Catchy Name Needed

(Look, this actually makes four icons with Star Wars references that I've found. I have close to 200 icons so it's possible there's something else in there that has escaped me.)

If you haven't been following this all along, by "alternative" I mean the stuff that I didn't actually pick for Music Advent. Part 1 is here.

(Here's what I actually picked for N-Q)
So picking up again with N, the only thing I wrote down was "Nothing Compares 2 U" - which I think was just in case I completely didn't find a video for "Never Stop," to tell you the truth. Because that's just one of those songs that I have strong and ancient emotional ties with, you know?
So here's Sinead's version of that, in case you only know it from "The Voice" or something):

(Lyrics are useful for this song, I think - I always had trouble understanding her, at least.) This song was written by Prince, incidentally.

O: I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that I had "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" written down for O - that's always been one of my favorite old carols. (I have a weakness for the minor-key ones, generally.) What I actually used was Dishwalla's "Opaline" and I did have a couple of things besides those two written down: The Eagles' "Ol' 55" and also "One Headlight" which I think is the Wallflowers.

P: I used Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" but I had several other things written down. One was "Pat-a-Pan" which is most generally famous in this Mannheim Steamroller version. (Gawd, I just listened to that, & I didn't remember it being as boringly repetitive as it sounds to me at the moment. I suppose that's because it's one 30-second melody which they then proceed to repeat about 10 times.) Then there was "Psallite" which is also something I know from choir - it's not generally something you hear around at Christmas because it's too obscure for that, but from what I remember of the (Latin) lyrics it does seem to be a Christmas song.

That's a nice version of it. Much better than my 7th-grade choir one was, I bet!

The two non-Christmas songs I had written down were "Purple Rain" (speaking of Prince) and Jackson Browne's "The Pretender."

For Q, I had "Queen of Hearts" written down (which I know somebody else did use in Music Advent, because I looked) and something called "Queen of the Air." - I don't have easy access to my iTunes list right now so I'm not entirely sure what that is. (Possibly Everclear, because it's a song on an album I know I had.)

(R-U picks here)
R songs other than "River" which I used: Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" - one of my old favorites. Here's David Byrne in a 2002 performance:

Other R's: Radioactive, by which I'm sure I meant the Imagine Dragons song, not any of several older ones. (One thing I've noticed about the Imagine Dragons song: it's one of those songs people sing along with. Pay attention the next time you're in the supermarket or somewhere and it comes on, I bet you'll notice it.) Also Real Fine Place To Start, which is one of those country-ish songs that I picked up somewhere along the line.

I better quit talking so much about every single song or I'll never finish this.

S: I used the cheesy 80s song "Stone Cold" but my alternatives were Fixx, "Saved by Zero"; "Superstar" by which I think I meant the old Carpenters song rather than the musical; and "Second Chance" - the Shinedown song from a few years back. (All I wrote down were titles, which is why I'm going through my list and trying to decide which version of a song I meant.)

T: I used the 80s song "True"; my alternatives were Dan Fogelberg's "There's a Place in the World for a Gambler," Pearl Jam's "Tremor Christ" (but I used Pearl Jam twice this year as it was) and that old cheeseball classic "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

U: I used Simple Minds' "Up on the Catwalk" because neither one of the other songs I had written down had a video I liked. In the case of "Under Your Spell" from the Buffy musical - and that seems sort of odd (that I didn't like the video, considering that it was the original video), but it didn't appeal at the time, that's all I know. The other one was "Unwritten" (Natasha Bedingfield).

(V-Z videos here)
V: I used "Veni, Veni, Emmanuel" (i.e., "O Come Emmanuel" in Latin) for my actual pick, but I also threw another V song into this entry, Ultravox's "Vienna." I also had "Valotte" (Julian Lennon) and Vasoline (Stone Temple Pilots) on the list.

