Cairns love rock and roll...

or ZZ Top anyway.  It's funny how Aggie and Peter seem to be more social, or awake at least, when I have the music on.  Normally, they don't seem to care what's playing.  But this afternoon, when I pressed play on the CD remote, Aggie came alive.  Rock and roll is apparently her thing.  Let me explain: today I actually bought a CD for the first time in years.  I was at WalMart looking for a USB cable and when I drove past the music & video department to get to the computer accessories, I took a shortcut down the music aisle.  And there it was: ZZ Top's Greatest Hits - all eighteen of them - for the low, low price of nine bucks.  Fifty cents a song - cheaper than downloading them all from iTunes.  And let's face it, all eighteen are bona fide, lots of airplay hits.  Now, Aggie knows Sharp Dressed Man because it's in heavy rotation on the iPod - but she really seemed to like Gimme All Your Lovin' and Cheap Sunglasses.

Who'd have thunk it? 

A thing of the past?

I read a funny article today.  Apparently the makers of Guitar Hero are discontinuing their product.  It seems that the young generation is not as enthralled with air guitar as we were thirty or so years ago.  In fact, the only way some of these kids have even heard of rock and roll greats is by playing this video game.  How is that even possible?  Can today’s youth not know who Eric Clapton is?  AC/DC?  Foreigner?  The Beatles?  Not that I have occasion to play Guitar Hero, but it sure looks like fun.  And yes, I’ll admit, I played my fair share of air guitar (complete with wild headbanging) back in the day.  Hard to imagine, but I was well acquainted with Boston, Yes, Aerosmith, Heart and Led Zep.  I wanted to be Ann Wilson.  Right now I am probably the only person within a five mile radius who even knows who Yngvwe Malmsteen is.  Sad, but true.  The history of rock and roll should be a required course in high school.  Or college.  Especially college.  Of course, I am so old and demented that I have never heard the music of the Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne or, dare I say it, Lady Gaga.  And I have no desire to – not as long as I have my ZZTop CD and all those rock and roll classics on my iPod.  I mean, I may like old music, but there’s no reason not to utilize new technology.

Don't shoot me...

I'm only the piano player...  I am thoroughly enjoying my ME page-a-day calendar and this illustration took me back to my childhood and my $22.50 piano.  Right down to the howling little dog, although mine was a black poodle.  When I was about ten and attending the First Baptist Church in Zephyrhills with my family, I was enthralled with the old upright pianos in all of the Sunday School rooms.  They were fair game on Wednesday nights after prayer meeting while the adults visited and I made the most of my unsupervised time with what I considered to be the grandest of all musical instruments.  I could barely read music, but I managed to pick out a fair number of tunes from the old hymnal.  One fateful evening, the choir director asked my father if I was taking piano lessons.  No, my father replied, we don't have a piano.  The choir director informed him that the church was planning to sell the old pianos to raise money for the new sanctuary and that my dad ought to consider taking advantage of getting a good deal on a piano for me.  How much, my father asked, dreading some astronomical figure.  "Oh, twenty five dollars," the choir director said.  "Think about it - I think your daughter has an ear for music."  My eaves-dropping ten-year-old self didn't hear that part - all I heard was twenty-five dollars!  It might as well have been twenty five hundred - I knew my mother was never going to go for that.  I had, however, underestimated my father and his ability to deal with my mother.  The next day over dinner, my father casually mentioned that the church was going to be selling some old pianos.  Her response was exactly what I expected: what do we need with a piano, we can't afford a piano, besides, we have no place to put it, blah blah blah.  My heart sunk.  My father was undeterred.  He told my mother that he thought the piano would be a good investment.  We can't afford piano lessons, she countered.  They went back and forth like that for a while until he finally announced that surely she couldn't say no to a piano for a mere $22.50.  Wait, I thought, wasn't it twenty-five dollars?  She wavered.  She said she'd think about it.  That was all Daddy needed to hear.  The following Saturday my father and his friend with a truck picked up my new (old) piano at the church and found a home for it in the utility room just off the kitchen.  And he had indeed only paid $22.50 for the piano; apparently they were willing to make him an even better deal and threw in a couple of old hymnals for good measure.  I can't tell you how excited I was that day or how much enjoyment I got out of that piano over the years.  I taught myself to read music and played anything and everything for the sheer joy of making my own music.  I would play and sing for hours on end all by myself in that little utility room.  Over the years, that piano occupied many out-of-the-way places and gave me many hours of pleasure.  Yes, my father threatened to throw away my Scott Joplin songbook if he heard Maple Leaf Rag one more time, but I would have to say that he enjoyed that piano as much as I did.  I miss that old piano, almost as much as I miss my father.

