Moomin Light

Star Wars Main Title - Nick McKaig

This is a fun version of the Star Wars Main Title music done all a cappella!  Nick McKaig (iTunes store here) sang all the parts - over 90 tracks and more than 300 hours of production time.  He's got a fantastic ear to keep all these parts on key!

"Pass Me Not" - Lyle Lovett (with George Duke)

We sang a beautiful anthem, Nothing Between, in choir today (I can't find a YouTube version I really like).  However, the hymn that eventually ended up in my head wasn't even one we sang.  One of the Communion hymns (from Lift Every Voice and Sing) was 138:  Lord, I Want to Be a Christian.  On the facing page was a hymn that I don't remember ever singing in church, though I know it well - Hymn 139, Do Not Pass Me By. 

One of my favorite Lyle Lovett albums is Smile:  Songs from the Movies, with songs like Blue Skies, Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You, and I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.  Another favorite song of mine from the album is Pass Me Not, Lyle Lovett's version of Do Not Pass Me By, which he sang for the movie Leap of Faith. 

I love the bass part in this one!

 

[Note:  Older son leaves in a week for the summer semester at the NCSU Design School's Prague Institute.  Blogging will be possibly even more sporadic than usual!]

Legs

In junior high school, while sitting in slow classes and having way too much time to think about other things, I would look down at my thighs in disgust.  They were too wide there - flattened out on the chair.

For years, I've hated my legs.  They're actually short for the length of my torso, although that does make it easier for me to lean over and put my hands flat on the floor.  It makes buying pants even more difficult than it would already be with my hips and waist.  If pants fit in the hips, the waistband sticks way out.  If pants fit in the waist... well, I'd never know because I wouldn't be able to get them over my hips.  Shopping for pants is second in unpleasantness only to shopping for shoes. 

Clothes aren't made for my legs.  They've never looked skinny, even when I only weighed 102.  Those who say that women's muscles don't bulk up when they work out haven't seen my calves.   I'm also shorter than most people.

Recently, when I ask one of the four family members who are taller than I am to get somthing from an upper shelf, I add "Because I've got these short stubby legs."   I'm joking... sort of.

One Biblical character I've always enjoyed is Zacchaeus, who, being "short of stature," climbed up into a tree to see Jesus.  

I could look at things differently, though.  These are the legs that enabled me to run around parks and play with my kids as they were growing up.  They're the legs that hike up mountains.  They're the legs that wander all over cities.  They're the legs that garden. They're the legs that taught aerobics for sixteen years.  They're the legs that did musical theater even when scar tissue from my first knee surgery kept my kneecap from moving normally. 

They're the legs that dance.

My legs rock.

 

Musical interlude

Really longtime readers of my blog will know what song is coming next, There's Lightning in These Thunder Thighs, written by Cynthia Emmets, and performed here by Saffire:  The Uppity Blues Women:

• To hear Cynthia Emmets singing her song go to her American Songspace page and do a search for the song.  She actually posted a coment on my blog the last time I posted the song!

 

"Leave It" - Yes

Now that we have all the tapes in one place, and now that there isn't a huge pile of stuff in front of the cabinet anymore, I've been listening to lots of tapes.  One tape, from 2004, had a song on it that I haven't heard for quite a while - Leave It by Yes:

"Southern Serves the South" - "I Am A Town" by Mary Chapin Carpenter (also again)

I have spent countless hours over many years wandering the back roads of North Carolina.  Mary Chapin Carpenter's song, I Am A Town, is amazing in the way that she captures Carolina small towns:

I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride
For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side
I'm the last gas for an hour, if you're going 25
I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind
I am peaches in September and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl
I'm the pines behind the graveyard and the cool beneath their shade
Where the boys have left their beer cans, I am weeds between the graves
My porches sag and lean with old black men and children
My sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them
I am a town

I'm a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain
I'm a Baptist like my daddy, Jesus knows my name
I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age
I am not your destination, I am clinging to my ways
I am a town

I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields
I'm an old truck up on cinderblocks, missing all my wheels
I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and "Southern Serves the South"
I am tucked behind a Jaycees sign on the rural route
I am a town
I am a town
I am a town

Southbound

I had I Am A Town in my head all of yesterday (older son and I sang it at one point). 

We spent the day at the NC Transportation Museum.  One of the first things you pass on the way in to the museum, is a silo with "The Southern Serves the South" painted on it.   

"The Southern Serves the South" was the slogan for The Southern Railway (merged, in 1982, into Norfolk Southern).  In southern trains, you can still see boxcars painted with the slogan. The museum (more on that later this week) has one of The Southern Railway's diesel engines in the roundhouse. 

For this post, I tried to find out anything about how Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote this song so I Googled "I am a town" and "writing."  Along with posts about her, I found that a number of writers like to listen to this song while they write.  I also found an interview where she said:

...a song that I wrote years ago that started out as a poem.  It's called I am a Town.  And I had the complete lyric for that for months and months and months and I never could find the right music to go with it and then one day, just kind of stumbled on this very circular kind of moody thing and I knew that I had it.  But it was constructed, you know, very separately.  Music and lyrics very different times but then they found their way together.

More on I Am A Town:

• Mary Chapin Carpenter:  Voice of Humanity
• Soul Enlarging Songs:

...A song that, for whatever reason, at the end of the final fade, allows you to somehow be more ready than you were before to face the next moment, the next day?     It’s a miracle that we ever find one...

•   Four years ago, I also posted about this song after taking an eastern NC road trip.

