Daughters

Featured tunes in this post: "Daughters" by John Mayer, "The Day the Ravens Left the Tower" by The Alarm, "Diamonds and Coal" by Incubus.

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.
  

Summary:
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

Come Original

Featured music in this post: "Come Original" by 311, "Come Sail Away" by Styx, "Cronulla Breakdown" by The Pernice Brothers.

Come Original - Not that this has anything to do with 311, but my wife, daughter, and I got to see a show called "Montage" by Cirque Imagination the other night. (Thanks to my buddy Roy.) Apparently the cast are former members of Cirque de Soleil. It was incredibly entertaining, and original. It's really hard to believe that people can be that strong and flexible. Act after act performed short pieces - climbing up and down poles, dancing, juggling, contorting, and performing all sorts of acrobatics. It was amazing stuff that you shouldn't miss if you have the opportunity.

Come Sail Away - Styx was the first rock band I really got into. Well, Styx or Kiss, and since I don't have any Kiss on my iPod, let's say it was Styx. When I was in 6th grade, we lived in a small town called Ironton in the "tri-state" area of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The largest city in the area was Huntington, WV, with about 40,000 residents. Radio choices were severely limited, so we mostly listened to a Top 40 station. At that time (late 70s) that meant we heard a lot of Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, and all the disco hits. (Pretty insipid stuff, actually.) I had a good friend, Chris Parsons, who I played football and basketball with and generally hung out with a lot. For one thing, his family had an in-ground pool - pretty much unheard of in that part of Ohio. Anyway, he had "Grand Illusion" by Styx. When I heard it, it was like nothing else I'd listened to before - soaring keyboards, power chords, multiple lead singers. I badgered my parents into getting me the album. I found out that they had a newer release, "Pieces of Eight", so I had to get that one, too. For a few years, I got a Styx album for Christmas or my birthday - "Crystal Ball", "Cornerstone", "Paradise Theater". Styx is an interesting band. It seems like they were always having a struggle between Dennis DeYoung's desires to make operatic, almost-Broadway musical type spectacles, James Young's power guitar rock, and Tommy Shaw's melodic, introspective pop rock. When DeYoung won that battle, resulting in consecutive concept albums, "Paradise Theater" (very much on the Broadway-end of the spectrum) and "Kilroy Was Here", the tour for which included staging, costumes, and characterization that would fit in any opera house, the band pretty much lost its appeal with me. In fact, when they headlined the Texas Jam (an awesome annual rock festival) they were pretty much booed off the stage. I've been listening to their stuff from the 70s quite a bit lately - it holds up really well.

Cronulla Breakdown - "We try so hard to make the worst of a bad situation" : OK, it's pretty likely you haven't heard of The Pernice Brothers, which is a shame. They're an excellent band. I was introduced to them by another childhood friend from Ironton, Brad Markins. Anyway, Joe Pernice has a unique ability to combine poppy, ethereal, piano-based music with some very dark lyrics, producing listenable but thought-provoking music that delivers over and over again. Must be time for a list - my favorite artists that are unheard of or at least less popular than they should be:
10. King's X
9. Idlewild
8. Cave-In
7. Eisley
6. Matt Nathanson
5. Paloalto
4. Dave Barnes
3. Ben Lee
2. The Pernice Brothers
1. Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers

• Come Alive - Foo Fighters
• Come Around Again - Jet
• Come As You Are - Nirvana : "Take your time/Hurry up" - Reminds me of the contradictory lines in "Oh, Susanna".
  
• Come Away With Me - Norah Jones
• Come Back - Foo Fighters
• Come Back to Bed - John Mayer
• Come Clean - Eisley
• Come Down - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Come Home - OneRepublic
• Come On Come On - Jet
• Come On Get Higher - Matt Nathanson
• Come Original - 311
• Come Sail Away - Styx
• Come to Life - Alter Bridge
• Come Together - The Beatles
• Come Undone - Duran Duran
• Come Ye - India.Arie
• Comedown - Bush
• A Comet Appears - The Shins
• Comfort Eagle - Cake : "We are building a religion/We are making a brand/We're the only ones to turn to when you're castles turn to sand" - Speaking of original, Cake is probably the most original band I listen to regularly. (If there are actually degrees of originality.)
  
• Comfortable - John Mayer
• Coming Home - Alter Bridge
• Commissioning a Symphony in C - Cake : See what I mean. Who else would write a song called this?
  
• Communication - INXS
• Company Car - Switchfoot
• Concede - Sister Hazel : "Concede and believe me, I won't give up, I won't give out on you"
  
• Concrete Girl - Switchfoot
• Constellations - Jack Johnson
• Cookie Jar - Jack Johnson

Back-to-back by Jack Johnson.

• Cool Blue Reason - Cake
• Cool Down - Triumph : This really sounds like it could be a Led Zeppelin song. From Triumph's underrated "Thunder Seven", which holds up really well 20+ years later.
  
• Corduroy - Pearl Jam : "Can't buy what I want because it's free"
  
• Could You Be Loved - Bob Marley
• Countdown - Rush
• Country Feedback - R.E.M.
• Cowboys from Hell - Pantera : "We're taking over this town" - Masters of metal from Dallas.
  
