Front Porch
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Karen Rivera
Most of the houses in my neighborhood have a backyard Madonna keeping watch. This one, graceful and simple, is perfectly placed on a pale stucco front porch. Freshly painted and draped with a rosary made form silver roses and small birds, this front porch Madonna adds color and spirituality.
My friend Steven Christopher Wallace texted me today to tell me he had finally watched one of my favorite movies, “To Live and Die in L.A.” which he had never seen before due to extreme procrastination. The conversation brought on one of my childhood flashbacks. I remember in perhaps 1986, as a wide eyed, jean jacket wearing, mirror tinted sunglasses sporting, prepubescent 80’s kid, that one of the only times I ever bonded with my stepdad was one afternoon we sat on the couch and watched “To Live and Die in LA” in its entirety followed by a basketball game(the Chicago Bulls vs. someone.) It is one of the few memories I have of being a child where there was not some sort of anxiety or childhood trauma involved. And I use the word “trauma” loosely as in from the perspective of a child. Getting grounded no TV for a week for sneaking your football back from the 3rd grade teacher who unjustly took it from you…or having to sleep with the lights out with a talking Pee Wee Herman doll visible in your room is traumatic to a kid.
Speaking of the 80’s, whenever I hear popular 80’s songs I am reminded of how I comically misheard the lyrics to many of them:
Take for example the chorus of Madonna’s “Material Girl” which I heard many times being dragged shopping with my Dynasty era, diet pepsi drinking 80’s mom. Waiting hours and hours while my mother spent ungodly amounts of time browsing and trying on shoulder padded clothing and pantyhose at fashionation (a hip 80’s clothing store not to be confused with the porno boutique chain “fascinations”)
“everybody’s living in a material world, and i am a material girl”
is how it went, but I mistook the lyrics for:
“cause everybody’s living in a cereal world, and I am in a cereal bowl”
And I REALLY thought those were the words to the song.
another fine example was how I thought the song “The Heat is On” was really “Peter’s Uncle” (I had a friend named Peter, though why someone would be writing a song about his uncle and it subsequently playing on nationally syndicated radio was outside the bb gun scope of my logic at the time)
I still remember the disappointment while riding in a truck when I told my own uncle how “I really like that song that just played, “Peter’s Uncle” only to have him get briefly confused, laugh and then tell me “that’s not Peter’s Uncle” it’s “The Heat is on.”
And so it is. In the real world of material girls, here I am a serial boy, in a cereal bowl, living in a cereal world…kind of explains a lot. I’ve often wondered if I was perhaps the ONLY person out of the millions who heard these songs to interpret the lyrics in this fashion.
I recently came across a website for creating fantasy music festival lineups. Needless to say, I got excited about it!
I’ve been such a terrible poster lately, but hopefully me sharing this awesome website will make you like me again. Sooo, here’s my music festival choices. Do you agree with me? How much could I charge for tickets?
My overall eargasmic concert experience with an indie rock emphasis:If you can’t read the picture, the bands are: Tegan and Sara, Death Cab for Cutie, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fiona Apple, Guster, The National, Phantom Planet, The xx, Uh Huh Her, Phoenix, St. Vincent, Ra Ra Riot, Florence + the Machine, Wintersleep, Metric.
If I started a dance party music festival…
Shiny Toy Guns, Madonna, Prince, La Roux, Lady Gaga, Peaches, MGMT, Of Montreal, Freezepop, Amanda Blank, Shwayze, M.I.A, The Veronicas, Moby, 3OH!3
If it was 30-40 years ago…The Doors, Steve Miller Band, Pink Floyd, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Styx, Queen, Rush, Jefferson Airplane, The Clash, XTC, Tom Petty, The Doobie Brothers, Steppenwolf, Carole King.
-mmbizz
Digital Spy is reporting that Madonna is hell bent on fostering her Latin lover, Jesus Luz’s recording…career.
Apparently Madonna has floated all of the recording session expenses and set Jesus up with remixer Victor Calderone (‘Frozen’). Reportedly, Jesus was granted a two-single deal, after the refusal by Warner, Madonna’s former record label, of an entire album.
If true, this is almost as bad as when Britney was paying the bill for KFed’s budding rap career. As one member of a pop forum community so astutely put it: ‘Madonna can’t even earn a #1 these days, what hope does she possible have for Jesus?’
I think Madonna should nix this idea straight away and go back to recording a Confessions part II album.
What are your thoughts? Are you ready for international pop star Jesus? Sound off in the comments or @popboi on twitter.
It’s an age-old tale.
Boys in heavy metal band on the verge of rocking the planet meet 13-year-old girl. Girl hates boys in band. Boys in band batter a smurf. The private yacht they are all on sinks. Boys in band are marooned on a desert island with only a pink Hello Kitty ghetto blaster, a case of batteries, the 13-year-old’s 1980s pop music CD collection and 158 cases of schnapps for company.
Ah… how often have we seen that sad story play out?
Such is the legend of Rock Sugar (full legend here). However, for the band, and fans of great music, there is a happy ending.
Two decades of listening to 80s teenybopper music has left a mark – Popholm syndrome, as the band amusingly describe it – and now Rock Sugar is a musical nexus where the heaviest of metal collides with the lightest, catchiest and, um, cheesiest of bubblegum pop.
Okay, so, in other words, stripping away the wonderfully silly back story, we’re essentially in mash-up territory here. Or should that be mosh-up..?
I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of the mash-up – they never improve on the original component parts and if they involves a song I like, it just annoys me to hear it ruined by some idiot playing about with mixing software on his computer.
