Knock Three Times On The Ceiling…And Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree…Because You Decorated My Life…

When I was about 7 years old we received in the mail a flier for the “Columbia Record & Tape Club”, where you buy roughly 3 million records or tapes [Cassette or 8-Track – Your choice…] for a penny [that you actually taped to the flier and sent back!] and then order every month [usually at a cost equal to the national debt].  And remember, if you didn’t send back your reply card, you received their “Selection Of The Month”, which depending on what category you chose, could be a new version of an old classical piece, conducted by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.  If you chose R&B at the time…it was probably Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. [now solo from the 5^th Dimension] singing “You Don’t Have To Be A Star [To Be In My Show]”. In rock it might have been Aerosmith’s “Toys In The Attic…”  Needless to say, to obtain a penny, and more importantly, the permission to enter this major financial agreement, I had to ask my Mom. 

My Mom was something of a conundrum to me.  If I had to say where my interest in music came from I would have to say it was from her.  Now it wasn’t like she had it on in the house, or listened to it constantly [Dad played WHN remember, and my grandmother preferred 600 AM WICC or 66 [660 AM] WNBC out of NY, with Imus In The Morning], but she had her favorites.  And whenever her favorites would play the area [I remember her talking about seeing Paul Anka or Tony Orlando at the Oakdale Theater when it was still in the round…], she would get excited, albeit quietly, about her idols.  She would drag my dad out to the show and any one of the four Kovacs girls [Robin, Jeannie, Katie or Maryellen] would babysit for us. I could never understand how someone with so much passion for her music could keep it all bottled up, but that was Mom.  She always had something else to worry about or something more pressing at the time. 

She once told me that she wanted to play piano as a child, and that one thing or another prevented her from doing it.  Because of this, whenever she saw my passion for music budding she nurtured it, and in doing so provided me with not only the permission, but the penny to join the club.   Now I won’t say there weren’t times when she may have regretted that decision, particularly when my room was right above the dining room and the volume of music that I would play would rattle the ceiling and shake the chandelier, but she would always somehow let me know it was ok.  Whether it was a smile, or a wink, she told me she got it.  She understood….

We had a turntable in our den.  And I remember playing a copy of the Grease soundtrack [not the movie…the original Broadway recording] and wondering why the songs from the movie were missing.  We had a copy of a Chicago record, and there was one point in 25 Or 6 To 4 where the song always skipped, so I got used to the skip.  Whenever I heard the complete version on the radio, my mind would skip the song… repetition strikes again.  We even had a copy of Cheech & Chong’s “Up In Smoke”, but we couldn’t always play that because of the profanity…  But what I remember the most was the albums my mom liked to hear.  It is these songs that I hear now and can’t help but to think about her. 

She loved “Diana” by Paul Anka, and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and “Roses Are Red”.  Long before Enrique took over as a Latin heartthrob, Julio Iglesias was a favorite in the house.  “Candida” and “Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn would certainly pick up the pace. And when it came to country music there was no one more idolized by Mom than Kenny Rogers.  I think if Kenny Rogers showed up at our house growing up and offered to whisk my Mom away, we’d never hear from her again…it was like that. 

She would play his album and we would sing with it [and usually we’d do it wrong..] Whenever we heard “Lucille”, the line would be “four hungry children and a crop in the field” and we would sing “four hundred children and a crop in the field” and think that was the words.  Math on feeding them all be damned… 

What I remember most is the smile.  She would smile from ear to ear whenever she heard those songs.  She didn’t play them often [or in my opinion, often enough], but when she did she was as happy inside as we could see she was outside.  She allowed me to play everything, and even though some of it drove her nuts, or was too loud, you could still see that it was ok. 

Mom will be gone exactly two years on Wednesday [3/9].  I can’t thank her enough for the influences and guidance that she has had in my life.  She knew I was a little different, and instead of trying to make me fit in with the rest, she let me be me, and knew somehow that the music would get me through.  She knew, because I was a lot like her, but she didn’t want anyone to know it but me…

On Wednesday I will say a prayer for her, and will play some of the music that made her smile as my little tribute to her.  And I will always treasure the moments that we had when she was here, especially the moments after she yelled at me to turn down the music, because I knew in my heart that she would have turned it up too… [Even the ones we got because we forgot to send back the reply card…]

“And you decorated my life, created a world where dreams are a part
And you decorated my life by paintin' your love all over my heart
You decorated my life…”

I Love You Mom.

