Whatcha Listenin' To? (Special Billboard Edition)
For those not in the know, Billboard is the organization that keeps track of chart data of popular and classical music, (music within a lot of genres, actually.) They publish this info in a fascinating weekly magazine. I say it’s fascinating because it so grotesquely reminds me of the business behind making music, getting it on the radio, etc. etc.
I’ve always found it strangely creepy to see the photos of insanely popular, beautiful pop divas and tattoo-ed gangsta rappers, and cowboy-hatted studly dudes, and mopey indie rockers, and past-their-prime dinosaur rockers making the state fair circuit…all of these kaleidoscopic performers and entertainers glad-handing the record label execs that pay the bills (perfectly tanned rich white guys in expensive suits) at press events. Those photos always seemed kind of out-of-whack somehow, as if the business were a kind of image-driven circus with out-of-touch Great Oz-type guys controlling it all.
When I worked at a music store in college, we used to consult the Billboard to try to translate when customers would come in looking for “this song I heard at the club” or “you know that song on the radio? It goes ‘doot doo doo…”
Billboard’s been around for awhile and the CDs they compile of each year’s big hits (along with the “Have a Nice Day” series) serve as a great document of what gooey, transient treats the culture was producing way back in the day. Well, our public library has a lot of these discs. And me being…well…me, I decided to start methodically working my way through these, having finished experiencing the 90 or so albums the library had from the
Rolling Stone Top Albums of All Time.
The library’s collection of Billboard discs starts with the year of 1975. Here are some highlights so far:
1976-
It was an auspicious year, in that yours truly came on the scene.
“All By Myself” by Eric Carmen- I have an untested theory that the chorus of this song can be overlaid by Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.”
1977-
“Undercover Angel” by Alan O’Day- I’d never heard this song before. It’s one of the goofiest mish-mashes of pop/rock and over-the-top studio production I’ve heard in a while.
“Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates- I leave this little aural adventure of mine with a new appreciation for these guys as they had several hits in this time period. Fantastic funky Rhodes piano and triumphant B section.
“Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston- It took Baz Luhrman’s
Moulin Rouge to really hear the darkness underneath the bubbliness. I like it when songs can trick you like that. (See also most of They Might Be Giants’ catalog written by John Linnell.)
1979-
“Heart of Glass” by Blondie- There are a scant few songs that even have a remote chance to get me to bob my head, much less dance. But this one is definitely on that list. Let’s be honest. A large part of this band’s appeal was how good Deborah Harry looked. But this is a very tightly-constructed disco-pop song, regardless of the band’s image. The melodies will stick in your head but they are delivered with such a lackadaisical sigh. Also of interest to me is the unconventional 4/4 bar followed by ¾ bar in the B section. Maybe I won’t be dancing to this after all…
“Just When I Needed You Most” by Randy Vanwarmer- I wonder what good ol’ Randy Vanwarmer is doing these days… The gentle falsetto vulnerability of this song is pretty creepy in my book. And I'm pretty sure I'm hearing an auto-harp solo in there too! I wonder why you don’t hear this kind of thing on the radio anymore.
1982-
“Eye in the Sky” by Alan Parsons Project- This is the best Pink Floyd song never written or recorded by Pink Floyd. Lyrically, it’s a thing of ambiguity. Is it about God or a creepy lover? You tell me. Also of interest are the extended chords which employ quite a bit of dissonance, but it’s all dressed up in such a comforting soft-rock kind of way, you don’t even notice the complexity of the harmony you’re hearing. This is probably my favorite song I’ve heard off of these Billboard discs so far.
1983-
This was apparently a schizophrenic year in music. You have Men at Work’s Australian version of The Police with “Down Under,” Eddy Grant’s Jamaican funk heard on “Electric Avenue,” Culture Club’s reggae on “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” (probably deserving of an award or medal for “most times to repeat a refrain so as to avoid writing a verse,”) and the epic “best impression of a Meatloaf song by a female artist” in Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” And don’t forget Michael Cembello’s “Maniac.” And yet somehow the Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut” is still an anomaly, even amidst such a mixed-up year.
