Category: music

I Want to be David Bowie

Posted on Posted in confessions, declarations, musicTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

blog

I want to be David Bowie. Seriously, who doesn’t? The man is from another planet, another world, across the universe and turn left at the old oak tree. He holds the universe in his head. He can see the past, present and future as he creates it.

I imagine he has his own gravitational pull. It’s enormous, and as he passes you on the street you feel the fluctuation in the Earth’s gravity as the planets and stars and moons in his universe orbit and collide and die and are born. Sidewalks buckle under the weight of his universe, oceans part. Glass bends and time is relative and rippling. No wonder he doesn’t like to fly.

What must it be like to have this vast cosmos ever circling and changing inside his head. What is it like to know the future and to move the past. As an avid fan and listener and believer and worshiper for the past twenty years or so; I feel as though he has been telling us all along.

For me, it started with The Labyrinth. I was only two when it came out, but I remember watching it young and throughout my preteen years I was obsessed with Jareth – and who the hell was this Sarah idiot to deny the Goblin King? Are you kidding me? Who saves a baby over a chance at eternity with the incomparable Mr B?

Then I became Ziggy Stardust.

No I really was Zig.

Just like anyone else who has ever taken in that album as I did – we have all been Zig. An alien rock n’ roller here to change the world but can’t take the pressure of it, we can’t bear the pain of the whole wide world but we have to carry on. For years I was wearing chandelier earrings to high school and college classes on the daily. Daydreaming about rock n’ roll suicide and wanting the palm tree platforms so badly I was ready to carve them myself. I didn’t – but still – someday…

As I have faced the inevitability of aging, maturing (I really kind of hate that word), learning and expanding my mind (cosmically and existentially – not chemically) – I have grown to love the many different Bowies. I have always loved his big hits from his crazy discography. I embraced the 60s pop hits of Davy Jones, the shark suited hits of the 80s and sh*t, I am still f*cking afraid of Americans; but I could never love anything as much as the 70s albums (of which there are eleven).

Now I get it – I just wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t ready to let Mr B open my mind and show me the future. He has been telling us all what it is all about for decades now. We just haven’t been ready to listen. We each carry his crazy universe of black holes violently tearing apart and consuming anything and everything around them, of stars being born and exploding with nuclear energy and planets and moons and matter and anti-matter.

I want to be David Bowie dammit.

Advertisement

Day Thirty Three

Posted on Posted in music, seven weeks, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

black

Today was a Pearl Jam Ten listening, Hemingway brooding, spending-too-much-time-inside-my-own-head kind of day.

So today will be the first day I use the words of another to describe exactly what my day was and what the hell was going on inside of it.

 

sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
were laid spread out before me as her body once did.
all of five horizons revolved around her soul as the earth to the sun
now the air i tasted and breathed has taken a turn

ooh, and all i taught her was everything
ooh, i know she gave me all that she was

and now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds of what was everything.
oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything

i take a walk outside, i’m surrounded by some kids at play
i can feel their laughter, so why do i sear?
oh, and twisted thoughts that spin round my head, i’m spinning, oh,
i’m spinning, how quick the sun can drop away

and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything
all the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything

all the love gone bad turned my world to black
tattooed all i see, all that i am, all i’ll be

i know someday you’ll have a beautiful life,
i know you’ll be a sun in somebody else’s sky,
but why, why, why can’t it be, can’t it be mine?

black – pearl jam

 

jesus, don’t want me for a sunbeam
sunbeams are not made like me

don’t expect me to cry
for all the reasons you had to die
don’t ever ask your love of me

don’t expect me to cry
don’t expect me to lie
don’t expect me to die for thee

jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam – the vaselines

 

Day Twenty Three

Posted on Posted in music, places, seven weeksTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

rsd blog

Once again I know I’m late getting this posted but whatever. I thought of my post all day so that still counts right? If not, too bad. Here goes.

This was a day of many many firsts. So many awesome firsts in fact that I’m not so sure I can do them all justice in this post.

For starters, today was Record Store Day 2014; the seventh RSD and with seven being one of my new lucky numbers – I feel like that was a good sign from the start. This seventh RSD my love and I started early from our Nashville hotel (we were on the seventh floor btw) to make our way to Third Man Records. We arrived to see a fairly large crowd queuing for their copy of The World’s Fastest Record and for the ten o’clock show we ourselves had two tickets for. Once we’d queued for about an hour we were shuffled in to the Blue Room sound studio to settle in for our first time seeing Jack White together.

The show was amazing, there are few words for what an outstanding showman, guitarist, singer et al he really is. Mr. White and his band warmed us up with a live version of High Ball Stepper before jamming out the live recorded direct to acetate versions of Lazareto and Elvis’ Power of My Love that were whisked away for pressing. We were treated to an hour long show spanning White Stripes hits Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hello Operator & Hotel Yorba to tracks from Blunderbuss (Freedom at 21, Weep Themselves to Sleep and Love Interruption) and a few new songs off his upcoming album. It was our first time hearing Three Women, Just One Drink and Would You Fight for My Love. We were twenty feet from the man himself and I don’t think we will quickly forget how lucky we were to be there today.

We left the show, grabbed a free free beers in the courtyard courtesy of Yazoo Brewing, grabbed some delicious iced tea and strawberry mint lemonade from Bang Candy Company and waited a bit to get into the TMR store to buy some sweet swag. While in line we spotted a dude from Criminal Minds – I don’t really know who but I know my mom watches that show and will be pumped to hear we spotted him. We even got a few goodies from the TMR Rolling Record Store.

