Messed Around

What does your music library say about you?

*Put Your iTunes, winamp, MP3 player or whatever on SHUFFLE
*For each question, press the next button to get your answer (no cheating!)
*You must write down song/artist even if it doesn't make sense
*Include any comments in parenthesis
*Post into a NOTE with #25 as your Title

1. What do your friends say about you?
Mumbo Jumbo - Glenn Tilbrook

2. How would your coworkers describe you?
Breathe - Prodigy

3. How would you describe yourself?
Mad Kow - Weezer

4. What do you like in a romantic partner?
Island in the Sun - Weezer

5. How do you feel today?
All Over Me - Graham Coxon

6. What is your life’s purpose?
Inner City Pressure - Flight of the Conchords

7. What is your motto?
Play with Fire - The Rolling Stones

8. What do you think about the most?
Dominoes - Syd Barrett

9. What are you going to do on your next vacation?
Trust Me to Open My Mouth - Squeeze

10. What do you think of your first love/date?
We Are the Champions - Queen

11. What is your life story?
Stagger Lee - Lloyd Price

12. What did you do yesterday?
Outsider - The Ramones

13. What do you think of when you see the person you like/love?
Is That Love? - Squeeze

14. What describes your wedding?
All Over Now - Aimee Mann

15. What will they play at your funeral?
Howling at the Moon (Sha-la-la) - The Ramones

16. What is your obsession?
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window - The Beatles

17. What is your biggest fear?
Salt of the Earth - The Rolling Stones

18. What is your biggest secret?
Sweet Tuesday Morning - Badfinger

19. What is your biggest turn-on?
Dear Prudence - Siouxsie and the Banshees

20. How do you describe your friends?
Stop Your Sobbing - The Pretenders

21. What would you do with a million dollars?
Thick of It All - Porno for Pyros

22. What is your opinion of sex?
Doctor Jimmy - The Who

23. What is your biggest regret?
Liberty Ship - The La's

24. What would you rather be doing right now?
Into Temptation - Crowded House

25. What will you post this list as?
Messed Around - Squeeze

Kill Your Girlfriend

So when I was 19, I had this girlfriend. She moved away and we were broken hearted. I called her when I could, but in reality it was inevitable that we both would move on. Still, it stung a little when I called her and her mom said, "She's not here. Is this Roger?" No. I wasn't Roger. I didn't know anyone named Roger. I hung up the phone and never called that girl again. To take out my frustration, I wrote an angry, wanna-be punk song called Kill Your Girlfriend.

I had recently read a book called, And I Don't Want to Live this Life by Deborah Spungeon. Deborah's daughter, Nancy was the girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Sid killed Nancy after a night of drug abuse.

I took that story as inspiration for my broken heart and wrote my song. To ease your mind, I didn't really want to kill my (ex) girlfriend. I was just blowing off steam. I actually recorded the song that night with overdubbed backwards guitars and a wannabe Johnny Rotten singing style and forgot about it for a while.

Fast forward a few years and I was in a band called Audrey Smilley and we needed to have three hours of original music for a gig at a local club called, Broderick's. We had one week to learn it all. We played anything and everything we had ever written or thought about writing. It was only natural that Kill Your Girlfriend was resurrected (ha!). It quickly became a very popular part of our live set. Even the girls liked it, because everyone has relationship frustrations. The girls would sing, "Kill your boyfriend!" instead of girlfriend.

Anyway, my former bandmate Dale Garrard recently posted a video performance on YouTube of us doing Kill Your Girlfriend at a club called The Backstage Cafe in Provo, Utah. Enjoy!

Dog Strategies

We have two English Springer Spaniels: Odin and Daisy. They are siblings, but from different litters. Odin has been with us for two years and Daisy just since August. The other day, Odin brought me a tennis ball. He does that sometimes when he wants to play. I dutifully took it from him and threw it down the hall. He didn't even look at where I threw it or move a muscle. Instead, he stared at his sister who immediately jumped up and chased after the ball. Odin, then walked over to where she had been and confiscated the bone she had left behind. I never knew that dogs strategized until that moment. But clearly, he understood that (a) if he brought me a ball I'd probably throw it and (b) if I threw it, Daisy would probably chase it.

I know people who don't have that much foresight.

Music

Here are a couple of cool things I found floating around YouTube.

This is Squeeze doing John Lennon's Cold Turkey. I've been a Squeeze fan since the 80s and I never knew they covered this song.