Joan Marie Fico Finnegan [April 11, 1940-March 9, 2009]

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon…

J.

Talkin’ Bout…Pop Muzik…Talkin’ Bout…Pop Muzik…Shooby Dooby Doo Wop… Rants & Raves & New Releases On The Way…

I had the wonderful opportunity this weekend to DJ a party for a young ladies 18^th birthday.  There were decorations, and cake [who doesn’t love cake…] and relatively well behaved, well dressed young people who danced from the first song to the end… 4 hours later…like it was nothing.  They were a lot of fun, and their energy was boundless.   The most poignant moment for me was when her dad came up and asked for…you guessed it… Free Bird.  Now, laughter ensued when he said it from both him and me, but he explained that it was his way of playing a joke on his daughter.  The inside joke was that he was going to have us play Free Bird during the middle of the party to throw things off, and every time he said it to her she would feign anger and threaten him in some manner.

So as we were finishing up for the night and the kids were disbursing and recovering from the melee we cued up the last request…and called the young lady [whose name is Katelyn] out to the floor where she proceeded to slow dance with her dad to the first portion of the song.  Once they got to the endless guitar solo they broke and laughed and it was a touching moment.  I laughed with them, and then wondered just how quickly the party would have come to a screeching halt if I played it.  I would probably have lost the whole floor. 

We kicked the night off with “DJ Got Us Falling In Love” by Usher [Featuring Pitbull] [You always have to say who is featured, I think it may be contractual, but it does make the Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon game too easy…] and they danced [Not unlike the Hooters did…].  And as the night went on, I started to think how different the music has become in these situations.  And by that I mean “PARTY”… 

Our parties had music…usually the mix of rock and pop that played on the radio, [and for me and my friends the hard rock that didn’t make it to the radio] but I got to thinking it wasn’t the all night dance party that this evening had become.  It didn’t matter if it was a rock song with a dance beat, a dance song with the big poppy chorus, or the rap song that slowed the dancing down to a groove where the kids knew all the words [they filled in the bad ones since I was playing clean versions of everything…].  It was a cornucopia of everything, and it was refreshing to see the kids change tempo and groove so flawlessly. 

What made the difference? I would have to say it was a combination of two things - technology and a severe lack of prejudice in their tastes.  This is the new generation, where the race and creed of a person is less important than whether or not they were cool.  The kids didn’t define their status by such antiquated perspectives, and it allowed them to keep an open mind when listening.  The technology complements this in that every new song may have a shorter lifespan on the radio, but if a new song hits…it’s everywhere. YouTube Videos, iTunes, TV shows [I watched last week’s Hawaii Five-O and the opening scene contained Rihanna’s S&M]. There was also Napster and Limewire, and I have also seen it travel from phone to phone, so that they have it all the time. 

Now I’m not trying to be critical of myself or my generation [talkin’ ‘bout My Generation…]…but we were very closed minded when it came to some of the music that was out there.  In hindsight we grew up with Motown, and R&B, reggae courtesy of the Marley family, and disco. But by the time the backlash of disco waned, the music became very divergent on the radio.  Out of disco we had the punk/new wave movement [and with it the advent of the synthesizer].  “I Want My MTV” meant that we were going to primarily see rock and pop video by mainstream white groups and artists and when a non-Caucasian artist played, it was because they “crossed over” from the R&B chart to the pop chart. 

I don’t believe that we were as ignorant as I am implying here, but we didn’t really see it the mix as we do now.  Now Michael Jackson ruled the world when MTV was in its infancy, and his sister Janet made waves, but they were part of the musical landscape from well before the era of MTV, and were already culturally accepted.  We had Prince, and Whitney. Bobby Brown had gone solo from New Edition, and Chaka Khan still proved she could fill the dance floor.  But there was always an element of segregation in the music.  Now I completely understand when they put Headbanger’s Ball on late Saturday nights.  If you wanted to bang thy head…you could do it without disrupting the regular programming.  And while I would tune in to see Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax or Iron Maiden, you didn’t necessarily have to be privy to that. 

You have to remember, that when The Sugarhill Gang dropped “Rapper’s Delight” on the dance floor, the underground rap movement was just that, underground.  And it took some time for it to bubble up into the mainstream and become a driving force in popular culture.  And for all of you that say [and I used to be guilty of this myself] that to be a rapper you don’t have to be talented…I say you try it.  It’s a lot harder than it looks, and those that are good at it are very good at it.  Run D.M.C. charted with a cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and started the rap-rock genre now regularly mined by artists like Linkin Park. 