Possibly my favorite thing that I skipped is "Wig in a Box" (movie version) (but again, I had already used a Hedwig song):

other W songs, besides the Wassail Song which I used: another musical song, the "Watch Dog Theme" from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and also Amy Obenski's "Words on a Page"

(Best Little Whorehouse is another thing that I have a weird emotional reaction to - or maybe it's more accurate to call it a heavily nostalgic reaction. The Chicken Ranch story broke in the summer, one of the years that I was a teenager, and we used to watch Channel 13 all the time and saw all of Marvin Zindler's posturing about it. I think we thought it was all pretty stupid even at the time, but I also remember being oddly riveted by the whole thing too. - Ask anybody from Houston: there was just something about that man you couldn't turn away from, possibly like a trainwreck.)

(I'm running out of steam here, so I'll be brief.) The Y alternatives were Coldplay's "Yellow" which I have always been unaccountably fond of, and another 80s song, "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record.) For Z, the alternatives I had were "Zat You, Santa Claus?" (if anybody actually used that, I didn't see it) and U2's "Zoo Station." (Frankly, I was at my aunt's house late on Christmas Eve after everybody had gone to bed, and I think the one I used was the first one I looked at, "Zydeco Stomp." I think I used it mostly because I was tired and I didn't want to look at any more videos. "Eh, I like that song, what the heck.")

For R I went with a Christmassy song (although it's not really a Christmas song, just because it mentions Christmas - although actually I think "sad Christmas songs" could be their own genre, almost) - and not incidentally, this is one of my favorite songs of all time: Joni Mitchell, "River"


After that I got in an 80s groove, although none of these songs are much alike. The first one is a rock song: Rainbow, "Stone Cold"

This is one of those very silly songs (or well, the video is very silly, anyway, and I think MTV must have been where I first heard the song because the two are inextricably merged in my mind) that you can't help sort of liking anyway. Also, at 22 or so, I thought Joe Lynn Turner was really cute.

Then we have this sort of smooth, slick thing that is "True" - I think Spandau Ballet was lumped generally under the "new wave" banner at the time, but I also think for this song, at least, that's pretty debatable:


This is a song that never caught on in the US, as far as I know. Simple Minds had a Moment in America (mostly because of Breakfast Club) but they were a much bigger thing in Europe. Anyway, this is my favorite Simple Minds song. I think I posted this video during Holidailies last year but I didn't actually use it for a Music Advent pick at the time.

(As I said when I posted it before, I don't remember seeing this video at all back then. I just knew the song.)

And as a bonus (because I'm pretty sure I'm not actually going to use it for Music Advent tomorrow), another one of my fave 80s songs, Ultravox's "Vienna"

I posted H & I for Music Advent just now, so that means I have another three to post here - which is good because I haven't particularly got anything else to say. I'll start right off with I, because I think what I posted is a pretty glaringly obvious choice what with the death of Scott Weiland recently - STP's "Interstate Love Song"


And then I'll keep going backwards: H was The Traveling Wilburys, "Handle With Care" - this seemed pretty obvious to me, too, but I guess it's been a while and it's probably not quite so obvious as I think.

Couple of these guys are dead too, of course, but then they were a good bit older than Weiland. (Added: Huh. actually Orbison was only 52 when he died. Not much older than Weiland - who I think was 48 - at all, and younger than I am now, for that matter. I'd forgotten that.)

I was on a rock-song tear with this bunch; G is Pearl Jam's "Given To Fly"

I wasn't going for a "dead people" theme, believe me, but I gathered from the comments on this (2000, live) video that the lady who is signing onstage in this video has recently passed away. Apparently she was a teacher who was in the audience with some students and Eddie, so the story says, noticed her signing and put her on the stage.

Here's my alternate H video, in a much different style: Linda Ronstadt and the McGarrigle Sisters, "Heart Like a Wheel":

And, since I was talking about who's still with us, I had to check on the McGarrigle sisters - apparently Kate died in 2010 (I might've known that at the time, now that I think about it) but the other two are still kicking (Anna McG. & Linda Ronstadt, I mean). Linda Ronstadt has Parkinson's and can't sing any more. I knew I hadn't seen her in a while. (I was not a huge fan of hers, in particular, but around the time I was in college, she was the only big female star going, certainly the only rock singer who achieved that level of fame. She was a trailblazer, in retrospect.)

