Musical Meme Deux: Seven Songs

Tim Sommer & Alexandra Scott of Hi-Fi Sky

The ever musical Beth has tagged me this time. I thought this one would be hard, but it barely took any thought - just a quick look at the Ipod and recent memories of sitting at the piano.

The exercise here is simply to discuss seven songs you are currently enjoying in your life.


* Goodbye Sarah Shu (John Vanderslice)
John is currently my boyfriend. I like his music. I like it that he's (still) small enough to play the intimate clubs. And I LOVE it that he gets upset with people who talk while he's performing. One time he stopped playing in the middle of a song and asked some people who were having a loud conversation near the stage to take it outside. I'm going to see him this week in Brooklyn.


* Dance of the Blessed Spirits from "Orfeo & Euridice" (Abbey Simon, piano)
This is a piano transcription by Abram Chasins of a beautiful melody from the Gluck opera. Mr. Simons performed this piece at a concert I attended a few years ago, and he moved the entire audience to tears. Being the inspired musician I am, the next day I tried to order a copy of the music, but sadly discovered it was out of print. So I began calling out-of-print music stores, and was repeatedly told "sorry, we don't have it."

Finally, a nice gentleman at a store in New York suggested I call Mr. Chasins' widow, who still lives in the city. He also strongly encouraged me NOT to tell Mrs. Chasins where I got her number. And I can see why; she sounded like a crabby old lady when I got her on the phone. "What, you're probably calling about that damn Gluck piece aren't you? Well I don't know if I have any more copies. I'll do what I can. Give me your address." (click.) But a few days later I did indeed receive a copy from her in the mail, free of charge. I haven't completely learned it yet, but it's a work in progress.


* Cemetery Gates (The Beautiful Mistake)
This is from a compilation cd of various artists' interpretations of songs by The Smiths. Although I've always liked this song, I particularly enjoy this version because it's the first time I understood the words "while Wilde is on mine."


* I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard (Nightmare of You)
This is a Long Island band I discovered fairly recently. Catchy little ditties. I always think of our blogger friends Chris and Megan when I hear this particular song, because it's a guy singing to his girlfriend, Megan, about wanting to be buried in her backyard when he dies so that he can make the flowers grow for her. I thought about sharing it with them back when they got together, but it seemed kind of morbid. Cheers.


* Fuck and Run (CP on the piano, a la Liz Phair)
This will be next in my home concert series, as soon as we get a new digicam. Stay tuned.


* Belle Louisiane (Hi-Fi Sky)
This is a space-age rendition of a traditional French Cajun song. I first heard it on NPR when I was driving home in a bad mood due to hating the guts of various sales reps. It calmed my angry spirit. I also enjoyed listening to the Cajun French, which for some reason I had thought would be difficult to understand. Belle Louisiane, je chante mon coeur pour toi. Ouvre tes bras et serre ton cher enfant...


* Sad Songs & Waltzes (Cake)
A great little ditty from a great little band.

I tag: My sister. And in honor of the creepy song I am now dedicating to them, I also tag Megan and Chris.

Parent from hell: My Mom!

One time Lulu, who is a high school teacher, shared a horrific story about a parent-from-hell. It's stories like this that kept me from being a teacher; I figured I would just storm off the job one day and that would be the end of my career- so why decide to start?

The parent-stories that both Lulu and Megan tell have prompted me to think about my own parents' interactions with my teachers. To be perfectly frank, I feel my teachers got the short end of the stick on occasion.

For example, one time in seventh grade I procrastinated writing a report until it became an emergency to get it done late Sunday night- and I needed my dad's help because I didn't understand some of the material I was reading. He was quite annoyed that I had waited so long to get started, so to save face I lied and said the teacher had just assigned it on Friday and it wasn't fair, blah blah blah. (We had actually beein given over three weeks to work on it.)

At the end of the quarter when my dad had to sign my report card, he wrote a terse note to the teacher to the effect of "it is unfair not to give your students adequate time to do their assignments" - and specifically referenced the report I had almost tanked on. I cringed when I handed back the report card, hoping my teacher would not read it. He never mentioned it to me, so I hope that is the case.