More later…
A Nice Sunday Ride
Yesterday was a beautiful day. Here's a good way to spend a beautiful day: take a leisurely bike ride downtown, thrill at the 20 mph cruising speed as you descend the best hill on Shartel. Soak in that lonely, weekend feeling of tall, empty Sunday buiness buildings and relatively dead streets, normally chaotic and stressful during the week. Have a free cheeseburger (or two) at SchlegelFest, an outdoor party/bicycle-shop-perusal. Ride back home, smell the bakery as you blow past it.
Even better, do it with a couple friends and Life Is Good!
(I think we shall do this route again, for both Coffeeslingers AND Cuppies and Joe are within reach!)
Abandoned Ideas Volume 4
Whenever the weather is bad I wind up having to spend some time at the gym. I like to see people there and look at their faces while they are pounding out miles on treadmills and elliptical machines, sweating it out on stationary bikes. As I look at them, I many times see the same faces and wonder “what keeps” them (me) at this?” What motivates us to spend our valuable time in this manner? Is it health? Mutual well-being? Stress-relief? Escaping feelings of guilt? Running away from bad habits? Pure enjoyment? A desire to improve at something? To look more conventionally attractive? Anyway, I look around at these familiar, yet anonymous faces and feel a strange camaraderie. We’re all WORKING for something.
And I got to thinking about that “work” part. Work is merely the expense of energy- burning calories. “What if,” I thought to myself, “we could find a way to harvest all of this energy we’re expelling in the name of fitness?”
What if the sum total of the mechanical energy I’m producing could be captured and stored by that stationary bike? And then sent on to a master collection point at the gym? And then multiply that by how many people use that one bike in one day. Multiply that by however many other bikes, treadmills, and weight machines are used in a day, week, month…Now multiply that by however many fitness centers there are in the country, the world! Whoah! There is your alternative energy source!
The Century (Full Report)
Today I bring you a report of the second huge accomplishment of the year for yours truly.
Saturday was the cycling century and I finished that mofo! The course was basically from the Children’s Center in Bethany, west to Hinton, and back.
Common questions:
Did your butt hurt? Surprisingly, no.
Was it a race? No. It was an endurance ride, which means there were rest stops every 10-15 miles. Overall, these were the best rest stops I’ve seen with an event like this. The people working them were excited, helpful and they were well-stocked with powerade, water, snacks, medicines, etc.
How long did it take? Time on the bike was 5 hours and 54 minutes. Total time, including rest stops, was about 6.5 to 7 hours. I wound up averaging about a half mph lower than I wanted to.
How was it? I got off to a really fast start. I made a point to get up close to the front at the start, to try to avoid the mass of humanity and find the faster people to try to keep pace with them. This lasted for about the first 20 miles or so. I have found that the field tends to thin out after the first rest stop. And I got passed by a couple pretty disciplined pace lines, which I've yet to learn about, being fairly new and all.
There were two factors that made this ride difficult: the heat (at the end) and the wind. I chose this particular century because the course was largely east/west, banking on the fact that we typically get north-south winds in Oklahoma. In biking, crosswinds are easier to deal with. However, the wind was probably blowing 20-25 mph on Saturday, which made the two jaunts heading south just brutal.
And then, as the morning turned into afternoon and my body started to get mad at me, the temperature rose to the mid 90s. The last rest stop was my longest, as I was getting light-headed and cranky. It felt good to just sit and soak up those big winds blowing across the dusty plains outside of Yukon. I wanted to stay there for the rest of the day.
But I didn’t. I had a goal to meet and I was close enough to push through. The one bummer was that police support at the intersections was mostly a forgotten memory after the halfway point and cruising through Yukon, I and a handful of other people hit every damn red light! You would think a chance to rest would be welcome. It was not. For at every red light my body kept thinking “we’re done! Great!” But we weren’t done. In fact there were still a handful of hot miles to go. I was fading fast.
I finally reached the Children’s Center to one lone anonymous stranger’s half-hearted cheering and immediately found a shady spot on the lawn to collapse. I laid there for a good ten minutes, too tired to care about what I had just done, the muscles in my calves twitching. I guess my legs hadn’t gotten the message that we were done now.
