Why Did You Fall in Love With Music?

William Robert (Austin's own Will Matthews) asked, "What was the song, band, or singer that made you fall in love with music?"

It was probably my Mom. My earliest musical memories are of her singing me lullabies.

Close your sleepy eyes,
My little Buckaroo.
The light of the western skies
Is shining down on you.
You know it's time for bed,
Another day is through...
So go to sleep,
My little Buckaroo.

Don't you realize,
My little Buckaroo,
'twas from the acorn that
The mighty oak tree grew?
Remember that your dad
Was once a kid like you...
So go to sleep,
My little Buckaroo.

The other early song I remember is this:

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
Here comes my wagon, my wagon,
The men in the white coats are after me!
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
Here comes my wagon, my wagon,
To take me to the funny factory.

Just like the nuts that fall,
I'm a little cracked that's all.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
Here comes my wagon, my wagon,
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
Here comes my wagon!

These are not the official lyrics, but they are what I remember... and since Mom is not here to correct me, they are correct.)

Other than that I just remember growing up with music; it was always an integral part of my life. I can't remember a time without it. Our house and car were usually full of music. Dad played piano, Mom sang, and records or the radio were at least as likely to be on as the TV. Most of us kids ended up in band, chorus, or taking lessons. (I played trombone and guitar.)

Some of my major, musical memories in my early years include:

• Firestone and Goodyear Christmas albums
• A boxed set of western (mostly cowboy) songs such as "Ghost Riders (in the Sky)", "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds", "Streets of Laredo", etc.
• Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire": I first heard this at the age of 7. It was spring or early summer; we were on our way to church. I wanted my parents to turn it off. "We can't listen to a song about Hell on Sunday, going to church!" They laughed so hard dad almost had to pull over.
• Around 4th or 5th grade I got my first 45 (a small record with one song on each side) as a prize at a YMCA fair. It was Jill Corey singing "Let it Be Me" and "Make Like a Bunny, Honey". At that age, I played the rabbity side a lot more.
• Musical sound tracks to movies my parents went to see. I knew every song from movies like My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. When I finally saw these movies decades later it was like being reunited with childhood best friends.
• The New Christy Minstrels
• Gilbert and Sullivan. 'Nuff said.
• The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. I don't really remember the show but I remember being enthralled.
• Theme songs to shows like The Lucy Show, The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and of course Secret Agent. I can still sing, or at least hum or whistle, a crazy number of these. "My heart would be a fireball (a fireball), a fireball (a fireball) every time I look into your starry eyes."
• In the summer of 1966, Mom's sister Betty Chappelle and her family visited for a week. My cousin Steve played the "Secret Agent Man" song (expanded from the TV show theme) from pretty much breakfast time til the news came on (when our parents would forcibly turn off the stereo), playing guitar and singing along. Dad swore he wore out the new diamond needle on the phonograph. This song has been part of m,y life's soundtrack since.
• The Monkees! Between the music and the shows, these guys had a huge impact on my life. My friend Claude Thompson taught me to dance to their songs so I could go to my first sock hop. I fell in love with "Last Train to Clarksville" imagining a dance with Debbie Jones.
• My parents bought a small house by ours (to rent out) that was full of thousands of books and records. I ended up with dozens and dozens of Motown singles and fell in love with the Motown Sound.
• One of my sisters-- probably Kathleen-- gave me a single of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" ("The Laird" graced the B side). I wore it out.
• Eric Clapton, Alice Cooper (Killer), the Smothers Brothers... I remember listening to albums by these three back to back.

There's a smattering of what I grew up with. I still listen to almost anything besides opera. There are a few genres I can't listen to much of (rap, hip hop, Gnashville country, Coldplay), but if there's music, I'll give it a try.

What songs, artists / bands, or writers / composers influenced you? Why did you fall in love with music?

Quick Thought: Love of Learning

Someone posted a quote on Facebook:

If you are not willing to learn,
no one can help you.
If you are determined to learn,
no one can stop tou.

I completely agree. But there is a huge related discussion; I put it like this:

If the schools spent half the time helping kids learn and cultivating their innate love of learning instead of teaching to tests and beating that love out of them, we would have far less illiteracy and a far more productive (and happier) country.

Thankfully my parents fostered a love of learning in me that even bad schooling could not destroy. On the other hand, most of my teachers were good, the curriculum was decent to good, and the schools I attended gave the teachers a lot of leeway. We spent very little time on standardized curricula or tests.

