Photo by my friend Jo Halstead; posed ridiculously by me in a very similar outfit to the one thrown together here...! (Trilby out of shot -- was too windy to wear it on the Pier!)
5. Playing DJ
Currently compiling a playlist for a church party next month! Cheesy pop and rock being the order of the day...
Because aside from smell, music is one of the best triggers of memory. IMO. And if I ever want to recapture my happiness this summer, the music'll do it. Mostly Glee covers, bit of old disco, that sort of thing.
8. Richard Marx.
Bit in love right now in case my previous post didn't quite capture that. :-) Especially watching YouTube clips of him and Hugh Jackman hanging out together... ooooh...
...A few years ago now, I decided that before I shuffle off this mortal coil (and I'm 32 now and God willing not about to begin that shuffle quite yet) I wanted to see my three favourite singer-songwriters perform live.
In no order of preference, as I love 'em all:
3. Thea Gilmore
Seen her live three or four times now and she rocked out each time, even when she was massively, massively pregnant! She falls into the indie folk-rock category if she falls into a category at all, and her music is intelligent, often barbed and more often than not, just beautiful. Case in point: December in New York.
BIG TICK. DONE.
Mainstream, on TOTP2 in 2003,
first time I stumbled across Ms Gilmore while awaiting an episode of Buffy no less...
2. Beverley Craven
Saw her live about four years ago at my local theatre. She. Was. Supremely fantastic, talented and very funny too, which was wonderfully surprising.
BIG TICK. DONE.
Promise Me, old footage but timelessly beautiful song!
And then there's:
1. Richard Marx.
...Yep.
Sometimes we set ourselves ambitions, or goals, and in the back of our minds we think we know we'll never achieve them. And sometimes we're proven wrong. Which is a-l-w-a-y-s good.
Not sure how the love got in but somehow this guy's music got right under my skin. Yep. I think it started with 'Right Here Waiting' on a compilation tape and spread out to 'Hazard'. This was in the late 80s, early 90s when, let's be honest, my loyalties were still divided between Kylie, Jason, Craig McLachlan, The Beautiful South and... Big Fun.
Who?
Oh yeah. These guys.
Princes in pastel. (Hey, I was ten, you're allowed to be that musically fickle when you're a child.)
Then... in 1993 there was 'Silent Scream'. And 'Now and Forever'. And Richard Marx came back into people's consciousnesses over here.
I came by a tape of Paid Vacation -- think I bought it a couple of days before a family holiday to 'sunny' Exmoor.
image via Amazon.co.uk
I fell head over heels over head over heels in musiclove. I played the album on a loop for hours days weeks months years and it still rocks my socks nineteen years later. I'm not sure when I decided on my musical ambition but it was some time back, and since then I had convinced myself that seeing Richard Marx live would never happen. These days it's all about Gaga, or Clapton, prominent artists whose shows are sold out in seconds (I'd imagine).
And then … flicking through the Metro one morning on the train into work I happened upon The Ad.
Yep. Richard Marx was coming to play live in London on 31st May*... AND I WAS GOING TO BE THERE, APOCALYPSE OR NONE!!!
The ticket rocked up a few days later, and on 31st May, I tipped up at the Royal Albert Hall for the last leg of Richard Marx's 'Stories to Tell' tour.
It was, without question, one of the best nights of my life. It's always a danger seeing one's idols live as there is always a margin for disappointment. Not so here. My expectations were exceeded -- Mr Marx rocked my socks yet again with a phenomenal setlist of acoustic tracks, some with string accompaniment, and then some with full band, and oh my word it was amazing. AMAZING. He played all the tracks the crowd would expect -- 'Hazard' (acoustic: haunting and beautiful!), 'Endless Summer Nights', 'Should Have Known Better' and, to my utter delight, 'The Way She Loves Me' from Paid Vacation! My teenage self, and my thirty-two year old self, were rocking out in tandem at this point.
I was reminded of why I'd chosen Richard Marx as a music idol all those years ago -- his voice is fantastic, just as strong and lyrical and edgy as it was over twenty years ago. He had fantastic banter with the audience, had some very funny anecdotes and some lovely ones about his family too -- the composite video of his three sons playing and singing the backing track to 'Save Me' was just too clever: a very talented family -- making the night perfect for the die-hard fans. His tribute to his father, through the song 'Through My Veins' actually had me in tears -- it was beautifully orchestrated, starting off with RM on the piano, then with the strings kicking in, then halfway through the full band joining in, and it was just... aaaah. Powerful and extremely moving.
...And yep, he finished on 'Right Here Waiting'.
Musical perfection.
I can watch this recording from last week and still have the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, no joshing.
I was on such a high leaving the venue afterwards -- I had my gig t-shirt and was completely wired... I tweeted manically on the way home about how much I'd loved the gig and also how I was one of the die-hard fans who did own a copy of his album My Own Best Enemy -- there's a completely breathtaking, high-energy track called 'Colder' on the album that propels me along on a power-walk like no other tune can.
