What Are Your Musical Pet Peeves?

Andrew and I are just back from an excellent trip to Maine, and for the first time in the history of our travels together, we didn't hit any traffic coming back into New York. It was amazing. We made it all the way home in less than five hours, which is sometimes how long it seems to take to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

But even with the Traffic Spirits on our side, we still had plenty of time to listen to music. At one point, the radio hit us with Madonna's "True Blue," and Andrew quickly revolted. You see, that particular ditty is on his list of permanently forbidden car songs. (Other banned titles include Rihanna's "Umbrella," Avril Lavigne's apparently plagiarized "Girlfriend," and T-Pain's "Buy You a Drank (Shawty Snappin').")



Andrew finds "True Blue" to be, and I quote, "insipid."

I just asked him to clarify what he means. Glancing up from his laptop--and looking quite dashing in a blue t-shirt and some shorts recently purchased at a Banana Republic outlet store--he says, "Musically, it's a boring chord structure that never goes anywhere. It's like substandrard fifties music. And lyrically, it's pedestrian. That would be a nice way to put it."

Now while I find "True Blue" to be a charming, inoffensive early draft of the girl-group homage Madonna would later perfect with "Cherish," I can take Andrew's point. This song is not the deepest puddle on the sidewalk.

More damning for "True Blue" (in Andrew's case) is the fact that it embodies two of his musical pet peeves. Not only does it have a music track that is endlessly repetitive, but it also features the lyric "your heart fits me like a glove." For Andrew, saying something "fits like a glove" is forced and phony. That's like how I feel about the "shelf/self" rhyme.

I'm interested to know: Which songs have no chance with you? What are your musical pet peeves? Are there any elements of songwriting that make you want to ball your fists in fury?

If so, don't let that rage fester inside. We here at "I Totally Hear That" want to help you work through it

As for me... well, I just mentioned how much I hate the "shelf/self" thing. And I really, really hate overuse of the vocoder. It's cool on Cher's "Believe," but it's egregious on almost everything else. Case in point? The aforementioned "Buy You a Drank."

See there? By letting out my anger, I found another link with Andrew. We both hate that damn "Shawty Snappin'" song. Amazing!

Truth brings connection, people! Truth brings connection!

Say You, Say Freak

My friend Laura pointed me in the direction of this clip, and I felt like everyone needed to see it.

For those who don't remember, this is what Fergie looked like when she was on "Kids Incorporated." Imagine if this was the video for "Big Girls Don't Cry." The song would take on a horrifying new meaning.

But really, this is horrifying enough. I mean, what the hell is that clown doing with that broom?

Also, for those who don't know, Laura, our friend Stephanie, and I have a long-standing agreement that Lionel Richie is our mortal enemy. (It's a long story, but there really is a story.)

That makes this clip doubly delicious.

A Hometown Shout-Out

So this isn't about music, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give big props to my hometown.

Y'all, Chattanooga is in today's New York Times. And the story? Is about goats. Word.

Vacation with a capital "Dammit"

Do you ever have one of those mornings where everything just sort of explodes in your face, and then you think, "Oh, right! I'm on vacation!"

Well, that's what's happening to me right now. First of all, it's 8:00 AM on a a Saturday, I'm on vacation at a Delaware beach, and I'm awake. What? Exactly. I know that for many, many people, being awake at 8:00 AM is a regular thing, but for this freelance writer--who is accustomed to working until the wee hours of the night--this part of the morning generally happens only in theory. But here I am, in my (admittedly very cute) room at a bed and breakfast, unable to sleep because the sounds of people making said breakfast are coming so strongly through the wall. Then there's the sound of the people upstairs, who apparently are practicing their clog dancing routine while breaking in their heaviest pairs of WWI-era boots. And, finally, there's the good Lord's sunshine, which is streaming over the bed like the brightest lamp in the tanning salon. I close my eyes, but it burns through the lids. Nuclear winter right here in the Delaware spring.

Plus, Melinda got kicked off American Idol, and my brand new iPod only works if I plug it into the external speakers I brought. Unplugged from the speakers? Just headphones? Nothing. Not even a picture on the screen.

So what do I do in the face of this rib-tickling adversity? I sing, dammit. Or at least, I think about singing. I can't actually sing, because Andrew is still trying to sleep. In the middle of the night, he moved to a small twin bed at the back of our little suite, trying to escape... well, I don't know yet. When he wakes up, I'll ask him what pushed him over the edge.

