Month: January 2016

Saturday Morning

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We have a fairly strict rule in the house for my five-year-old: no screens during the week.  This includes TV, the iPad, my phone and the toddler-tablet that Santa brought at Christmas.  I have a very solid 2-3-2 custody schedule that works for all three of us, my daughter, my ex and myself, which means my daughter is with me every other weekend.  And when the weekend hits, so do the requests for screen time.

My daughter is an active child who likes to build things, so screen time is still not that abundant.  She thinks she wants screen time throughout the weekend but when I suggest we build a marble track or a crazy fort instead, she’ll often choose the latter.  Still, on Saturday mornings, screen time is often the best choice for the both of us.  I feel that I’ve lost that excited little-kid approach to the first morning free from schedules and responsibility and I’m starting to see things from the other side. From that parent’s point of view I can understand why Saturday Morning cartoon watching is still a thing.

Come Saturday morning, I am tired.  This morning she woke up at 6:18 bright eyed and ready to go.  Forget that every day during the week when I try to wake her at 6:15 she shirks from any form of light like some sort of mini-Dracula.  So while part of me feels guilty that I shuffle into the kitchen, get her cereal and put on the TV for cartoons while I lay there in a half daze on the couch snuggling her when she’s done eating, there’s the other part of me that loves it and is comforted by the idea that this is how early Saturday mornings in childhood should be spent.

She’s napping now, tired out from swimming lessons, and I’ve pulled out an old tape that I used to play over and over again.

Saturday Morning:  Cartoons’ Greatest Hits

Saturday Morning Cassette   Saturday Morning Cassette

I’ve just spent the better part of the last half hour searching out videos for some of these classics and I’ve honestly got my head spinning in a sort of two-tiered nostalgia.  Dos-talgia, as the Spanish might say. I’ve gone down the YouTube rabbit-hole remembering a tape I listened to 20 years ago that covered songs from cartoons I watched on TV 30 years ago.

I also just discovered that there is a video for the entire cassette that strings together videos for all the songs and features Drew Barrymore (coincidentally published to YouTube on my birthday last year).  At only 711 views, I think this is quite the find for any fans of this compilation.

Individual songs from the overall video are published on their own and I’ve chosen a few of my favourites below. Whether you’re nostalgic on one or two levels for these covers, I hope you enjoy them.

Josie and the Pussycats – Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly

When you talk to me about the mid-90’s, Juliana Hatfield’s name rises very close to the top of most-listened to artists.  And long before Rachael Leigh Cook and Trainwreck Reid tried (and failed) to make the show cool again, Juliana Hatfield’s soprano blends just the right amount of alternative guitar and bubblegum pop to make this one of the highlights on an already stacked album.


Butthole Surfers – Underdog

How have I never seen this video before today?  The song is by far the most out-there track on the album and the video doesn’t disappoint.  If watching this was your first-ever introduction to the character, you’d have a hard time believing how fairly simple the cartoon concept is.  Watch the video below then come back up and click through to this link to see the original cartoon opening.  Taking the propaganda approach works and is a fantastic way to flip the original on its head.


The Ramones – Spiderman

I don’t think I need to say anything else.

Honestly, I could post the videos for almost every song on here, but nap time is almost over and we have a playdate to get ready for this afternoon.  The three above are the standouts for me, but check the Further Listening for a few more recommendations.

After spending part of the afternoon walking down this particular memory lane, I can’t tell if I want to be 6 or 16 again…

Further Listening – More Tracks from Saturday Morning:  Cartoons’ Greatest Hits

Helemt - Gigantor

Helmet – Gigantor.  Singing it like they wrote it.

RHH Stop That Pigeon

Reverend Horton Heat cover Johnny Quest and Stop That Pigeon.  While Johnny Quest was never a staple growing up, there are few things that take me back to pyjamas and cereal more than Dastardly and Muttley… adding this cover to the album legitimized my childhood fascination with the show which, when I was a kid watching it, simply wasn’t as popular as some of the other cartoons being watched by everyone else.

Matthew Sweet Scooby Doo

Matthew Sweet – Scooby Doo, Where Are You?  Like Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet can do bubblegum and make it cool, a perfect fit for one of the simplest themes on the album.  The song is very simple but they take it up a notch for a terrific ending.  And honestly, does it get any more Saturday morning than Scooby Doo?

The Boxer

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I got my first guitar when I was 16.  I was at my grandparents’ house and my uncle reached into the back of a closet and gave me an old guitar that belonged to my granddad.  Granddad, who they used to call “Three Chord Jack” because he could take any song ever written and pare it down to a G-C-D chord progression, had passed away four years earlier so the significance of this gift was not lost on me.

It doesn’t take much for me to remember that moment so clearly… bringing the guitar down to the family room in the basement, the comfortable musky smell, the autumn-leave print couches and fake wood paneling along the wall, the bar at the end of the room that housed a huge collection of bottle openers, mugs and other bar paraphernalia that was popular to obtain through the 60’s and 70’s.  This was what surrounded me when I played guitar for the first time.