I think I mentioned before that #musicadvent - which has always been a Twitter thing - was doing A-Z this year (skipping X). I said I might not do it, and then in the middle of the night one night this week I posted a version of Bad with lyrics. Unfortunately it was very late at night and I failed to notice that the lyrics are apparently from a non-English speaker who got some of it wrong - "find away" instead of "fade away" - but anyway, still a great song. (I think I posted the LiveAid version of this last year, and that's here.)

But that aside, I wasn't really intending to do this daily, partly because I couldn't think how I would choose songs. Then it occurred to me, kind of belatedly, that I've had iTunes since it first started - what's that, over 10 years now? - and that after all this time that contains a pretty exhaustive list of what I've listened to in the last decade, and it's easily sorted by title. So that's what I'm doing. I'm not going to try to post it over here daily like I did last year, but I'll try to post them here periodically.

I just picked stuff that seemed interesting to me. Everything here is music I like, and I'm going to try to keep from second-guessing my own taste. (People are so judgmental about other people's taste in music, and it's easy to get defensive. My taste is pretty much all over the place, quite frankly, but leaning toward rock & alternative.)

So I've been posting catch-up choices on the #musicadvent tag, and here's what I've posted so far:

A - Across the Universe, Michael Johns' cover. I always thought he had a beautiful voice. If you listen to the Idol judges afterwards, 2 of the 3 said this performance was too low-key, but I've found that I listened to this one pretty frequently over the years.


B - Bad, U2 (bad lyrics and all)


C - Chrome Plated Heart, Melissa Etheridge, a live version from Germany in 1993


(And I think three videos is enough for one day. I'll do some more tomorrow.)

Well, before I get around to talking about concerts, let me tell you what happened to me in 1985, in a nutshell. I got one full-time job, replacing the two part-time ones. It still didn't pay very well, but better than I was making before. It was back in the Serials department, where I had worked before, and... I hated it. Once the new wore off, I could barely stand to go to work. I also bought a car, a used Datsun - I forget what year model it was - 82 or 83, I think. I had been in Austin all these years with no car, and having that freedom of movement was weird. And then I moved out of the co-op. I found a girl who wanted a roommate, and I moved into an apartment for the first time. (That didn't really work out so well, either. The roommate and I didn't particularly get along.)

The part of my life that did go well was my social life. I wasn't dating anybody, but I hung out with a couple of my old co-op friends, and a couple of their friends, and as you may have deduced if you've been paying attention, we did a lot of concert-going. We also went to clubs - especially we went to one gay bar on 4th Street. It was sort of fashionable for straight people to go there, at the time, but really the reason we kept going was that one of my friends was in the process of deciding to come out of the closet - which he finally did at the end of the year, to nobody's surprise. I suppose that was also related to why we went to see Frankie Goes to Hollywood (which was an education all by itself. I thought I was all grown-up and sophisticated, but... oh my). But we did plenty of other stuff, too. We went to Esther's Follies - which is apparently still going strong. We went to see small acts - we were very partial to a guy named Dino Lee, and saw him several times at different places. (Oh, look, here he is on MTV in '86, and it looks like he's still around, too.) We went to see Timbuk 3 - that's the "Future's So Bright We Gotta Wear Shades" guys - on campus, I think it was at the Cactus Cafe, which was a really small venue. I think that was just before they had the one big hit song, which is this one:

(We also saw Katrina and the Waves - another one-hit wonder act, at least in the States. I gather they were around for longer in the UK.)

We also went to bigger acts - the big ones and the medium-sized ones, too, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Howard Jones. We went to U2, which I found rather a disappointment, because I loved U2 but it was exactly like the Live at Red Rocks concert, I thought, which I had seen on MTV. There wasn't anything wrong with the concert, it just... didn't grab me like I thought it would. My Music Advent choice was U2, probably their most famous live moment, from LiveAid, which was in the summer of '85:

(I watched parts of LiveAid live, when it was originally on, but I don't think I actually saw that bit.)

I've been poking around trying to figure out when these various concerts were, and for U2 I came up with February 85. I mostly remember Bono waving a damn flag around, 30 years later, but I'm pretty sure they did sing "Bad" along with the other stuff that you'd expect. I had the EP - I think it's "Wide Awake in America" - that had the live version of "Bad" on it.

