List-o-mania

One of those ancient MySpace/Facebook quiz things.

Rules
1)Don’t take too long to think about it.
2) List Twenty-one Albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. First twenty-one you can recall – not in order of greatness!
3) Tag a few friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 21 picks, and tag people in the note)

1) Rubber Soul – The Beatles
2) Beggars’ Banquet – The Rolling Stones
3) Moondance – Van Morrison
4) Hits – Joni Mitchell
5) Breakfast in America – Supertramp
6) Mr. A-Z – Jason Mraz
7) Greatest Hits – James Taylor
8) Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan
9) Gold – ABBA (sorry. I thought a lot about it, but it’s true. I can’t imagine my life (or, rather, my relationship with my mom) without ABBA.)
10) Juno (soundtrack) – Kimya Dawson & others
11) Stop Making Sense – Talking Heads
12) Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club
13) Sympathique – Pink Martini
14) Lonely at the Top – Randy Newman
15) Nilsson – Harry Nilsson
16) Dial-a-Song – They Might Be Giants
17) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles
18) Orange Crate Art – Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks
19) Negotiations & Love Songs – Paul Simon
20) Car Wheels on a Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams
21) Greatest Hits – Simon and Garfunkel

Close runners-up, either because they’re more recent, or just because of the sheer number of times I played them:
1 – The Beatles
Greatest Hits – Heart
Greatest Hits – Pat Benatar
Standing in the Shadows of Motown (soundtrack) – The Funk Brothers (+Various motown artists)
A Mighty Wind (soundtrack) – Various
This Is Spinal Tap (soundtrack) – Spinal Tap
Come On Feel The Illinoise – Sufjan Stevens
Viva La Vida – Coldplay
Continuum – John Mayer

Tell me yours!

Still the best band at warp speed?

There are many, many crazy people in this world. In some, their brand of ‘crazy’ manifests itself as genius.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the following internet gem is genius, but it certainly is innovative and imaginative. This is a mash-up of 12 Beatles albums (the UK releases), played chronologically at 800x their normal speed. It takes an hour to get through them all and, yes, I did listen to the whole thing.

What can I say? It was tempting. It’s the Beatles! And as some people in my life know, I’m hardcore dedicated to the band and all trivia associated with them. So, I had to listen.

I ate lunch, painted my nails, followed along in iTunes, and experienced this weirdness.

The first few albums were extremely difficult to get through. The songs aren’t really distinguishable and they all just sound like generic… well, generic crap.

But after that, things pick up and the individual albums sort of become different masterpieces on their own. It’s not good as music goes, maybe not even as most experimental creations go, but it is inventive and new, which was all I was looking to get out of it.

My major complaints with this endeavor were:
First, the accompanying video clips are ridiculous. They don’t make any sense, have no context, and (for the most part) aren’t even entertaining or enjoyable to look at.
Second, the breaks between songs should have been omitted. In that way, the creation would have been more novel. It wouldn’t have just been like jamming Beatles songs together; it would have been like a whole new 61-minute song. I would have liked that.

At least spend a couple minutes on it: maybe one minute at the beginning and then about 45 minutes in. Or, if you really can’t stand to listen to it at all, just read Nick Gall’s comment from July 26, 2011. Hilarious.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/all_the_beatles_albums_in_sixty_one_minutes/

Sai Guru Deva (or: An overdue homage to four handsome young men)

I woke up this morning staring at my “Abbey Road” album cover poster. I listened to “Good Day Sunshine” on my iPod, and I put on a Magical Mystery Tour shirt. Now, for fear of being ostracized by the Evergreen community for being too mainstream, I’ll assert my hipness: I do listen to bands you’ve never heard of, I own vinyl, and sometimes I even wear plaid. But my roots are with the Beatles, and most of the time I think I owe any of my good taste and creativity to them.

It started when I was 9. I looked over my parents’ shoulders as they read the paper and saw a picture of four very handsome young men. “Who are they?!” I asked. My poor parents must have thought they had failed as guardians and educators. “Well, they’re the Beatles!” they said. “Who are the Beatles?” I asked. Again, faces of dismay.