Given what they have to deal with, I'm not surprised that so many kids today don't care about school. I realize there are far more societal problems involved, but in many ways today's schools are their own worst enemies.

As for me? Can't stop, won't stop... learning.

(Thanks, Eliezer Adrian Adame, for the inspiration!).

 

Copyright 2014 Triple R Publishing, Round Rock, TX. Feel free to quote so long as attribution is made. All other rights reserved.

Fall Out Of... the Gap

Once upon a time, there were no jean stores that carried a cool selection of jeans. The GAP was born to remedy that gaping hole in the cultural landscape of the early 1970s. They carried the cool stuff from manufacturers big and small, even some nobody ever heard of at the time. Their prices were decent. They had some of the coolest commercials, using one of the coolest avant garde voices on radio: Dick Orkin, the guy who did "Chickenman" and "The Adventures of the Tooth Fairy", five minute radio comedies that were far more worth the time to listen than 97% of all TV comedies ever.

They carried other stuff, too-- shirts, coats, a limited but excellent selection of belts, jewelry, hats, and anything else your little hippie heart could desire.

Somewhere in there the gap faded off my radar. I didn't even know they were still around. At some point they made a half hearted attempt to woo me back with the familiar sounding "Fall... in...to... the GAP!" commercials. They got my attention, but somehow sounded lackluster and contrived. I ignored them a while longer.

Now the GAP carries mediocre, mass market, store brand crap. It's pricey as if they were designer jeans. It's become a horrible parody of itself. I don't recall the last time I heard Orkin's voice; I can't remember if they used him for the more recent commercials or not. It hasn't been that long since I was in a GAP store, though. I'm kind of glad I have no modern association between Orkin and the GAP. Blech.

Almost everything in there (at least in jeans) was GAP brand. The fit was atrocious. Their girl & woman jeans are coming to be known as Mom Jeans, the kiss of death for cool. Their mens jeans were hideous. I bought a blue jean jacket that was OK. Not great. It's starting to tear up, not lasting as long as a well made Levis or Wranglers would. Designer jean quality (fair) and prices (horrid) without the looks or fit.

No thanks.

(Thanks to Kayla Lankford for inspiring me to get this out of my system.

 

Copyright 2014 Triple R Publishing, Round Rock, TX. Feel free to quote so long as attribution is made. All other rights reserved.

Random observations, vignettes, & questions from Chicago...

I didn't expect a city this far north to react this much to a Canadian cold front (-25 wind chill at the moment, -40F or so last night). But when I walked to Target (1.4 mi each way), about half the restaurants seemed to be closed. The city was shut down today other than, I suppose, essential services. (The buses and trains were running.) Schools were open, but all absences were excused if the parents contacted the school. My god-daughter had to go to work, but nobody else showed up.

A big, fat pigeon eating by the sidewalk caught my eye. In the alcove between the business door and the (closed and locked) security gate, there were 15 - 20 pigeons eating; someone had left them food there.

I expected Chicago to be like big cities in the northeast, but it's not. It's cleaner, generally feels safer to this out of towner, and is overtly friendlier. There are lots of friendly people in, say, NYC, but as a visitor you might not realize this. Chicago folk have that neighborly mid-western thing going on. Businesses make you feel welcome, and other patrons are ready to talk. Cars often defer to pedestrians. Less people will reply to a howdy on the street than in Austin, but more than will reply (or at least nicely) in NYC.

There are a lot of good restaurants here. I'm uptown, and the prices are similar to downtown Austin, but it's a much larger city. And the food is excellent. The icons (Lou Manalti's, Portillo's) lived up to their hype, but there are so many fantastic holes in the walls! And lots of good coffee shops. Within a block of here are Ch'ava (coffee shop with good, interesting sandwiches) and Tiztal Cafe (incredible breakfast fare all day long, among other things). Nellsyn works at a new restaurant, Endgrain, that has been open six months and already featured on prominent foodie shows. I would love to have all three in Austin.

I haven't seen anyone "reserve" a parking space on the street by sticking a lawn chair or something in it, but apparently that's a thing. I guess if I spent a half hour shoveling out a space I'd like it back, too. There's no legal basis for it but it generally works. I hear tires can get slashed if you "steal" one of these spaces. Kinda rough on newbies!

We're in a third floor apartment. The radiators are centrally controlled, and come on when they want. It's too bad we can't turn them off, because the floors below us heat the place just fine most of the time, even in subzero temps.