But anyway. Singing. In this bleary-eyed wasteland that is my Saturday morning, I keep my imagination on singing songs that put me in a good mood. Perhaps the Facts of Life theme. Or
"Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves.

Because I find that singing can actually improve my mood. Andrew tells me it stimulates some gland or other that makes this mood-enhancement a fact, but I don't remember the details.

And lord knows I need a little mood enhancement right now. I would love to...

...oh, sorry. I got distracted. The upstairs guests also have a small child, and she keeps testing out the volume level on her new voice. I mean, I assume it's new. Why would she use it so carelessly unless she was discovering all the features? Maybe in a few minutes she'll realize that the "shrieking Mommy's name" option isn't really meant for early morning employment.

Right. Singing. "You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the..."

Oh. Sorry. I got freaked out a little right there. It literally sounded like someone dropped an entire tray of coffee mugs.

But screw it. Singing! Walking on Sunshine! Walking on all the sunshine that is streaming through this room! This bright, bright chamber whose ample illumination only reminds me of all that's good in this world! Like the voices of children! Shrieking for mommy!

I'm on vacation!

Trapped in Olde Tyme Brooklyn

It had to happen, I suppose. Last summer, my iPod started giving me the "sick face," and now it has died. All 2,000 songs have been erased.

However, the clock has managed to keep perfect time. Strange.

All in all, this has not been a great week for technology. Along with my iPod, Andrew's phone and cable box died. Oh, and the overhead light in my living room isn't working, but my landlords are out of town for the next week.

So here I am, sitting in the almost-dark with no iPod, dating someone with no phone and no cable.

Screw it, you guys. I'm going all the way Colonial House. Coming soon, my report on the latest fife and drum music from Goody Goode and her tunesmith sisters!

Touched

Get ready for some sidetracking, you guys. This post was going to be about one thing, and then it totally became something else. Rather than go back and change the beginning, I'll just leave my whole thought process on display.

It all started here...

Let's see... how to justify this on a music blog... Well, regular cast member Vanessa Williams had some big hits, and tonight's special guest Patti LuPone is a Broadway musical legend. That's reason enough for me to discuss "Ugly Betty!"

And there's so much worth discussing. I agree with all the scuttlebutt that this is a golden age of television. In the last decade or so, even amidst the crappy reality series and endless vehicles for "actors" like Pamela Anderson, television has proffered series after series that can rightfully be called art. Did you see the last episode of "Six Feet Under?" It's a beautiful, heartbreaking example of storytelling. Watching that show--and particularly that episdoe--expanded me as a person, much like an excellent piece of theater or an exceptional novel, because it unveiled something true about being alive. Wrapped up in "Six Feet Under's" best episodes were ruminations on how much we can help one another have a better time being human.
Even as we wound each other endlessly--and often unintentionally--we also can heal someone's wounds.

I think about the moment, for instance, in the final episode of the show when Claire offered to stay home with her mother instead of moving away to school. And her mother, Ruth, said no. No, don't stay here. And thanks to the writing, the acting, and the directing, I was able to see how much good both halves of that conversation did for those characters. For the mother to hear the daughter's offer to stay and the daughter to hear the mother's joy in her child's developing life.

I wouldn't have felt the depth of that moment--or understood the importance of gestures like that in my own life--if the series hadn't been so well constructed over dozens of episodes. I knew these women, and so I could feel the explosion of love in just a few sentences.

As a rule, I prefer small moments of love in art. They feel more real to me than those grand gestures, like Jack sinking into the ocean so Rose can live or even Juliet committing suicide. To me, those gigantic acts are the kind of moments that you can consciously perform because they *seem* like love. They seem like the things people in love are supposed to do, and they can be performed without much real feeling if you just understand our general cultural script of what romance and commitment are supposed to look like. (How do you think I "dated" girls in middle school? I just did what I'd figured out I was supposed to do.)

In my experience, the most honest love reveals itself in unconscious or barely expressed actions. Small things that come naturally, without an effort or a show, tell me love has sunk so deeply into someone's being that it has become a part of them. It's like how whenever I have good news, I always call my friends Laura and Stephanie. Because obviously if something good is happening to me, it means even more if I can share it with them.

