Skeletons in My Musical Closet - Billy Joel

It's hard to keep a critical distance from anything we once loved unabashedly, particularly if it was something we loved in our childhood or adolescence. Thus the presence of all three seasons of "Land of the Lost" at the top of my Netflix queue, and the mostly unapologetic appearance of a few Billy Joel albums on my IPod. In the past week I've troubled over two reviews of the 30th anniversary deluxe reissue of Billy Joel's "The Stranger" (from The Onion's AV Club, and from Pop Matters). They trouble me because I have a strong childhood connection to that album, and to Billy Joel in general, and I'm not sure what to do with it. Until recently I've mostly avoided thinking much about Billy Joel, and have never paid much attention to his critical & popular position in the pop/rock canon.

There's a key scene in Cameron Crowe's musical love letter "Almost Famous" in which the protagonist discovers his older sister's LP collection. It's clearly his moment of musical revelation, and it changes his life. [Note: The link is to a stupid montage, but look around 1:53]. While I have a few moments of musical revelation in my past, one of my earliest involves my brother's vinyl copy of "The Stranger". I won't go so far as to say it changed my life, but it at least cemented my devotion for many years to a critically dubious musical icon.

As for my moment of musical revelation? I don't remember how old I was - my best guess would be jr. high, approx. 10 years after "The Stranger" was released. I was in our faux wood paneled den, where the only real stereo in the house was, and I guess I must have been digging through my brother's record collection, and for whatever reason pulled out "The Stranger". While I'm pretty sure I listened to the whole album that night, it was "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" that I listened to over and over again. As a piano playing lover of musical theater on the cusp of his teenage years, I was probably doomed to love this song. A story of lost teenage innocence, in four acts, with heavy piano underneath it all (and I'm sorry, but the piano intro to act 3 is still a blast to play), this song had all the hooks I needed.

In subsequent years I would become a complete Billy Joel devotee. I had every album, all the piano music, the videos, saw him on the Storm Front tour, and made my best friend J try and play the saxophone part on "Scenes..." (as well as other songs) while I accompanied on piano (and maybe vocals?). Then sometime between "Storm Front" and what would be Joel's last pop album, "River of Dreams", I put him away. I don't know that I ever even owned "River of Dreams", and I'm not sure when or where my collection of Joel CDs went (though I do still have the piano music, but no piano). I wish I could say it was because my musical tastes improved, but my more honest guess is I lost touch with him during my "Christian Music" fanaticism years (see future, even more embarrassing, "Skeletons in My Musical Closet" blog post). I guess I've been surprised to only recently discover that Billy Joel wasn't critically respected during his heyday, and certainly isn't now; that he's even kind of a joke. In some ways he seems to have even less cred than his sometime tour partner Elton John, though Joel never did anything as egregious as The Lion King ("Innocent Man" may come close). So thanks reviewers for making me confront a large piece of my musical past. I'm more confused than ever, but it's comforting to know there are writers working for reputable music outfits that struggle with some of the same demons.

What's On Your IPod

I usually avoid internet surveys like the plague, but my friend J posted this one on her blog and I'm a sucker for anything music related, so here goes.

This would probably be more interesting if I hadn't had to replace my IPod some months ago. I'm still in the process of getting my library onto the new one and am about 3000 songs shy of where the old one was at.

Total Library Length: 8043 Songs, 21 Days, 34.41 GB

First and Last Songs (by title):

• Abbatoir Blues by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (ABC by the Jackson 5 comes in second J)
• 911 to Orson Wells (sp?) by Robert Deeble
  

Shortest & Longest Songs:

• The Sky is a Harpsichord Canvas by Olivia Tremor Control :04
• A Long Day by The Polyphonic Spree 36:31

First and Last Albums (by title):

• A.M by Wilco
• 80th Birthday EP by Charlie Louvin
  (I think these make nice bookends. J - I guess my copy of Achutung Baby hasn't made it on yet, but if it did, it would be 6th)

First and Last Artist (by name):

• A.C. Newman
• The 1900's (J - 10,000 Maniacs is second to last for me)

Top 5 Most Played Songs (actually 6 because of a tie):

• Don't Tell Me To Do The Math by Los Campesinos! (18)
• I Want You Back by Jackson 5 (17)
• Death to Los Campesinos! by Los Campesinos! (15)
• We Both Go Down Together by The Decemberists (14 Tie)
• Run Myself Out of Town by The Holmes Brothers (14 Tie)
• Hey Baby by The Holmes Brothers (14 Tie)
  This is where having the new IPod is a bit of a bummer. I'd be much more interested to see the top 5 over the last 3 years. I listen to my IPod on shuffle about 90% of the time, so there is some aspect of randomness here, but all 6 six of these songs are definitely favorites. I'm not at all surprised by the Los Campesinos! appearances as I've beat that one to death the last few months. I'm also not surprised by the Jackson 5 as they're constant favorites, though I am a bit surprised by "I Want You Back" as I've made no special effort to listen to that song (and I swear it has nothing to do with my recent divorce!). Ditto the Decemberists and Holmes Brothers...both favorites, and a few of my favorite songs by them, but I don't believe I've been purposefully calling them up or hitting repeat.
  

Search for the following words. how many songs show up?