There was not a lot of sheet music… as much as we were a sing-along family, it was all learned by heart and the music coming out of the guitars sometimes never quite synched up with the words.  But there were a few pages and one of those pages was The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel.  This would be the first song I’d ever learn to play on guitar.

My father had the album (of course he did, he had over 300 albums in his collection) and had transferred over half his collection to tape.  I practiced every night in my room listening to that cassette, trying to get the shift from major to minor just right in my voice.  It took weeks to get to a point where I felt comfortable enough to try and play it for anyone else and, it just so happened, that another family birthday had come around and we were back at nan and granddad’s house.  I brought my guitar.

Not in front of everyone, but in front of a select few (I remember my mom, dad and uncle being there) I set myself up in the basement and played my first ever show.  One song, with the end chorus stretched out to infinity thanks to the singing along and clapping that was coming from my first audience.

I loved it all; I loved the song, the performance, and the fact that it was likely the first time an F chord had ever been performed on that guitar.

You’ve heard the song before, of course, but watch this clip on Letterman from 1990.  Not only are some of the riffs and harmonies new from the original recording, but the entire performance is powerful, seeing the two perform together so late in their careers knowing these reunion performances were so rare.

Listen for the missing verse as well, one that did not appear on the original Bridge Over Troubled Water recording.

Now the years are rolling by me / They are rocking evenly / I am older than I once was, but younger than I’ll be, but that’s not unusual / No, it isn’t strange / After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same / After changes, we are more or less the same

The song means many things to many people but the one unifying theme we can all see is that the song is about perseverance.  The fighter still remains.

Paul Simon opened Saturday Night Live with the song on September 29th, 2001, the first live SNL show after the events of September 11th.  Everyone watched that show; everyone needed to watch that show and the song was a perfect way to inspire strength and courage without resorting to bravado.  In this clip below, Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels and Amy Poehler reflect on that night and on that performance.

One last memory about this song… later that same year, in November of 2001, I went to Japan to teach English, an adventure that I am sure will come up on a number of occasions here on the site.
I taught at a junior high school and was the only foreign teacher on staff.  Most of the other faculty were warm and receptive to me, however there were those who were either shy or embarrassed about their lack of English and would be very cold or rude towards me as a result.

From an email back home to Canada, April 25th, 2002:

Had a teacher’s party last Friday night, and that is always an adventure. Nice restaurant, food upon food upon food and, as is always the case when drinking with a bunch of Japanese people, too much to drink. The problem lies with the fact that you can’t keep track of how much you’re drinking because people keep filling up your glass with their bottle.

And man do they speak English when they’ve been drinking!  One teacher, I call him a wall-looker (because we’ll be walking towards each other in the hallway and, just as we’re about to meet, he turns his head and stares at the wall as he walks past) asked me (through another teacher) what my opinion was of him. I gave him four words and he understood and smiled: “Big smile… after beer!”

After dinner we went to karaoke where I was urged to sing. I half mentioned The Boxer while looking over someone’s shoulder and the next thing I knew I was belting it out.

Karaoke Tip Number 4

When surrounded by a bunch of older Japanese always go with something pre-1980.

Tip Number 4.1

It doesn’t hurt to pick a song with five minutes of Lai-La-Lais either.

The wall-looker has been much nicer to me ever since.

 

The Boxer… breaking down walls and bringing cultures together.

 

Further Listening – Covers Of The Boxer

The Boxer Cover Tamar and Natanel

Tamar&Netanel do a beautiful version of the song.  What I love about this performance is how clearly they love singing with each other.

The Boxer Cover Jess Chalker

Jess Chalker is a singer/songwriter from Oz with a lovely voice and an excellent version of the song.

The Boxer Cover Jaiwant Nana

With not a lot of eye contact with each other or the camera, this video is not as visually engaging, but Jaiwant Nana’s guitar is impeccable and there is something innately sweet about his father providing the Garfunkel high harmony.  I like it.

The Boxer Living Room Sing a long

And lastly, a great house party version of the song that just shows people having fun with it.  I love this vibe and, honestly, my happy place is where the drinks are flowing, the guitars are out and everyone is singing along so far into the night that we don’t even realize we’ve crossed over to morning…

The stars look very different today…

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Today we remembered an icon.

I was driving to work this morning when the news came on the radio.  Through the day I checked in on social media and it was all over my newsfeed… tweets, hashtags and unspoken competitions as to who could find the most obscure picture, video or reference of a man whose other-worldly physicality carried a career that spanned over 50 years.

I knew I was going to write tonight and it’s a funny thing, starting a music blog two days before David Bowie dies… it’s like starting to date someone a week before Valentine’s Day… you think you can ease into it and then, boom, you’re in it.  Full on.

And wait, am I making this loss of an amazingly talented man all about me?  I am, and that’s exactly my point tonight.  We all are.  And it’s okay.

Not all celebrity deaths are created equally… as callous as it is to say that, it’s true, and we all know it. Schnieder from One Day At A Time passed away last week and the over-35 Internetters gave a collective chuckle of fond rememberance before scrolling to the next news story without even clicking.