Or take Andrew: When he walks by me on his way to get a glass or a fresh pair of socks or any mundane thing, he touches me. Even if he's on the phone, and I'm on the computer, and we're both doing things that don't involve the other, I'll still feel his fingers brush quickly across my shoulder or my waist. Just a quick touch as he moves through the room, like we're grounding each other. It's so small. It's so automatic. It's everything.

And you know what? Now that I've said that, I don't want to go into an analysis of "Ugly Betty." Suffice it to say that it's a work of art that can bring me around to gratitude for what I have in the real world.

Updates, additions, and a little more Margaux

Hello all! Two shopkeeping things:

First, I'd like to repost the link to my "Chartological Readings" entry, since it seemed to be popular. I've just analyzed the chart of a reader named "Cheerleader," and it's fascinating. If you haven't had your pop chart read, write in! Just go here.

Also, due to a technological glitch and a few professional things that I cannot yet discuss--all good--I decided to take down my post about Christmas songs on "The Office." However, that also meant removing my admonition for everyone to check out the fabulous jewelry of "I Totally Hear That" reader Margaux Lange.

So let me say again... her jewelry is awesome. Check it out here.

And check out the similarly awesome work of my friend Kate. She's the one who told me that Margaux was reading this blog. (Margaux and I have never actually met, you see.)

Shopkeeping done, I must now go to bed. Soon, I'll be leaving Chattanooga to stay with Andrew's family in Michigan. Outstanding!

Gift "Certificates" are SO 1998

Some of you might be thinking, "Yo, Mark! Where's your list of the best songs and albums of the year? All the other lists are out there. Are you... lazy? A no-goodnick? Drunk?"

Well, no. It's just that, for the time being, I am not fortunate enough to get advance press copies of CDs. (Anyone out there want to hire me to write about music?) That means I have to wait until I actually buy albums in order to hear them, and that means I don't hear a lot of things until after Christmas. Today, for instance, I received a boatload of music, plus a gift card for iTunes that will let me purchase more. Once I've sifted through my spoils, I'll indulge myself (and entertain you?) by ranking the best and the worst tunes of 2006.

For now, let me ask you this: what were your favorite albums and singles of the year? I have $25 to spend at iTunes, and I'd love some suggestions. At present, my plan is to buy the greatest hits of Mary J. Blige and the latest album from a punk-pop group called Morningwood.

And you know that I love some Mary J. However, other than a tape of her first album, "What's the 411?", that Thomas Blake gave me for my birthday in 7th grade, I've never owned any of her music. (Remember Thomas? Some of you do!) I do dig the lady, but she has always struck me as someone who, from a purchasing perspective, was designed for a greatest hits album. Sort of like Sheryl Crow or Lenny Kravitz or Nickel Creek. I can't exactly explain why, but I feel like these artists' best songs will always be their singles. The rest of their studio albums? Fillertown.

(Okay... with Sheryl Crow I can explain why I feel that way. With the exception of one song per album, neither "Tuesday Night Music Club" nor "Sheryl Crow" gave me anything worthwhile that wasn't also released to radio. That's why I sold those CDs and got her greatest hits instead. I should not have to hear "The Na-Na Song" before getting to "Strong Enough.")

But anyway... those are my current choices. I'm open to arguments that I should spend my gift card elsewhere.

Expect the Unexpected

Thanks to this blog, I have been invited to join a fascinating group called the "CD Mix Project." Every month, someone in the group of fifteen people decides on a theme for a mix CD. Everyone e-mails the leader with Mp3s of their selections, and the leader then burns all those songs onto a CD that is mailed to the entire group. It's a pretty great idea for a club.

I thought we could all play along. The first month's theme is "Expect the Unexpected." In other words, which songs from well-known artists are the most surprising in terms of content or sound?

For my entry, I've chosen Madonna's "I'm Going Bananas." The song is on her "I'm Breathless" album, which ostensibly features music "from and inspired by" the film "Dick Tracy," in which she stars as Breathless Mahoney. (I say "ostensibly" because that album also features "Vogue," which was added to the track list because of its hit potential and was not in any way inspired by the "Dick Tracy" film or its 1920s period. Vogueing is something Madonna picked up from black drag queens in 1980s Harlem. To see them in action, check out the documentary "Paris is Burning.")

