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!

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.

“How ’bout it then?”

I can’t say I’d rather be sitting here listening to music than anything else in the world at this very moment in time…

… No, I take that back, yes I can.

Because no matter where in the world I was, no matter who I was with, no matter what I was supposed to be doing, or no matter “what fate had in store,” no matter whether I was alone, if it was dark or light, what the music was… if I choose to, I could learn everything I could possibly ever want to know from music, school be damned.

See, when the Rolling Stones said, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need,” well, what if all I wanted was simply exactly what I needed?

Ha, got you there, haven’t I, Mick? Eh, Keith?

Yeah. Because really, what more are we entitled to want? Everything else is a luxury; everything else is optional. But we have to make the choice to be OK with what we need to sustain us… just in case everything else looses its meaning or is stripped away.

And if you’re wondering whether music would then survive… you should probably leave this blog page. I mean, really. Music will always survive. Everyone has a voice, right? Or they have bodies with which to make rhythm. Or they could whistle, or make percussion. There are so many options in Nature. I like that the Stones said, “if you try sometimes, you get what you need”. Yeah, it takes effort… not to get what you need, necessarily, but to realize that what you need is really all that you could ever want or demand. And then, when you want a little more than that, you’re not disappointed if you don’t get it… or you’re pleasantly surprised when you do. It’s like being a pessimist… but it has a less negative effect on the world, and a more self-fulfilling one.

If you try sometimes…

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(Title quote from “Pirate Radio.” Great movie, if you haven’t seen it.)

Shine a Light

I wrote this movie review (of Martin Scorcese’s concert/documentary film of the Rolling Stones “Shine a Light”) for my high school newspaper. I saw the movie in an IMAX theater in Vancouver, BC.

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There are some things about your parents and their past that you just have to ignore or pretend don’t exist. Like the fact that both of them may have worn bellbottom pants and enjoyed disco balls at one time. But you can’t always just write off their music sense… or even lack thereof. I think I can truthfully say that my life changed when I started listening to what my parents said was great music.

Of course, it’s also thanks to them that I’m rather in denial about what decade to which I think I belong.

While they relive their adolescence through movies like “Across the Universe,” all I can do is long for what I missed. And while my parents were able to experience real concerts of groups like the Stones and Queen, I’m forced to only imagine what it could be like to actually sit in Mick and Keith’s audience.

It is, admittedly, a little easier to imagine in an IMAX theater where Keith’s guitar and Mick’s lips are even larger than life.

Martin Scorsese has brought us hits like “Taxi Driver,” “The Aviator,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed.” Now, he’s brought a New York stage to mere mortals who haven’t been touched by the sweat of a Stone (metaphorically speaking) or counted their wardrobe changes during a concert. Complete with snippets of black-and-white interviews straight from the 60s, Scorsese’s newest film “Shine a Light” reveals the glory of one of the finest rock groups of the British Invasion.

The main performance footage of the movie was shot at the Beacon Theater in New York City, where the Rolling Stones performed two nights in a row to packed crowds. The audience was varied in age and social status, from your average teenage girl to Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

Bill Clinton introduced the group, reminding everyone that he’d had the pleasure of doing so before, and that he still thought the Stones were forever a classic group, one that many generations could enjoy. And when the camera panned over him in the second half of the movie, he seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself.

Some say the Stones are at the absolute bottom of their game. They’re still wearing skin-tight leather and hippie-era-jewelry, while their wrinkles are growing and their skin is sagging. But they’re no less talented than when “Satisfaction” was number one on the charts. In fact, they secure their One-of-the-Greatest-Rock-Bands-of-All-Time status when they collaborate with other contemporary artists, like blues guitarist Buddy Guy, Jack White of the White Stripes and Christina Aguilera. These musicians were all featured in the movie in duets.

The Rolling Stones have always had a somewhat questionable reputation. Between the Beatles and the Stones, the Stones were always the “bad boy” band who had supposed drug references and satanic allusions in every song. They are quick to remind critics that it’s all in the interpretation, however.

The band is made up of Mick Jagger (vocals), Keith Richards (guitar), Charlie Watts (drums) and Ron Wood (bass, guitar). All are in their sixties. Their voices are gravelly, their arms are veiny and their hair is thinning. But they’re still performing, with more vigor and enthusiasm than we find in many other artists. They’re still producing music, with more talent and genius than most mainstream contemporaries.

So why wouldn’t you want to experience the closest thing you’ll ever get to seeing the second-best rock band of all time (Beatles still rank number one, of course)? Maybe because the thumping bass is just too thrilling. Maybe because the songs are too familiar and enjoyable. Maybe because otherwise, your parents might just rub it in your face that they got to experience the hype firsthand.

Or, ok… maybe because “Shine a Light” isn’t actually playing in a theater near you, let alone the IMAX. It’s bound to come to our hamlet soon, and if it doesn’t, it will definitely be available for rent. At least invest in some digital surround-sound to make the most of the experience, and watch it with someone who can relive the band’s greatest highlights.

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