Tuesday's Song of the Day

 I've been posting this everywhere because it's just so incredibly awesome, but I forgot to post it here (where it's way easier to find than on Facebook).

If you're one of those people who do a little swoon at the end of Love Actually, you'll love this new version. There is so much to love about it: singers, sets, music, and fantasy. It's got it all.

Going To See Ron Sexsmith

One of the things about getting older is how birthday present expectations change. I don't seem to get as excited, nor do I get as worked up about presents.

Boring of me, I realize, but there it is.

Anyhow, my birthday is not for another couple of months, but when I saw the ad in the newspaper announcing the (wildly joyful) fact that Ron Sexsmith was going to be in town, I decided that I wanted Ron tickets for my birthday. So I told Richard, who was hugely relieved at having A Great Birthday Idea, particularly since I'd already squashed his other Great Idea by buying a copy of Howl's Moving Castle after getting paid for a garden lecture I gave to a local club.

I really did - and if you don't believe me, click on this link. My MIL wrote that blurb, which is kind of nice given our - ahem - fractured relationship. I sound like a sensible holistic back-to-the-lander, don't I?

I won't ruin that image for you.

Tickets. Right.

So Richard buys the tickets. They arrive in the mail and I take great pains to remember where I put them (unlike the LEGO tickets I tacked to the pinboard and promptly forgot about). Last night we get ready, even though we're in the middle of a Severe Wind Warning that has all ferries to the mainland COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN and has already knocked down two garden arbors. We weren't completely irresponsible: we made sure the kids had working flashlights and gave them strict instructions not to fly their kites while we're gone. Then we drive through a deluge to the university. It is such a deluge that the gutters in the roofs are all overflowing, so hard and fast is the rain falling. Richard is a little puzzled when I demand to be dropped off near some form of overhang but he goes with it, because it is ostensibly My Birthday Event and he likes to humour me. We run through the rain to the university centre, me stealing one of the concert promotion posters along the way, and dash into the hallway with all the other sodden concert goers. There is no power outage, and really, truth be told, the wind has pretty much died down. Even so, I call the kids using the Courtesy Phone, mostly because I am excited to a) use a free phone, and b) call the kids and remind them that I am going to see RON SEXSMITH! (they humour me too and all take turns shrieking witticisms into the phone)

Then we sit in our seats and I take a couple of photos with my iPad mini, despite the arched eyebrows of my seat mate two seats over (who spent the first 10 minutes checking her stupid phone messages until I gave her some arched eyebrow action of my own). Jenn Grant, his backup act, comes out and sings. The sound in the hall is, for lack of a better word, sublime. It's clear and gorgeous and hauntingly beautiful and we all sit captivated. She sings with her husband, who has his head hanging so low I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering why. She tells some funny stories about emailing her songs to Ron and asking him to sing on one. At the intermission I go out and buy a CD from her. I ask her which one my 12 year old daughter will like. She puts her arm around me and we both laugh into each other's eyes. Then she signs it with a big heart. She's so friendly that I'm mildly regretful that we couldn't be friends in some alternate universe somewhere. We file back in, I take another photo. Then Ron and band mates come out. He is SO good and SO musical and SO mournfully sweet there is a collective shiver of pleasure from the audience.

And so we all sit for the next 90 minutes, with pauses for some extremely loud applause. I shriek YES! very loudly when he asks if his piano playing is okay, the audience all laugh and he hangs his head, sheepishly pleased that we like him so much. I wonder, not for the first time, why he isn't way more famous than he is. He reminds us that a certain song wasn't actually written by Feist, even if she HAS made it more famous than he did. After the concert, I buy his latest CD because I worry a bit for his pension plan.

Then it's home to the kids, the flashlights, the ruined garden, and the rain. What a spectacular birthday present.

(Although if you're reading this Richard, the Pacific Rim DVD is being released in, ahem, October...)

The Tonys & Team Neil

Did you watch the Tonys? Or were you like me, forgetting until it was too late but scouring the internet for the opening number? I caught this on another site and so far I've watched it three times. The amazingness that is Neil Patrick Harris is nothing short of, well, amazing.

