Album Art Appreciation

 There was a great mental debate on writing about my Mother’s Day plans and in the end I have decided to hold off and write about it at a later date. Mostly because I don’t want to provide any spoilers to my mother and mother in law.   Instead I will talk about something that both my mother, mother in law and myself have in common and that is art appreciation. 

My husband is a connoisseur of vinyl records. It is his hobby and he is constantly on the hunt for new music. He has a talent for finding obscure and often very interesting records. While not all the records are to my musical taste, some of the art on the album covers is remarkable.   Below are 11 gems from the record collection that I think have interesting album jackets.

1. Monomyth - Exo - This is amazing because not only is the jacket a space trip, the inside is fascinating to look at.
2. Comacozer- Binbeal - I love how psychedelic this is. 
3. Orphans of Doom - I am not going to lie, I picked this one because of the octopus.  The flowers and octopus is beautiful to me.
4. Alunah - Amber &Gold - I feel like this one could be the cover to several fantasy novels. It reminds me of a fallen angel in the garden of eden with the apples and wings. 
5. Book of Worms - Remythologizer - This is the exact type of fantasy novel that I would have bee drawn to. The more you look at it the more details you see. 
6. The Pilgrim - Walking into the Forest - This reminded me of the sort of folk music that I enjoy. 
7. Slift - Ummon - This is another amazing one that the out side of the jacket is just as interesting as the inside of the jacket. 
8. The Well - Pagan Science - This I would expect to see in a museum. 
9. Waveshaper- Artifact - I love how retro and futuristic it is. I makes me think of an 80’s set in what they thought the future would look like.
10. Turned to Stone Volume 2- Masamune and Maramasa- Howling Giant- Sergeant Thunderhoof -  There is so much going on in this.  The more you look at it, the more details you see.
11. The Greasy Gills- The Spring Collection - This album cracked me up. It made me laugh.

Murder She Says

I have tried to write an opening to this section five times now.  Each one is worst than the last. I am have decided to jump in and then clean it up in a year when I relook at this post and edit it to a better place. 

Somedays I have issues concentrating. My brain gets distracted on minor details and I end up following squirrels looking for nuts. One of the things that have really been helping me find my focus is listening to music and podcasts.  This weeks music and podcast choices revolve around murder and crime. 

Criminal Discourse is a podcast that revolves around true crime. Most of the crime is murder but not always.  I find it to be interesting and the episodes are a decent length.  I would recommend you to check it out if you are into true crime and podcasts. My favorite episodes so far are The Watcher and Sheila Keen Warren. 

When I am not listening to podcasts, I am listening to music.  Somehow my music and my podcasts intertwined and now they both talk about murder or could possibly be part of sound track to a murder.  Here are several songs that popped up that work with a theme.

Play List

1. Dance Upon Your Grave  by The Brothers Comatose

2. The Plank by The Devil Makes Three

3. Bad Things by Jace Everett

4. Bourbon in Your Eyes by Devil Doll

5. Murder He Says by Duke Heitger and His Swing Band

6. The Shadowman by Lee Presson and the Nails

7. If I'm Crazy by Amigo the Devil

Do you have any pods cast that you listen to to help you concentrate or music recommend?  It is always fun to discover new things. 

Dreams of Work

Last night I had a dream that I was at work.  Dreams like that normally leave me feeling unrested and normally running my tongue across my teeth to make sure they are still in my mouth.(I once read if you dream about teeth, you are anxious) The dream I had last night left me feeling happy when I woke up. 

The dream started out sad.  It started out with being notified that my favorite customer from when I worked at the bookstore had passed away.  I haven’t worked at the bookstore for little over half a decade, but I can still remember my favorite customers. 

This particular customer liked to come at the end of the night. He had long dark hair, a small smile and walked with a limp and a cane.  He like to come at the end of the night, because it was less crowded and he was less self conscious of his limp and sometimes it would take him all day to get his limbs to work.  I remember him telling me once that he was once in service and things didn’t go well.  He loved music, and when he was in pain and couldn’t go anywhere, he was able to escape into music. If it was slow , we would chat for a bit about music as I applied every coupon he had to the latest additions to his already extensive music collection. 

In my dream, my favorite customer had died.  It was sad and I was shocked. I was even more shocked to find out that he had left me an inheritance to the amount of double the value of my home, so that I could pay my house off and still be comfortable. I had no idea.  The solicitor handed me a note and a check.  I opened the note (and listened to it being narrated by the recently deceased,) that stated they had included me in their will, because I had always been nice to them and treated them with respect and kindness and those were rare qualities to find in a person.