• Coyote - Better Than Ezra
• Cradle of Love - Billy Idol
• Crazy - Patsy Cline
• Crazy Life - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
• Crazyboutya - Dave Barnes
• Creatures (For a While) - 311
• Creeps Like Me - Lyle Lovett
• Cronulla Breakdown - The Pernice Brothers
• A Crow Left of the Murder - Incubus : "Unlearn me" (love that); "From here on it's instinctual/Even straight roads meander/Every piece contains a map of it all"
  
• Crowing - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Crumblin' Down - John Mellencamp
• Crumbs from Your Table - U2
  

Summary:
Listened to 49 songs (well, 48 since my copy of Come Undone apparently is scratched - it skipped all over the place on my iPod), skipped 2 (Live versions of Come As You Are and Country Feedback)
18 songs start with the word "Come", 2 Cool, 4 Crazy, 2 Crows (neither of them counting)
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Now playing: 311 - Come Original
via FoxyTunes

Closer to the Heart

Featured songs in this post include "Closer to the Heart" by Rush, "Cochise" by Audioslave, and "Colour My World" by Chicago.

Closer to the Heart - In spite of its brevity, no Rush song better exhibits the poetry of drummer Neil Peart. ("The Larger Bowl" from Snakes and Arrows is a close second.) I love how he splices together the 2 vocations in each verse:
The blacksmith and the artist
Reflect it in their art
Forge their creativity
Closer to the heart

Philosophers and ploughmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the heart

Cochise - "Go on and save yourself/Take it out on me": Tom Morello, lead guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave (during the former band's extended hiatus), can really play guitar. He was featured in a "making of" video for the Guitar Hero videogame series. I should really like his playing. I don't. He has a really annoying signature - he plays a bunch of noise (sometimes cool-sounding noise, but noise nonetheless) at the beginning and/or end of nearly every song and in most of his solos. He does this for both Rage and Audioslave. Combine that with the yell-rap style of Rage lead "singer" Zack de la Rocha, and I find that band unlistenable. In contrast, Chris Cornell, lead singer for Audioslave and, before that, Soundgarden, has an unmistakable and remarkable voice. In my opinion, he made Audioslave. BTW - I don't know what this song has to do with Cochise.

Colour My World - Favorite slow dance songs:
5. Let's Stay Together - Al Green
4. What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
3. Colour My World - Chicago
2. Maybe I'm Amazed - Paul McCartney & Wings
1. Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton

• Check It Out - John Mellencamp
• Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running) - Foo Fighters : Making fun of emo bands.
  
• Chem 6A - Switchfoot
• Chemical Party - Gavin DeGraw
• Chemistry - Rush : "Oh but how do we make contact with one another? Electricity? Biology? Seems to me it's chemistry." I was taking high school chemistry when this came out. I sure liked the song better than the class.
  
• Cherry Bomb - John Mellencamp
• Chicago - Frank Sinatra : My wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in Chicago. We absolutely loved it. We stayed in a bed & breakfast on Michigan Avenue, less than 5 minutes from downtown. I agree with Sinatra - it's my kind of town. At least in the summer.
  
• Children In Bloom - Counting Crows
• Children of the Damned - Iron Maiden : Apparently a concert favorite. I can't stand it & usually skip it. One of things I've made a concerted effort to do with this blog is to make sure I listen to every song completely. It's helped me develop an appreciation for some songs that I didn't have before. Not this one, though.
  
• Chocolate - Snow Patrol : Mmm, chocolate. Me like chocolate. I don't think the song has anything to do with chocolate ("this is the final straw" forming the chorus) - but I'm not certain, since I'm usually eating M&M's by the end and can't hear over the crunching.
  
• Chorus and the Ring - R.E.M.
• Christmas Morning - Lyle Lovett
• Church - Lyle Lovett

Back-to-back songs by the long, tall Texan.

• Church On Tuesday - Stone Temple Pilots
• Cinderella Man - Rush
• Circles - Incubus
• Circles - Switchfoot
• Circus Envy - R.E.M.
• Citizen Soldier - 3 Doors Down
• City Love - John Mayer
• City of Blinding Light - U2
• The Clairvoyant - Iron Maiden
• Clarity - John Mayer
• Cling - Days of the New
• Clocks - Coldplay : One of the best songs of this decade.
  
• Close I've Come - Ben Lee
• Closer - Sorta : "We should be closer than we are." Locally successful band in the Dallas area. This song was written by bassist Danny Balis, who is also producer of the extremely popular and long-running radio show, The Hardline, on Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket. It's my favorite Sorta song.
  
• Closer to the Heart - Rush
• Closing Time - Lyle Lovett
• Cochise - Audioslave
• Cocoon - Jack Johnson
• Cold Cold Heart - Norah Jones
• Cold Day in the Sun - Foo Fighters : The only Foo Fighters song (on a full-length release) Dave Grohl doesn't sing - drummer Taylor Hawkins comes out from behind his kit to sing it and does a great job.
  
• Cold Fire - Rush
• Cold Hard Bitch - Jet

4 consecutive songs that start with "Cold". This is my favorite pattern like this so far. Every one of them is excellent, but they're very different.

• Collection of Goods - Collective Soul
• The Color of Right - Rush
• Colour My World - Chicago
• Coma - Stone Temple Pilots
• Combinations - Eisley : Excellent CD.
  

Summary:
Listened to 40 songs, skipped 3 (live versions of "Cinderella Man", "Closer to the Heart", "Cold Day in the Sun")
3 Chem, 2 Children, 2 Church, 2 Circles (plus a Ring), 2 City (1 Citizen), 4 Cold

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Now playing: Rush - Closer to the Heart
via FoxyTunes