French Horn Rebellion – Cold Enough (ft. Jody Watley)
Just when all the snow from the blizzard had finally disappeared from the yard, another snow storm is headed our way. Sigh.
I know the snow won’t stick around long but we were beginning to see signs of spring here and there. A witch hazel bush in bloom, a handful of brave crocuses, fat buds on the trees, it’s lighter later and in just a few days we set the clocks ahead, We’re nearly there. But I sure wish it wasn’t going to be cold enough for it to snow. I’ll take raw, cold rain over snow every time. I know, it’s not pretty, but you also don’t have to shovel it.
The brothers of French Horn Rebellion crack me up and as a former French Horn player myself, I appreciate the name. I can just picture a frustrated dance party aficionado stuck playing the horn in the symphony. It reminds me of that scene in Dazed and Confused when they’re in the car and Mike is telling his friends he doesn’t want to go to law school. When they ask him what he does want to do, he says, “I wanna dance!” If you’ve never seen the movie, you should definitely watch it, especially if you’re old enough to remember the 70s. Or maybe, especially if you’re not old enough.
Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant Hapus! Or, Happy St. David’s Day! St. David is the patron saint of Wales, where I went for graduate school to a small university in the middle of mid-west Wales. That’s the middle of the middle of nowhere. The town had more sheep than people and more pubs on its two main streets than any other kind of establishment. At least half of the town spoke Welsh as their first language and their English was so heavily accented that even if they didn’t speak Welsh, you had a hard time figuring out what they were saying.
It was a crazy place. Truly crazy. I lived in a graduate student house owned by the university called Green Acres. Me and ten men. We all had our own rooms (actually I think there was a double in the basement level) but shared the kitchen and the bathrooms (one on each floor). There was one other American besides myself and two Canadians who got how funny it was that this place was called Green Acres. There were plenty of jokes about me being the Eva Gabor character but really, this line in the Wikipedia entry for Green Acres pretty much sums it up, “Much of the humor of the series derived from the ever-optimistic yet short-fused Oliver attempting to battle against and make sense of the largely insane world around him.” Yup. As another American grad student we were friends with said once, “Wales, it’s like M*A*S*H (the tv show), if you don’t laugh, you’re gonna cry.”
I met my husband there. He was a Swedish exchange student (bizarrely, this was one of only four universities in the UK to have a Swedish program so they had a, relatively speaking, large number of Swedish exchange students) in the same grad program as me. Most of the other students in our program had either been undergrads at the university or at least had been through a UK institution and lived in the area and the crazy was just normal to them. We would get together after class and compare; is it like this in Sweden? No! Is it like this in the States? No! We bonded over our shared confusion and endless search for decent coffee in a land of tea drinkers (well, really, beer drinkers).
This was the mid-90s and there was actually a surge in Welsh bands making it big. Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, but I have a real soft spot for Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Partly for their name, partly because they sang in Welsh, and mostly because they hailed from Carmarthen, the nearest place to catch the train east to England and London. If getting anywhere hadn’t been an all day affair, I might have been able to catch a couple of these bands while I was there but the bus schedules were…challenging.
My mother printed out and saved all the emails I sent her because she found the whole thing so amusing. One day I’ll ask her for that file folder and write a book about it or maybe a screenplay. The whole time we were there it just felt like you were in some kind of absurdist drama. I love it now, and think back very fondly on all of the bizarre experiences I had there, but it was without question, the strangest year of my life.
I just learned that today is Cindy Wilson’s birthday so in honor of that, some vintage B-52’s from 1978. I think seeing them like this, especially if you are not old enough to have known them in anything pre-Cosmic Thing, you get a different sense of the band.
They were always a campy band out for fun but I think the whole Love Shack era had a weird effect. I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it but it’s almost like the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at someone. In the early days, dancing around with your friends to the first (yellow) album or Wild Planet, especially as a newly minted junior high student, meant you were cool. I had the good fortune of having older siblings who brought home all kinds of music I might otherwise never have been exposed to at that age. By the time Cosmic Thing came out and large-scale fame had found them, it was no longer cool.
The other great thing about this video is that you now know how to do the Aqua-velva and the Escalator.
And you may ask yourself, how do I work this?
And you may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?
Every once in a while, I find myself feeling this way. Am I really an adult responsible for raising two children? Am I really supposed to know all the things the other parents seem to know like, what makes an acceptable contribution to the golf-themed gift basket (?!) for my second grader’s school fund raiser? I feel like David Byrne, hitting his head over and over again. Surely I missed some vital information along the way here. I’m the person who decides what we’re all having for dinner (and has to make it)? How the hell did that happen? The family is counting on me to keep a roof over out heads and large automobiles in the driveway? What?!
You may ask yourself, am I right am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god what have I done?
