Posted in Music Monday, tagged Cold Cold Heart, Hank Williams, Norah Jones, sexy, The Alexander Technique on February 20, 2012| 2 Comments »
Norah Jones sort of makes me wish I was gay. I also wouldn’t mind to have three men with good, slow rhythm backing up my chick lead vocals.
I know I should shut up, but her hands on the piano are so ridiculously beautiful. One rarely sees a wrist and fingers with that kind of poise on the keys. Lovely. You can hear the amount of control she has in her playing.
Non-doing is an important principle in the Alexander Technique, what FM Alexander called Inhibition. Learn it and reap; oh, yeah.
Posted in Music Monday, tagged America, car songs, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, I'm in love with Massachusetts, Johnny Cash, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Lucinda Williams, ocean, road trip, Son Volt, summer travel, The Beatles, Tom Waits, Wilson Pickett, Woody Guthrie on September 5, 2011| 6 Comments »
We went to Crane Beach on Friday, which entailed about 2 hours, 15 minutes in the car each way (we stayed overnight). Not bad to get to an ocean beach (compared to 12-14 hours, one way, from Kent, Ohio where we used to live).
I’ve written about this before: kids in the car on road trips. Of course, they’ve graduated from singing songs at the top of their lungs to us playing CDs to them feeding songs through the car stereo via iPod. Not so much the radio on, but it all works, it’s fun, and it’s All-American.
Current Top Ten Road-Trip Songs (in almost no particular order):
ONE
This works especially well because we have to drive on “128 when it’s dark outside” to get to or home from any North Shore beaches. A classic.
TWO
“swear it had the power to repair itself”:
THREE
How can you go wrong with Lucinda covering Gram Parsons? We all belt along with Lucinda and we sound real good.
FOUR
You already know how I feel about Woody and Songs to Grow On. My dad used to sing this to me.
FIVE
This made my top ten Beatles’ songs on our Christmas card last year, so you know it had to make this top ten list, too. Hubby says it’s a bit obvious, but I told him baby, you can drive my beat up old mini-van and baby I love you
SIX
Who says you can’t dance and drive at the same time? Safer than texting!
SEVEN
The Man in Black. ‘Nuff said.
EIGHT
I sure can’t choose a favorite Hank Williams song, but I do have a 2-disc CD compilation that I play ad nauseum on car trips. Not a song about the road, but all of Hank Williams’ songs are road songs.
NINE
Switchin it over to AM, searching for a truer sound/Can’t recall the call letters, steel guitar and settle down/Catching an all-night station, somewhere in Louisiana/ It sounds like 1963, but for now, it sounds like Heaven
TEN
Would any top ten music list be complete without a Wilco song? Well, no, but you’ll have to listen to “Passenger Side” on your own because I wasn’t too happy with the youtube versions. Instead, you get J. Richman and the Modern Lovers again. This is sans the intro which is half the reason the song is so good. Gotta find that intro by your lonesome, too.
ELEVEN
It goes to eleven? I tried to find the scene from Spinal Tap in which Michael McKean sings “All the Way Home,” but could not.
Postscript: I am well aware of the lack of females representin’ here. Chrissy Hynde “Middle of the Road” was a thought and Aretha is good music in (and out of) the car, forever and always. I love my Mahalia in the mini-van, Sweet Honey, too…you know I may need another top ten road-trip songs some day. I am an American after all.
twinklysparkles 