This one is Radiohead doing Paranoid Android from their O.K. Computer album. The arrangement is pretty elaborate and they make it seem effortless.


The other day, I watched the Martin Scorsese movie called Shine a Light which was a Rolling Stones concert film. I like the Stones right up until about Tattoo You. After that, they seemed to be doing a passable Rolling Stones impression. Still, I wanted to see this film. It was well made, but my biggest beef is that Mick just doesn't sing anymore. He yells. He used to have a silky, smooth voice and he threw the yelling in for good effect. Now he yells all the time.

However there were three highlights in the concert. One was when Buddy Guy came out to perform Muddy Waters' Champagne and Reefer:




The next was when Jack White (of the White Stripes) came out and joined the band for Loving Cup:


For the final highlight, Cristina Aguilera came out for the song, Live With Me:


Finally, last year VH1 did an honors special featuring Elvis Costello. In addition to his own material, he did a Fiona Apple song and she in turn did one of his. It is perhaps his most twisted and insane love song and there is no one more suited to perform it than the twisted and insane Fiona Apple:

Christmas Eve

I admit I haven't been feeling very Christmasy this year. I don't know if it's because my kids are older or if I just have lost the capacity for that much excitement, but I just don't feel it.

Even listening to Christmas music or Christmas shopping hasn't helped. Maybe it's all the major negative economic news we keep getting. It's hard to lose oneself in a holiday when the news is all bad. Nevertheless, we are ready.

Every Christmas, I tend to reflect back on past Christmases. When I was a kid, I had this advent calendar. It was really a long strip of felt with yarn ties. On each tie was a Hershey kiss. You took one off each morning until Christmas.

My mom used to make home-made hard candy which my dad would take to work for his secretary and anyone else to whom he felt he had to give gifts. One morning, as he walked outside with a jar of candy, he slipped on the ice and it broke into a million pieces. Dad always had a bad back so it didn't do much good for that either.

I would be home from school for vacations, of course, and I always liked to watch Captain Kangaroo. Keep in mind that by this time, I was way too old to watch Captain Kangaroo, but there was something about his voice that was soothing. It was particularly so when he read books for us. At Christmastime, he read holiday-themed books so it really put me in the mood.

One tradition we had was that in the week or so leading up to Christmas, we would get out one of our toys from a previous Christmas. It was particularly fun to get out something we didn't play with much. It helped build the excitement leading up to the day.

Another tradition was that we were allowed to open one of our presents under the tree on Christmas Eve. That helped take the edge off the mania. You had to be careful though. If you didn't pay close attention, you might accidentally open up a sweater or some Avon gift my grandmother would get for us. No, the ideal Christmas Eve present was a toy. The success of that tradition varied from year to year, but I remember one year I opened up a GI Joe footlocker. This was a wooden box which could house GI Joe's various uniforms and weapons. You could also fit Joe in the bottom of it, so it was very cool.

When our family lived in Virginia (1971-1978), my grandmother, Nan, used to come stay with us for Christmas. I don't know why she didn't stay with my grandfather, but he only came with her once. The year he came, we lived in Lovettsville on a farm. My grandfather took me and my brother hunting. We were trying to get a pheasant for Christmas dinner. I wasn't really old enough to have a real gun, so they let me take a BB gun. I nearly got my head blown off when we flushed the pheasant and I inadvertently stepped in front of it. If my grandfather had worse reflexes, I wouldn't be writing this now. Fortunately, he didn't shoot me in the head and I lived to tell the tale. Instead, we bagged a rabbit, which my mother dutifully cleaned and served for Christmas Eve dinner. My great aunt Sue (Nan's sister) and her husband Daris were also there. Right as we sat down to bless the food, it started to snow. This would be a better story if the snow had stuck, but it just snowed for a while. Still it was a perfect moment.

My grandfather made a big noise before bed that my brother and I better not wake him up first thing in the morning because he needed his sleep. Of course, he was awake at about 5:30 a.m. screaming, "JINGLE BELLS! JINGLE BELLS! JINGLE ALL THE WAY!" at the top of his lungs. He was a big kid at heart.

Of course the most memorable Christmas eve was in 1989: the year John was born. I was still in college and we had only the barest insurance coverage It covered the birth and a 12 hour hospital stay. We were all sick that year. Shauna and Trevor had pneumonia and I had mono. John was born early Christmas Eve morning.