 

 

"O Rest in the Lord" - Felix Mendelssohn

For my voice lessons, I've been working on O Rest in the Lord from Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio, Elijah.  It's a high alto piece, which makes it a different kind of challenge than the soprano pieces I've worked on before.  Since last fall, we've been working more on the lower part of my range.  Of the pieces we've done in my lessons over the last two years, it's one of my favorites because... and that's where I fall into trouble writing about music.  My appreciation goes non-verbal, and I can't come up with words that fully describe what I see and feel.  I like the melody of this, and the harmony, the way the melody floats up to "desires" (hopefully), and the noodly way the melody goes in the middle section at 0:56 and at 1:15... and I don't feel like I'm getting it across.  I admire writers who wite about music more than just about any other writers because I understand the music, but I can't express it.

Oh well.

Actually, listening to this recording, I really love the way the voice and flute interact from 1:48 on.  I'd love to be able to play the flute part and sing at the same time!

Here is Christina Wilcox, mezzo soprano, singing Mendhelssohn's O Rest in the Lord:

"World Spins Madly On" - The Weepies

I don't usually post the same song twice in one year, but both videos are well animated and very different.  Last February 15, I posted Thought of You, a beautiful, animated, dance video set to the Weepies song, World Spins Madly On. 

Recently, daughter posted the official video for the song on my Facebook wall.  It's sweet:

Moods, "She Loves Me," choosing a word, Eddie Izzard, and Pink

It was gray and rainy all weekend.  Dear husband, who has been traveling every week lately and has to continue for the near future, had to work all weekend.  Yesterday, I woke up to a quiet, gloomy house and looked outside at the fog. 

The music in my head, as beautiful as it was, didn't help.  She Loves Me is one of my favorite musicals.  The two main characters fall in love through letters.  In Dear Friend (a waltz, giving a feeling of coupleness), she waits for him, with diminishing hope, at a romantic restaurant:

Charming, romantic, the perfect cafe
Then as if it isn't bad enough a violin starts to play
Candles and wine, tables for two, but where are you dear friend?

Couples go past me, I see how they look.
So discreetly sympathetic when they see the rose and the book.
I make believe nothing is wrong, how long can I pretend?
Please make it right, don't break my heart, don't let it end, dear friend...

Listen here.

I could really easily sink into the same lonely depression I had last winter, but I'm determined not to.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions.  If I want to change something, I can try at any point.  However, one idea floating around friends' walls on Facebook struck me this year.  Choose a word to set the tone for your year. 

I decided to choose "laugh" - in two senses.  First, I tend to take things too seriously.  I get silently argumentative so "laugh it off" would be good for me.  Also, laughing helps depression.  Okay, it doesn't fix anything, but it makes things a bit better.  Last week, when I woke up gloomy one morning, I started the day with this Eddie Izzard clip (language, of course):

It doesn't help that Broadway Dance was cancelled last week.  Last night, I tried Lyric Dance.  It's sort of contemporary dance with a very small bit of ballet.  It was fun, but I'm not sure I want to do it every week (it's also more... swoopy, and my back and neck aren't happy this morning). We did a dance to a minute of Glitter in the Air by Pink:

 

Tonight, I'm, hopefully, going to try tap.  If tap were on another night, I'd definitely take it.  Tuesday night, however, is when I go to a really high energy Zumba class.  I get out all my frustrations and feel lots better after it.  Can I do both classes?  I'll see tonight. 

Supposedly, it should clear up today.  Not yet.  I woke up to clouds and fog again.  I had a different song in my head, though.  More Pink - Raise Your Glass.  It's helping my mood:

 

"The Day The LOLCats Died" - Chris Parker

Today, websites are being blacked out, and bloggers and internet companies are speaking out - all against two badly written laws currently making their way through Congress.

Scientific American's blog has a good summary, What's Next in the SOPA Fight?:

...But the real power in the bill is not in the powers it gives the courts. Rather, the bill creates a system of incentives whereby the mere accusation of copyright infringement is enough to block a site entirely. The law gives immunity to ISPs, financial transaction providers and search engines who voluntarily block web sites accused of infringement. And if they don’t block those sites? Then they, too, may be held legally culpable for the infringing activity. The laws also contain no penalties or disincentives for copyright holders to avoid falsely accusing others of infringement... [italics and bold are mine]

All based on an accusation?!  No.  Our country is based on innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 

I'm not blacking out, though.  I'm doing what I do - posting music (with apologies to Don McLean):

• The story behind the making of the song

[Hat tip to the author of Books and Movies]

 

A Zumba song that I thought I'd never like

Eventually, I end up liking most Zumba songs. 

That wasn't the case when I first started Zumba a year ago (has it only been a year?!).  The music seemed too repetitive, and I couldn't tell a salsa from a mambo (still can't do it very well!).  As I've gotten more used to Zumba and the music, I've gotten to like it more and more. 

This didn't necessarily happen in aerobics.  Many times I would just put up with a song.  I think the difference in Zumba is that, unlike the way hi/low aerobics was for the last ten years I taught/took classes,* Zumba choreography is very tied to each song.  With the instructors I've had for the last half year, they either pick or choreograph Zumba choreography which really goes with the music.  I think that helps me to enjoy the music more. 

In the fall, the Zumba teacher whose routine is more hip hop-ish added this song to his routine.  I hated the song at first.  Then I got used to it.  A few weeks ago, I realized that I had the song running through my head, and that I actually liked it.  I don't usually like rap, and I never thought I'd like a song by Eminem.

This is the clean version of Till I Collapse by Eminem.  However, even though the words are blanked out, the sentiment still comes through.  I'd rather listen to it without reading the words:

 

 

*  Hi/low started out being what they called "chorus/verse," which means that the chorus and verse of every song were choreographed for that song.  The next song had different choreography.  Eventually, the style changed to "add on" which meant that you gradually added moves on until you got to 32/64/etc. beats of choreography which you repeated throughout the class.  That wasn't as tied to the music, although I would choreograph to the individual songs and then string the moves together.  I kind of cheated.