• sex: 5, though one qualifies because it has the word "sexton" in the title (after eliminating songs by Ron Sexsmith, Charlie Sexton, and Martin Sexton)
• death: 24 though one album has "death" in the title and accounts for 12 entries
• love: 525
• you: 868
• home: 108
• boy: 129
• girl: 168

First Five Songs That Come Up On Party Shuffle:
As best I can tell party shuffle actually uses my computer library, not my IPod library and the computer library is much smaller than my IPods, but here goes:

• Daylight Savings Time By Josh Rouse
• A New Family by Colour Revolt (This is from a sampler CD and I'm not sure I've even heard it)
• One Last "woo-hoo" for the Pullman by Sufjan Stevens
• Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You by Sally Timms
• Welcome to the Occupation by R.E.M.

...would be a strange party.

Sleep-Dialing

Yesterday morning I awoke to find the cordless phone next to my pillow. I'm about 95% sure it wasn't there when I went to bed, and I have no recollection of doing anything with it during the night. The caller ID didn't show that I received any calls. Contemplating whether I might have made any calls, I realized I know exactly four phone numbers - my home (though sometimes I'm fuzzy on that one!), my cell, my work, and my grandma (because it's been the same number all my life). So if I made any calls, it would have had to be one of those. I rely very heavily on my cell phone contacts list, which is why I'm always screwed when I lose or break a phone. I wouldn't even have a home phone if it wasn't saving me money on my cable/internet for 12 months. After the 12 months is up I plan on getting rid of it.

Some Observations From Tonight's Bedtime Stories

1) If you're going to run around town with a monkey, you should probably be committed to keeping better tabs on him. Letting him get into the kitchen at the pizza place and start making pizzas is just plain lazy monkey-wrangling.

2) It's pretty rude to just leave your monkey at the ice cream shop while you go run errands, unless you've made arrangements with the proprietor.

3) It's okay to be curious and make trouble - as long as something good comes out of it in the end, everyone you've injured and offended will forgive you.

Corn Accessories Sur La Table Would Like Me To Consider

Planning to cook up some corn tonight and realized I no longer have any of those poky corn holder thingies. In perusing my options on Sur La Table's website (I'll walk over to their store at lunch today), here are some other suggested corn-related accessories:

• The "Corn Zipper" (not what it sounds like)
• The "Corn Slitter" (also not what it sounds like - same function as the "corn zipper")
• The "Corn Cob Butterer" (what it sounds like...depending on where your mind is)
• The "Corn De-Silking Brush"
• The "Corn Cutter" (I'm not sure what this sounds like...same function as "corn zipper" and "corn slitter")
• 4 varieties of "Corn Dishes" - 3 in the shape of ears of corn, in case you forget what you bought them for
• "Corn Grilling Cage"
  
• Electric Martini Shaker/Stirrer (Exactly what it sounds like - relation to corn, uncertain)

As for the corn holder options (apparently also termed "corn picks"), I'll have to see what exactly is available in store, but options I won't be going with:

• Lobster Corn Picks (in shape of lobster, for some reason)
• Barbecue Folk Corn Holders (one end in shape of the head and shoulders of some down-home barbecueing type person that looks like they might have been designed by Gary Larson, the other end in the shape of the person's lower half)
• Corn Picks (in shape of ears of corn, in case you forget what you bought them for)

Two conclusions to be drawn:

1. If properly accessorized, grilling and serving corn for four people could run you $70 if you leave the kernels on the cob ($150 if you're also making martinis).
   
2. There is need for an official term for removing kernels of corn from the cob. I suggest that this term not be "zipping" or "slitting".
   

Learning To Read

I'm a magazine addict. I think my number of subscriptions is at its lowest in ages, but I still can't get through a bookstore without picking up a magazine. Having recently subscribed to the New Yorker again after a long hiatus, I'm having to force myself to be economic about my magazine reading time. Some obsessive compulsive part of me makes me feel like I have to read the whole magazine, cover to cover, in order. Any magazine I pick up. The articles I'm dying to read acting as a reward for sludging through everything that comes before. So I'm having to force myself to start with the things that sound interesting. Today I allowed myself to jump straight to the New Yorker review of "I Hate Sarah Marshall", then to the Jonathan Franzen piece - skipping right over all the letters to the editor and NYC arts listings I've always read, or at least skimmed. For me this is as momentous an occasion as when I decided that I didn't have to read all the comic strips on the funnies page; that it was okay to just admit that Cathy is in no way funny and I could care less about the adventures of Brenda Starr and it is okay to just skip right on over to Boondocks or Dilbert or whatever passes for comic strips in these post Bloom County / Calvin and Hobbes days. Baby steps.

It's this same controlling sense of order that I caught myself in at Whole Foods today. I had selected a sandwich for lunch and put it in my basket. Then, perusing the sushi case, I decided I'd rather have some sashimi. Rather than put the sashimi in my basket right then, my brain told me I needed to walk back over the sandwich case, put the sandwich away, then come back to the sashimi case for my new selection. It wasn't forgetfulness - I didn't just forget to put the sashimi in my basket; it was some deeply ingrained directive.

After It's Over, Things I Surprisingly Still Own

Curling Iron
2-3 Years Worth of Bon Apetit Magazines
Enough cosmetics/feminine toiletries to fill a tall kitchen garbage bag
2 Woman's jackets
Wheaton College Yearbooks
2 Jewelery boxes containing a modest collection of costume jewelery
Iron
Pink ducky flip-flops