But do you really care/When you’re a marmoset?

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a deep and abiding fondness for the Sesame Street song about marmosets. Out of all the thousands of songs they played on the show, repeated over and over again, this is the one whose lyrics I learned by heart. Occasionally, to this day, i break out singing them in public. I cannot explain this; apparently, I was a weird kid. This is the view Shoemom endorses anyway.

Later, as all good little weird kids did pre-Nicktoons, I graduated to The Muppet Show. I frankly had no idea who most of the guest stars were, but the worldview of Henson & co — as definitely distinct from what’s happened to his creations since his death — I grasped instinctively and wholeheartedly. Just the other day, in fact, I taught Shoesis the proper way to cavort — and she turned out to be a model student. There may be hope for our relationship yet.

The Seven Days meme: Day One

As gacked from . I like the occasional post-a-day challenge as much as the next lazy blogger, so…

Day 01 | a song
day 02 | a picture
day 03 | a book/ebook/fanfic
day 04 | a site
day 05 | a youtube clip
day 06 | a quote
day 07 | whatever tickles your fancy

____________________________

Besides, boy-oh-boy, have I got a song to share. This song is so good I am going to risk announcing that I used to watch the PBS geography game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on a very regular basis. Hey, it was cute and funny and I really like Lynne Thigpen.

Also, it had a kickass theme song by Rockapella.

I love this theme with an ‘e’, because it is excellent, and because it remains the only song that has ever driven me to an encyclopedia… what? [sigh] No, kiddies, Wikipedia didn’t exist yet. (Now that it does: Bonaire.)

The link below even provides the lyrics, just so you don’t miss a second of the awesomeness. You’re welcome.

Post of Canadian Idol-ness

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these, isn’t it? And now, not liable to again. I was feeling rather wistful about the whole situation – the way you do, when you hear the fate of a friend long past – until I happened to catch judge Zack Werner’s reaction. Something about howbitterly ironic it was that the show was being canned as too expensive, when it’s in just this sort of economy that kids need dreams to hold onto.
Er, yeah, Zack. Not to worry; they can always still aspire to be contestants on Don’t Forget the Hits! And there, they’ve a chance to be paid real money.

Anyway, I dragged out my old home-made ‘Best of CI2’ CD as part of the total music overhaul, inspired by Brian Melo’s version of Karma Police from CI5. It’s worth a download, mostly; Melo’s rock voice sounds authentic, and I was heartened to learn that he and the bubblegum factory have since parted ways.

As for CI2…oy. Remember I said I wasn’t particularly embarrassed by my past musical choices? Well, I lied. Shorn of the excitement of the moment, Teh Greatest CI Season Evah comes off, largely, as…how do I put this? Like you thought you were watching American TV, and it turns out it was Canadian all along.

Mind, this does have the effect of throwing the glimmers of real professionalism into high relief:

Top 32:

What I preserved – Kalan (Lady), Theresa (Summertime), Kaleb (Water Runs Dry)
What I’d keep now – None of the above. These are three canny kids showing off their vocal tricks for the voters; that’s all. Kaleb probably gives the closest thing to an actual performance.

Top 10:

What I preserved– Kalan (Born to Be Wild), Theresa (Good Mother), Elena (Mary Jane)
What I’d keep now  – Theresa. No idea how I put up with Elena’s shouting for even this long, anymore. Meanwhile, Kalan’s developed a serious case of Johnson novelty syndrome: it’s not so much that he’s performing well, as that he’s performing it at all.

Top 9:

What I preserved– Jacob (Space Oddity), Kalan (House of the Rising Sun)
What I’d keep now  – Both, unreservedly. They are collectively the reason us Canucks were all "Our Idol is better than yours, nyahhh!" at AI all season. (Although I do wish Kalan would just record the damn song already so I can get a version clear of all the SCREEM!s.)

I’m so excited! And I just can’t hide it!

So the music project has somehow morphed (coughcoughcoughwith the aid of Frostwirecoughcough) into a super-spectacular star-studded trip down memory lane.

