Headbanging!

My family is awesome. The other day we were all sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner. The radio was on and Nightmare, by Avenged Sevenfold started playing. At exactly the same time, about 30 seconds into the song when the guitars and drums start, everyone at the table started headbanging in unison. It was classic!

It's nice that we all share similar tastes in music!


Quack!

Subliminal Messages

I should have been a jingle-writer. When the kids were little I often came up with little songs - sometimes for fun, sometimes to also try to influence them. One of the best involves a plush broccoli. (doesn't everyone have one of those?) I would bounce Mr. Broccoli in tune to the music:

(send)

I'm Charles Broccoli and I'm here to sing a song,
Vegetables are good for you the whole day long.

Carrots and squash are good for you
And peas and green beans too.
You can eat them by themselves
or put them in a stew.

In order to get your vitamins, you should eat some everyday.
Vegetables are really great, that's all I have to say.

(me)

Unfortunately, the message didn't work too well. Only one of the three ducklings will come within five feet of a vegetable.

(chocolate)

Maybe it was because I sang it off-key.

Quack!

Fairly Mellilow

  So I'm taking a training class for work and the break room is right across the hall from the classroom. Are you with me so far?

Now, said break room has the usual coffee and unhealthy snacks. It also has a CD player and a stack of CDs. Each day it plays some innocuously mellow music. Some days that music is better than others. The other day was Etta James - that was nice. More recently it was some way-too-mellow jazzy stuff that insinuated its way into my brain crenelations like worms in rotting meat. It was very difficult to pull it out and boy did that feel gross!

But I discovered there is a step beyond way-too-mellow jazzy stuff burrowing into my brain crevasses. Behold the horror of the day prior:

It didn't start out too badly. Even I can stand very small doses of fairly mellow Barry Manilow (or Mary Banilow as I prefer to call him). But after listening to a rousing rendition of Oh Mandy, followed by the upbeat and uber-lovely - I Write the Songs and the soothing and romantic - Looks Like We Made it, it started in on Copacabana. At that point it was far far far into the 'way-too-much-mary-banilow' category. And when I found my leg starting to bounce and my body starting to sway in time to the music I decided it was just over the top too  much! It was bad enough I was being subjected to endless Barry Manilow, but another thing altogether to have my body betray me and start moving in time with the music! Traitorous!

So, I went over to the break room . . .

and . . .

I . . .



turned that CD down!


Oh, I'm sorry. Were you expecting something more. Something involving shattered CD players and CDs spinning across the break room? Some cursing of the Mary Banilow name? Sorry to disappoint you. All I did was turn it town. Not off, just down. But boy did I turn that thing down! Way down! Now-no-one-can-hear-it down. Ha ha ha ha!

And before this class is over I'm bringing in some Five Finger Death Punch or maybe All That Remains. And I'll put that in the CD player. And I'll turn it up. Way up. Muah ha ha ha ha ha.

Quack!

Step Away From the Strelephant!

You know how when you don't quite catch the words to a song you tend to make up your own words so you can sing along? I think we all do that.

But to change the subject, years ago I got some swag from a vendor at work. They sent me a gift so I would never forget them. It's an elephant. Get it? Elephants never forget, and all that. Well, this was a nice little squishy elephant that I could squeeze when I was stressed out. It had the company logo on the side and best of all it came in a tube. Now, on the outside it looked like a plain black cylindrical tube about 4 inches or so diameter. Nothing extraordinary. But . . . when this mundane, every-day tube was opened, letting the daylight shine into the darkened interior, the loud trumpeting of an elephant racing across the plains of Africa would ring out, startling even the most stoic of office workers. It was great!

I of course took it home to amaze and amuse the children. It worked wonderfully once they got over their fear that a raging beast would tear out of the tube and stampede them into the rug.

We had that thing for years until recently the battery died. I could probably have figured out how to change it, but that was too much work so we said our goodbyes and waved as the garbage truck carried the tube off down the street.