Sit back, click play, and see for yourself why he's the greatest host EVAH...

Beguiled By Bill

Billy and his band on stage in a converted church

There was no review in my local newspaper today about last night's Billy Bragg concert, so I'm going to write my own. Shame on you, local newspaper.

First off, thank GOODNESS I went to this concert with someone had a newish cell phone. Not me, I hasten to add, my cell phone is too antiquated for such innovations. There was a sticky moment when the person sitting next to the person taking the photo expressed her disapproval that the person with the cell phone was taking photographs. "It's wrong," she said, with a look. Fortunately, our need to document the moment prevailed. Me, I don't think it's wrong at all: I think of it as free publicity for Mr Bragg and his Marvelous Musical Tour. Who knows, maybe the sight of that lovely set (in what was once a Methodist church) will spur people to snap up tickets for the concerts soon coming their way.

Which they should.

I suppose I should preface this review by saying that while I have long had a crush on our man Bill, and even own several cassettes (CASSETTE: a rectangular box with magical tape that plays music) and CDs of his music, I do not know the words to every single one of his songs. Last night I wished I did, because at several points he offered up the mike to the audience, who, being nice polite Canadians, obliged as much as they felt able (softly and very politely at first, later getting a little more courage to sing louder).

While we were waiting for the concert to start my cell phone mate and I discussed which songs we'd like to hear (me: Life With Lions, The Great Leap Forward, Valentine's Day Is Over, The Boy Done Good; him: The Short Answer, The Price I Pay). Richard amused himself with his Billy Bragg London Accent imitations, which I find charming but which drive Max nuts ("Why does Dad keep DOING THAT?" he says to me). We shifted around a lot in our pews in the balcony, which got hotter and hotter as the night wore on. There was even A Moment, 45 minutes after the concert should have started, when some of the nice polite Canadians started clapping, rather pointedly and hopefully, but being nice polite Canadians, soon stopped in case they offended someone.

Then Billy came out, to enormous applause. He was, like his audience, a little older and a little greyer, but it was obvious that we were the Emma Thompson to his Love Actually: We love him, and true love lasts a lifetime. He sang, he chatted, he appeared bemused by the presence of the Queen on our currency, he swore (I was heartened to see that he liked saying "fuck" and "shit" as much as I do), he made pointed remarks about a soccer player-turned-manager in England, he told a funny story about the Queen ("there are not very many things I've done in my life that impress my mum"), announced the demise of the goatee and the resurgence of the full beard ("my beard is a middle-aged face lift...hiding a multitude of chins"), and generally charmed the socks off everyone in the theatre. We even cheered when he mentioned the fact that he was drinking Throat Coat tea to soothe his throat (told you we were nice and polite).

And along the way he complimented us in the way we like best: by telling us that Canada is markedly different from America (we're more European AND we know how to make a decent cup of tea). We didn't get to hear Life With Lions but we did get an updated version of The Great Leap Forward ("One leap forward, two leaps back, we've got to free Pussy Riot!"). We also got a brief lesson in how alliteration trumps grammar when it comes to song writing, before he launched into Nobody Knows Nothing Anymore.

And when he said goodnight we stomped and clapped and hooted until he came back and gave us a few more songs. Then we all walked smiling into the night. Be still my beating heart.

Let Me Count The Ways

How I love you, too.

Happy Birthday, Yoko, you're looking pretty good.

My favourite Yoko Ono song HERE.

What We Did On The Weekend

— watched bits of the Junos (specifically the performance by Max's fave Deadmau5). It was hard not to wonder aloud what it must be like inside that mouse head of his, all that flashing and light-popping. Wondered also how Michael Buble's Christmas album won over Drake's (not Christmas) album. Yet another peculiar judging experience we've witnessed in the past month (and yes, we DID all comment on this).