Other than the weather there was one other unexpected difficulty for me on Saturday: fueling. In total I burned something in the neighborhood of 8000 calories doing this thing. Your body has to take in energy to continue as it’s burning at that rate. It’s usually not a problem for me. I’ll have a big breakfast, and take in granola bars and Gatorade to replenish every hour or so. Unfortunately the rest stops didn’t have Gatorade but had Powerade instead. I didn’t know this before Saturday, but Powerade + Heat do not mix well in my stomach. So, the last thing I wanted to do was eat. But like I said, I needed food for energy. Water alone will not cut it. So, I faded at the end because I ran out of gas, not motivation.
So, all in all, a tough day.
One interesting thing I am noticing, though… The residual toll was much tougher on my body when I did the marathon (a scant three and a half months ago.) After the marathon I was literally too sore to walk for about three days.
However, this time, I was ready to ride again the next day, feeling no pain or soreness. This could be due to the fact that I was MUCH more well-prepared for this event, having already done the goal distance plus a few more miles in training.
What’s next?I plan to keep biking for the next month or so, since I love my new ride so much and to try to become a social creature again. Then I will switch over and try to learn how to run again for the Tulsa Run 15k in Tulsa at the end of October.
It’ll be nice to have Saturday mornings off for awhile!
Never Let Me Go by
Kazuo IshiguroMy rating:
4 of 5 starsThis is a stirring book of unaffected beauty. The prose style is not futzed over. It's simple. Deceptively so. And Ishiguro is able to evoke the thoughts of a woman looking back over her childhood and early adulthood very convincingly. Nice trick for a male writer.
The other nice trick he pulls off is setting a wistful, evolving love story against the strange backdrop of a school with an unusual, mostly unspoken secret drama. (And that's all I'll reveal...)
I was sad at the end, both for plot reasons, but also because I would have to begin the search for another good, highly readable book.
View all my reviews >>
Hopefully not a bad omen...
Tomorrow is the day! I shall be doing the 100 mile ride for Spin Your Wheels, benefitting the Children's Center in Bethany.
If all goes well, I should be finishing at the Center around 1:00 if you want to stop by and be amazed at the Triumph of the Will!
I'm not normally a superstitious type of fellow but I do like order and my routine, and this week has seemed to be out to rattle me.
It started out with a flat tire right before Wednesday's morning ride. After pumping it up again I was only able to get in 2/3 of the distance I wanted to cover that morning before it was going flat again. And Thursday morning's thunder and lightning show forced me to hit the stationary bike at the gym, which I hate. And then this morning's flat tire reappeared after setting out on what was supposed to be a nice, easy short ride. Unfortunately I had to walk the bike about 4.5 miles to get back to the car. My only consolation was: "at least this didn't happen tomorrow." (Fingers crossed.) So with a brand new tube, I will set out confidentally tomorrow morning.
Conditioning-wise, none of this is that big of a deal. You're supposed to taper off your weekly mileage before a big event anyway.
But mentally, I just feel off-kilter, having had to go with plan B and C against my will for the last three days of training.
Like I said- I like predictability and routine, especially the week going into the thing I've been training for literally for months.
This has not been that kind of week at all.
I don't subscribe to Netflix, but...
Richard Corliss has written a curmudgeonly article in this week's
Time called "Why Netflix Stinks" in which he bemoans the disappearance of his favorite corner video store called Kim's. I must say I was struck by the following observation:
Beyond the mail delays and the botched orders, the lack of human interaction is the big problem with Netflix and its cyber-ilk. Thanks to the Internet, we can now do nearly everything- working, shopping, movie-going, social networking, having sex- on one machine at home. We're becoming a society of shut-ins. We deprive ourselves of exercise, even if it's just a stroll around the mall, until we're the shape of those blobby people in WALL*E. and we deny ourselves the random epiphanies of human contact.(While I agree with the thought and am determined to not become as insular as he suggests, I find it amusing that one of his main illustrations was from a movie!)
I don't want to be a shut-in! I want to LIVE life!
Stop reading this and go outside and INTERACT with someone right now!
