my DVD of the film several years back, I kept saying I would go in and rip that track to an Mp3 for myself so I could finally over-indulge in the good version.  Of course I never got around to that.

But lo, what should appear in the Amazon $5 offering list today?  Is that a different cover to the album I spy?  And, ZOMG, NEW TRACK LISTING?

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  And he likes the good version of “Edelweiss” too.

But there’s more!  In addition to that, we also get the music to the “Laendler” and the expanded version of the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” reprise with the opening that I never knew existed until the DVD special features and the music from the interlude…..

Christmas came early for me this year and the hills are definitely alive with the sound of the tracks I’ve been missing….

No, I’m not about to do a Musikalischer Mittwoch about “American Pie”  (I can more or less promise that won’t ever happen–I don’t hate the song, but it’s been eye-rollingly over-done in my corner of the Universe).

I’m talking about how my favorite radio station totally killed music.

The country station I listen to (the one that plays old shit and does not mock my less-than-secret love of Hee-Haw) decided to become the 24/7 Christmas station for the area starting the day after Thanksgiving.  I would applaud this but for two things:

1) They said this will run through 26 December.  Um.  Yeah.  No.  Twelve days of Christmas, yo (and more than that if you’re smart and milk both Roman Catholic/Protestant AND Orthodox)

and (this is the important one)

2) I haven’t heard a Christmas song yet.  Or any other song.

This station was always a bit heavy on the advertisements in the mornings.  That’s to be expected for any station, so I’m annoyed, but forigiving. But since the alleged Christmas rotation started, I have heard about nothing but collision repair, vinyl siding and the price of brisket for a grocery chain whose nearest store is 30 minutes from me.

I knew the Christmas music thing was going to be a bad gimmick, but I didn’t think it would be this awful.  How can I mock the craptastic renditions of “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” if I never get to HEAR them?!?!

To start:  Yes, I’m missing a lot of posts.  That is due to a work-related time vampire that I am just not going to discuss because it’s entirely too suck-tastic.

And now that I’m here thanks to the wonder of one of the few holidays we haven’t destroyed completely in this country*…..

Except that I’m here later than I expected because, it’s officially post-Thanksgiving-meal-consumption for me, which is my stated prerequisite for starting up Christmas music.  And I wanted friggin’ holiday cheer blaring before I started typing.  So, I sit down at ye olde PC…..about 2-3 hours ago.

Trouble is, I had hell getting MP3s loaded.  To own the truth, I am still playing them ones-y, two-sy.

In the off-season, when I’m shifting files around on computers to make space, or set up a new drive, the first thing to get shuffled aside in a less-than-orderly fashion, are the Christmas MP3s.  It’s generally done because, well, I won’t need them until after Thanksgiving, and of COURSE I’ll get them organized again before then.

Except I don’t.

So, here I am, ready to start rockin’ to my Danish Santa Rap, Juleman, and….where the hell was that file?

First there’s the consolidation into one location, then there’s dumb-ass iTunes and it’s molasses-in-January loading process (although, I suppose I shouldn’t blame iTunes totally….I have fairly extensive collection of holiday tune-age.  By-product of being a practically-Christmas-baby).  During this process, I get fed up and start my internet search for the killer-app to replace this nightmare that we call iTunes.  Download a few.  Install.  Realize they won’t fit the bill, go back to loading iTunes.  And here I sit, just now attempting to get this thing posted while a folder sits open next to this window so I can right click on a Christmas song and tell it to play in Winamp so as not to disturb the goings-on of iTunes (why don’t I just use Winamp?!?!?!)

Then again, the real time vampire in this is probably my own lack of organization….

*Though we’re working on it–I mean, whatever meaning it had, racist or not, is pretty much gone–but so far it’s still a mandatory day off.  Except for those poor SOBs in retail.  And because of that, the slippery slope is in place to make this into another work-day for the rest of us where only those with vacation time and forgiving superiors can manage to take the day.

This entry less-than-thoughtfully composed to the following soundtrack: “Kaj i kanen” - Kølig Kaj; “Podsafe Christmas Song” – Jonathan Coulton; “Es Wird Scho Glei Dumpa” – Stefanie Hertel & Stefan Mross; “Christmas Wishes” – Anne Murray; “Throw The Yule Log On, Uncle John” – The Christopher Wren Singers; “Wenn ein neues Jahr geboren wird” – Claudia Jung.

Today is CBC Radio’s 75th Birthday!  Huzzah!  It goes without saying that I am a tremendous fan of CBC Radio.  Radio 1 is what I wish I heard when I turn on NPR (but never do….they lack a Shelagh Rogers or Anna Maria Tremonti), and I shudder to think of my life without some of the fantastic music I’ve encountered through CBC 3.

That list of songs and artists is incredibly long, and it was difficult to identify one song this week that tied with the birthday message….until I recalled what CBC Radio 2 (which is great, and I should probably listen to it more than I do, but there are only so many hours in a day….) commissioned a birthday song for another Canadian milestone, the 100th Anniversary of Parks Canada this summer, from a favorite artist I discovered through Radio 3, Sarah Harmer.