But Rock Sugar bring something new to the mix. For a start, they are performing the songs, rather than just cutting and pasting other people’s recordings together.
But more importantly, they bring a sense of fun that transforms the mash-up from the dry, soulless technical exercise it essentially is into something… wonderful.
The 13 tracks on Rock Sugar’s debut album, Reimaginator, are an astonishing fusion of no fewer than 34 songs by rock heavyweights such as Metallica, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Ozzy Osbourne, Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue and Judas Priest with catchy pop-rock anthems from the likes of Journey, Eurythmics, Rick Springfield, Bon Jovi, Madonna and Queen.
I know, I know… the Journey song has been hugely over-exposed in the last year or so, from its memorable use in the final scene of The Sopranos, through being massacred in last year’s The X Factor (in the UK) and, most recently, the surprisingly decent version performed by the cast of TV smash hit (and, the Choob must admit, one of my guilty TV pleasures) Glee.
But Rock Sugar’s version will make you look at the song in a whole new light. In a good way.
The official video has only been up on YouTube for about six weeks and already, through only word of mouth, has just smashed through the 200,000 views mark. Here it is, see what you think:
Great though it is, Don’t Stop The Sandman is really just the curtain-raiser to the album. You can stream all the tracks on the band’s official site, and most are also up on YouTube too, so I won’t go through them all.
However, here are a few that I think are particularly awesome (I’ll leave you to work out what’s been mashed together).
First up we have Prayin’ For A Sweet Weekend:
Next, Shook Me Like A Prayer:
And finally, Dreaming Of A Whole Lotta Breakfast:
There are countless ways this could have all gone horribly wrong and been an embarrassing mess – but it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly have turned out better.
And that is surely a testament to the fact that the band have genuine musical talent to back up their high-concept idea. Yes, there is a gimmick inherent in their music – but there’s nothing gimmicky about their inspired choices of songs to combine, the technical genius of their arrangements or the quality of their recorded performance.
If the live experience matches the studio effort – and early live reviews suggest that they are even better live than on disc, then this band may just be THE next big thing.
In the title of this post I jokingly compared Rock Sugar to the ever-entertaining Spinal Tap. But that’s perhaps unfair, because Tap are all about spoofing the self-important pomposity and excess of heavy metal. Rock Sugar is no spoof.
If Rock Sugar share any characteristics with Spinal Tap, it’s that their tongue is firmly in cheek and they are making rock music fun again.
The album is currently only available from the band’s website for $17. Adding international shipping of $8 makes it a slightly pricy proposition for those outwith the US – $25 or £16 – but well worth it, for my money, to get in at the ground floor because they deserve to be huge.
Rock Sugar might just be my new favourite band. Because pop rocks!
Incidentally, lead singer Jess Harnell has apparently had a colourful career. In addition to being in a few bands, including Loud & Clear, he’s a somewhat prolific voice-over artist. He has lent his voice to many animated TV shows and videogames.
Most notably, he starred as Wakko Warner in the fondly remembered 1990s Animaniacs cartoon series and also voiced two of the Transformers in the two recent live action movies. Oh, and he’s been the announcer for America’s Funniest Home Videos for over a decade.
At first sight of Michelle Obama, I noticed her arms. Her arms are so sculpted but not masculine or not like a body builder’s. Ever since then, I’ve always wanted to have arms like hers.
I’ve been researching about how to make my arms something like the First Lady’s. I particularly like Tracy Anderson’s program because it doesn’t look too hard. Besides that, she has trained with Madonna, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Hers should be effective. I plan to do these 6 kinds of arm exercises that she does and hopefully see some results. She prescribes using the threadmill, however that costs thousands. I will just substitute. I will just incorporate my yoga in my arm workout. I have to. I have been practicing yoga for 10 years now. It is very important to me. It is like a ceremony for me. I wonder if this is a good substitute. Doing yoga affects “cardio”, studies have shown.
I’ve practiced different kinds of yoga. Yoga from the books, yoga at the gym. Recently, I’ve been doing yoga from videos. I am currently doing “twisting” yoga. It was from this website called yogatoday.com. You could download different kinds of yoga for different uses from this website. It costs around $4 per download.
And so this morning, I bought a pair of 3 pound dumbbells as adviced by Tracy Anderson. She says a woman should not exceed 3 pounds otherwise it wouldn’t look sexy or feminine.
Today is my first day to do this workout. I took a picture of my arms today as a “before” picture. The “after” picture to follow. I wonder how long this will take? Hopefully this is effective.
Madonna to go into apparel?
The rumour goes that Madonna is negotiating for an apparel-line. Her relations with the fashion industry grew tightly over the years, and a lot of people admire Madges chameleon style.
Parties said to be involved in the project, like Iconix brand Inc (a brand management firm that owns and licenses 21 brands), and Madonna’s publicist Liz Rosenberg nor admit or decline the possibility of this apparel-line. Sources say even the label names are in serious consideration. These would be Material Girl for the apparel, and Truth or Dare for lingerie and underwear. The line would be exclusively sold to Macy’s.We think it’s a project that suits Madonna’s ambitions outside the music industry. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. She co-branded a line with H&M in the Spring of 2007, under the M by Madonna label. H&M’s head of design, Margaretha van den Bosch was impressed by the popstar’s feel for fashion and trends: ”She was extraordinarily style conscious, passionate and was involved in even the smallest details of every design.”
We’ll keep you posted if anything on this issue will be confirmed.
(Source: WWD)