Our next first came before we went in for our second show of the day. I met Terry Richardson it was awkward because he didn’t even try to sleep with me, but I met him and grabbed a picture too. The last first I will write of today was seeing and hearing Whirlwind Heat for the first time. Holy sh%t have I been missing an awesome band. They tore up the stage, my ears and my musical heart. It was like listening to an early, visceral White Stripes.

As we reluctantly left the Blue Room for the second and last time today we grabbed our copies of the World’s Fastest Record and the re-release of Do Rabbits Wonder? by Whirlwind Heat. Such an awesome day of firsts.

There will be more to come tomorrow from the road home. For now, goodnight from Nashville.

 

RSD14 aka Best Day Ever Track-List:

High Ball Stepper

Lazaretto

Power of My Love

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

Freedom at 21

Three Women

Weep Themselves to Sleep

Love Interruption

Hello Operator

Just One Drink

Hotel Yorba

Would You Fight for My Love

Day Seven

Posted on Posted in music, places, seven weeksLeave a comment

tmr

Today was a great day. I did some baking, had an awesome time with friends, played some pogs circa 1995, watched Tremors – all in all the makings of an awesome day.

Now for my first for the last day of my first week (what the what).

My love and I scored tickets to see Jack White perform in the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville on Record Store Day. There are not words to explain how much I am looking forward to this. For a while now I’ve been bumming that we don’t have any vacation plans this year, no plans for my big birthday coming up, no plans for our lucky seventh anniversary this summer. And voila – this morning TMR announces this crazy small show, with an extremely limited number of tickets, to see Jack White perform his new single live in the Blue Room on Record Store Day, April 19th 2014, and wait as the live recording is pressed locally and handed out to the audience within hours. It is set to be the world’s fastest record and we will be there for it all.

By the way, can we talk for a minute about Jack White? Do you realize how much of an influence he has had on the music scene these past 13 years? From Jay-Z to Loretta Lynn, musicians want to work with him. He is arguably one of the top ten greatest guitarists of all time, he is imaginative, he becomes his characters and albums. He is all power, and talent, and volume, and charisma. Yet he is cinsistantly just under the radar of mainstream music. He is a musician’s musician.

In just over two weeks we will be in Nashville to see Jack White. S*&t just got real.

It is my first time planning a trip to Nashville, my first time holding tickets to see Jack White solo (I’ve seen him with The White Stripes and The Raconteurs), my love’s first time seeing Jack White perform at all. Today’s first is awesome. I am so lucky to be going, to be with the love of my life, and to have this life.

Today was a great day.

Day Three

Posted on Posted in confessions, music, seven weeksLeave a comment

Full-Moon-Hd-Desktop-Wallpaper

Today I did a headstand in my yoga teacher training and I did not say one negative thing about myself. I might have thought a few things but I didn’t say it. Which is crazy. But that fits. Even still – I am counting two new things for day three.

Some days it is so easy to see the future unfolding before me. Others I can hardly see the point in looking up. Today was a clear day, which is great, and I am happy for that. But the ridiculous pessimist in me is terrified of failure, rejection, loss. All things that are largely out of my own control. Once I start to think on these fears, they swallow me whole. I lose myself in my own head, I start to drown, every word and thought is twisted into its own worst interpretation. The empty back hole that is depression, like a magnet, pulls you toward your darkest thoughts and fears. On clear days I can look down into the black hole and try to repair it, try to celebrate understanding myself better. That’s all we can do. Celebrate.

 

Come celebrate

Life is hard

Come celebrate

Life is hard

Our life is all we are

-Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Day One

Posted on Posted in music, seven weeksLeave a comment

avicii

Hello, my name is Annie, I’m a self-diagnosed manic depressive.

I am about to turn 30 and that scares me. It scares me because, like many people, I am not where I thought I would be at this point in my life. Thirty isn’t necessarily my scary age or anything – that might have been 25 actually – but it is a turning point. I am lucky enough to have an awesome husband who is amazing and supportive and happy. All the time. I am fortunate in so many ways – and yet it feels impossible to stay consistently happy and satisfied with life. I want to get over some of the f*&%ed up issues that have haunted much of my adult life. Battling manic depressive tendencies, self-image issues, self-doubt and hatred. I don’t want to enter my 30th year and my third decade on earth feeling the way I have for so much of my life.

A fresh start is required.

With this sense of impending doom and roiling uncertainty I have decided to commit myself to therapeutic wordplay. I will blog each day for the next seven weeks. I will commit to trying something new each day. Heavily researching a person place or thing I currently know nothing about will count. Trying a variety of different brandies and deciding once and for all whether I love it or not will count. Ordering something different at Starbuck’s will not. It’s just too shallow.

Today’s obsession is EDM (or electronic dance music to most of the world). My day started productively enough until Levels by Avicii popped in my head, and before I knew it I was trying to decide if seeing him in Vegas in April would be preferable to seeing him in the much closer and cheaper Toronto the day after my birthday. I also need to decide if sticking with the easily customizable V-Moda Crossfade LPs for $199 versus the M-100 model for $310 will mean a huge step down in sound quality when rocking out to my quickly growing selection of Avicii, David Guetta and Hardwell music. Alas, my main issue of the day has become reconciling myself to the fact that DJ Magazine ranked Armin Van Buuren over Avicii and Tiesto on their Top 100 DJs list for 2013. I await the 2014 list with baited breath. Is it possible to love EDM so much and not be a molly-soaked douchebag in Vegas, spraying sticky (and overly-priced) champagne, reeking of bad cologne? I don’t know – but I’m going to damned well try. This is Day One and I’ve already found my self jacked up on EDM video playlists and Coke Zero dancing in my living room by myself while the sun is still up. I can’t wait for Day Two.