“They were a band when we were growing up, but they’re still very popular.”

“Were they bigger than Britney Spears?” (In retrospect, that moment may have been one of the lowest points of my life.) Their faces of dismay turned into faces of disgust. Britney Spears was pretty much the only contemporary pop star I knew about; I listened to music my parents listened to (motown, 90s adult contemporary like Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks) but didn’t ask questions about who they were or to what era they belonged.

“Yes. They were much bigger than Britney Spears. They still are. They were bigger than Jesus.” My dad probably smirked as he said that, but I would have no idea what it meant ’til years later.

“Well, were they any good?”

My dad probably hesitated a bit. He would have wanted to remain loyal to the memory of the Beatles, but he knew in fact that some of their material was mediocre at best.

“The best,” my mom said.

Someone gave me a homemade CD copy of “1,” (still a bit obscure in 1999) and it was well-loved and scratched within a week. I didn’t know what the song titles were, so I made the track list up myself. When I checked them perhaps years later, some of them, like “Yesterday,” were spot on. Others were called things like, “Blue Suburban Skies,” “Christ, You Know It Ain’t Easy,” and “Back to Where You Once Belonged.” I pinned the original picture from the paper on my wall. And I started asking questions.

Suddenly all I wanted to know was about the music my parents listened to when they were growing up. Then all I wanted to know was each story that went with the songs. First they told me where they were when the Beatles arrived in the United States, where they were during that first Ed Sullivan TV show. That continued with every other “parent-era” icon I discovered: Hendrix, the Stones, Van Morrison, Heart, Supertramp…

But it’s with the Beatles that I’ve developed some of the best memories of my own. They’ve brought me closer to some of my best friends, and they’ve made me realize some of my worst friends. My best friend back home was Em, who was new to my school in 8th grade. Even then I think I knew that she would become a great person, but I never knew she was going to be my friend. By the end of week one, she had somehow proven her astounding knowledge of Beatles trivia, and I was not to be outdone. I swore she was my rival. That was the year my grades started to slip, and I focused on academics less. I’m not blaming the Beatles… but maybe it was the fact that I started making flash cards for their notable recording dates rather than my science class. Anyway, by the end of week two of knowing her we were best friends. I guess if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Eventually my passion led me to disassociate myself with some so-called friends. In 10th grade, this kid came up to me and said that his pastor had told him not to listen to the Beatles, and that they were un-Christian. Then he handed me a packet of quotes and song lyrics and famous musicians that his pastor (or something) had deemed sacrilegious (or something). It included some admittedly incriminating quotes by Metallica and Kurt Cobain, but there were also some lines by artists like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. James Taylor and Joni Mitchell! “The secret o’ life is enjoying the passage of time” and “bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air”?!

At the time, I vowed never to listen to or intentionally befriend someone who didn’t like the Beatles, but later I realized it was bigger than that. I vowed never to listen to or intentionally befriend someone who was so literal and narrow-minded. I think I’ve done pretty well, with a few exceptions, but that’s not the point. Some people aren’t literal or narrow minded, and they just don’t like the Beatles like I do. And I’m friends with a few of those people, and I’m ok with that. They can snigger or shake their heads at the numerous Beatles posters to which I wake up every morning, and I’m ok with that.

They can say that “All You Need Is Love” is too contrived and unimaginative, but I can still love it and deeply appreciate the fact that it begins with the French national anthem.

They can say that “Good Day Sunshine” is too simple and too cheery, but I can still listen to it every Groundhog day, especially if there isn’t 6 more weeks of winter.

They can say that “the Beatles are bigger than Jesus” is irreparable and condemning damage to the reputation of what might have otherwise been a great band, but I can know better. The character in the movie “Pirate Radio” called The Count says, “there will always be poverty and pain and war and injustice in this world but there will, thank the lord, also always be the Beatles.” I can guarantee you that more people in this world have listened to the Beatles than have read even one passage of the New Testament. That’s not sacrilegious; that’s fact. And that gives me more hope that there may not always be poverty and pain and war and injustice in the world than to know that there are approximately 2.1 billion Christians in the world. Sai guru deva.