I woke up feeling really good about myself. If I could be remembered for anything, I think I would want to be remembered like that. I would want to be remembered as a person that treats other people with respect and kindness.   It doesn’t matter what you do or where you work, it matters how you treat people. 

Today when I went to work, I tried to be a little nicer and chat with my coworkers a little more. I want my dream self to be just as nice as my awake self. 

Secret Agents for Santa

I think my cats might be secret agents for Santa. Or at least that is the thought that came to when I was in the shower and Iggins sat there and watched me the entire time, despite his fear of being hit with a drop of water.

Holiday music is slowly amping up on radio stations, store stations and doctors waiting rooms. Whether you are pro holiday music creep or anti holiday music creep it is going to creep its way into you brain anyway.  Which is how the line, "He knows when you are sleeping, He knows when your awake," popped into my brain when I could see Iggins watching me.

Cats would be the perfect secret agents for Santa, because my cats definitely know when I am sleeping, and know when I am awake.  In fact Dib will grumble and meow just outside of the bedroom door, if I am just lazing in bed.  There is no pretending to be asleep to the cat unless you are the cat.

However, if they were the ones to decide who was being bad or good in the house, I think it would be skewed.  The number of times I have told Dib not to do something (don't jump behind the TV, get off the table, that isn't edible) are too many to count. I am sure in his brain I am being the bad human, because I won't let him do the thing he want to do, which if the was an  agent for Santa, would it reflect badly on me.  On the bright side, if the cats were secret agents for Santa, I am pretty sure I can sway their opinion with some canned cat food.

Gyrating in Chairs

Have you ever been hanging out with a couple of friends and then out of the blue someone says, "That would be a great band name!" Then the rest of the night devolves into discussing the imaginary band and joking around about our celebrity personalities. Yesterday Lizzy, Gat and I made our imaginary band, Gyrating in Chairs.  It is kind of a folksy sort of thing, or it might be based off of the imaginary album cover we posed for yesterday.

It looks like a legitimate album cover. At least I think so.  Unfortunately a fake album cover and a bunch of wine does not make us musicians.  Only one of use can actually sing and play an instrument, but not at the same time.  The other two have other talents that have absolutely nothing to do with music.  It probably has more to do with helium infested mice, salami and The Little Mermaid. In fact all could be revealed in the fake biography of the group and how they became a back porch favorite, if I ever get around to it.  Until then, I am just going to snicker at our song titles and enjoy the strawberry jam we accomplished while goofed around with stardom. What would your band name be?

The Devil Hates Kung Fu

I wanted to use February as a Month for Gratitude and talk about all the things that I was grateful for and try to mentally trip myself out of the January doldrums.  I had this master plan last week that I would start on February 1st and even had a subject that I wanted to start with. Two days ago it was February 1st and at the end of the day, the only thing I was grateful for was to be able to go home in one piece.  Yesterday was the annual Wish It Was Spring By Trusting a Rodent Festival  (Groundhogs Day) and despite the prophesies  of an early spring, it didn't put a spring into my step. It isn't that I am not grateful, I have a lot to be grateful for, but when you are seeing colors in a dreary light it is hard to see colors.

One of the things I do when I need to work stuff out in my head is reorganize the space around me, and then hope that by the time that I am done my brain will be in a better spot.  I was reorganizing the library last week since it had become a black hole of clutter and half finished projects.  In the middle of moving a cabinet I discovered a bunch of old year books and compact discs.   One of the discs that caught my eye was the one my husband made for me when we first started dating.

Before I was with my husband I had a very specific music taste. I am not saying it was good music taste or bad music taste, but it was pretty much whatever came on the radio.  I had never been super obsessive over music, but on the other hand I could listen to the same CD for weeks without taking a breather, because it just jived with me at the time.  I will admit that I get in a rut with my music.  I get in a rut in a lot of things and I don't even know it most of the time.

My husband is a constant evolution of music and has introduced me to a lot of bands that I would never have discovered on my own.  Looking back at the first mixed tape made me so grateful that he didn't call it quits when I told him that his favorite band had nasally grating voice that I couldn't stand.  If you hear him tell it, I was a hairs breathe from getting the axe, because I inadvertently insulted the band that spoke his soul.  I am grateful that he could accept our differences and move forward and give me time to change my music tastes at my own pace and not instant expect me to love everything he loves.  My husband and I are almost a dozen years out from our first date, and I still don't love all the music that he does, but thats okay.  He certainly doesn't love all the music that I do, but when I showed him that first compact disc he made, he marveled at his good taste and I was able to laugh with him over some of the songs.  Looking back and enjoying the past is one step closer to getting out of the rut.