We took him home at about 9 that night. Trevor was two and a half so he was really super excited for Christmas. He was so excited and we were so determined not to traumatize him, what with the new brother and all. He woke up at about 3:30 in the morning and wanted to open presents. He was the first and only grandchild at the time (besides the recently born John) so he had a mountain of presents. He could only open so many before he was exhausted and we went back to bed.

At about 6:30 in the morning there was a hammering at our door. It was our pediatrician. He didn't explain or apologize, he only said "Where's the baby! I need to see him." I was dazed and led him in to where we had the basinet. He mumbled something to himself about his color and pulse and then said, "Get his coat on and come with me." He then explained that John had tested positive for Beta Strep. I'm still not exactly sure what it is, but it's very dangerous to babies. We took John to the hospital where he spent a week in intensive care. Shauna stayed there with him and I stayed home with Trevor, who needed a nebulizer about every two hours for his asthma complications and pneumonia. Luckily, Shauna's dad came up from California (we lived in Utah at the time) to help us out. It was pretty overwhelming for a while, but he pulled through.

He turned 19 today.

Sleepy Jeffers

I was born in Charleston, W.Va. When I was small, WCHS TV still had local programming which I suppose many stations across the country did as well. One of the programs I watched was a kid's show called Uncle Willie.

He was a goofy cartoony kind of guy, not unlike Captain Kangaroo, who told jokes, sang songs and introduced cartoons. He had a daughter on the show who looked to be about my age at the time. Her name was Little Linda. He could make his tie jump up and down with his Adam's Apple. That may not sound like much now, but it killed in my circle of five year olds.

Uncle Willie was played by a guy called Sleepy Jeffers. He was a big time, local radio guy who also had another show called, what else, The Sleepy Jeffers Show. This was a variety program which consisted primarily of down home country music. Not my favorite, but my parents watched it.



Years later when we moved back to W.Va., I got a job at WCHS Radio and who was the over night guy during the week? None other than Sleepy Jeffers himself! I was a part-timer so I never had to attend staff meetings, but I heard that when the meetings would get boring, Sleepy would get your attention and start wiggling his tie with his Adam's Apple.

I worked overnight Saturdays and late evening Sunday. When I worked Sunday nights, Sleepy was the guy who came in after me. He was pretty much always late. I would inevitably get a call from him at about five minutes before midnight.

"Hi Craig, this is Sleepy."

"Hi, Sleepy. What's going on?"

"I'll be there pretty soon, but I'm gonna stop by Shoney's and get something to eat. You wanna sammich?"

"That's o.k., thanks. I'll see you when you get here."

He would never be more than 10-20 minutes late and I always signed out at my regular time. I didn't want him to get in trouble. He was a local legend after all. I admit that despite the years, I was a bit starstruck. It was a pain to stay late when I had school the next day, but I'd always do it for Sleepy.

And sometimes he brought me a sandwich anyway.

Here's some highlights from Uncle Willie's last show:

Bleach

When Nirvana's album Nevermind was released it was like a revelation. It had been years since I had heard music that sounded like it was sincere, like it meant something. We had endured the 80s with its hair metal and Euro trash keyboard pop. Here was music that was urgent, loud and unexpectedly melodic. One thing I noticed about Nirvana was that if you changed the arrangement and rerecorded it, you would have some pretty snappy pop music. They were the Gen. X Beatles. They came and everything changed.

At the time I lived in southern California, working in LA. There was a youngish girl of the indie persuasion working there too. I mentioned to her that I really like Nirvana and was curious about her opinion. With a touch of disdain she said, "Well, I liked Bleach ..." Bleach was Nirvana's first release on Sub Pop and almost no one had heard it at the time because they were just a Seattle band. Now there's nothing wrong with Bleach, but it's that phenomenon where people want to prove they were early fans so they reference some obscure work and act all shocked when no one knows what they are talking about. I bet you anything that there were Liverpudlians in 1963 who said, "Well, Please Please Me is all right, but I really liked My Bonnie ..."

I read an article about Barack Obama's campaign and how people who support him think it's cooler to have old, tattered Obama stickers because they showed they got into supporting him early. What is it about humans that they need to feel like they were the first into something?

In our family we now call it the Bleach Syndrome. Whenever anyone references liking something first or some obscure work, we all shout, "Bleach!"

Yes, we're dorks.