— went to the beach and noticed, amid the sun and waves and wind, that dogs were distressingly ubiquitous on the landscape. I was unable to get a single dogfree photo. And all those curious doggie names: Oliver, Christopher, Jason, Angela, Olivia, Penelope, Jane.

Two words: baby substitute.

— finally cleared the brush from the front garden. Seven wheelbarrow loads of clippings, trimmings, dead stalks, and weeds. S-E-V-E-N L-O-A-D-S. Now reposing damply at the end of the yard.

— noted with dismay that someone in the LEGO contest won with 413 votes. I do not have that many friends on Facebook so my children, despite their delightfully creative designs, did not win. Mostly because I only 'friend' people I actually know. It's a quirk I have.

— watched Sherlock AND Titanic in the same evening. Titanic isn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be, but it still has some good moments. Sherlock, while completely implausible (Irene Adler naked? Methinks this stretcheth the conceit rather bizarrely) is fun. Benedict Cumberbatch is evidently having a good time in this role.

Shades of Life

I was lying in bed this morning, trying to decide whether I really wanted to get up and go to the bathroom, braving the cold of the morning and more than likely waking myself up enough to prevent a return to sleep, but instead turned on my little bedside radio and put the headphones on, hoping that NPR's Morning Edition would distract me sufficiently.

Then this came on: This NOT Just In: Mourning John Lennon.

Which did two things: drove all bathroom thoughts from my mind AND woke me up. Funny how these things happen.

Where were you when John Lennon died? Do you remember? Were you even born yet? I was. I was in Guatemala, adventuring as only the young and truly clueless can; the fact that I might need to learn another language to traverse South America only struck me when I crossed the border into Mexico and realized that I didn't understand anyone. For a brief moment I wondered whether the words TACO, SERAPE, and SOMBRERO, along with a lot of hand waving and facial expressions, might be enough to propel me around South America. I was a fan of Italian films and they always seemed to manage on few words and a lot of drama, surely I could too? This thought lasted about, ooohh, maybe three weeks before I realized that I needed more words and less gestures.

So there I was, four months later, working in a vegetarian restaurant as a cook, a fact which still mildly astounds me, given that until that month I hadn't ever cooked anything more than toast. I think I must have radiated a certain culinary confidence though, because I was also Head Cook. The fact that the owner of the restaurant spent all his time out backing smoking pot might have had something to do with my position: not only was he even more clueless than I was, he also operated on the premise that, because I could read The Vegetarian Epicure in the original English, I must be able to cook.

At this point I feel I should do a Burl Ives snowman shrug and say something like "Ah, youth."

This situation lasted about three weeks, then, one night, when I was walking down the main drag of the little town where the restaurant was (a hot spot on the Gringo Trail), contemplating the curious fact that every restaurant seemed to serve exactly the same menu: omelettes and fresh fruit, when I heard a tinny little radio playing Across the Universe. Until that point I knew who the Beatles were, but I wasn't a knowledgable fan. We were separated by a bit of a generation gulf. They were my brother's music. I liked the John and Yoko pairing, and in fact I still think Let Me Count The Ways is one of the more beautiful songs I know, but I didn't know much Beatles music. But there was that radio, playing that song. In a Twitterless, Facebookless world: news spread by (untyped) word of mouth back then. Soon all the gringo tourists were standing in the middle of the street, shocked at the news that John Lennon had been shot and was dead. I think I heard Across The Universe at least a hundred times that week, it was in constant rotation on all the radio stations.

So that's where I was when John Lennon was shot: growing up in Central America. I still remember it clearly all these years later.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe

A Not So Dark Horse

If you're familiar with the film Love Actually you might know something of the obsession that afflicts Britain this time each year: the coveted place wherein a musical single, usually performed by some good-looking youthful quartet, tops the charts at Christmas time. Playing an aging rock star intent on a comeback of sorts, Bill Nighy muses, in one of the more sublime moments of the film, during a radio interview, "Wouldn't it be great if number one this Christmas wasn't some smug teenager but an old ex-heroin addict searching for a comeback at any price?" Wonder of wonders (spoilers!), he achieves his Christmas number one, in spite of himself.