But, even though the tube moved onto greener pastures, the stess elephant stays with us. It's been adopted by the ducklings and has taken on the moniker 'Strelephant'. (Stress + Elephant = Strelephant) We are all very fond of Strelephant.

Now, to circle back, you know that song by Five Finger Death Punch about the elephant? You know, it goes like this:

Step away from the elephant,
I'm coming down.

What do you mean it's not 'elephant', but 'edge'? That can't be?!?

OK, I knew the right words, but I caught one of the ducklings singing 'Step away from the elephant . . .' the other day and it stuck. We started to sing it that way. And even better, we've upgraded it to 'Step away from the Strelephant". So now that song will never be quite the same. Whenever I hear it on the radio I have to pause and think, 'wait a minute, he just sang the wrong words. Oh, wait.'

Oh Strelephant, we love you so!

Quack!

Christmas Music Makes Me Stabby

  The other day as I was making hundreds of thousands of Christmas cookies, the hubby tuned the radio to a station playing Christmas music. While I generally prefer to bake to heavy metal with screaming guitars, screaming singers, lots of swearing, foul language and heavy drum beats, I had to admit that some holiday music was more appropriate for the situation. My tendency to beat the imaginary drum sticks sometimes interferes with the baking process and we end up with dough on the walls and ceiling and fist prints in the frosting. Something a little more in tune with the season seemed to be in order. So I didn't complain.

However, after hearing some of the song choices the DJs chose to play I was feeling downright stabby:

Blue Christmas is Elvis. Ok. Elvis is cool. But come on! Those uber-annoying whoo-ooo-ooo-oo parts throughout the song are enough to drive me insane after hearing it once, let alone 6 times!

And what's with Dean Martin referring to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as 'Rudy'? Sacrilege!! Give the deer some respect! Use his full name. It's bad enough he missed out on years of reindeer games and spiked eggnog, but to call him Rudy?!? Inexcusable. And stupid.

Then there's Jewel breaking down into yodeling and jazz scat on Winter Wonderland. All I can say is WTF!

And I get that Taylor Swift is cute, and a good singer. And I know that she has a pretty good version of Santa Baby if you don't mind the country music twang thrown in and the fact that she is WAY too virtuous to be singing that song. But do we really have to hear that version over and over and over? There are other, much better versions out there. How about the original? Or even Madonna's version. Madonna at least has the personality to pull it off. Has Lady Gaga done a version yet?

And I think it may be Michael Buble singing Oh Holy Night. Or maybe it's Josh Groban. I really have no idea, but whoever it is, it's a god-awful, slow, put me to sleep version of an awesome holiday tune. Zzzz, wha? Oh, did I fall asleep in the cookie dough again? Let 's get something with a little bit of life on the radio!

And speaking of falling asleep, or being put to sleep, what is up with the annoyingly slow, bordering on depressing, versions of Silver Bells, Home for Christmas, and many others? Isn't Christmas supposed to be a happy time? Full of fun, love, laughter, family, giving, etc? I don't want to fall asleep in my Christmas pudding while listing to Christmas songs. Nor do I want to cower in a dark corner contemplating self harm due to overplaying of slow, depressing renditions of songs that should be uplifting.

After a mere two hours of that (and I tried several different radio stations) I was ready to kill - either myself or the Christmas tree, or the radio. Gah! I'm feeling stabby!! Time to switch to some Christmas CDs with good music, or some nice soothing heavy metal.

Quack!

 

Got my iPod on
Drums, guitars, voices and more
Lots of good music

Well, it seems I am the only one in the family that likes music with screaming. Imagine that. You'd think I get enough of that sort of noise with three kids. I think it's more that it's a familiar sound and I've grown accustomed to it.

Five Finger Death Punch has some awesome music - the lead singer tends to descend in deep-throated screams now and then.

In This Moment (a really crappy name for a band, but awesome music) has lots and lots of screaming - both from the female lead singer and from the male backup.