Below is the play list for those that are interested.

The Devil Hates Kung Fu

1. The King of Carrot Flower by Neutral Milk Hotel
2. King's Dominion By Black Eyes
3. Pull My Strings- Dead Kennedys
4. Target by Fugazi
5. The Kids are Alright by Gold Finger
6. Call the Doctor by Sleater Kinney
7. Bloody Murder by Cursive
8. DatSkat by The Roots
9. Goneja by Skinny Puppy
10. Circus by Tom Waits
11. Caroline by Jawbreakers
12. Magical Colors (31 Flavors) by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
13. The Lost World by Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon
14. Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)  by Digable Planets
15. Futile Bread Machine by Meshuggah
16. Watergate by Ohgr
17. Kill All the White Man by NoFx
18. Snow Shoe BBQ by Atom and His Package
19. Turn Around by They Might be Giants
20. Can God Fill Teeth by Lard
21. Kabuki Girl by The Decendents
22. White Kids Love Hip Hop by MC Chris
23. Exploding Brains by Tenacious D
24. Hotel Yorba by The White Stripes
25. United States of Whatever by Liam Lynch

Friendship is Rare

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in you head? And you hear the same stanza over and over in your head and it won't stop.  You have tried playing the song to get it out of your head, and listening to other music to drown it out, but in moments of utter silence the words float about in your brain sort of song? I have one of those songs stuck in my head.  I figured the one way to really get it out of my head would be to write about it. For the past couple of days I have had Tenacious D stuck in my head, and thankfully it is a stanza that won't get me fired if heard muttering at work.


"Friendship is rare, Do you know what I'm sayin' to you? Friendship is rare. My derriere, When you find out much later That they don't really care. It's rare to me, can't you see? It's rare to me, can't you see? "

Of course after the the third hour of singing this, I begin to think about my friends, instead of how to get the song out of my head.  I started to think about who my best friend is and realize that there is no one person that is my best friend. If my friends are reading this, I am sure that some of them are a little surprised. They know my pretty well and would be willing to join me on some pretty stupid adventures. Here me out, before you pull the pitch forks out and start the march. 

Friendship is rare. It isn't easy to make friends. It isn't always easy to find some one that you click with and that understands aspects of you.  I think that when most people think of a best friend, they think of a person that understands you the best. That could be a sibling, spouse, coworker or muggle. 

What if there were multiple people that understood various aspects about you, would they all be considered equal in their level of friendship? Or is it the person that I see most often considered my best friend? If that were true, I would be considered best friends with a good majority of my co workers.  I like my co workers, but I am sure that some of them would not think twice about tripping me if it meant getting away from the zombie apocalypse or a bear. 

I believe that a person can have multiple best friends, because people are fulfilled at different levels. I can be the best friend to several people at once because I am fulfilling a need and they fulfill my needs. My best friend to bake cookies with is not the same best friend that I go shopping with, because those actions to mean the same thing to each person. 

While the rest of that Tenacious D song did not stick as much as that first stanza the lyrics, I think that it might have been the reminder that I needed to be thankful for the friends that I have, and that finding someone to connect with is a rare thing and should be cherished. Not every one will understand a friendship, and it is okay, because we all connect at different levels. 

Here is all of the song lyric, and good luck not getting it stuck in your head. 

                                                           "Friendship"

Friendship is rare, 
Do you know what I'm sayin' to you? 
Friendship is rare. 
My derriere, 
When you find out much later 
That they don't really care. 
It's rare to me, can't you see? 
It's rare to me, can't you see? 

Oh shit there's a bear, 
Could you hand me that shotgun buddy, 
Also that chair? 
We're fighting a bear 
Now your life's in grave danger 
And you don't even care. 
It's rare to me, can't you see? 
It's rare to me, can't you see? 
It's rare to me, 
Say a prayer for me, 
'Cause it's rare to be 
In Tenacious D. 

Friends will be friends 
They're running naked in the sand, 
Friends holding hands 
Will someday surely form a band, 
Friends will be friends 
They say that friends are friends 
To the bitter end. 
Long-as-there's-a-record-deal-we'll-always-be-friends! 
Long-as-there's-a-record-deal-we'll-always-be-friends! 

Friends will be friends 
They're running naked in the sand, 
Friends holding hands 
Will someday surely form a band, 
Friends will be friends 
They say that friends are friends 
To the bitter end. 
Long-as-there's-a-record-deal-we'll-always-be-friends! 
Long as there's a record deal we'll always be friends, yeah

Now that I have written about it, hopefully it will move on and make room for other songs to get stuck in my head.