The doubt creeps in during those quiet moments. When the sixth grader’s science homework question (water dissolving) suddenly has me unsure of everything I thought I knew. Crap! I forgot all this stuff after the test! I thought we were never supposed to need to know it anymore! I’ve been entrusted with making sure two whole people become thoughtful, intelligent members of society?! Shit! You know, it was easy when they were babies, I thought, I’ve got this. Teach them to walk, write their names, ride a bike, no problem. The discipline wasn’t too hard, teaching what’s good and what’s bad was pretty cut and dried. As they’ve gotten older though, there is much that is hard to define and I look at them sleeping and think, ooof. We have not even hit the teenage years yet.
Same as it ever was, Same As It Ever Was!
I’m sure this is nothing new. I’m sure my mother had no idea when she was 23 and had my oldest sister, what lay in store for her. I think most people who contemplate having children tend to think about babies, toddlers, young school-aged children. My kids are still young but I can see what’s just on the other side and I remember what kind of trouble teenagers can get into. My high schools resembled Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Most of us made it out just fine, but not everyone. How much of that is luck and how much is shaped by what I’m doing now? Letting the second grader take his Skylander figure to school is not a decision that’s going to alter the universe much. Letting the sixth grader start to go places on her own and unsupervised gets a little harder. By the time we get to learning to drive I am sure I will have an ulcer.
Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us
Letting the days go by, letting the days go by
It’s good that this all happens really slowly over months and years. It isn’t really just Once in a Lifetime. There are days when you might wish for the current phase to be over and to have only existed that one time. Like colic. But by now you know that whatever you’re currently dealing with will pass, there will be a little lull and then the next challenge will crop up. Until then, you just have to let the days go by, into the blue again. Dancing may help.
Living in New England, we are pretty well stocked with colleges and, subsequently, college radio stations. In my long commute I drive through the broadcast range of at least five of them. I know a lot of people who just categorically don’t listen to fm radio anymore but I do, in part because of these college stations.
To be sure the shows can be pretty hit or miss. You will have one post-punk show followed by three hours of polka music. A new releases show (where I heard this song on my drive in this morning) and then a basketball game. For this reason my alarm clock’s radio is usually set to one of three commercial radio stations (each in a different state but we’re packed in tight like that) that define themselves as alternative or progressive.
Of course there’s also the internet and the endless amount of music there. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes and I often feel like I am hopelessly out of it. How do people do it? I think back to when I considered myself to be much more aware of new bands and it was when I was young, single, and living in a city. I spent a lot of time going to clubs and seeing bands and buying zines. I don’t really have the time or budget for that level of immersion now. I skim the surface, easy enough with the internet, but I don’t delve as deeply as I did before.
It does feel like a hurdle sometimes and I can understand how some of my friends have just decided they aren’t that interested in adding to their music collection. I still listen to (and love) a lot of the music I did 25 years ago. But I also love going out to see bands in small clubs and that means keeping an ear tuned to what’s new. I’ll never be as well-informed as I’d like but I’m still going to try.
I recently heard the expression, sitting is the new smoking. I laughed but a second later I thought, heh, oops.
I spend most of my day sitting. First there’s the hour plus I spend in the car to get to my job where I sit, pretty much all day. Then I sit in the car for more than an hour again, stand up for a bit in the kitchen, sit to eat dinner, walk around a little while prodding the kids through their nighttime routine, sit again until I go to bed. At that rate I must be the sitting equivalent of a pack a day smoker.
We belong to the Y and I can use the gym at work, I just need to factor in the time and make myself do it. When it’s freezing cold out and there’s all that snow, my motivation is non-existent.
What always helps is having a kick-ass playlist to spur me into action. So help me out and suggest some good songs to add to a workout list for my iPod. If they make you think of sunshine and warm temperatures, windows open, all the better. In February I need all the help I can get to make it to spring.
Sometimes it’s hard to find a good video for the song you want to use. This is one of those times.
Back in the early-mid 80s, I was not much of a U2 fan. I didn’t have to be to still know all their songs. I always had a friend who was a devoted follower so you’d hear them no matter what. I admit at the time, I didn’t really pay a lot of attention. I bought The Unforgettable Fire at some bargain bin sale a few years ago. When I put it on I was instantly transported back to cold bus rides home from high school football games (I was in the band).
Those dark, frigid days have been on my mind lately as we had a blizzard last weekend that dropped about 20″ of snow and knocked our power out. That wasn’t really a surprise, it happens every time a hurricane comes around. The difference is hurricanes usually occur in warmer months and lose their steam as they head north so the last couple of times, I’ve taken the kids up to my mother’s in Maine to ride it out. We’d lose power at home and my husband would stick around in the area to assess any damage and let us know when it was safe to come back. It’s been nice to have that refuge though I’ve felt a little guilty about just escaping the worst of it and waltzing back in when everything is comfortable again. I’m not going to feel bad about that any more.