It’s simply called “The Parks Song”  or “Chanson des parcs” for the Francophone set.  It immediately puts me in mind of a conversation with a friend of mine from BC about Canadian identity.  She pointed out a penchant for sitting around campfires and singing songs as being strangely ubiquitous among Canadians….and–to her mind–strangely absent when she visited other countries.  This song is perfectly suited to friends around a pit of dancing flames, swaying back and forth and singing along.  It just fits.  And CBC Radio having a hand in adding this beautiful tune to the campfire repertoire of their listeners just adds to the laundry list of awesome they already possess.

It’s probably a bit chilly to still be gathering around a campfire for a song, but should you be in a climate conducive to such an activity this evening, give this tune a try and give a little shout out to the radio network to the North that’s nice enough to share it with all of us.

The CBC Radio 3 Blog community was home to a discussion of superfans recently.  Normally, I would find the rabid superfan a little off-putting.  They tend to be louder, pushier….a lot of things ending in -er, most of them unpleasant.

But at tonight’s rodeo/Reba concert I got to watch a superfan who actually made my own concert experience better.

About 5-6 rows ahead of me tonight, there was a girl, who looked about 11, and her Dad.  The kid was sporting her “All The Women I Am” Reba shirt and a lot of barely contained excitement.  You could tell in one look at the kid that she was stoked about this.  Dad appeared to be patient and mildly amused.  I think I noticed them because it reminded me so much of my first Reba concert when I was 11–Dad took me, and displayed the same amused patience.  Throughout the rodeo, she was watching, paying attention–Dad was pointing things out and clearly explaining things–but radiated a kind of tense anticipation.

When Reba finally took to the stage, the entire Sprint Center stood for the first two songs, but after the rest of us had settled back in our seats, that kid was still on her feet, clapping and singing along.  She stood the entire concert (her seat position and her height prevented this from annoying anyone behind her–and the volume meant that her singing along could in no way offend anyone around her).  At one point I saw her glancing down at her palms, clearly contemplating whether the sting of all that clapping was worth it.  I suppose it must have been, because she shrugged and kept going.  She even sang along with the medley of older stuff.  And when I say older, I’m not talking about “Fancy” or anything from the 90s.  I’m talking “Can’t Even Get the Blues”…from 1982.  Her Dad was probably still in school when that one came out.

I actually found myself wishing I was seated next to her.  As it was, other than my empty seat, and the PDA couple directly in front of me (side note: there was also a Radio 3 Blog discussion of concert PDA), I was surrounded by un-impressively passive people my parents’ ages.  They totally didn’t get into the concert, which was physically painful, because in the stripped down and truncated version of the performance (rodeo concerts tend to be less elaborate), there were maybe 4 slower songs (1 of which was “Because of You” in which Reba turned the mic on the audience for large chunks).

How much nicer would it have been to have been along side the kid, bopping along with her?  To catch a little of that enthusiasm and feel like it’s totally okay to keep clapping and enjoying the hell out of the moment?  Even at a distance, I feel like I  got something out of seeing this girl watch the show, and I guess that’s enough.

I hope she enjoyed the concert as much as I did–though I strongly suspect she may have enjoyed it even more.

Sadly, I am stuck posting from my phone again, a situation that is hardly conducive to writing the kind of review my most recent Earworm deserves.

“Dying of Another Broken Heart” combines the kind of simple, clear county sound with a kind of well, adorableness.  I hear this song and it seems cute.  I mean, cute for a song about yet another broken heart. 

That great tune and cuteness was catchy enough to start me exploring more from Ortega.  Her album Little Red Boots is currently $5 from Amazon’s mp3 store, so I gave it a shot.  It was totally worth it. 

Also, it contributes to my Canadian country music part of the playlist on Radio 3….always a plus (so you can test drive several tracks there if you don’t want to part with $5 on my poorly constructed recommendation).

Despite my attempts to make sure I don’t overdo the Canadian connection here, I couldn’t help but have another Canadian song this week.  There’s been so much talk lately about the new Said the Whale single, “Lines” coming relatively close on the heels of their documentary Winning America, I’ve been on a Said the Whale kick lately…..

Heaviest on the rotation?  ”Camilo (The Magician)”.  What can I say about this song?  The song is fun, the guitar is great.  Much like last week’s pick, this is on my “Chair Dance” playlist for work–the kind of upbeat song that reenergizes a slow day and has me bobbing my head and tapping my feet.  If I weren’t in an open cube farm, there might even be air-guitar.

And Camilo is similar to Cammy.

If you’ve not given Said the Whale a try and you like a solid pop-rock song, “Camilo” is  a great starting point (then try the new one “Lines”).  You can try it out at Said the Whale’s Band Camp page (see below), or, as usual, on CBC Radio 3.