Busy and Song in my head

Sorry again for the lack of postings. Been busy. Monday nights are softball, Tuesday nights are Darts (yes, I play competitive Darts. How many times do I have to say it?), Wednesday nights are band practice, Thursday nights are something, and then its the weekend. I don't really know what eats up my time, but there's always something. It's good though, right? It's healthy that I'm too busy to blog. I'm also too busy to go to the gym and too busy to not eat pizza and ice cream everyday. But that's...O-K.

Lately, I've had the following song in my head. I sang the opening lines to my wife the other day as romantically as possible. She was wooed until the call letters where she realized what it was...

Update!/Songs in My Head

Holy smokes! It's been a while since I've posted, eh? Sorry to keep you waiting. News on the basement: it's almost done. Well, almost done being constructed. Then there is the furniture, flooring and painting (not in that order). I've started painting one room already, and I'll post some pictures soon. I enlisted the guys in my band to help me out (since it will be the Band room), and we're doing lots of interesting designs and things instead of your standard solid-color walls. I was up until 2:00 a.m. last night working on a mini-masterpiece on one section of wall.

We listened to some Husker Du, Megadeth, and defunct local punk band Oblivion while painting on Sunday, and busted out some Superchunk last night. But for some reason the song in my head right now is "F.M." by Steely Dan. I take a lot of heat from my wife for guiltily digging the Dan and Fleetwood Mac and some of that smooth 70's rock. I can't help it. The polished hooks just sink right in.

Anyway, look for some more basement photos soon.

Songs in my Head

I'm busy working on a project at work. Right now I've just e-mailed what I believe will be the final version to a co-worker for their approval. So while I wait for their reply, I'll tell you what song has been in my head this morning: "All Over the World," by the Pixies. I haven't listened to the Pixies in a few months, at least, so I don't know why that song popped up. I was just discussing with my friend about how the Pixies were once one of my most favorite bands, and at one point not long ago, I listened to them regulary. But once I finally saw them live about 2 years ago (which was great), their albums started to lose a little of the mystique and appeal. Something about the simpleness of songs was exposed, where the record had me convinced it wsa more complex. I still like them, quite a bit, but they've faded just a little in my desire to actively listen to their records.

I've had the opposite happen often, where a live show gets me interested in a band. Has a live concert actually diminished your appreciation for a bands albums?

Fun Bar

Today I brought my lunch to work. A turkey sandwich, some baby carrots, a banana and some yogurt. Pretty healthy stuff.


But in the morning I remembered that I didn't have a spoon to eat my yogurt, so I went down to the cafeteria in my building to get one. I passed through the food stations to see what was cooking (literally). Roasted chicken, some fish, nice smelling soups... the usual. Then I saw this unique dessert.














It was labelled "Fun Bar," and it did, in fact , look very fun. It was a piece of chocolate cake, covered with marshmallows, a few chopped peanuts, and colorfully topped off with some dark chocolate M&M's. (I took the photograph after my first bite - it did not have a missing bite when I bought it.)


I was so excited, I nearly forgot to get a spoon before going back to my desk to wait. I was raised to eat my dessert after my meal, but it wasn't quite lunchtime yet. Despite not being hungry, all I could think about was food. My lunch was going to be so exciting now that I had a Fun Bar! So at 11:30, a full hour before my usual lunch break, I retrieved my lunch from the office fridge and devoured it, setting my sights on the Fun Bar.


But tragedy struck. A phone call. From my boss. With the chocolate and marshmallows just inches from my face, I was forced to have a real conversation about "important business"- seemingly miles away from everything a Fun Bar represents. After several agonizing minutes, I was finally able to hang up and take my first bite -


Meh.


It was really just OK. The cake was good, the marshmallows were good, but you know, I think I just prefer them seperate. I kept thinking the cake should've had a more sugary topping (like a usual frosting), and the marshmallows' soft texture was diminished by the spongey cake. But despite my less-than-ecstatic taste buds, the Fun Bar WAS very fun. It was a child's dream food and it made me feel silly for a while.


PS. The song in my head today is "Taxman Mr Thief" off of Cheap Trick's first album.

Songs in My Head

Right now the song in my head is "She's So High" by Blur from their album Leisure. It reminds me that there is this boxed set that was released last fall called The Brit Box which features 78 songs by 78 different British artists from the last 15 years or so. I don't have the set, but I wound up winning a one-disc 18-song sampler of it from an online radio station contest (woxy.com). As you'd expect, the sampler (and the full boxed set) contain a lot of Brit-Pop and Shoegaze tunes. Most of them are what I would consider the big hits of the era, but a few are more obscure.

The Blur song chosen for the compilation is "Tracy Jacks." Not a bad song, but I don't remember it being a single or getting much attention when it came out. Could be that it was a much bigger hit in England, or it could be that I just missed the boat on that one. Or it could be the only song the Brit Box compilers could get the rights too? But I kind of think that "There's No Other Way," "Girls and Boys," or "Chemical World" would be better selections for a British hits collection.

The Songs in my Head

I've had "House of Pain" by Van Halen in my head a couple times recently, including right now. not sure why cuz I haven't listened to it lately, but I'm not complaining. "House of Pain" and "Girl Gone Bad" are kind of the forgotten final tracks from VH's 1984 album. It's a pretty neat tune, too - there are like 3 or 4 different sections to the song, probably written independently of each other, but fused together into a clever 3 minute job. The part in my head is the lead riff and chorus, but I like the sped-up middle and the back-to-basics ending as well. Some might say that the parts don't really go together that well, and that the song is kind of a mish-mash. But I tend to like songs that start in one place and go someplace so far off that by the end of the song, you've forgotten the beginning. My band Kemman has a lot of songs that do that. (We are playing tonight at the Underground Lounge.)

The Songs in My Head

I almost always have SOME song in my head, and very often I don't even consciously notice it. My idea behind this series was to post whatever song was in my head at posting time. But now that I have a chance to post, I am actually listening to music, so the song in my head is the song playing right now: "Puss" by The Jesus Lizard. But it doesn't really count since it's actually playing.

So I will mention a song I had in my head recently: "For Your Life" by Led Zeppelin. The other day, that song was really stuck in there. What adjectives can you use to describe the severity of a song getting stuck in your head? It was stuck in my head real hard? It was stuck firmly? It was un-stickable? It was stuck with resounding presence? Speaking of presence, that song was stuck so thick(?), I had to listen to the entire album from which it came, Presence. A pretty underrated Zep album, it's got some great tunes on it. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" is probably the hit, I guess, but "Hots On For Nowhere" is possibly Zeppelin's most fun song, and nothing even comes close to the power of "Achilles Last Stand." What an epic tune. "For Your Life" is good, too. I dunno why it was in my head though. Just came up on my internal shuffle, I guess.

The Songs in My Head

I get songs stuck in my head all the time. I'm sure you do too. I decided to start a running feature here called "The Songs in My Head" and just list whatever song is in there at the time.

Unfortunately, I've got a pretty awful song stuck in my head right now, and it's kind of embarassing that it will be the first one I post. But, this is not a blog of lies. I'm not going to say I have some particularly cool, obscure indie-rock song in my head if it's not true (indie-rock, your time will come).

No, the song right now, for no discernable reason, is Sheena Easton's "Morning Train (9 to 5)." Not the Dolly Parton song - you know, it's the super cheesy one that goes, "My baby takes the morning train / He works from 9 to 5 and then / He takes another home again / To find me waiting for him." I can't get that chorus out of my head right now. Ugh.