What if Kurt was one of us?

Tonight’s procrastination is not like any other night of procrastination.

Ok, I kind of take that back. Most nights of serious procrastination end up about the same: It’s midnight, I’ve written about 300 words of a 2000-word paper, and all I can do is listen to the Beatles and cry.

I don’t know if that makes you want to feel sorry for me, but please don’t. Not only do I bring this upon myself, but I also don’t actually have any reasons to be crying.

But tonight seems different. I’ve gotten into a major Glee phase lately (maybe later we can go into details about what a “major phase” is), and I’m finally caught up on all the episodes… all except one. For some reason, the third episode of season 2 was the only video that I couldn’t find anywhere online, so that’s the one I skipped, moving on to the latest 3 episodes.

Then I downloaded all of the Glee music I could find from FrostWire.

Then I heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” sung by Glee’s Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer). It’s a version close to what Prudence did in “Across the Universe,” and I love it. The really strong bass line, the anguish in the progression of the lyrics… It’s all there. So I would have remembered Kurt singing it, and I didn’t. Of course it was from the one episode I missed.

I found it on YouTube, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. It will probably be removed soon, but I’d still encourage you to look it up.

I’m really not sure why Glee strikes me so much now. It’s pretty cheesy, it doesn’t really apply to me, all it does is make me wish I was back in high school with my jazz ensemble and that I could sing better. But lately it’s kind of what gets me out of bed. I know that’s an awful thing to say, but my class feels dead-end and inserting myself into fictional musical storylines just seems like what I need.

By now I managed to find episode 3 of the second season, and it might just be my favorite episode so far. It’s almost undoubtedly the most powerful episode ever of Glee, and it also is the one that hit most home for me. One reason is because of the Beatles song, another reason is because it had me choked up the whole second half, another is because it featured Kurt, my favorite Glee clubber, heavily, and it also reminded me most of some of my experiences in high school. You can’t sum up all of life’s questions and whether or not you have answers in one episode of a tv show, but I think it’s admirable that at least those issues are being brought up on national television.

And now maybe I’ll try to tackle some of them in my school paper.

Make it better.

The News That Matters

“EMI and Apple Corps have announced they will be releasing a limited edition apple-shaped USB drive containing all 14 of the remastered Beatles albums as well as artwork, documentaries and other extras.

On 7 December, 30,000 of the drives will go on sale for £200 each.”

 

 

http://digg.com/d3196aj

[Something]‘s Gonna Change My World

I have about ten saved drafts of other posts I’ve started over the past couple weeks… but on this day, I feel more like starting anew.

You know how they tell you in high school that once you get into “the real world, then blah blah blah”? I never knew whether the Real World started after college, or before, or during, or at the moment of graduation from high school, or right when you became financially independent, or what. Who knows whether any of us are in the Real World at all. (I know that statement is a little too Matrix-y, but whether it’s a metaphor or not, sometimes there IS a world (or many other worlds) out there to which we are blind or deaf).

Occasionally, I know that I’m living in the world in my head. Occasionally, I know that I’m living in a fantasy world created by the media. Occasionally, I know that I’m living in the Real World.

This is what the real world is like: In college, they don’t hold a moment of silence for the lives lost during 9/11/01. I remember in middle and high school (gawd, I’m old) when we would stand with bowed heads, and I’m sure it happens still. But I’m not in an environment where that’s done, and I don’t know why. It’s not that I want that moment of silence…

I think I just want to comprehend the suffering of others. Or maybe I don’t, but I feel like I should. For instance, I have a friend who is in Ghana right now (her blog is at http://heidigroover.blogspot.com/. She updates often and her insight is really great–check it out). She’s sort of a participant observer in the third world/developing country scheme there, and she witnesses first hand the conditions in which the natives live.

