As you may already know, and it’s abundantly clear if you spend any time poking around here on my blog, I have a busy life. Sometimes it gets so busy, in fact, that I occasionally forget things. One of those things is my Favorite Songs series. I still need to work on a snappier title for it, but at least I remembered it, and here’s another song.
It’s by a German 80’s group called Freiheit (Germans probably know them as Münchener Freiheit), and it’s called “Keeping the Dream Alive.” I first heard the song on the soundtrack for the movie Say Anything, back in the day, and fell in love with it instantly.  To my ears, it’s the best Paul McCartney song that he never wrote.
The video does look a bit dated, but it fits nicely with the spirit of the song.
The song has apparently had a nice resurgence here in this country in recent years, thanks to its inclusion on American Idol. I watch precious little television, and have only seen that show a couple of times, but I can do internet research as well as anyone.
I was somewhat surprised to find out that the group are still active (dare I say it. . .keeping the dream alive?), and continue to put out new albums. I’ll have to check those out. Even if they hadn’t, though, they’d still be an incredible band in my book, based on this song alone.
I just got tagged by Carolina to reveal six random things about myself. You may be surprised to find out that I’ve never been tagged in one of these things before, so I’m rapidly trying to think of what I can write about, since I usually have something in mind before I ever start writing.
Okay, here goes.
NUMBER ONE:
I love Bach’s organ music. I mean LOVE IT love it. If I could marry it, I would. I love it so much that if it’s playing, I can’t do anything else because I get absolutely sucked in by its perfect structure and beauty. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. E. Power Biggs playing “The Jig.”
One of my favorite memories of my dad (How many times do you hear me say THAT?) is when the two of us were attempting to play this particular piece on a beautiful pipe organ in Ellensburg, Washington. I was sitting on the bench, playing the manuals (that’s organ terminology for keyboards) and my dad was on his hands and knees underneath the bench, playing the pedals with his fists. It was hilarious and touching, even moreso when I think about it now. I’ll never forget that moment.
NUMBER TWO:
Speaking of Number Two, I find it absolutely repulsive to have to listen to someone go Number Two in the bathroom (I’m thinking of the bathroom at work, by the way), especially since most guys are notoriously disgusting and loud when it comes to this particular activity. I’m so disgusted by it that if there’s someone else already in the bathroom when I walk in, I’ve been known to go downstairs so that I don’t have to listen to that happening. I mean, really. The sound, the smell, everything. Ewww. And if they’re sitting there tapping away on their cell phones, that grosses me out even more, because I imagine them wiping their asses and then grabbing their phones before they get the chance to wash their hands again. NASTY. I hope no one ever has to borrow their phones for any reason.
NUMBER THREE:
I used to have two mullets. No, not at the same time, but consecutively. I liked them so much that I grew one out until it got all scraggly, and then I cut it off and grew another one, which was only a slight improvement over the previous one. Here’s a picture of the first one, in progress, in 1988. . .
. . .and here’s a picture of the second one, in full effect, not long before it got cut (THANK GOD) in 1995:
I know; I was hot.
NUMBER FOUR:
The longest time that I’ve ever dated someone was five years (on again/off again). The shortest time was three days. Does that count as two things? I don’t know, but I’m counting it as one two-part answer to one two-part question.
NUMBER FIVE:
I have no tattoos or piercings of any kind. I used to have my left ear pierced, around the time of Mullet Number One, but I only wore an earring in it for about a year, and I haven’t worn one since then, so the hole has long since closed up. No, I don’t have any pictures of that.
NUMBER SIX:
I’ve made more money playing the accordion than any of the other instruments I play. It’s paid for itself many times over. The cello is in second place, then probably the electric guitar.
NUMBER SEVEN:
There is NO Number Seven. Thank you.
So, which six people would I like to tag and to see respond to this in kind on their own blogs?
Thank you to Carolina for including me in this, thank you to YOU for reading, and thank you six participants (or anyone else who wishes to) for lending your metaphorical voices to this endeavor.
Back in the early 1990’s, maybe it was even 1990, there was a show on TV called Get a Life. It was hilarious and dumb and strange and puerile (I sense a new blog coming on. . .!), but most of all it was brilliant, or at least I thought it was at the time. It was actually rather hit-and-miss, but the ‘hit’ moments were priceless. Here are two of them, “Zoo Animals on Wheels”. . .
. . .and “The Handsome Boy Modeling School.” This is part one of three, by the way. If you’re interested, you can search for the next two.
You may or may not recognize HBMS as the name of a hip hop project put together by Dan the Automator. Here’s one of the best songs. . .no video, unfortunately, but at least you can hear the song.
It was nice to finally track down “Get a Life” again. I think my friend Dave and I were the only people in the United States who watched that show, let alone enjoyed it. So may I propose a toast to the show’s creator, Chris Elliott, who was (and presumably still is) a slightly odd comic genius, and whose show was very much ahead of its time.
