The Boss and a Confession

I have a slight confession to make. After all my bitching and moaning about the drivers of this area, I think I may have committed a DLD yesterday. DLD you ask? Driving Like a Douche, yes, I was driving with my daughter to drop her off and was trying to feed her cheerios and cinnamon toast crunch while picking up her stuffed animal lamb Bernice off the ground. So, I may have been weaving a little ... within my own lane of course. So I ate some Turf and Air for dinner (a hamburger and some crow). It always seems to happen to me. I will joke or complain about something and then I will do the same thing. I hope that doesn't make me a hypocrite. Remind me to explain this in more detail, keywords will be the Wiggles and my friend Shunky's teat.

Back to business. I was talking about music in my last post. Last year, I had the pleasure of seeing 5 great musical acts. I saw Pete Yorn with Coldplay headlining, Muse with U2 headlining (twice) and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (nobody opens up for the Boss).
I hear a lot of people make fun of Coldplay, but the 4 guys were in a musical zone and playing very well together and therefore, put on a great show. Muse was a revelation with the best musicianship I have heard since Rush. U2 put on their consistently great show as I expected. Finally, I got to see the Boss with my younger brother. It was my second time and we were very close to the stage. I was physically spent after the concert as it is very difficult to sing along with the Boss for 3 hours. That old guy even crowd surfed during "Hungry Heart".

During the 1980's I had heard Bruce Springsteen songs and I liked them even though I didn't know who was singing them. Then, Born in the USA came out and I couldn't stand Bruce Springsteen. Around the same time my older brother would play this cassette with some awesome songs like "Blinded by the Light" (where i first learned sing the word "douche", although I later found out it was "deuce") "For You" and "Spirit in the Night". I was like, "jiminy crickets, this is some good shit" I asked my older brother who sang them and told me it was his friend Leo and his band. I believed him for a few weeks. When I found it was actually Bruce Springsteen, it led me to seek out more of his music and I have been a Bruce Springsteen fan ever since. This culminated in my first experience seeing him perform the epic "Rosalita" live. That was one of my concert wishes that I could cross off my list.

Next post will be a grab bag of stuff including office etiquette, bathrooms and movies and another confession, maybe my friend Shunky's teat too.

Curmudgeons and Music

I am excited that I have finally joined the blogosphere, I have gained 2 followers to bring it to a grand total of 2 followers AND got my first comment: "sounds a little curmudgeony to me". I was slightly disappointed that "curmudgeony" was what someone got from my first post, but it will spur me to try harder. I do believe that if you live in the DC suburbs or any major city's suburbs, you will at some point become curmudgeony over the traffic and lack of driving skill. Ok, moving on ...

When I got home from work today, we conducted our normal nightly routine which culminated in our daughter paying homage to her TV friend: "Caillou". I decided to mix it up and play the Grammy award Michael Jackson tribute. It was well received by our daughter. Then I moved onto a recording of a "Muse" concert at some English seaside venue. She got through a couple of songs including "Uprising" and "Starlight". However, she pressed for her favorite song, affectionately known to her as "Again"

A major reason that traffic and driving dominated my first post, is because my commute to work everyday including dropping our daughter to her grandmother's, takes about an hour each way. When I first started driving my daughter as part of the daily commute, Coldplay's album: Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends had just come out. There were two songs on the album in particular that I was able to play to calm her down if she got restless and started crying: Reign of Love/Lovers in Japan and Viva la Vida (which became known as "Again" to her). As she has gotten older, she has expanded her list of songs that will calm her down. However, "Again" is the "go to" song. I also recorded "Coldplay Live in Japan" on the Palladium channel, so she can watch "Again" at her leisure. All the songs mentioned today are available at ITunes or whatever music downloading site you are a fan of.

In future posts, I will suggest more song downloads based on my daughter's playlist as well as my own recommendations. So far, I agree with all of her choices, even the Latin beat songs she was into near her first birthday.

Next post will involve a lost cassette from the 80's in which my brother's friend Leo recorded vocals that sound very similar to a legendary American musician.