My other favorite band was R.E.M., and we saw them, too - I came up with August for a date on that one. I can't say I remember exactly what they played - I always have trouble with that part - but I remember that I loved it. I mostly have an impression of it in my head - standing on the floor of the Austin Coliseum and bouncing up and down because there wasn't enough room to really dance. (The song my brain wants to set it to didn't come out til the next year. That song will be in the next entry, because I picked it for '86. However, somewhere online I found a reference to "Fall On Me" having been played that night for the first time in public - here - and it's on the same album, so who knows? It's doubtful they played it, but possible.)

I also loved Tom Petty, and yes, we saw him too, with Lone Justice opening - I think that one was probably in July. I mention seeing Katrina and the Waves, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood (my research there says June). I mentioned a few days ago seeing New Order and thinking it was boring, and I think that one was in the fall, although I haven't attempted to check my memory there. My impressions of the time of year things were often seem to have been more accurate than my memories of what year was which, though. (I remembered Fleetwood Mac being at Halloween and Echo and the Bunnymen being around the time school started, for example. But I don't always have anything like that to tie things to.)

If you're wondering how I afforded all of this on a Library Assistant's pay, well, I really couldn't. By the end of the year I was pretty badly in debt, between credit cards and the car payment. I actually sold most of my vinyl albums that fall, among other cost-saving measures. (It wasn't as much of a wrench as you'd think - CDs were starting to come along by then, and I figured vinyl albums were going to go the way of the cassette and the 8-track tape. I sold them at Half-Price books and got quite a bit of money.)

I started talking about 1983 in the last entry, let's see if I have anything else I feel the need to say about it...

I have notes about the music portion of this, and my notes remind me that I saw David Bowie in 1983. I sat behind the stage, I remember that, and because of that I was quite close. It was a good concert. (The only professional-level concert I ever saw that I have really bad things to say about was New Order, which I thought was boring. I think that was in '85 but I'll get that complaint over with here, because I went to a number of concerts in '85 so I'll have plenty of other things to say for that year, music-wise.) (It just occured to me that I remember the name of the Bowie tour - "Serious Moonlight." "Let's Dance" was a huge hit at the time.)

Oh my god, I forgot about this picture - this was, I believe, a "Bizarre Party" in fall 1983 - terrible scan but still, I love this.


My first video choice for 1983 was in the last entry also, but I had a second choice, so here's "Twilight Zone" - which I also loved:


That's the only concert that I'm sure was in 1983. I think I was too busy to do much concert-going. But as I said before, I spent a fair amount of time watching MTV, and I hung around with a friend who introduced me to NME and Melody Maker (British music magazines) and also to the world of import singles. I was already interested in this music before I met this particular friend, but that was what really pushed me into the edge into fairly serious fandom - as serious as I ever get, anyway. I made a mix tape that I had for years (and this was actual tape, remember, a cassette) with a bunch of songs recorded off of Rick's records - it had Echo & the Bunnymen, of course, but also Berlin & Big Country & Cyndi Lauper & The Alarm - that's all I can remember. (That thing might still be around somewhere!) There were probably a couple more. The Eurythmics were a new thing (at least to me) that year, so was Culture Club. It was also the year that Thriller was a huge thing, but that was too middle-of-the-road to be fashionable in my circles. (I suspect some of my friends owned that album, just the same, although I didn't.)

This was my favorite Culture Club song:


One more thing:
When I think about 1983, I wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. Both 1981 and 1983 were big crossroads in my life - and actually I'd have another one in a couple more years, but I'll get to that later, hopefully. In 1981, I wonder what would have happened if I had, say, gone to law school. I was not at all interested in it at the time, but in retrospect... well, like I said, I wonder. And in 1983, what if I'd gotten a job - god knows where it would have been. It's certainly highly likely that I'd never have met Rob, for example. At the time, what I thought was that I'd only ever have one chance to help start a co-op. I figured that if I didn't do it I'd always wonder what would have happened if I had. (And conversely, obviously, because I did, I sometimes wonder what if I didn't.)

