Daughters - My wife and I have 3 daughters. I can't imagine life without them. I'm not really sure what I lived for before they came along. Actually, I think my life up to that point was just preparation for becoming their Daddy.
Our oldest, Nicole, has been out of the house for about a year now (give or take - she'll be disappointed I didn't mark the exact date in my brain's history log), but she lives in an apartment close by. We get to see her a couple times a week for a few hours. I hope she knows how special that time is to us, even though it's usually just spent catching up on TV viewing.
Raychel (named after my Dad, hence the non-standard spelling) is the middle child. She just finished her sophomore year of college and is transferring to SMU for the fall. She wants to find an apartment closer to campus. She kicked ass and took names at community college.
In a few days, we're taking our youngest, Lauren, to Freshman Orientation at Oklahoma State - a joint venture for kids and parents. Soon enough we'll be making the trip again so she can start her college career on her own. I'll act tough and make fun of Linda's crying, if I can manage it. Or I might break down myself.
We'll be empty nesters. We had several weeks to test this out last summer when the younger girls took church trips. No worries there - we had a great time together. It's not possible to say how much we love our girls and how proud we are of them all. We'll be empty nesters, with overflowing hearts. Maybe it will make me a better son - at least calling my parents on a regular basis. I'm starting to see how much that means to a parent.
The Day the Ravens Left the Tower - I was going to write about animal songs - those that name an animal in the title - when I noticed how many songs there are with birds in the title. Here are the songs on my iPod that fit the bill (what a punster!): "And Your Bird Can Sing" (The Beatles), "Bird On a Wire" (Johnny Cash), "Blackbird" (Alter Bridge), "Canary In a Coalmine" (The Police), "Comfort Eagle" (Cake), "A Crow Left of the Murder" (Incubus), "The Day the Ravens Left the Tower" (The Alarm), "Disturbance at the Heron House" (R.E.M.), "King of Birds" (R.E.M.), "Kiwi" (Maroon 5) [although this seems to be about the fruit], "Nightingale" (Norah Jones), "Parakeet" (R.E.M.), "Penguins" (Lyle Lovett), "Rooster" (Alice In Chains), "Songbird" (Fleetwood Mac), "Swan Swan H" (R.E.M.), "Three Little Birds" (Bob Marley), "Vultures" (John Mayer), "Where Eagles Dare" (Iron Maiden), and "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)" (Icicle Works). That's 20 songs. R.E.M. leads the way with 4 of them.
Diamonds and Coal - "If it's good to instigate, we're a fast horse bet on us/I'm not calling you an animal/I think we just fight too much". "Love isn't perfect/Even diamonds start as coal/Come on, in spite of this we're doing just fine/Even diamonds start as coal/Give us time to shine/Even diamonds start as coal/We're incomplete and infantine/Even diamonds start as coal". My favorite lyricist going these days is Brandon Boyd of Incubus. He displays an imaginative vocabulary, discusses a wide range of topics, and doesn't mind letting his phrases fall out of phase with the music - allowing them to stretch into the following progression or end in the middle of a measure. It makes you pay attention. It's unique and thought-provoking. In the next post, I'll be featuring another Incubus tune, one of my favorite songs of the current decade, "Dig". Future posts will no doubt feature other Incubus songs - "Smile Lines", "Nice to Know You", "Wish You Were Here", "Megalomaniac" - great poetry, and when combined with instruments it makes stunning music.
- Crush - Gavin DeGraw
- Crush With Eyeliner - R.E.M.
- Cry In the Sun - Better Than Ezra
- Crying Shame - Jack Johnson
- Crystal Ball - Keane
- Crystal Ball - Styx : "I used to like to walk the straight and narrow line/I used to think that everything was fine/Sometimes I'd sit and gaze for days through sleepless dreams/All alone and trapped in time"
- Crystal Blue Persuasion - Tommy James & The Shondells
- Cupid - Jack Johnson
- Cure - Metallica
- Cut to the Chase - Rush
- Cute as a Bug - Lyle Lovett
- Cuyahoga - R.E.M. : "Let's put our heads together and start a new country up/Our father's father's father tried, erased the parts he didn't like/Let's try to fill it in, bank the quarry river, swim/We knee-skinned it you and me, we knee-skinned that river red"
- Cyanide - Metallica
- Cygnus X-1 - Rush
- Daddy Sang Bass - Johnny Cash
- Daisy Duke - Rooney
- The Dam at Otter Creek - Live
- Dam Would Break - Toad the Wet Sprocket
- Damaged Goods - Fastball
- Dance Naked - John Mellencamp : That's an ugly visual!
- Dance of Death - Iron Maiden
- Dance With You - Live
- Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol
- Dangerous Type - The Cars
- Danny Boy - Johnny Cash : One of the few songs from Cash's American Recordings that I just don't like much.
- Dare You to Move - Switchfoot : "Welcome to the fallout/Welcome to resistance/The tension is here/Between who you are and who you could be/Between how it is and how it should be"
- Dark Street - Fastball : I don't see how anyone could not love this song.
- Darkness - The Police
- Daughters - John Mayer
- Dawn Chorus - The Alarm
- A Day In the Life - The Beatles : It's a great song, even so, it's grossly overrated. It's rarely left out of lists of the greatest songs of all time.
- Day Job - Gin Blossoms
- The Day That Never Comes - Metallica : About a battered woman - very evocative. "Love is a four letter word and never spoken here/Love is a four letter word here in this prison/I'll suffer this no longer/I'll put an end to this I swear/This I swear!/The sun will shine/This I swear!"
- The Day the Ravens Left the Tower - The Alarm
- Day Tripper - The Beatles
- Daylight - Coldplay
- Daylight Fading - Counting Crows
- Days Go By (acoustic) - Dirty Vegas : The electric version was a pretty big hit - very techno/electonica. This acoustic version shows what a great song they actually wrote, unhidden by the repetitive noise.
- Days of the Week - Stone Temple Pilots
- Days With You - Fuel
- Daysleeper - R.E.M. : Good song, but way too similar to "It's the End of the World...", which is far superior.
- De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - The Police : "Poets, priests, and politicians have words to thank for their positions."
- Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground - The White Stripes
- Dead Wrong - The Fray
- The Debt Collectors - Ben Lee
- December - Collective Soul
- Deeper and Deeper - The Fixx
- The Deepest Blues are Black - Foo Fighters
- Deja Vu - Iron Maiden
- Delia's Gone - Johnny Cash : Delightfully dark tune. The guy couldn't stand his woman any more, so he shot her.
- Demolition Man - The Police
- Deny - Default : "The hand that feeds you, needs you/Oh God, I'd die to try to finally please you". From the excellent CD "The Fallout".
- Departure - R.E.M.
- Desire - Toad the Wet Sprocket
- Desire - U2
- Desperado - Johnny Cash : Not as good as The Eagles' version.
- Detroit Waves - Matt Nathanson
- Diamonds and Coal - Incubus
- Diddley Daddy - Chris Isaak : A bluesy tribute to Bo Diddley.
Listened to 59 songs, skipped 1 (live version of Cygnus X-1)
2 Crushes, 3 Crystals, 2 Dams, 4 Dances, 11 Days, 2 Dead
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Now playing: John Mayer - Daughters
via FoxyTunes
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