The other night I tried opening the inner and outer windows to cool my room off a bit, but sirens regularly scream by within a few blocks, as they do in any big city. Leaving the outer (double pane) window open and closing the old, single pane inner window made a huge difference in temp, but still kept the sirens at bay. Odysseus[1] would be proud.

Speaking of radiators, these are the noisiest I have ever heard, If I'm almost asleep and they start snorting, whistling, wheezing, coughing, hissing, and humming (at times reaching 65 to 70 db) I have to stick a pillow over my head to escape the raucousness.

Overall I have been impressed with the CTA[2]. There was that one bus that wouldn't sop, and the other night a couple of train cars smelled like someone had puked in them (identical smells in two cars, just less pungent in one). Nobody on the train had smelled it before. As far as I know the cars do not have common air conditioning, so what was up with that? Stinky cleaner? Bulemic convention?

As frustrated as I get in Austin that you can't readily find shorts and swim suits all year long, it's almost insane that you can't find cold weather gear here at least throughout the winter. We're just getting into the really cold part, and some places have no snow boots left; the rest are picked over. Other stuff varies, but overall the selection is less than I expected. To Heck with the conventional garment seasons! Where are Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, and his spoon when when I need them?

 

NOTES
[1] I started to write "Olysses". What's up with that?
[2] Chicago Transit Authority[3]
[3] The actual transit authority, not the band, or its sel-titled first album, still one of my favorites after all these years.

 

Copyright 2013 Miles O'Neal, Round Rock, TX. All rights reserved.

A Dozen Random Thanksgiving Thoughts

A Baker's dozen... even more apropro since that is Sharon's maiden name!

1. As a kid, one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving was the artwork at school. Whether coloring Pilgrims and Indians, using construction paper to make giant turkeys and maize, or drawing cornucopia spilling out food (once including a cooked turkey and a pan of dressing), I loved it.
2. For years I thought dressing and stuffing were always one and the same.[1]
3. My first idea that they were different was that it was dressing until we ate too much, then it became stuffing.
4. Around age 5 or 6 I thought we should dress up as Pilgrims or Indians for Thanksgiving. We did have to dress up a bit for the meal, but only in a nicer than playing outside sort of way. Having to wear a starched button down to eat convinced me that if I had to dress up, it should be as an Indian, not a Pilgrim. Growing up out west, the Indians I was familiar with didn't wear as much as the those around Plymouth Rock likely did, especially late in the fall. Nowadays we tend to stay in jammies until we have company coming. I tend to stay in jammies even then unless it's not family or someone living here. I did change into jeans yesterday to play basketball with Tyler later in the afternoon, but reverted to jammies shorts as soon as we were back inside!
5. I always preferred white meat, although it was usually a little drier than I wanted (back then everyone baked the turkey). So I smothered the meat in gravy and/or cranberry sauce. I still do that today, no matter how moist the turkey is.
6. Since Mom made stuffing as well as gravy, our white meat was not nearly as dry as some people's.
7. Over the years I got pretty experimental with leftovers. Turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry, salsa, and pico soft tacos, anyone? With guac? Yum!
8. Pumpkin pie and/or pecan pie with eggs, sausage, or bacon... breakfast of champions!
9. As a kid, Thanksgiving never meant all that much to me. Then for a while it was one of my very favorite holidays. Having learned to live a thankful life, it's become less of a big deal for some reason. As it gets radically commercialized, it feels more and more like just another sad commentary on out of control USAculture.
10. I don't know if I have a favorite Thanksgiving, but contenders include:
    • The first Thanksgiving after my first[2] wedding. Sharon wanted to invite both families (17 people, and we may have had more; I don't recall) over. She cooked everything in a kitchen that with dining nook was maybe 12'x7' (barely room to open the fridge or over across from each other). The over was the smallest I have seen; think we had to take all the racks out and cut the turkey up a bit to make it fit). We had a couch and two bean bags and brought the four dining room chairs into the living room. Others sat on the floor. It was a great time.
    • My brother Bill got married Thanksgiving weekend fourteen years ago. We drove all day Thanksgiving from Austin, TX to Augusta, GA. We found a DQ open for lunch in east Texas. They had brought in everything to provide a full Thanksgiving meal, which we soooo wanted! But traveling, we weren't sure if it would make us need to stop more, so we regretfully stuck with standard DQ fare. Should have just chanced it. Drove back Sunday. Long trip, but worth it. Love you, Bill and Laura!
    • The Thanksgiving after Josiah got back from Iraq, and not just because we got to see him and his buddy Matt blowing Dr Pepper across a microfiber tablecloth.
    I think it's probably whichever one I'm living at the moment.
11. For years I thought maize had to me multi-colored, despite knowing that it's the Spanish word for the thing we call corn, just mispronounced. I still think of "mayze" as multi-colored corn and "ma-eese" as any corn. I have always loved the way "mayze" looks. The one time I tried some I was underwhelmed.
12. One year some of us dressed up to play cowboys and Indians. After we finished killing each other off (I'm pretty sure we all died many painful, often ignominious deaths) we sat down for a pretend Thanksgiving feast.
13. I always loved cranberry sauce, more appropriately known as cranberry jelly. As a kid, that was the only way I really liked it. The closer it was to having actual cranberries, the less I was interested. Now I like it all, but especially home-made cranberry sauces that are more about the berries. Sharon makes a seriously yummy blueberry cranberry sauce. In fact, as soon as I post this I am going to go eat some!