Videos at the bottom.

OK, so in 1981, I graduated from UT. But then I stayed at UT, because I decided to go to library school. ('Cause, I dunno, I like libraries. I didn't really think this out too well.) I ended up living at The Ark, which was a student housing co-op, and a really wonderful and nutso place. (It's still there, but nowadays it's called Pearl Street Co-op, I understand.) It was rather famous for its parties. That fall, as I remember it, we paid the unheard-of sum of $1000 to have local favorite Stevie Ray Vaughn play at one of the parties. We would get some kind of temporary liquor license (this was how it was explained to me, anyway) and we could basically operate as a club for the night, and sell beer and everything. Well, honestly, I can't tell you much about Stevie Ray's performance because I over-indulged with the beer and I really don't remember a lot of it. I do remember that I wandered into the house living room before the performance and Stevie Ray was in there waiting to go on. I don't think I exactly knew what he looked like, although I did know who he was, he was sort of a cult figure around Austin at that time. I just mostly remember him looking at me and my friend like, "Who the hell are these people?" And I remember that there was a mob there and and we made the thousand bucks back several times over, and we bought new washers and dryers, as I recall. (Another thing I don't remember is exactly why I know all these technical details - I must have been on some committee. Everything in co-ops is done by committee.)

Oh, and the little kicker to that story is that that same weekend there was a Rolling Stones concert in Dallas, which I couldn't go to because I had a job. (Unlike as an undergrad, I was paying my own way in grad school.) Many of my friends got up hung over the next morning and drove to Dallas - or maybe they never went to bed at all, I'm not sure which. But in any case, I was told by what I considered to be reliable sources that the Rolling Stones knew about our party, and said something about it onstage, of all the crazy things. (This makes a certain amount of sense because Stevie Ray's brother Jimmie was in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, at the time, and the T-Birds were opening for the Stones on that tour.)

I was a lot more interested in the co-op and generally having a good time than I was in grad school, really, but I enjoyed library school. Most of what I learned is of course totally obsolete now, but it was interesting. I took a lot of reference classes, which meant a lot of hanging out in the library trying to look things up without computers. It was like puzzle-solving, it was fun. We did actually get mainframe time to do research once or twice - you had to parse your queries just so, almost like writing a computer program.

I was trying to remember any concerts I went to in 1981 and everything I was thinking of seems to have been in 1982, so I will save those for the next entry. I spent a fair amount of time watching MTV, although we generally liked to think we were above all that kind of thing, and we made fun of it a lot. That was the year "Bella Donna" came out, and I remember that Stevie Nicks' voice really annoyed me at first (I think it's "Leather and Lace" I'm thinking about) but eventually "Edge of Seventeen" kind of won me over. Joan Jett was a huge thing, too, and Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl."

Two Music Advent selections for 1981:
first, John Lennon, which I mentioned yesterday


and secondly, representing the MTV era, Billy Idol (with a video directed by Tobe Hooper - which I didn't know until I looked this up yesterday):

(Oh, I loved this so at the time!)

Mostly for my own use, because a list is easier to deal with, here's the songs I've picked for the first ten days (or rather years) of #musicadvent, and links to the videos:

1963: Peter, Paul & Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon (video is a BBC performance from a couple of years later)

1964: Julie Andrews (and children and an animatronic robin), A Spoonful of Sugar ("Mary Poppins" clip)

1965: Petula Clark, Downtown

1966: Nancy Sinatra, These Boots Were Made for Walkin'
second choice: The Hollies, Bus Stop

1967: The Beatles, I Am the Walrus ("Magical Mystery Tour" clip)

1968: Simon & Garfunkel, Scarborough Fair/Canticle

1969: The 5th Dimension, Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In
second choice: The Archies, Sugar Sugar (also there's some interesting info along with the video about the amount of stuff from that cartoon series that isn't known to exist any more!)

1970: The Jackson 5, ABC (really meant to post this one, though, because that other one is only about half the song!)

1971: Three Dog Night, Joy to the World (NOT the Christmas carol)

1972: America, Ventura Highway