Beauty of Gray

On to the Bs...

• Baby Don't Cry - INXS
• Baby In Two - Pernice Brothers
• Baby, What a Big Surprise - Chicago
• Back at Your Door - Maroon 5
• Back Door - Fastball
• Back In Baby's Arms - Patsy Cline
• Back In the Village - Iron Maiden
• Back On Line - INXS
• Back On My Feet Again - The Babys
• Back to You - John Mayer
• Bad - U2 : "If I could through myself/Set your spirit free/I'd lead your heart away/See you break, break away"
  
• Bad Blood - Neil Sedaka
• Bad Day - Fuel
• Bad Day - R.E.M.
• A Bad Dream - Keane : "I wake up, it's a bad dream/No one on my side/I was fighting, but I just feel too tired to be fighting/Guess I'm not the fighting kind"
  
• Bad Seeds - Brother Cane
• Badge - Cream
• Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today) - Love and Rockets : There's a nice remake of this in the movie "Marley & Me"
  
• The Ballad of Bjorn Borg - Pernice Brothers
• The Ballad of Ira Hayes - Johnny Cash : Another revered elder statesman of American entertainment, Clint Eastwood, made a good film related to this "Flags of Our Fathers"
  
• The Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
• Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners - Foo Fighters
• Banana Pancakes - Jack Johnson : "It's just so easy, when the whole world fits inside of your arms/Don't really need to pay attention to the alarm/Wake up slow"
  
• Bang and Blame - R.E.M.
• Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
• Bastille Day - Rush : "And we're marching to Bastille Day/La guillotine will claim her bloody prize"
  
• Battery - Metallica
• Battle Cry - Triumph : "So many, many miles from home/Oh Lord have mercy on my soul/I think the loneliest man in the world is a soldier"
  
• Be Like That - 3 Doors Down
• Be Mine - R.E.M.
• Be Still, My Soul - Wintley Phipps
• Beachball - R.E.M.
• The Beast In Me - Johnny Cash : This song is a perfect example of the greatness of Cash's "American" recordings. At his advanced age, his voice weak and wavering, yet able to evoke such feeling, the songs are truly powerful. You can just feel that he's resigned to the fact that his days are near an end, that he wants to deliver a message, and that he's ready to be with his wife and his Maker in eternity.
  
• Beat a Drum - R.E.M.
• Beautiful - Creed : "Beautiful is empty/Beautiful is free/Beautiful loves no one/Beautiful stripped me"
  
• Beautiful Day - U2
• Beautiful Disaster - 311 : "I try to be not like that but some people really suck"
  
• Beautiful Girl - INXS
• The Beautiful Letdown - Switchfoot : "I will carry your cross and your song/But I don't belong here/I'm gonna set sight and set sail for the kingdom come"
  
• Beautiful Son - Cave In
• Beauty & Sadness - The Smithereens
• Beauty of Gray - Live : "The perception that divides you from him is a lie/For some reason you never ask why/This is not a black and white world/You can't afford to believe in your side/This is not a black and white world/To be alive, I say the colors must swirl/And I believe that maybe today we will all get to appreciate the beauty of gray"

Three events this week swirled together to demonstrate just how far we still have to go in race relations in this country. To briefly summarize them, for those not keeping up (or in the author's vain thought that someone might read this well after the stories have faded):

First, President Obama signed the Economic Stimulus Plan, a couple of months on the heels of the first "bailout" plan, no doubt in advance of Stimulus 3 and whatever else is to come.

Second, a Connecticut woman was brutally attacked and maimed by a chimpanzee owned by her (I don't want to judge anyone, here) complete lunatic of a neighbor. The neighbor had owned the chimp for several years and treated it as if it were her child - dressing it in diapers, feeding it steak and lobster, and serving it wine. Tragically, the chimp had to be killed to end it's attack.

Third, the New York Post ran an editorial cartoon that tried to combine these 2 events - it depicted 2 police officers standing over a chimp they had just shot and killed, one of them saying "they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." The Post "apologized" after the ensuing outcry. Now, unlike most people I've heard discuss this, I believe The Post and the cartoonist when they say they were simply saying that a chimp could have written the stimulus bill. However, it wouldn't take a moment's thought on their part to realize that many people would think they were disparaging the president (comparing him to a chimp), and that it would piss them off.

When are we ever going to get past this? Idealists thought the Civil Rights movement in the 60s ended it. Optimists thought that the L.A. riots of the 70s were the last breaths of racism. 30+ years later, it's hard to see that any advance has actually been made, in spite of an African-American man being elected president. Some white people continue to act and talk like other ethnic groups are sub-human, or at least sub-white. Some black people are excessively sensitive to continuing slights, both real and imagined. I really wish we could all get to the place the band Live describes in "The Beauty of Gray" - where the world is not black and white but a beautiful amalgamation of the two. We are all children of God and, thus, each other's brothers and sisters.

Summary:
Listened to 40 songs. Skipped 1 (Demo version of "Beat a Drum").
5 songs by R.E.M.
2 songs called "Bad Day" - thankfully neither of them by Daniel Powter
6 starting with "Beautiful", 7 starting with "Back", 6 starting with "Bad"
Second instrumental (Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners)
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Now playing: Live - The Beauty Of Gray
via FoxyTunes