Then in eighth grade I had this perfectly lovely English/History/Social Studies teacher, Mrs. S. She was just about the sweetest woman ever. Anyway, my problem with procrastination was not new at that point, and I would regularly put off working on major assignments until I was down to the wire - a system that has served me well my entire life. (Some of us need a fire under our asses to perform.)

We had been "working" all semester on a research paper, and were required to hand in various interim assignments to chart our progress (e.g. have 100 note cards filled out by one date, have an outline by another date, etc.) I regularly failed to hand in the preliminary assignments because they weren't graded separately from the paper, and therefore I didn't care. I knew I would get the paper done somehow.

About four weeks into the paper schedule, Mrs. S. started freaking out because I wasn't doing the work. She reprimanded me several times a week, and I kept promising to get more done.

Then one day Mrs. S. came up to me in the classroom, looking very upset.

"Tom, I need to talk to you. It's very important."

Oh my god, I must be in big trouble this time, I thought.

"I called your mother yesterday to let her know how concerned I am about your lack of progress on this research paper. And you know what she said? She said that you think I hate you. How could you possibly think that about me? You know that's not true!" I think she even had tears in her eyes.

So I'm thinking "what on earth did my mom say to her, and why?" I didn't remember ever saying anything negative to my parents about Mrs. S. She was one of my favorite teachers ever. So I outright denied it to Mrs. S. and told her I had absolutely no idea why she would think that, except that maybe I had grumbled at the dinner table about having to do the research paper or something. I felt really bad that Mrs. S. was so upset, so I tried to convince her not to worry. I'm not sure it worked.

That evening I confronted my mother and asked her what she had said to Mrs. S. She said "well from what you say about her, it sounds like you think she doesn't like you."

???

27 years later, I still feel bad about how sad my mom made Mrs. S. feel.

All this talk from Lulu and Megan about parents from hell got me thinking about this. My parents had both been teachers, and both knew how it felt to have parents side with their children against them. Yet my parents were both completely willing to do the same, even when their son (me) was nothing but a lying complainer without a shred of evidence to support his accusations against his teachers. And especially in the case of Mrs. S. where I hadn't even provided them any information as to why they should attack her.


I'm telling you, you could not pay me enough to be a teacher. Ok, well maybe you could pay me enough, but I don't think any school would pay me would it take to put up with that shit.

And besides, being a Stragetic Sales Executive is heaven!*


*At CPW, heaven and hell are the same.

Teacher teacher

Lulu and Megan are both teachers, and both share a lot of stories about their jobs. Gets me to thinking about how much the world has changed - and hasn't changed - since I was in school.

Megan's story about handing out stickers (as in gold stars and that sort of thing) got me thinking about my sixth grade teacher, Ms. Pav. Ms. Pav was a weirdo artist type, so of course I absolutely adored her. She used to do things like take us down into this dark basement gym and perform interpretive dances for us. One time she got on the floor under a blanket and then wriggled out from under it, butt-first. I think she called that one "The Cocoon."

Anyway, Ms. Pav also had bizarre forms of punishment for us. For example, she kept all of our names on a rolodex on her desk. If she caught you chewing gum, she would affix a pink tab to your card. And if you got caught throwing something, your card got a black tab.

Once you accumulated three tabs of either color, you were required to bring in treats for the whole class. That was the punishment.

No wonder I still have a warped attachment to candy.

Occasionally I would decide my class was in need of treats, so I would purposely get caught chewing gum and/or throwing things. (Note to self: why didn't I ever try throwing gum? Could have been a two-for-one.) Then I would lie to my parents and say we had a birthday or something and that I needed treats to share with the class. Worked like a charm.

I'm really not sure what the psychology was behind all this. I think she was fucking with us. Good for her.

Next on tap: Lulu inspires CP's own "Parent-from- hell" story - and this one's about MY MOM!