And on my Apocalyptica CD there is a song by some French death metal dude - Joseph Duplantier, Bring Them to Light. I love that song! Awesome.

But whenever I put any of that music on it sounds like this:

Hubby: What the hell is that?
Me: What? The music you mean?
Hubby: If that's what you want to call it.
Me: It's awesome!

Snickers: Mommy! Oh my god! That's terrible!
Me: What? The music you mean?
Sweet Pea: That sucks Mom! Switch it to [some god-awful pop station].
Me: God no! I can't do that. And besides. This music rocks!
Sweet Pea: Really.
Me: OK, I'll skip this one. The next song isn't so screamy.
Sweet Pea and Snickers in unison: Oh my god! That's worse! Is that a guy screaming too?
Me: Fine! I'll listen to it when I'm alone!

Quack!

Good Times

  The 80's were awesome! I had a lot of fun in the 80's and the music was also awesome! Even Snickers appreciates much of the music from the 80's on the rare occasions we subject him to it. He's especially fond of Ah Hah's 'Take On Me' and Twisted Sister's 'I Wanna Rock' and 'We're Not Gonna Take it'. He's also a big fan of the 'Sweet Victory' song on Spongebob which is very reminiscent of an 80's tune.

Switching topics here, when the kids were young they used to watch Veggie Tales, a cartoon where cute vegetables attempt to teach kids morals through the retelling of various bible stories and fun silly antics. We aren't very religious (to put it mildly) but we always enjoyed the Veggie Tales. (with the exception of the episode with the pie throwing which some people found terrifying - but that's a story for another day). We even have the Veggie Tales Christmas CD which is a lot of fun and which until very recently we listened to every year to get geared up for the holidays.

Maybe you can see where this is going.

When I saw the CD "Bob and Larry Sing the 80's" at the library, I had to get it. I brought it home and proudly held it up for the kids to see. They all looked at me as if I had lost my mind. They are so too old for Veggie Tales now, Mom! Come on! Well, Mom isn't too old for Veggie Tales so we all got to listen to it in the car on our vacation. It certainly wasn't the best selection of 80's tunes, but it was fun to listen to our favorite vegetables singing songs from that wonderful era of yore. It brought back a lot of memories both from the 80's and from our Veggie Tale years.

Good times. :)
 
Quack!

Kill Bill is Kick-Ass And So Is The Music

  I was watching Kick-Ass the other day with hubby. It's a very violent movie somewhat akin to Kill Bill type violence - with spattering blood, limbs being cut off, guns and torture and beatings and such. Usually quite a put-off, but for some reason, the movie was pretty good despite that.

In the same vein I also liked Kill Bill. When we started watching it I hated it. Too much over-the-top gore and spurting blood and snapping bones. But by the time we were 75% of the way through the first one, I was hooked. I eagerly anticipated the second, and was not disappointed. Despite the flagrant comic-book violence and utter grossness of many of the fight scenes, I really enjoyed the story. If you can overlook the blood and guts (and for some people I'm sure that's a plus), the story line is really good. And the music is awesome! An eclectic mix of all sorts of stuff. Cool. You should take a listen.

And, to get back to Kick-Ass, we were watching it and in one of the fight scenes this song started up. We both said at the same time - "What is that music?" It's haunting, eerie, rhythmic. Guitars and drums. It's beautiful. After some searching we found it - In the House - In a Heartbeat by Composer John Murphy. It was also used in the movie 28 Days Later (a zombie apocalypse movie that was a little too grim for me. I don't go for zombies much.  But what an utterly awesome piece of music! Another one you should check out.

And while you're at it, the soundtrack to the movie Collateral is really good too. So, that's your homework. Go to amazon.com and check out the soundtracks to Kill Bill, Collateral, Kick-Ass and 28 Days Later. Let me know what you think. And let me know what other movie soundtracks you like.

Quack!

