Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Music History

Yesterday I saw this post on a blog I have begun reading (one of many) that I got linked to from dooce.com. The whole thing made me laugh thinking about my own history with music and how our music histories differ because of our ever so slight age difference. The main thing that her post got me thinking about was what is the first song I can remember listening to. It's "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads, which EVERY time I hear it instantly takes me back to sitting in my dad's beat up, giant hole in the floor boards, POS, tiny Datsun pickup truck. My dad had the LP of Stop Making Sense and had copied it onto a tape. Every song from that album makes me thing of my dad and that Datsun.

I remember having a couple of LPs of my own when I was young. I had a Sesame Street album. I can't figure out or remember which one, but I seem to remember something like Sesame Street characters doing Sesame Street style versions of pop songs. I also remember getting the soundtrack to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on LP. I have no idea why I got that, I don't even remember listening to it.

My music listening until late elementary school was definately my parents style. Jethro Tull, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and the like filled our house quite frequently. My parents are fun people and liked to play their music loud and often. Luckily we had a house that was surrounded by woods, so there were no neighbors to be concerned with the noise. The first time I remember finding my own taste in music was 5th grade. For me that was the time of New Kids on the Block. I was totally obsessed with Donnie, Jordon, Jon, Danny & Joe. I had cassettes and video tapes and posters and I was always begging my mom to get me the teen magazines that updated me on each New Kids' specific likes and dislikes. I also am pretty sure that 5th grade is when I asked for both the Metallica Black album and Billy Joels' River of Dreams for Christmas. That was also the time of Kris Kross ("Jump Jump") and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (thanks to Wayne's World).

I think my taste in music through junior high was just a terrible continuation of 5th grade. High school started out pretty bland music wise, I think I listened to one cd during 10th grade (Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes), but then I met Gil. Gil put the spark into my eclectic taste in music. He introduced me to Soul Coughing, Portishead, Dream Warriors, A Tribe Called Quest and many others. I have enjoyed every artist he has introduced me to. He continued to affect my listening habits and tastes through high school and into college. Sidenote: I have also put a lot of energy into constantly trying to "beat" him in music, by finding out about a cool artist before he does. I have failed several times, with Herbalizer and Roisin Murphy. However, my greatest success in this arena was Matisyahu. I heard one of his songs off the live album on XPN at random one morning. I loved it and when they said it was a hasidic jewish reggae rapper, I had to run right out and buy it. Gil was home one weekend shortly after this and I played the cd. He had never heard of it and loved it just as much as I had. Sweet Victory!

Back on track, we went off to college at the beginning of the internet music sharing craze, before you had to pay and before all the lawsuits. We shared all our music on the college's network. I got so much music then, all of which I still have (shhh!). That's when I discovered Radiohead. I loved the music of my freshman semester at college. Since then all my new music has come from one source, XPN.

All this music talk is also relative to my moving back to PA. Being out here in Utah I feel like I've completely lost my sense of new music. The only new music I've discovered in the last 6 months has been Roisin Murphy, whom I discovered not thanks to a radio station or a friend, but thanks to my obsession with a little tv show called "So You Think You Can Dance". It's sad and I feel lost without access to new music, but there are NO decent radio stations out here. They all suck. However, back in PA I will be back in the land of the radio station I LOVE!!! 88.5 WXPN is wonderful. I can basically describe my current music tastes as "anything they'll play on XPN", with the exception of Echoes and Sleepy Hollow (radio shows, not songs or artists). I am OH SO VERY EXCITED to be able to listen to XPN once again.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Crazy weather out west!

Hi all. I know I've been a little quiet. I've been trying to keep some info on the down low until it seemed a little more definate. Well, it seems pretty definate now, so attention, attention: I am moving back to the Philadelphia area. I got a good job offer from the company I used to work for in PA and I am heading back. I'm pretty excited about the job and about heading back east.

But, obviously that's off topic. This picture was taken yesterday, that's September 20, 2006, up at Snowbird resort here in Salt Lake City. The store manager's conference for the company I work for was being held up there and we had to go up to make some presentations. I really loved the snow, except for the fact that I was wearing open toed shoes. Honestly, it was warm enough in the valley for open toed shoes, I just hadn't thought about how much colder it would be up at Snowbird. Yikes.