Thanks, Daddy, for $22.50 well spent.

Lemonade Makin' Mama...

got me thinking about hymns - and about my favorite, which is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, written in 1758.  I've always loved the melody and the fact that it lends itself well to being sung a capella.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

Sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,

Mount of Thy redeeming love.

 
I realized that most of my favorites are really what one would classify as American folk hymns.  What's your favorite hymn?

Aaron Neville and I...

are still cutting green and red paper for Christmas cards and singing soulful holiday duets.  I am sure the neighbors next door are loving it.  Ha!  The CD is called Aaron Neville's Soulful Christmas - and we are currently bopping to Oh, What a Night.  Not too loudly.  Well, not very.  My favorite is Louisiana Christmas Day.  Tim, of course, always hated this music - his favorite Christmas CD was, and I am not kidding, Now It is Christmas Again by Garrison Keillor and the gang from Prairie Home Companion.  The tune he would always sing along with was The Sons of Knute Christmas Dance and Dinner.  Very strange.  And yes, I know all the words, too.  Not that I could ever get him to listen to Prairie Home Companion on NPR, but he was completely enamored of the Christmas CD.  Go figure.

Today, since it is Thankful Thursday (thank you for the theme, Yoli, from Apron Senorita), I am thankful for my friend and client, Cari.  And for her little restaurant just four doors down.  And for hot dogs with mustard and onions.  There is a distinct advantage to being close by: a fully stocked refrigerator and kitchen that will make you just about anything your little heart desires - and bring it right to you.  She's been pretty busy lately - which is great in this economy - and she has a loyal following of regulars who are hooked on her philly cheese steak sandwiches and great salads.   So what happened to my giving up meat, you might ask?  Well, I have convinced myself that a hot dog, which does not come from any one animal, isn't meat in the classic sense of say, steak or chicken.  And it bears no resemblance at all to any living thing it might have once been.  And they were left over from Monday's chili dog special - so I was helping out by eating the last two hot dog buns.  Yes, yes, justification, I know.  I do regularly eat the salad and when my friend, Heather, and I had dinner there a week or so ago, I had the eggplant parmesan, which was excellent.  Cari is a hard-working, enterprising young woman and I am thankful that she is continuing to thrive while small restaurants are closing all over town.  She refers clients to me quite often and I try to send people her way every time someone asks me for a suggestion on where to have lunch or dinner.  So if you're ever in the area...

And check out the giveaway at Lemonade Makin' Mama's blog.  Too cute!

I'll admit it...

I like musicals. There's just something about people spontaneously bursting into song, I guess. I mean, it worked for Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor - who apparently spent an inordinate amount of time singing (and dancing) in the rain. And there was always someone just off camera who could toss Elvis a guitar - along with an invisible band and some terrific back-up singers. So while I was never a big ABBA fan, I do like Meryl Streep and I added Mamma Mia! to my Netflix queue - hoping to get it during my free two-week trial period. It came in the mail yesterday and I couldn't wait to get home and watch it. And it was so cute! I mean, aside from the fact that Pierce Brosnan can't sing - it's like he's strangling or something - and that Stellan Skaarsgard shows his naked butt. They managed to work every ABBA hit into the production - I kept waiting for someone to starting belting out, "Do you hear the guns, Fernando?" - but the lyrics didn't quite fit with the story line. However, Meryl Streep was humming Fernando while she was looking for something in the goat house. Cute story, pretty good acting and makes-you-wanna-jump-up-and-dance music - what more can you ask for in a musical?