Diametrical Opposition on my iPod

So the other day I plugged myself into my iPod. Plumb's Blink. A nice album. Very soft. Gently tinkling-bells,
melodic female voice, soothing transitions, love and acceptance, children and flowers, kittens and raindrops. All that good stuff. Very nice.

But you know, I was sleepy. I needed something to keep me awake. Soomething other than coffee. Time for a switch. Five Finger Death Punch's War is the Answer was the answer. Banging drums, screaming, grating male voice, wailing, raging guitars, death, destruction, betrayal. Not so nice maybe, but good.

How's that for diametrical opposition? But I was better able to concentrate on my work. And that's what I needed.

What do you listen to when you need to wake up?

Quack!

Arms Flailing, Hair Flying, Sweat Dripping

  This song (Your Betrayal by Bullet For My Valentine) makes me want to play the drums. For some reason, every time I hear this song (and I hear it a lot because it's on my iPod) I can't help but bang out the drums along with it. Sitting at my desk at work, my arms flailing wildly, hair flying all over the place, sweat dripping down my face. I'm getting pretty good at it. The kids have witnessed it and surprisingly they just look at me, then continue with whatever it was they were doing. I guess they are used to my many weirdnesses.

But I have enough hobbies. Don't expect to see a drum set in my livingroom anytime soon. Of course, if Doodlebug were to decide to take up drums for the school band then all bets are off.

Quack!

That Otis Guy

Have you ever heard the song "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes? It's very catchy. I like it. Every time I hear it I start bopping to the music. But I suppose it's one of those things that upon first hearing it I probably said, "Holy crap! What the heck is this? It's terrible!" But over time, it's grown on me and now I really like it. I actually spent $0.69 to download the mp3 to my iPod. And as I was doing so, Sweet Pea was in the room. She said, "Mom! What are you listening to? That's terrible!"

And now, whenever she gets the chance, she mentions "that terrible song that Mommy likes by that Otis guy."

"That Otis guy?" Yes, that same day I was listening to "That's how strong my love is" by Otis Redding on youtube and she thought it was terrible. So all this 'terrible music' is now joined in her mind as 'that Otis guy'.

And, in regards to said 'Otis guy' I decided against purchasing any Otis Redding music. While I like it, it's a little too, oh, I don't know, old fashioned maybe? Too twangy? I don't know. Something about it I just don't like enough to purchase. But, I did discover that one of my many favorite bands, Seven Mary Three, did a cover of "That's How Strong My Love Is" on their Backbooth album - an awesome live acoustic album. So I got that and downloaded it to my iPod. I love it! The lead singer has a great voice and I really like the music.

I'm sure Sweet Pea would not agree. What I listen too is by no stretch of the imagination 'boy band music' or 'pop' which is what Sweet Pea enjoys. Too each their own, right?

Quack!

Best Christmas Song Ever

I absolutely love The Calling's version of Carol of the Bells. It's one of the best Christmas songs ever. Have a listen.

And while you're at it. Have a very merry Christmas too!


Quack!

Make Some Music

At the state fair this past summer they had a booth set up in one of the agriculture buildings with a man selling hand-crafted mountain dulcimers. The hubby and I stopped over to check it out. They were beautifully crafted instruments and the gentleman was very knowledgeable and friendly. He mentioned that there was a local dulcimer group (who knew?) that would be stopping by for a demonstration later. So later in the day we stopped back for a listen.

And, you know, I really needed another hobby. I mean, I must have about 5 minutes of each day where I'm just twiddling my thumbs. Inexcusable! So, to take up that slack and put my thumbs (and indeed, all my fingers) to work I found an affordable yet decent quality tear-drop shaped mountain dulcimer. I've had it for almost two months now and I'm really enjoying it. I'm cheating - by using the 'tabs' rather than trying to learn the notes and chords, but hey, it's a place to start. I can always learn the 'right' way at some point. For now I'm just enjoying playing a few tunes and learning how to make it sound decent.

If you're looking for an instrument to play, and don't want anything overly complex and like the sound of a string instrument I highly recommend the dulcimer!

Quack!