Heading north wasn’t going to help us escape a blizzard (and sure enough my mother got buried, snow up to the door handle) so we stayed put. I had left the heat up a little higher than usual, made the kids take their showers early, found the flashlights and was just finished making dinner when the lights first began to flicker. We managed to finish eating but didn’t get the dishes done before the power went out. I played a board game with the kids, we read some books, then went to bed early. My seven-year-old was scared so I let him sleep in with me and my husband took the futon. I’m not used to going to bed that early so I was awake for a while in the middle of the night using a little of my precious battery power on my phone to see how others were making out.
It was 52 degrees inside the house when we woke up. Bearable but chilly. We made a tent in the playroom and lined it with blankets and pillows to try and trap some heat in. I went out in search of coffee and to see if anyone in the neighborhood had power.
See those wires? Coated with inch thick ice and hanging ridiculously low. I knew we’d be in for another cold night as I didn’t see any plows or power company equipment anywhere. The kids were being good sports about it all, even when their iPod and Nintendo DS ran out of power. We played some more board games (note to self, buy new games you can stand to play more than once), ate cold pasta, cereal, whatever anyone found palatable at the new room temperature was fine with me.
With the sun down it got cold, fast. Both kids piled into the bed with me and we took turns reading aloud by flashlight, gloves and hats on to keep the parts out of the covers from getting too cold. It reminded me of the first year we moved up to Maine. Our house in NY hadn’t sold so we were living in rented houses, the first one an unheated summer cabin which we stayed in until Thanksgiving. My sister and I shared a room, wearing two layers of pajamas and socks, mittens and hats to bed. My mother and younger sister shared a single bed, with the cat on top, just to keep warm. We survived that, have some really great inside jokes and stories we can tell, this is going to be fine, I told myself.
Because of the cold or the early bedtime, I woke up again in the middle of the night. I thought back to those days in the unheated house. As a teenager, it was something to be gotten through, put up with, grumble about. I’m sure I never gave any thought to what my mother was going through, teenagers aren’t known for their great empathy with their parents after all. Now I am the mother and I was responsible for making sure we did all survive it fine with nothing more than a good story to tell. Things sure look different from this side of the fence. The temperature in the morning was down to 42F. We were in the midst of getting ready to pack up and head to a friend’s house when the power company called with an anticipated restoration of power for 2pm. Phew! And thanks, Mom, for the grace I never even knew you were showing under all that pressure.
Today I’m over at Midlife Mixtape writing about an album I discovered years ago that is still in rotation on my stereo. Let It Be by The Replacements has been with me a long time. Head on over and check it out.
Instead of watching Jeff Mangum perform this song tonight, like originally planned, I’m listening to a blizzard roar outside. Show’s been rescheduled, I leave you with this.
My brother’s best friend (he’s really like a second brother to us all) nicknamed us The Primitive Family sometime when they were still in high school. The title stuck and I’m sorry to say, I seem to be carrying on the family tradition.
We earned that distinction by having a number of household appliances that were in sad shape but money was tight, what with six kids to put through college, so we made do. This meant there was a pickle jar holding up one end of a shelf in the fridge. The tv needed time to warm up, five minutes or so, and the knob to change the channels had fallen off. For a while it remained on top of the tv and you would have to get up and put it on, then turn it to your channel and place it back on top of the tv. That last part only lasted until the cat managed to lose it and a pair of needle nosed pliers were left on top of the tv instead.
The record player also needed time to warm up before it reached the required speed. You could help it along by pushing the turntable around with your finger to get it going and then click the switch back and forth from 33 1/3 to 45. Once you had it going at something that looked like 45, you could chance turning it down 33 1/3. If you didn’t wait long enough, the weight of the arm and needle could drag it to a stop. We also became very adept at grabbing records off and dropping them down without letting the turntable stop.*
I’m sure there were other problems with the washer or dryer and let’s not even talk about cars. The car I’m currently driving used to belong to my sister so it’s no wonder that it shares this Primitive Family gene. The rear windshield wiper only works sometimes and only if you click it back and forth from on to spray and back several times. Occasionally I forget that I’ve left it in the on position, after giving up in frustration, only to have it suddenly start moving fifteen minutes later.
This morning I noticed a small hole in the floor in my daughter’s room. A knot in the floorboard had fallen through. I’m not surprised. The house is over 150 years old and the old floors have big gaps between each board, large enough to hold any number of Lego weapons. So I took a cork and shaved it down to fit and lopped off the top. Good as new. That’s actually the second time I’ve made some kind of home repair with a cork. A number of years ago in a terrible rainstorm I plugged up a hole in the basement that was pouring water like a faucet. I took an old baby bib that had a waterproof backing and wrapped it around a cork and jammed it in there. A couple of whacks with the rubber mallet and voila! It wasn’t an elegant solution but it did the trick.
* Not to worry, none of the records pictured up top were played on that old turntable.
Noisy Cats 