Then tonight, after the insanity of showing all the very interested parties my apartment, it hailed. I'm sitting her watching tv and checking email and I hear this very strange noise and look outside and it's hail. Thankfully little tiny balls of hail and not golf ball or baseball sized hail. So yeah, talk about crazy weather.

I'm going to post some more pics up on Flickr of this various weather. Other than that not much else going on. Just wanted to say hi.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Oh, how I love the East!

See the green, it's everywhere. It's beautiful. This is the woods surrounding a good friend of mine's home in Palm, PA. It's a little out in the middle of nowhere, but that's the way I like it. It was so wonderful to be back in the land of green. It's very dry in Utah, pale tan is a popular color, sand, grass, dirt, it's all dry. I really missed the trees and the green everywhere. I stayed at my old neighbor's house in Collegeville all weekend. Their house is also surrounded by woods. They have a beautiful stone back patio with a fish pond and amazing plants. Everything was even more green than usual because it had been raining for about a week and a half.

Friday night my flight was delayed 3 hours because of the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. Stupid hurricane. Even when we did land it was really bumpy and windy. Everyone clapped when we hit the ground. I didn't get out to my friend's house until 2:30am and to bed at 3:30am. Saturday morning I couldn't stay asleep for some odd reason, hmmm..... excitement maybe. :)


It was still raining Saturday. It ended up raining all day. It had also been raining most, if not all, of Friday, so everything was really wet. I went out to my grandmother's house and this is what I saw. A river in coming through her yard, over her wall and down her driveway. It always gets like this when it rains like crazy.

Saturday during the day I had an adventure driving around the city trying to find bikes for my mom and her fiance. They wanted to ride the trail from Valley Forge to Philly on Monday. I finally found a place with bikes and then it turned out that they would be open Sunday, so I just decided to drag my mom and her fiance down the next day to get their own bikes. They are a little bit picky when it comes to bikes. Saturday night I ended up going out to dinner with Carolyn and her girlfriend. We had a great evening. They took me to an awesome Italian restaurant in West Philly. It was in a part of the city I'd never seen before. We had a great time and they tried to talk me into coming back to Philly. I went straight from their place to the airport to pick up mom and her fiance.

Sunday I took mom and Steve (okay, got tired of writing "her fiance", if he doesn't want his name in here, he'll have to let me know, but it's not like his last name is here, cause I can hardly ever remember what it is, which is bad, since it may be my mom's last name someday soon) down to the bike shop to get their road bikes. Then I had lunch with my friend Penny and her family. It was a lot of fun. After that I headed up to Pottstown to see my old house and my old neighbor up there in Pottstown. I also stopped by my uncle's place for a bit. Then Sarah and I went out to Trader Joe's and picked up a basket full of joy. The checkout girl asked if we were roommates and Sarah explained that we were high school friends. I corrected her that we were actually junior high school friends. :) Then as Sarah went to pay I noticed that we have the same wallet. It was pretty funny. We went back to Sarah's and made chicken with TJ's masala simmer sauce. It was an awesome dinner. We watched some episodes of Coupling, a Britcom that I had never seen much of. It's funny if you like British humor, which I do, but I know people who aren't amused by it.

Monday I spent most of the day with Rachel, my sweet, wonderful, adorable little "sister". I say "sister" because I lived next to her parents for 14 years and was always very close with them, so when they adopted her she became like my little sister. I babysat her a lot and we hang out a lot. She taught me some moves on the trampoline, we went for a bike ride on the trail, and then we went to the mall for a bit. After that my mom and Steve came over to Rachel's parents' house for dinner. We had a good time, I dropped mom and Steve off back at gram's and then went to hang out with another friend. It was a very full weekend of friends, fun and food. The best food part was Tuesday. I went to lunch at Q'doba with someone from my old job in King of Prussia and then for dinner Sarah, mom, Steve, gram and Jake (my brother) went to August Moon in Norristown. 4 of us had sushi bimbimbap, which is rice, fresh veggies and sashimi in a bowl of goodness. mmmmmmmmmmmmm.......

Wednesday was sad because I had to head back to Utah. It was really nice to be back in Philly and it was really hard to leave. But, it's interesting to be back in Utah as well.