Special thanks to Kimmie Webster for making me think about the jammies with her new tradition of PJs only Thanksgivings!

Notes
[1] It's all dressing, but it's stuffing if you stuffed the turkey with it. You're welcome.
[2] First and only, and that's perfect! 8^)

Blowing up Syria... and the World. Why?

In May, a UN investigator stated that the rebels were at fault for the chemical weapons used in Syria. In July, Russia handed the UN a 100 page report backing this (no, I haven't seen it). Some source or sources apparently claimed it was not an attack, but a mishap while handling the weapons. I have heard interviews on NPR with rebels who claim that al-Quaeda related groups had them moving the weapons without telling them what they were transporting.

What is the truth here? I have no idea. (If you claim to, you better provide some rock solid evidence.)

The President claims he will explain to us Tuesday night why we need to attack the Syrian regime. He will "lay it all out".

Questions for the President... and you:

• Why couldn't he lay it out before? (Perhaps that will be answered. Given his track record, I sincerely doubt it.)
• Why has he not said ONE WORD about the evidence that it was the rebels? If only to dismiss it?
• Why has he steadfastly refused to answer the question, "If Congress does not approve the attack on Syria, do you intent to attack, anyway?" I heard one of his non-answers in entirety on NPR. They reported he did the same thing when asked in Russia. He "very frankly" talked about how he fully expected Congress to approve it. he did not even come close to answering the question.
• Why... WHY... does he think we can lob cruise missiles at Syria and not see retaliation? (Assuming we have incontrovertible truth it was the regime who used CWs.)
• It keeps coming back to the red line he drew in the sand, which he now refuses to admit he drew, but which he feels obligated to defend (although he now blames Congress and "the world" for that line). Do you really want a President to drag us into another mid-east (or any) war because of his own pride, insecurity, arrogance, cluelessness, or whatever combination of problems this is?

Let Congress know what you're thinking. let the President know. Those of you who believe in God, pray. Hard.

And love your neighbor, including the one who supports the President no matter what. We as a country have been divided and conquered from within far too long.

Avoiding War with Syria

It's clear to me that President Obama has boxed himself in. He doesn't really want to go to war with Syria so he's looking for a way out, or at least to get plenty of buy-in for the blame. If he can get Congress to agree then he will feel safe saying, "this is what the American people wanted and agreed on".

But there's another exit strategy, and I keep waiting for it to re-appear. We can't just recycle the old excuse and blame the Syrian problem on a movie, but maybe a book would work. Maybe Salmon Rushdie's latest tome incited the violence; it made someone so mad they just couldn't think straight. But of course they calmed right down after seeing the carnage they caused with the chemical weapons, killing a whopping thousand or so compared to the mere one hundred thousand killed by projectiles, explosives, and edged weapons. (Those apparently don't really count.)

And they're really, really sorry, and they'd love to stop but the other side won't, so they have to keep fighting in order to survive.

It's not their fault.

It's Rushdie's. Or whomever's. Maybe mine. They could easily find all the proof they needed in the vast treasure trove of all the data the NSA (and DEA!) mined this year.

I could live with that. I'll just get a deal like Snowden and "flee the country" and "request asylum" and live happily ever after far, far away.

Do I really believe all this? Nah. But if they take the bait and I disappear to, say, Kosovo, I won't mind a bit. I'm pretty sure Kosovo is the code name for Honolulu.

Aloha!