Along with three songs that Stephen Sondheim wrote for the film, including Oscar-winner "Sooner or Later," "I'm Breathless" features a pastiche of turn-of-the-century styles, including "Now I'm Following You," a swinging soft-shoe ditty, and "Hanky Panky" a big band number about the joys of rough sex that has to be one of history's most unlikely top ten singles (Number 10 in 1990, right after "Vogue").

The album also features "I'm Going Bananas," which suggests the Latin-flavored music you would might hear in a high-class, low-morals tequila joint in Prohibition-Era Tijuana. There's a saucy rhythm (maybe meringue? I'm not sure), plenty of Mexican horns and percussion, and Madonna doing some kind of Carmen Miranda voice.

As weird as it is, though, the song is also a lot of fun. It features such silly lyrics as...

There's bat's in my belfry
Better make sure that straight jacket's tight
Otherwise I might
Get my self free.
Yes there's bats in my belfry

...and it's got undeniable energy. Fizzy and clever, it's a tune that wouldn't be out of place in a south-of-the-border Cole Porter musical. Not what you'd expect from a Madonna album.

So how about you guys? What makes you "expect the unexpected?" Certain songs? This photo, perhaps?

A Special Thanks

To everyone who reads "I Totally Hear That,"

I cannot express how grateful I am that all of you are here. Writing this blog gives me so much joy, and that would not be possible without you.

No jokes here. Just pure happiness.

--Mark

Do You Want Divas With That?

When Andrew and I went on our recent trip to Montreal, we happened across the restaurant to your left, Pizza Madona. Being the clever fellows that we are, we thought, "What if we opened a pizza place--in the Village, of course--that was entirely themed after Madonna's hit singles?"

Tickled with ourselves, we spent about two minutes coming up with menu items. Then we realized it was time to eat. Again. We were on vacation, after all.

But when we got in the car for the 6 hour drive back to New York (plus potty breaks, an outlet shopping marathon, and one horrifying traffic jam), the Madonna-themed pizzeria sprang back into our minds. Could this be because we're too creative to let a good idea go? Could it be because I kept playing selections from the original motion picture soundtrack of Evita? You be the judge!

At any rate, I'm pleased to present you with the menu we devised. Look for our restaurant to open the moment some wealthy investor with a nose for success writes us a check.

PIZZA MADONNA

STEP ONE: CHOOSE YOUR CRUST

(1) Just a Pie, My Love (hand tossed)

(2) Like a Prayer (thin crust--thin as a communion wafer)

(3) Deeper and Deeper (deep dish)

(4) Secret (stuffed crust, with cheese or some other secret delight)

STEP TWO: DO YOU WANT BORDERLINE? (Meaning half of your pizza has one set of toppings and the other half has another)


STEP THREE: CHOOSE YOUR PIE or EXPRESS YOURSELF and PICK YOUR OWN TOPPINGS

Our pies include...

(1) Holiday (Hawaiian--ham and pineapple)

(2) Clucky Star (chicken and mozzarella)

(3) Like a Virigin (white pizza--no tomato sauce, rocotta cheese, your choice of toppings)

(4) Material Girl (black truffles, foie gras, brie)

(5) Dress You Up (supreme)

(6) Papa Don't Preach (caviar, baby spinach, ground veal)

(7) True Bleu (bleu cheese, sundried tomatoes)

(8) Open Your Heart (meat lover's pizza with extra cheese)

(9) La Isla Bo-Pizza (jalapenos, salsa, spicy ground beef)

(10) Take a Bough (veggie lover's pizza)

(11) You'll Sea (calamari, shrimp, scallops)

(12) Don't Cry for Me, Sausage Pizza (chorizo sausage, ricotta cheese)

(13) You Must Love Cheese (cheese lover's pizza--ricotta, mozzarella, feta, and parmesan)

(14) Ray of Lite (Whole wheat crust, soy cheese, spinach, broccoli, grilled chicken)

(15) American Life (pepperoni and cheese)

STEP FOUR: HOW ABOUT A DESSERT PIZZA?

(1) Hanky Panky (whipped cream, chocolate sauce, cherry pie filling, an unrolled pair of edible panties... served on graham cracker crust)

(2) This Used To Be My Playground (shortbread crust, cake icing, M&M's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

AND DON'T FORGET OUR SPECIAL OFFERS...

**Dine Another Day gift certificates available at register

**"Where's The Party" discounts available to groups of 10 or more (the management knows that Where's the Party was not a single but feels the pun is too good to pass up)