All I know for sure is, I went to the Closet of Half-Forgotten Things to check my cassettes for a song title, and suddenly realised…I have a LOT of cassettes. Like, entire previous musical lives were sitting there mouldering away.
Naturally I paused to take a closer look, which on reflection may have been a tactical error. Awww, hey, it’s Huey Lewis! The Cars! Tears For Fears! Music From Miami Vice! How could I have denied my heritage this way? Come to my arms, you beamish little plastic memories, I must ensure you are immortalised forever!

…I think it was the realisation that I was eagerly searching for Parachute Club lyrics that finally snapped me out of it.

The encouraging part is that, as it turns out, I had pretty good musical taste back then (‘then’ being roughly 1983-93). Aside from your standard teenage flirtations with a good beat and a cute bod – Eric Carmen, what was I thinking? –  and the weakness for big, Meaningful power ballads that I think it was illegal not to have in the 80’s, I seem to have escaped the worst. Even the aforementioned Miami Vice soundtrack now just makes me smile indulgently, not cringe.

(Bonus fun true coincidence: As I was coming home from work today, the local EZ-Rock station’s ‘Feel-Good Favourite at Five’ was Glenn Frey’s The Heat is On, from that very same soundtrack. And lo, there was much indulgent smiling right there.)

I’m even rather proud, like a fond parent would be, of my fascination with Brit synthpop – Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, the Human League, that sort of thing.  This is where it would be really nice to go back in time and advise my HS self; I seem to have been flirting on the borderline of cool all that time without even realising it…

*has a relisten to I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight*

…OK, maybe not. Still…

*smiles indulgently*

All cheered up!

But I’m afraid I’m becoming something of a shopaholic in the process. Which worries me not least because it forces me to self-identify with cutesy chick flicks.

At any rate, I decided to head over to the iTunes Store the other night for some serious musical medication. For good reasons; Bruce Springsteen’s latest had reminded me that my library was still missing Streets of Philadelphia, and I mean, really. After that, though, things may have gotten just the teensiest bit out of hand…I probably didn’t need all that Bruce Hornsby, let’s put it that way.

I did find a bunch of Hall & Oates classics that filled the mood-lifting bill most excellently. I have always had a thing for Daryl Hall’s voice…um, also Daryl Hall’s picture staring out at me from the iTouch while the songs play, nice bonus. Seriously, they were among the premiere pop craftsmen of my generation, and when your generation also includes Boom Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room), that is something you hold on to, believe me. 

While I was at it, I picked up a couple tracks off Duran Duran’s Arena, another key entry on my Remember Back When I Was Young and Carefree setlist. That I was carefree mostly because I had no musical taste is debatable, but I don’t care, it’s The Seventh Stranger and I get to feel gloriously hedonistic all over again.

So between the need to organise the new music, the circuit assembly this weekend, and another vow not to write another word unless it’s in the furtherance of my fictional ambitions (ha ha ha), things are getting back on track, here @ Shoe Central. Will keep you posted.

It gets even better when you imagine the makers of ‘Dora the Explorer’ watching openmouthed.

Jack Black, eat your heart out. A full thirty years before there was a School of Rock, Sesame Street enrolled us all in the School of Funk. In honour of Motown’s 50th anniversary, here’s Stevie Wonder, rocking the beloved ol’block with Superstition. Yes, really.

(And for those of you wondering – according to the comments, the guitarist in the blue cap, who looks like a young Ray ‘Who ya gonna call’ Parker Jr., is a young Ray Parker Jr.)

P.S. – You didn’t ask, but…

The most hideously ear-sporking holiday song EVER in the HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE is that Jose Feliciano thing – can’t really even call it a song, because all he does is like “I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas!” over and over and OVER until you are CHEWING PIECES OUT OF THE CAR SEAT ARRRRRGH.

…The only redeeming feature this thing has is that, after awhile, Shoemom will turn to me and say, very solemnly, “Y’know, I think he wants to wish us a Merry Christmas.” Then we giggle. It’s our little tradition.

I love this meme…

…also, I have an emergency dental appointment in a couple hours (a wisdom tooth randomly popped out sideways and is ‘ulcerating’ – lovely word – my inner cheek). So I need some happy fun distraction, like, NOW.

Courtesy friend tree_and_leaf over on LJ – I believe it’s his own invention:

Go into iTunes (or your mp3 player of choice) and search for ‘love’. Post the results under a cut.