It seems like things like that are really valued in our society, because we like to think we’re pretty privileged (when it’s put in perspective). On the other hand, being able to step back and have an honest, solid empathy for those who are suffering is “good.” When Hurricane Katrina happened, the rest of the United States felt sympathetic toward the victims and their loss.

When 9/11 happened, people all over the United States empathized and mourned (partly because it was a threat to everyone, not just those in NYC and the Pentagon).

But what if I can’t comprehend that?

I end up feeling completely heartless simply because I don’t understand suffering. I know what it is, of course, and I’ve experienced a tiny bit myself on a very small scale, but I just haven’t been able to look at suffering in terms of feelings. In other words, I can listen to specific stories of people’s losses around 9/11 and genuinely feel bad for them, but I can’t share their sorrow.

I look at Katrina as a mass loss of homes, pets, belongings, finances, loved ones… but not as a loss of hope or a loss of esteem.

I look at 9/11 as a mass loss of lives and loss of assets (buildings, money). I know it is symbolic, but I have some sort of emotional block from knowing what that really means for our country and for the people more directly affected by the attack.

And I won’t lie; I feel quite awful about all of this. It’s not like I’m apathetic toward everything. It’s just that I guess I have no way of translating that sorrow, so far removed from me, to something closer to home.

But how important is it, to share that burden of sorrow? I feel like it’s a duty for me as an American citizen to feel personally hurt and scared by the events of 9/11. I don’t. But is that something around which the United States really needs to rally?! Do we really need to take on some more pain, and remember it every year?

I may not be very adept [yet?] at feeling empathetic toward others’ pain, but I can sure as hell share their joy.

Heidi, my friend in Ghana, said that she witnessed a funeral procession in one Ghanian village where one of the elderly men in the town had just died. She says, “It was strange to see the way they celebrated the life of the 85-year-old man who had died instead of mourning the fact that he was gone. Even the signs posted around town announced the ‘Celebration of Life,’ not the ‘Funeral ‘or ‘Ceremony.’” (http://heidigroover.blogspot.com/2009/09/830-first-little-big-adventure.html).

I think joy is more universal than sorrow. Even with all the famine, disease, poverty, and other misfortunes ailing many parts of the world, those trials only make small things easier to appreciate, therefore creating more joy. Why don’t we rally around hope? Didn’t Barack Obama’s campaign prove that hope is a much more effective tool?

For a while, I remember plans being laid for an “uplifting” memorial to 9/11 at Ground Zero. While I do think it’s important to keep such an event in our history, I remember a line from one of my favorite movies saying something like, “the best way to forget something is by commemorating it.” Are we afraid of seeming heartless if we just move on? Are we not saving the victims still suffering from the effects of the attacks from enduring further strife?

In a way, it’s not so bad to not comprehend suffering. In fact, I think it’s pretty normal. I think confusion is a more natural and positive response than anger and hatred (but that’s not saying much).

How long did the people who started blaming others for the attacks stop to ruminate on what had actually happened? Life should not be a grand “whodunnit?” setup. Some things are mysteries, including the human brain, heart, and soul, as well as their feelings and functions.

I am not saying that we wouldn’t need to find out who was responsible for something like 9/11. I’m also not saying that anger is not part of the grieving process (i.e., anger IS part of the grieving process). But what do we need to do (personally and on a larger scale) to ensure that compassion is ALSO part of the process, enough to the point where we realize that anger and hatred are only bred from not understanding. We don’t understand death; it has always been mysterious. But we also know that to every time, there is a season. In the heat of the moment, it’s impossible to recognize something like that. I just wonder when blame has solved a problem, and whether it’s reliable enough to keep trying.

Though I may live in a bubble, and only venture into the Real World occasionally, my bubble does facilitate some self reflection. If I’m honest with myself in admitting that I don’t understand suffering and I don’t understand death, I can also realize that I share more common ground with people in joy than in sorrow. Rather than using ignorance in a way that is harmful to myself and others, I would like to exploit the similarity of joy, and breed compassion, hope, and love. Love can penetrate any personal bubble.

