The First...Music

I sit here contemplating my blank screen, wondering where to begin.
I remember how I used to do this sort of self therapy, it was called a diary. Hand written, each year starting off January 1, 198(enter year here), and it would make it to about January 4, 198same year before I would start thinking: "I can't today, no time, I'll do it tomorrow"...
I guess this is that tomorrow.

December 12, 2008.

Why start a blog at all? Does anyone read blogs that aren't created by celebrities or friends? My gut feeling is 'no'. But still, it's a place to express yourself, non? To un-saddle yourself, to discover what you are encumbered with and, well, un-encumber yourself. What blogs to I read? My sisters' (http://www.roverexposure.com/wordpress/), my friends' (http://www.80spro.blogspot.com/), the various members of Duran Duran (http://www.duranduran.com/wordpress/?page_id=14005), Lainey's Gossip (http://www.laineygossip.com/) .....see my point?
Why do I want to start one? I guess it's that need to write again, I used to write a lot, 'back in the day', as my young, young co-workers would say, I wrote journals, short stories, remarkably bad poetry, even a novel once with my high-school cohort, Karen G., I was published too, in The Toronto Star short story contest. I was a runner up with a story that I had written at the tender age of 15. The judges contacted me and told me that my story was too 'sophisticated' to be included in the children's section, so they bumped it to the adult group.
So, instead of winning the first place prize of a computer and printer, I got the great honour of 'runner up' and a $50 cheque.
Was I bitter? Well, maybe a little bit. I REALLY wanted that computer....

Last Tuesday night, December the ninth, I went to see Duran Duran yet again at the ACC with my high-school cohort. Perhaps that is what sparked this need to write. Remembering who I used to be, who I have become, and who I was in between. Maybe I need to write down some memories before they fade.

As we stood, screaming our 30 something heads off in the crowd just as I had done for the last 26 years of seeing them in concert, I thought how wonderful it was to still be able to feel that, to recapture, if only for a night, what it was like to have been a young teenage girl, idolizing after and having impure thoughts of these ungettable gets.
And I was also struck by the realization that I was now not JUST lusting after the ungettable gets but also, perhaps for the first time, live anyway, appreciating the music.

sigh.

Grown up.

Sure, scream, yell: "I love you Simon, I love you Roger" as I always had (rather more shamefaced now than then perhaps, after all I am a grown up) but to also listen...LISTEN to how beautifully John Taylor can handle that bass of his, LISTEN to how evenly Roger can beat those skins and keep the whole thing going, LISTEN to the subtleness of Nick's keyboards, and LISTEN to just how well Simon Le Bon's pipes have matured into something even MORE raw and melodic.
It was an odd moment, caught between the swooning teen and the appreciative adult. Still a few thoughts of "will they notice me?" dealt right beside the thoughts of how lucky I felt to have been able to see them one more time. To realize that they ARE musicians, not some boy band who rely on dancing and pretty faces, but who rely on, sure, being pretty, but being pretty with talent.

Perhaps that is the problem I have. There are bands I like now, The Killers, Kid Rock, a few others, but the music of the '80's was different. It had it's own sound, sure, a lot of the bands relied on their hair more then their skill, but there were others, Simple Minds, Adam Ant, The Fixx, Echo and the Bunnymen, Oingo Boingo, Shriekback, Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, ABC, Culture Club, Paul Young, Level 42, Haircut 100, The Stray Cats...who all had their 'thing' of course, but also had the music.
Many of them had their roots in the '70's, often in the punk field, often with many of the same people who they claimed fame with in the '80's and beyond.
They brought new life, new sound.
They brought new romantics, they brought ska, they brought blitz, they brought techno, they brought rock-a-billy, they brought double basses and electric keyboards, they brought drums and piano, they brought bass solo's, they brought more interesting vocals, they brought some meaningful lyrics, some poetry, some gibberish...and they brought their souls.

I don't see a lot of souls in '00's. I see a lot of hype, marketing, pyrotechnics, choreography...not a whole lot of souls anymore.
They are there, I'm sure, but not with the same bold-faced rawness that they used to be.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe I'm being an old fart with the complaints about "the kids of today with their loud music and their big pants, you call this music? In MY day we had.....", but my co-workers, the oldest of whom is 25, have echoed my statements about the bulk of today's music.
They listen to Zeppelin and The Beatles just as much as Feist and much more then Justin Timberlake. However they did have the nerve to ask the question "who are Duran Duran?"...I will just say "get off my lawn, and your Christmas Bonus' have been reduced."

Ok, sure, Rio might have danced on the sand with her cherry ice cream smile....but isn't that nicer than having you naked by the end of this song?

Until next time, in harmony.
IrishRed