Well, this is interesting. I think. Anyway a lot shorter, and more…revealing…list than I’d been expecting, out of 10+ gigs of music:

Have you seen the world’s been falling down?/I know you’ve got the time to care…

So I ran the semi-something Google checkup on Kalan Porter this afternoon – why yes, it is kinda boring waiting around for the new processes to kick in gear after the office reorg, however could you tell?

At any rate, there’s still no news of fresh music-making; kinda disappointing. Especially in light of the award SOCAN handed him…well, today, actually. Looky that, for a brief (and somehow vaguely disturbing) moment I’m current with the Porterverse once again. In this nostalgic mood, I rejoice to discover that an award is ‘really nice because it kind of keeps you going’; way to chat up the leading lights of your industry, there, boyo. What were you planning on doing if this honour didn’t pan out, pre-law? Lawn & garden maintenance?

Yeah. Because I was idly fiddling with my iPod just after this discovery – why, yes, the new commute does double as an hourlong Great Industrial Wastelands of Southern Ontario Tour 2008, why do you ask? – anyway, as it turns out Wake Up Living, the CD from whence this honour springs, is still on there, and I was in a heard-everything-else sort of mood, so gave it a relisten. You know, interesting to see what’s emerged from the mists of obscuring adoration and all that.

OK, bad idea. Most of it is patently dreadful, of course, in exactly the manner suggested by the quotes in the article – a beautiful voice repeatedly banging up against banal cliches. I am thinking now that they didn’t provide the lyrics on the CD liner because they were hoping to cadge a few more months’ sales off discreet fudging on lines like ‘Before I let this sinking ship go down/And I watch you swim away’.
Mind, with our boy here it doesn’t even have to be all that discreet. In fact, it’s to his real credit that the thing contains lyrics at all, beyond “Hi there, potential CD purchaser! I’m Kalan, and you really kind of keep me going. Unless you happen to be male of course…I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that idea, it’s just that…”

Yeah. I did say ‘most’. There is Hurray. There is Try, the still-passable Beatles pastiche, and there is the fragile elegance of Out of My Head, which is based off real emotion and thus always to be respected. Also, over in a different part of reality, there is the amusing Run Run Run, in which our Earnest Young Musician takes a random unexpected holiday from trying so damn hard. Just mucks around in his own earnest young psyche for awhile: ‘Do you ever stop to think about lines that run, run, run?/And fall past each other on the edge…’

The thing is, that song is in its way most intelligent thing on the CD – even more so than Hurray – because here the wit is somehow incorporated right into the standard Lite-FM drivel, transmuting the whole into…well, assuming you’ve listened to one too many Bob & Ray routines and do a nice line in wishful thinking to boot, it sounds an awful lot like subtle satire.

There’s still promise there, somewhere. I said once that I’d love to see Kalan follow in the manner of Franz Ferdinand, and got some awfully funny looks – but to me this is where the boy’s real talent has always lain, in riding that same razor-fine line between loving homage and sly parody (the snappy-suit thing is a nice bonus).  Awareness without anger…or even much awareness, I suspect. How exactly do you convince somebody to be snarky for their own good?

70’s Radio Rock, Part 3

…Ahem. OK, done ranting about the Supreme Unfairness of Being Ordinary, I swear. Have reconciled myself (once again) to the realisation that I am in fact not a lead Pixar character, therefore if I want drama and excitement in my existence I’m gonna have to work for it.

Have also, not co-incidentally, read a rather scathing article indicating that the most successful blogs are those in which the author looks up from their navel occasionally and enthuses over their areas of outside interest. Which works out rather neatly, since as part of the reconciliation agreement I get to work out my Bob & Ray fascination around here whenever the need strikes.

Anyhoo, that’s an entry for another day, when I’ve found a hook to hang those particular observations on. Meanwhile, I was casting about for something else I do around here that isn’t personal, and realised it’s been ages since I updated this series (follow the tag below) of major mellow musical moments from everybody’s fav…no, wait…everybody’s…the decade that didn’t contain the Jonas Brothers, OK? Or Hannah Montana. Say what you like about disco, at least the fantasies were legal. Sort of.