“Limitless, undying love which shines around me like a million suns, it calls me on and on, across the universe.” -The Beatles.

Yoko Oye.

I also follow Yoko Ono on Twitter, which was an embarrassingly huge step for me. It has taken me years to recognize the profound love than she and John shared, no matter how much it may have negatively affected John’s other relationships.

Anyway, I love it when people recognize that the first step towards peace is letting people know it’s out there. Peace exists; let us find it within ourselves first, and then learn how to spread it. Yoko, at least from her Tweets, seems like that kind of person, and I can really respect that. Plus, whatever she’s doing for “art” is a step in the right direction, so I want to praise her for actually trying.

Come to think of it, [and please excuse the shameless way I say "we" through all this, as if I were there], I have a few things for which we can at least recognize, if not praise, her.

• Dealing with all of us Beatles freaks who wanted to do very un-Lennon/Ono-like things to her. People have been against her since the day she stepped into John’s life and came out of the woodwork. A part of me thinks that the world wouldn’t have reacted half as strongly if John had settled down with some gorgeous American blonde bimbo, just because it would have made more sense. After all, those were the “type” he’d fallen for before. But then came this Japanese slice of nothing, and suddenly he was head-over-heels for her. And instead of shaking our heads and sighing and just being happy for him, we were outraged. Not only were there tons of things wrong with her… there was nothing right about her! What did he see in her? blah blah blah. Then, to top it all off, The Beatles just *happened* to break up, and regardless of how much influence Yoko had over that in the studio, there was no mistaking the fact that John was obviously distracted and otherwise engaged. But… well, there is no “but.” The break-up was an absolute tragedy. If there was some good light about it all, though, it would be that John was [apparently] happier than ever. And as long as he was still making great music, we should have been thrilled that he had found love.
• Dealing with John’s passing as well as she did. I cannot imagine her devastation, and frankly I’m impressed that she was able to pull through it (especially since she sort of had to carry the weight of the rest of the world’s mourning as well).
• Pushing the boundaries. Since I haven’t really warmed up to her for very long, I haven’t seen any of the work she’s produced. I’ve heard about some of it, though, like the 8-hour video of a fly crawling up a naked woman’s body. You can’t tell me that had been done before. Yoko pushed the boundaries of art in a way that the Beatles pushed the boundaries of rock. …Ok, maybe not that much, but both are an inspiration.
• Staying in the public eye. I used to hate her for this. Why couldn’t she just disappear back into the woodwork from whence she came, so we wouldn’t have to deal with her always talking about how amazing John was and what her new project is? In fact, I think we all sort of wished she’d shut up altogether–about peace, about art, about the Beatles, about herself… I don’t really know why. Maybe because even though we’d had 10 or 11 years, we hadn’t quite gotten used to her. Maybe we were hoping that John would get bored and call the whole thing off or make it an extended fling. But she ended up his widow, and she wasn’t going to let us ignore that.

“Oye” means “listen” in Spanish (correct me if I’m wrong–I took French), and I think Yoko deserves that from us. She’s pretty much the closest remaining piece of John that we have; maybe we should cherish that. After all that she’s been through, she hasn’t turned bitter and she’s still preaching John’s message of peace. Far from excommunicating Yoko Ono, let’s join her in wanting war to be over.

Lucky.

I had this moment of epiphany (among many, the other day) where I realized that this picture I had was of something very different than what I thought it was. 

It’s the picture I uploaded for the pic of this site– the peace sign one. That was painted on the side of a building in Laurel Canyon in Hollywood, where many many stars have lived and live now. 

It has been my desktop picture for some time now, so I’ve been looking at it for quite a while. And I always saw the white form on top of the peace sign as a white dove, which made sense since they’re the symbol of peace.

But the other day, while I was staring at my computer and shedding more tears over the dumb situation with my parents, I realized it was a hand holding the peace sign… and of course, in my weakened state my whole world came together at an apex at the moment I realized that and what it meant– we all hold peace in our hands, and when we don’t realize that, we keep “waiting for the world to change,” and nothing happens. 

