It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

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.

Call me a product of my generation, but I’m a chronic multi-tasker.  I can’t watch television or movies without doing something else.  I’m always cleaning, working out, crocheting, or writing blog entries that should have been up hours ago.  Which means I wind up listening to more than I “watch.”  Which is maybe where this list comes from.  Or maybe I just like guys with nice voices.  Who knows?  This is my personal list, not a collective production of It’s my TV, It’s My Peanut Butter.  While they’re fairly consistently my top five, the order shifts around a bit depending on my mood.  Note these are speaking voices, not singing voices.  That’s a whole other list.

1.  Avery Brooks. It is a travesty beyond travesties that StarTrek: Deep Space Nine did not have a voice over in the opening credits.  Yes, it would have been awkward to rework the whole thing from the first two Trek series so that it was about a thing that stays put instead of has voyages to seek out new life and new civilizations and yadda, yadda.  But seriously?  They wasted the opportunity to have that voice sensuously intoning whatever over dramatic music and pretty images of space.  He could have been reading a recipe for marzipan and I guarantee you female viewership would have gone up.  I’m a weirdo among Trekkies in that DS9 may well be my favorite series (again, depends on the day, sometimes its TNG.  Note I waited till Cammy was out of the country to say that because she considers it a sacrilege.) and while Picard was clearly the best “captain” I think it’s undeniable that Sisko was the bigger badass.  And the voice was a big part of it.  I generally feel like DS9 should have ended a season earlier than it did, but season 7 has avoided being stricken from my memory for two things.  One of those is Sisko singing.  The other is a pair of white baseball pants.  If you’ve seen them, they need no explanation (no, they aren’t on Sisko).

2.  Sean Connery. Yeah, I’m a sucker for the accent.  And the attitude.  And the being that damned hot while being old enough to collect social security (or whatever the Brits have).  Admittedly Saturday Night Lives Sean Connery parody has become almost indistinguishable from the real thing in my mind, but whatever.  Favorite line ever?  A strange choice:  “If I have to wear a suit, she has to wear a bra” from Playing by Heart.  A line that would not be nearly so funny in any other voice.

3.  James Earl Jones. Do I need to explain this one?  Didn’t think so.

4.  Carlo Rota. Yeah, it’s the accent thing again.  And the tone.  Cammy was really the one to point this out to me, but I would listen to this man read the phone book for hours.  Physically, he doesn’t do much for me.  But that voice?  Mmmmm…. Momma like!  And if I could get him to say one one of those Yassir-isms to me like “My flower” or something, I could die a happy woman.

5.  Jeremy Irons. Another accent.  Yes, it’s a theme. I’m okay with it.  I’ll admit it was The Lion King that introduced me to him.  He is deliciously evil sounding.  My friend Megan once said, “Evil looks good.  It’s kind of the whole point of evil.”  Let me tell you, evil sounds good too.  But he sounds good as a good guy too.  I melt every time I watch The Mission.  Every time he says that line about “If you’re right, and might makes right, then love has no place in this world.  And it may be so, it may be so.  But I can’t live in a world like that, Rodrigo.”  I become a puddle.  I know, it’s a well written line and would take an idiot to fuck it up, but Mr. Irons knocks it out of the park.

6.  Antonio Banderas. BONUS!  Because I left him off my list and can’t believe it.  But can’t bring myself to bump anyone either.  Yes, another accent.  At least I have variety in my accents.  But damn!  His accent is intermittently delectable and hysterical.  And by hysterical I mean listen to his version of “Oh What a Circus” and hear how he says “hysterical.”  Make sure you aren’t drinking anything.