But when someone like Bowie dies, we stop.  We remember.  We personalize that loss and we take a minute, or longer, to establish and share our own connections with those who we have lost.  They have meant something to us and all we want to do is share that with each other.

Today I remembered his stint on Extras and listened to my favourite Bowie song – Ziggy Stardsut (acoustic) – at least a half dozen times.  I thought about this post, what I would write, how I could subtly work in the fact that the street I grew up on was called Bowie Ave.

And then I started to read more about the album he released just days ago.

And then I watched the videos.

And for a man who has had almost as many characters as he has albums, I find it extremely compelling that one of his most shocking, most achingly charismatic portrayals should be his last; a character who foreshadows the fate of the actor.  Lazarus is beautiful and I won’t be the first to write it today, nor the last to say it, but in Lazarus, and in the backstory leading up to the album’s release, David Bowie has shocked us one last time and achieved something as close to immortality as any artist can hope for.

Watch the video below if you haven’t seen it already.  I’m willing to bet that the actual number of people who have seen this is exactly half the number of YouTube of views.  I know I’ve watched it twice today already myself.

Today we remembered an icon.  An amazing oddity of an artist who never stopped showing us that life and art do not need to be separated; they can live, and die, together as one.

Further Listening – “The Terror Of Knowing” – My tribute playlist over at 8tracks

tape the night

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I bought my five-year-old a tablet this past Christmas or, rather, Santa bought it for her.  Or made it.  Or had his elven slave labour force make it.  Whatever you choose to believe in… I’m not here to judge you…

Point being, because this was a gift from Santa, it was unwrapped under the tree in all of its rubberized, toddler-proofed, hot pink glory.  Her eyes grew wide upon seeing it – “for me???” – and as I sat there watching her hold it, just holding it, not believing it was actually hers, I had one of those sepia-toned memories I get all too often push itself to the forefront of my brain…

I’m nine and I’m rushing downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought us.  It is our first Christmas in this new house and my first Christmas where I have taken up the belief that Santa does not exist, but still keeping up the pretense for the benefit of my younger sister.

Santa always wrapped presents in our house.  He always had his own special paper that was different from every other paper under the tree.  His presents were always the best wrapped as well, with wrapping that resembled my father’s style…

So when I see it there, front and centre, unwrapped save for a bow on the top (my mother loved bows, often using them to cover for her own poor wrapping job) I am taken aback.  It’s just… there.  Sitting out.  No tag, no note, no wrapping.

The Barbie camper van sitting next to it, also unwrapped (save for that bow), is clearly not meant for me, so by process of elimination, I am looking at my gift from Santa.

A Sony CFS-W301 Stereo with AM/FM Radio, dual cassette recording and the most advanced technology I had ever seen in all my nine Christmases:  Hi-Speed Dubbing.

Dual Cassette

I run to it.  If I’m being honest and not giving a damn about highlighting my masculinity, I probably squeal a little.  I hold it.  I can’t believe it is mine.

My parents shuffle into the basement and…

… a tear came to my eye as I looked at her and saw how happy she was holding her gift from Santa, her very own tablet. Her eyes were small when she finally looked up at me, pushed closed by her cheeks and the size of her grin.

The holidays have now come and gone but that brief flashback to my own Christmas morning magical moment has stuck with me for the past few weeks.  To this day – and not including any saccharine, sentimental schmap such as the birth of my child or my good health – that dual cassette recorder, with Hi-Speed Dubbing, just may be the best gift I’ve ever been given in my entire life.

I spent hours with it.  Making mix tapes.  Making copies of those mix tapes for friends and family.  In Hi-Speed. Recording songs off the radio and adding them to my mix tapes.

I had owned stereos and cassette recorders before and had made mix tapes from songs taped off the radio prior to this, but this machine brought my tape mixing to a whole new level.  When you are dealing with a single cassette, you have to be perfect in your attempts at taping the radio.  The margin for error is very slim.  How many mix-tapes in the eighties had songs that ended with the DJ coming on, or a commercial for a car dealership or, worse, cut too short, the result of an itchy finger jumping the gun on the stop button trying to anticipate the end of the song.

The beauty of the dual cassette recorder is that you can have the one cassette just continue taping from the radio without needing to worry about when to stop it.  You then had a copy of the whole broadcast to edit as you needed over to a second cassette, making your song endings and transitions on your tapes that much smoother.

I remember getting out of bed – long after I was supposed to be asleep, while my parents were downstairs watching TV – and setting my stereo up on my desk.

I’d get the volume to just that right level – that perfect mix of loud enough to record but not too loud to alert my parents to what I was doing – and I would quietly sort through my stack of cassettes looking for a blank one to pop in.

After hitting the REC button on the stereo I’d scramble back into bed, putting my pillow at the foot of the bed so I could hear the radio better.

My eyes would close and I would lay there, falling asleep as my Sony CFS-W301 dual cassette recorder with Hi-Speed Dubbing would simply work its magic and quietly, perfectly, tape the night.