I have fewer doubts now that peace WILL spread, as long as individuals take advantage of the power of peace that each holds in his hands. 

It’s not a joke that I believe in music so fully. It’s not just because I’m so at a loss for something else to believe in, it’s not just because I’m so lazy that all I do is listen to music anyway, so that might as well be what I have faith in. It’s not just because that’s what I grew up with instead of a religious background, so that’s all I know. All of those things may be true, but in my defense I will say that it’s not for lack of thought that I’ve come to the conclusion that music is the most real and most powerful thing we can believe in.

If I really wanted to go out on a limb, I would proclaim my belief that furthermore, the Beatles have everything one needs to live. Again, my ignorance is “at fault,” because I’m sure many people would say, “well, that’s because you haven’t heard ________.” I realize that the Beatles themselves aren’t the epitome of perfection (though they’re pretty damn close). I realize that they aren’t even very good musicians or musical geniuses, in comparison with people like Hendrix or Santana, or the classical greats like Bach or Tchaikovski. But personally, their music speaks to me more than anyone else I’ve ever heard. 

Anyway, can I hear an Amen?! I’m sure there are others out there that have felt music resonate with them more than any sermon or revelation. Maybe not. Can I hear a Nay from the others?

I’m Lucky I’m in love with [the Beatles]. Ironically, I haven’t listened to the Beatles at all today… Jason Mraz (who is also a musical god) has been my soundtrack so far. And yes, I do go some days without listening to the Beatles at all. Just like many people go many days without going to church. It doesn’t mean we’re without worship or recognition of the Greatness.

Quartet for the End of Time

Today was ironic because it was the date of the publication of the first-ever “Counter Point Journal,” which was created in obvious rebuttal to our formal school newspaper, and this week I designed almost three pages in our Cooper Point Journal.

Today was ironic because I’m writing this paper on faith, and I’m way behind. I figured out that I wanted to work in the idea of music, and that people can ultimately have faith in music. Then, I accidentally uncovered an email that my mom sent me months back that I’d never read, because it was a forward. But it was called “A Contemplation on Music,” and it was a welcome address given to freshmen at the Boston Conservatory by Karl Paulnack, who teaches there. It’s perfect–it has every tidbit I want and need for my paper. But it contains all the sentences I wish I could say. He recommends many classical pieces, one of which I’m listening to right now. It’s called “Quartet For The End Of Time,” by Olivier Messiaen. He was French and lived in the 1940s, when he was captured and sent to a German concentration camp. There, he wrote this piece, that was composed for four musicians– the four he found in the camp, including himself. It’s dark.

Today is ironic because, to couple with finding that paper in my email, I had one of the best classes ever. Our teachers brought in a panel of three other faculty members who could talk to us about faith. They spoke of their experiences and bared some parts of their pasts, which made them very vulnerable. Andrew, one of my seminar leaders, even said that he felt so uncomfortable with it that he wouldn’t have been able to talk like that at the beginning of the year. But now, he said, he trusts us more. I took that very personally, and was thrilled to hear that we were deserving of his stories.

That’s ironic, because I was very excited about my fantastic class time and all I wanted to do was tell my parents. And all I asked was that they be together so they could put me on speakerphone and we could all talk at the same time. But, my mother went to the lake again (which I don’t fault her for, really) which meant I couldn’t talk to them simultaneously. And I refuse to say everything twice! That always happens, and I hate it. It always sucks the second time and I leave things out and I’m not enthusiastic and it feels like a chore.

So then I wished I could call Shadow up right now and talk to him about this! Then life would be perfect. Actually, if I had a sibling right about now it would make me SUPER happy. Mom always said that the most solid thing that helped her get through her parents’ divorce was her brother. I don’t have one (but I’m not going through a parent’s divorce). What now?

I feel like there’s something else that I could reach out to to help balance things a bit, but I have no idea what it is. I’ll probably have some revelation where I realize it was God I was searching for all along, but I’m not ready for that yet.

Right now I just want to listen to Beatles and find the comfort I know.