This all changed on August 6, 1988.  That was the day that Yo! MTV Raps debuted.  It remains one of the highest charting programs in the MTV line up.  Run D.M.C. hosted, and the first video played was Eric B. & Rakim’s “Follow The Leader”.   And the rest was history.  The program introduced the hip-hop culture to the rest of the globe, and began its meteoric rise to the top of the charts.  There have been setbacks because of violence, and many issues with language and the misogyny that it portrays, but it still remains one of the most popular genres. 

Why does all this come into play here…well doing the math… my 18 year-old birthday girl Katelyn was born in 1993.  By then the rap culture not only sprang up but had roots everywhere.  And this generation grew up knowing which pop tart was on the charts at the time, but also was aware of artists like Ice Cube, and Tupac Shakur, as well as Dr. Dre and Public Enemy.  It was in my opinion this exposure that allowed the acceptance to be so easy in the newer generation… the “millennial” generation as they are called.  So when we follow up “DJ Got Us Falling In Love” with Katy Perry’s “Firework” into Lil’ John or the New Boyz, they don’t blink.  They just change rhythms, change tempos and go with it.  I never thought my DJ job would actually get easier, but in fact it has, simply because the crowds are more accepting, of the changes in music, and each other.  Not to climb on my soapbox but if you want to see racism wane in America, keep watching the successive generations learn to grow with each other, and not against.  And I would also recommend you let them dance…

And remember…the next time you criticize a rapper for lack of talent…see how fast you can make a fool out of yourself trying to imitate them… And pull your pants up…please…

New Voices…

Let me proclaim that my new favorite female vocalist on the planet is Skylar Grey.  Originally christened Holly Brook Hafermann in 1986 in Mazomanie, WI.  She moved to L.A. in 2003 and was signed to Machine Shop Recordings and sang on Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda’s song Where’d You Go.  She released her first album in 2006 and also wrote parts of the song and demo’d her vocals on “Love The Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna.  She is currently featured in Diddy/Dirty Money’s “Coming Home” as well as Dr. Dre’s “I Need A Doctor” with Eminem.  She reminds me a little of Dido, with an ethereal sounding voice.  Definitely check her out.  She’s got a new album in the works… I’ll be looking for it…

Adele is anther voice that you can just close your eyes and listen… Her single “Rolling In The Deep” is making some waves on the charts…

New Releases…

I must give props to Mr. Big for resurrecting melodic hard rock.  These guys reformed and their new release “What If…” just dropped stateside.  Great melodies and some of the most fantastic playing you will hear this year. Bassist Billy Sheehan and guitarist Paul Gilbert’s interplay is amazing, particularly on the track “Around The World”.  It doesn’t sound dated, and Kevin Shirley’s production is just the touch they needed.  Shirley recorded most of the record in a live setting and really captured the energy of this band… definitely worth checking out.  The first single is “Undertow”…

Coming soon to a [you pick the medium]….

3/8/11 – Billy Joel [Live At Shea], R.E. M. [Collapse Into Now], Avril Lavigne [Goodbye Lullaby], Simon & Garfunkel [40^th Anniversary re-release Bridge Over Troubled Water], Children Of Bodom [Relentless Reckless Forever], Asia [Spirit Of The Night – Live], Sara Evans [Stronger]

3/15/11 – Lady Gaga [Born This Way –EP], Rise Against [Endgame], Travis Barker [Give The Drummer Some], Steve Vai [Essential], Rick Springfield [Essential], Whitesnake [Forevermore], Mastodon [Live At The Aragon] J. Mascis [Several Shades Of Why]

3/22/11 - Green Day [Awesome As F**k], The Strokes [Angles], Adam Lambert [Glam Nation Live], Duran Duran [All You Need Is Now], Jennifer Hudson [I Remember Me], Joe Bonamassa [Dust Bowl], Panic! At The Disco [Vices & Virtues], Soundgarden [Live On I-5], Rainbow [Rising –Deluxe re-release], Josh Kelley [Georgia Clay], Tommy Shaw [Great Divide],

3/28/11 - Radiohead [The King Of Limbs], Britney Spears [Femme Fatale], Within Temptation [The Unforgiving], Florence + The Machine [Between Two Lungs], Los Lonely Boys [Rockpango], Wiz Khalifa [Rolling Papers], Marillion [Live From Cadogan Hall]

Just remember to let them dance...

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon.

J.