This Christmas another group is attempting much the same sort of takeover for the Christmas spot: the Military Wives choir. If you've seen this series you will know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well, you've missed some seriously brilliant television and I advise you to get yourself to it immediately. I'm a fervently devoted fan of Gareth Malone, the boyish choirmaster who likes to take on decidedly unmusical situations, so when I saw his latest series - The Choir: Military Wives - I watched with some interest. It was every bit as riveting as his other efforts; there is something charming about a man who believes, in this age of endless tweeting and too-much-information-via-Facebook, that the simple act of singing can change people's lives for the better.

This single was compiled from snippets of the letters to and from these military wives, women whose husbands were largely in Afghanistan, and put to music. They performed it in November at the Royal Albert Hall, then recorded it professionally in a studio, as you can see yourself in this YouTube clip. If you're as soppy as me, you'll need at least one kleenex. Then make a little wish that this group can get their number one single this Christmas, just like Billy did on Love Actually.

Jane Austen Meets The Music of My Children

(HT to Enchanted Serenity of Period Films)

I had to laugh when I saw this, because Taio Cruz is one of Max's latest favourites (and this song is one of MY favourites so what's not to like). Then I remembered how perfectly lovely Ciaran Hinds was as Captain Wentworth...

So check this out - it's a great montage for Austen fans.

In Which Sheila Discovers The LipDub

Do you know what these are? Until yesterday I had been blissfully unaware of them. Then Richard came home, picked up the newspaper, and said "Oh look, I heard about them filming this. You should have gone up with the kids. I bet FDPG would have killed to be in this one."

I peered over his shoulder at the article. It seemed mildly, chaotically, amusingly...odd.

So off we went to that bastion of visual excess: YouTube. And I discovered that thing known as the LipDub. The one that was filmed here isn't ready or up yet, but we found a couple of addictive examples that I'm going to link here, just because they are so light-hearted and fun. And seeing as how it's Friday I think we all need a frivolous treat. No?

First, the one in Spain. The song they use in this one is a song that used to really grate on me; after seeing this I feel exceedingly charitable towards it. Besides, this is such a charming and happy lipdub.

Living La Vida Sorbona. This one reminds me of a cross between the Killers (video) Mr Brightside, and Pet Shop Boys Being Boring, with all that baroque fancy dress, and languid nostalgia. Tres cool.

This one is filmed in a mall, and the lighting as a result totally rocks (a definite issue in most of these things).

I was quite struck by the difference between American girl behaviour and European girl behaviour. Tell me if you notice it too.

Happy Friday!

In Which I View Something That Might Have FDPG & I Watching Glee After All

In another life I used to love watching all these award shows, but lately I've gotten to the point where I just check out certain gossip sites after the fact. Which is where I saw this. And maybe it's my knee melting weakness for this particular song, or maybe it's nostalgia plain and simple, but the opening segment for Sunday night's Emmy show, in my opinion, rocked. I might have to start watching Mad Men after this...

Good On You K'naan

World Cup anthem, anyone? Here's a rendition that was featured on Jian Gomeshi's radio show Q a while back. It still remains my favourite version.

It's perfect. Really really perfect.

Now get out there and score some goals...

On the Eighth Day of Advent...

Here is a video that made the rounds a while back, but for some reason (I can't possibly think why because we all love it so much) I neglected to post it. So here it is. A little jingle bell song to start off your Christmas cheer.

Friday I'm In Poetry Love

I think this is so quietly lovely that it's going to replace the Cure today.

Ha, yeah, right, who am I kidding. Nothing can replace this song.

But we'll give Billy top billing today. He's hit a chord with me, sitting as I am on the precipice of my dotage, with all those soon-to-be-lost memories looming on the horizon. Cruise ships! Tankers! Back and forth, back and forth...

...uh, what was I talking about?

Plus, he says it so nicely, it makes me almost welcome the prospect of impending forgetfulness.