...And to add to all of this, RICHARD MARX RETWEETED ME THE NEXT DAY!
It's the little things.
I fell in musiclove all over again. And a little bit of lovelove as well.
BIG BIG BIG TICK. DONE.
* again: somehow I'd missed him playing at Shepherds Bush last year -- how?!?!?! Epic Fan Fail.
OK, I try to avoid schmaltz (though somehow it always catches me up) but... p-r-e-t-t-y dang sad about Jeff Conaway passing away.
During a very earnest all-consuming Grease phase obsession in the 1990s I cultivated the mother of all crushes on this guy for the best part of three or four years (hey, that's a long-term crush when you're a teenager with escapism tendencies!). Hey, I even watched Elvira, Mistress of the Dark for him. And an episode of Babylon 5. And Ghostwriter.
And Celebrity Rehab. Which was exploitative, futile and sad. The man was in a lot of pain. Nuff said.
'K, so, just over a year ago I wrote a somewhat defiant blog post entitled "When I have a brand-new hairdo..." in which I tried to give a little boost to those of us who don't fit the category of classic beauty... whatever that is.
And... it's safe to say that despite that defiance I've spent a good part of the last year blaming certain failings in my life on the fact "I'm not pretty enough". Never mind that "not being pretty enough" (for what, exactly?) didn't hold me back from a much-wanted promotion, but in certain situations (such as being "ignored" when emailing folk to organise social events, seeming to be demoted as a friend, or receiving no valuable interest on a dating site) my default complaint is always "I'm not pretty enough". Which... yuh, I know, it's crazy-talk, but once the negative voice chimes in there's no stopping it.
(...Let's not gloss over the fact that this congenital negativity, folks' general busy-ness, or a mistake I made in that friendship shortly after Christmas, might be factors!)
...But I turned a corner lately. And this lass (in a well-timed episode of Glee) helped no end.
Only very recently have I reconciled myself with my own schnoz and my Heidi-the-psychic-possum boss-eyed look. A friend used to tell me until I was blue in the face that if I changed my nose then my face wouldn't be my own and it wouldn't look 'right'... but it took this ever so slightly kitsch episode of Glee to make me feel completely at ease with what I'd been given.
As I ruthlessly quoted, from High Art, on 5th February this year, "...the ugliest quality in a woman is vanity", I have to admit that like many women in the western world in possession of functioning eyes I'm quite very critical of, say, how I look in photos, so... yeah, vain to some degree... I saw a picture of myself taking shots at a work event lately and cringed; it was NOT flattering; too many chins, a heinous "snapper sneer"... not purty in any sense of the word!
...So I decided to go Cindy Sherman and play about with some self-portraits. Maybe it's vain, but when I've taken shots of friends of mine in the recent past, they've been equally self-critical of how they were portrayed so, armed with a new hairdo, a tripod and a shutter-release remote, I decided to be my own photographer. And these are some of the results:
On a slight -- but only minuscule tangent -- I've crafted a spring/summer look I want to rock, just as soon as I can acquire the trilby, and the eBay satchel rocks up (it's been shipped, woot!).
PS This post title* comes from something my friends and I used to say to each other if we were about to talk relentlessly about ourselves in an email... but if you can't swim in a Sea of Me on your own blog then where can you, eh?
My mother has been sprucing up her garden, and in the fabulous weather we've had the last couple of weeks it's looking beautiful. Not one of green fingers myself I can only appreciate the amalgamation of colour from a naive aesthetic POV. And make a mini movie montage out of it.
* Disclaimer: I don't speak German.
** Disclaimer: I am in a codependent relationship with Google Translate.
*** Disclaimer: It's supposed to read, "These are a few of my favourite things..." because, people... (person?) ...I'm very likely to be going to Salzburg in the summer for a coupla days of full-on Sound of Music immersion, Mozart appreciation, and Austrian coffee. YAY! Expect to see me doing this on a mountaintop!
Odd decision given Salzburg didn't even make my list but... spurred on by my Swedish friend Caroline's suggestion that we meet there, and my propensity to jump on a bandwagon and make attempts to be more spontaneous, it looks like a PLAN. And I'm excited! I dug out my Sound of Music DVD and found a couple of documentaries on the second disk including Salzburg: Sight and Sound, presented by the then 22-year-old Charmian Carr, "Liesl" in SoM. It's fabulously dated (filmed in between Carr's days on set, in 1965 or thereabouts) but the city looks beautiful and inviting even now in shots.
all grabs from the Salzburg: Sight and Sound documentary
on The Sound of Music additional DVD
And in other news: I'm developing a music-crush on Doris Day. Having found some tracks on Jazz Online I'm absolutely hooked. Have taken to dancing spontaneously in the style of old musicals on my way to work to the likes of Que Sera Sera and A Bushel and a Peck. Full, full appreciation.
...Just read on IMDB that the new release of The Great Gatsby (2012), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, will be directed by Baz Luhrmann! Hurrah!
