Flora.
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Away.
Brilliant.
Tuesday night treat, kids and I are watching ‘Once Upon a Time’
Prince Charming is dying in the arms of his beloved Snow White
My son calls out ‘I suppose they don’t know about CPR’ back in those days
My daughter responds with ‘I don’t understand why everything has to be about Star Wars’
…
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Alexander O’Neal—“If You Were Here Tonight”
Back in high school, I ran with a small group of guys up on some kind of baggy-pants, wingtip, hair-gel-infused, pseudo-Morris-Day tip. People in our town didn’t listen to much R&B, so we felt like outlaws, but cooler than the Punks or New Wavers, ‘cause we tried to dress up and used the black urban slang we had learned from records.
Anyway, like all 17-year-old boys, we though we had THINGS FIGURED OUT, and part of this delusion pertained to all things romance. Alexander O’Neal was a “go-to” record for make-out time or general seduction (I’m using that term loosely).
After college, I pretty much put the album back in the crate and forgot about it, but in surrender to the wave of musical nostalgia that’s been hitting me lately, I pulled it out a few weeks ago. Despite the dated production, it stands the test of time as a classic.
Two weeks in the wink of an eye.
I cannot believe it’s been two weeks since I posted something here. Part of it comes from the fact that I find it hard to believe photos of my suburban treadmill would be of much interest, aside from Cuff and Link, and I don’t want to put too many images of them up in the pixelsphere.
Mostly, however, it’s the lack of time, or more precisely, the surplus of choices + limited minutes not already taken by something else. I am awed by those other busy, parental people who make the time to take photos, jot down ideas, or share interesting links. Try as I might, posting regularly eludes me…even if topics and material abound.
Maybe I just need to give the vicious self-editor a swift kick in the *ss? Or hire a personal assistant.
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This weekend, I got into a discussion with a local record-store owner about those “formative” albums that marked one’s musical history and taste. I was telling him about my little trip back into history thanks to Levon Helm, and how I wondered if anything had changed for people since the near total digitalization of music consumption.
We agreed that albums and turntables (and even cassettes) were much more tactile, physical even, and how that must have influenced our connection to the songs and artists. Since we’re not really that intellectual, the conversation stalled there, until he said that for him the teens and twenties held the most sway on what he loved and kept listening to. It’s almost as if the growth peaked at that point then gradually slowed.
I have to agree with him. During those years what I listened to represented such a large part of who I felt I was and/or who I wanted to be. After a certain point in my life, I just couldn’t absorb anything more and began to define myself more by my career and family; music become something retrospective that I squeezed into the margins versus an active passion.
Anyway, during the discussion, the two of us discovered that Nas’ “Illmatic” held a particular place in our hip hop musical history. This track was always one of my favorite. It features a nice sample of Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love Music.”
Echos of The Band
Levon Helm’s death last week set off a flood of musical madelene’s. I hadn’t thought about The Band in years, but just a few bars of “The Weight” put me straight back to the mid-70’s, pushing the long hair out of my eyes, listening intently as my dad and his friends talked music and politics. A quick YouTube search led to The Last Waltz, then Ritchie Havens, Sly and Santana at Woodstock, then the ultimate 70’s hippy song, “Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills and Nash. They looked ridiculous but sounded great.
It’s funny how the music that filled my early years still holds its weight after all this time. I never bought into the whole Boomer Change the World deal (and was far too young to participate in it), but I have to say that those musicians sounded and felt like they cared more deeply about the art vs. the fame or the money. (Yeah, sure, they loved the drugs, too.)
I know that every generation looks back at it’s teenage music as the real thing, and I know that’s totally subjective, but something about those old songs feels so sincere, as corny as that sounds. I hear it occasionally now (Frank Ocean and Feist randomly come to mind), but I wonder what the kids in their 20’s actually experience when they crank up their favorite new artists in their earphones. It’s gotta be the same, right?
I was thinking the exact same thing about MY swag.
Amar’e Stoudemire shaved his scruffy beard and put his hair in corn rows — a style he has not worn since he was 17. Stoudemire said there was nothing symbolic in the makeover. “I’m just growing my hair out,” he explained. “And its just the fastest way to grow, when it’s in a cornrow setting.” As for the clean shave, he said, the beard “would be a little bit much with the cornrows. It was offsetting. My swag wasn’t impeccable.”
(Source: The New York Times)