Friday I'm In Poetry Love

In honour of Poetry Month, I've decided to spend my Fridays inflicting a sampling of musical poems on you all (sheila peers into the dark with her hand cupped over her eyes, guitar at the ready). No, no, fear not, I am not going to perform them. Links, baby, links. It's poetry, right? Just a different method of delivery. So settle down, no groaning now. Here, have some popcorn.

Here's a little number by a lovely fellow in a white sweater and a tidy mod haircut. Many an evening, when I was a cook at a Mexican restaurant (I know, I am SO Mexican, I hope you never had to eat there but know that I have improved greatly since), was spent blasting this over the heat of the ovens. We used to pride ourselves on knowing every word. Still haven't managed to swivel my hips like that though.

And then there's the lovely AND adorable Billy Bragg (how can you not love someone who sings with their accent doggedly intact?) doing Great Leap Forward. I wanted to include Shirley but all the versions YouTube has are crap, which makes me inclined to inflict this on you again, just because I love it so (besides, what's not to love about Fridays?).

Then there's this companion piece to Mr Brightside. I want this man's hair.

Let's not forget our Canadian content. Here is a greatly underrated Canuck, in my never ever humble opinion, who really should be getting far more air time. You might recognize this one, done with Chris Martin of Cold Play, and you know, I don't usually agree with the YouTube commentators especially when they have cheesy nicknames but in this case I think Chockles makes a valid point: this is one of the greatest songs ever written. Well, if you don't count this one, particularly if we're talking in present tenses. Is she not the most beautiful thing ever? Sigh.

And finally, because I love this song so much, here's Billy Bragg doing his version of Jerusalem.

Friday I'm In Love

I haven't been doing much in the Poetry Friday vein these days, but I just spent a couple of hours writing reports and listening to music on YouTube. It was like coming out of a really good yoga session, listening to all that music.

What started it all was seeing bits of the Brit Awards on the television. I caught this bit, and despite the best efforts of FDPG ("Are you going to watch ALL of that? Who is that man? Do you like his hat? Why are their heads so big? Are those men NAKED!?") I managed to hear almost every bit of it. And then I sighed and let her turn on Survivorand daydreamed a little. I spent a lot of time listening to those fellows.

So here's my Friday offering to you all. Consider it my Dance Music Friday post.

First, since it's Friday. I want to run screaming into the street I love this song so much. Not to mention this one. This band made my 20's so incredibly bearable (even if they did encourage me to do odd things at inappropriate times).

Then, the same boys, a little longer in the tooth. I love this version, even if I do feel a little teary at the sight of the older, sadder Mr Smith.

And let's not forget a modern imitation. I want that gold waistcoat.

What have you done to deserve this?

I once spent a week-end painting a mural on a kitchen wall and listening to this record (on a cassette tape I am so OLD) the entire time. That was WBKH (Way Before Kids and Husband) but I still have this one memorized.

Never noticed the armadillo before.

Heaven knows I am not miserable now.

Finally, my brother, when he moved into the basement and got all affected and miserable, used to play this song over and over and over and over. When my parents went out he'd play it loud. Really loud. The basement reverberated until I knew it forwards and backwards, even though I was so young and free of metaphor that I really thought the singer WAS talking about running. And after all those goofy Goths I felt like getting just a little rowdy. Well, that and I couldn't find Little Red Corvette on YouTube...

Back to your regularly scheduled programming, now. All of you.

One Less Than Five, One More Than Three

One two three four....


Do you like Feist? I like Feist.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?

If you remember Elvis Costello singing this song, or even if you watched Bill Murray lipsynch it (warning, that was a Bad Quality link) in Lost In Translation, then this interview Nick Lowe did with Terry Gross (NPR's Fresh Air) is for you. He wrote the song "What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding," and he even gives a brief performance of it for Terry with a few tongue-in-cheek remarks thrown in for good measure ("here I was...twenty-two years old and seen it all...but when Elvis Costello cut it, he sounded like he really meant it").

How the mighty have mellowed.

Happy Birthday Joni!