The other night I was supposed to get together with J, but she had a change of plans, so I scrounged around a bit to see what was happening in town. I called RockShowGirl to tell her about the movie Man on Wire, and how amazing it looked. She was too exhausted to go out, having spent the last few hours running around town and then cleaning her apartment, so I went from being double-booked to being zero-booked. The time was 7:22, and the movie started at 7:30. ‘I can still make it to the movie,’ I thought. ‘I don’t care if anybody else is free, I’m going.’ I grabbed my sweatshirt and my phone, jumped into the car that I’d borrowed from my neighbor for the evening, and raced over to the movie theater. I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am that I did.
The movie was amazing, and I recommend it to all of you. It’s a documentary about the French guy who walked across a tightrope that he hung (secretly and illegally, I might add) between the towers of the World Trade Center. There have been many pictures taken of that famous act, but this documentary was based on Phillipe Petit’s book. The story and the individual characters were all fascinating and intriguing. It’s really one of the better documentaries I’ve seen in a long time, and I watch a lot of them. Here’s a trailer:
Incidentally, another of my recent favorite documentaries is Helvetica. Yes, it’s about the font. No, it’s not the least bit boring. It’s about art and design and culture and the ways that they are perceived over time. Go rent it. I promise you’ll enjoy it. But don’t take my word for it; Helvetica is sexy.
And since we’re on the subject of documentaries, I just rented and received Theremin; an Electronic Odyssey. A friend of mine wrote a play about Leon Theremin, and it inspired me to find out more about the supremely interesting inventor. His most famous invention is the instrument which bears his name:
Well, you now have your homework, and you know what to do, and now I have a favor to ask of you in return. What are some of your favorite documentaries that you’d like to recommend to me? Please leave a comment and let me know.
Wednesday night I was invited to see Ray LaMontagne with my friend Jeannie, who had an extra ticket. I’m not super familiar with Ray’s music, but I do have one of his CD’s, and I enjoy it, and I’m certainly not going to pass up a chance to see him live.
We started the night by going to dinner. We had a few choices for happy hour places, one of which was Kenny & Zuke’s. We started there, and a quick perusal of the menu revealed that it was a total meat-a-thon. We asked the waitress what their vegetarian choices were, and she checked over the menu and replied, “Well, there’s. . .an egg-salad sandwich. . .and, uhhh. . .tuna fish. . .?” We thanked her and decided to go elsewhere. We walked around the corner to Saucebox, which neither of us had been to before, but we both now agree that for happy hour it’s one of the best deals in town. We’ll definitely be going back.
The show was awesome. Leona Naess was the opening act, and she and her band were multi-talented and excellent. She still seems fairly new to the game, but it’ll be interesting to see where she goes from here, and how she progresses.
Ray and his band took the stage and absolutely owned the audience the entire time, despite hardly saying a word until about three-quarters of the way through the show, when he talked about the sense of relief he felt after the election, and how he felt like partying and celebrating instead of singing his quiet, introspective, sad songs. It was very endearing and funny.
I wasn’t terribly impressed with his band, though. They were each good players individually, but it seemed to me that they just sort of plodded through every song, without many dynamic changes. I would have liked to hear much more from the piano player especially, and the two or three times he finally got to take a solo, the audience really appreciated him. The guitarist was unexciting (as are the overwhelming majority of rock guitarists), but he was absolutely stellar when he sat down to play the pedal steel. Don’t know what a pedal steel is? You’ll recognize the sound, for sure. Here’s a video. (No, this isn’t the guy from the show. I couldn’t find a video of him.) See if you can figure out what song he’s playing:
I will say, to be fair to Ray’s band, that they are phenomenal at playing quietly and keeping the energy level high while ‘holding back’, if you see what I mean. A standout song for me was “Shelter”, which I was able to find a video of from his show in NYC a month ago. Notice the awesome pedal steel solo, too.
So Ray and the band finished up their set and left the stage. After a couple of minutes, he and the bass player came back out to do a heartbreaking version of the song “Jolene”, which an audience member had been loudly and drunkenly requesting before almost every other song of the night. Incidentally, he didn’t even yell ‘THANK YOU’ after Ray finally played it, by which I think we were all a bit surprised and disappointed.
After he finished that song, the audience gave him a standing ovation, and then stayed on their feet to put their coats on and leave. Probably a third of the audience started streaming out of the theater. I told Jeannie, “That can’t be it. The house lights aren’t even on yet.”  After a wait of almost ten minutes, the lights came back up and the band walked back out onstage. The remaining crowd roared, and Jeannie and I took the opportunity to run down to the front. We sat down in the aisle as he and the piano player started the introductory chords to John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It was breathtaking, and those were the best two encore songs I’ve ever seen.
Great show, and just another great night in an incredibly full week. More to come.
