Libby Cudmore's Blog, page 2

Ahead By a Century

I discovered the Tragically Hip in 2005, when I was working at a tiny sandwich shop in Cobleskill.  The owner, who’s name I have long forgotten, would put on In Between Evolution.  It was magic. It was like love.  I asked her to burn me a copy, because I was so poor from the lousy wages she paid that I could barely afford rent on the apartment I shared with my sister, let alone a CD.  She obliged, and that album became the soundtrack to one last hometown summer and of the strange year in New York that would eventually inspire The Big Rewind.

I still think of a late-night run along the promenade in Brooklyn when I hear “Goodnight Josephine.”  I played “It Can’t Be Nashville Every Night” on my honeymoon as we drove through Tennessee.  And “In View” was the first song I played for Jason when we got back together.

And last night, my love for The Hip was rekindled as they performed for three hours in their final concert, broadcast live on the CBC. And not final as in “We’ll get back together in five years and tour again and you’ll pay big money to see it, suckers.”  Final as in no more, the end, forever, because Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer at age 52.

I had known about the concert but didn’t know the date until I saw that #TragicallyHip was trending on Twitter during #RecordSaturday.  As soon as I was done playing Pages, I found the concert streaming online and watched the rest of it, taking my eyes off the screen only long enough to tweet a few show notes.

I was bowled over by the energy he brought to the stage, the raw power of his voice and the outpouring of love across Canada, where viewing parties were held in private houses and town squares and bars.  I don’t know if we have anything like that in America, a national band that is encrypted in our DNA.  Bruce Springsteen, maybe? (and you just know Chris Christie would give up everything he had to have Springsteen speak as lovingly of him as Gord spoke of PM Justin Trudeau, in the audience and crying like a baby).

He paraded in his sparkly suits and feathered top hat.  You wouldn’t know he was looking at the lyrics on teleprompters set up at every angle unless you saw them.  It looked like every other fabulous rock show, full of energy and life.

But watching him scream, cry and drop the mic during the encore performance of “Grace, Too” was one of the most profoundly emotional moments I have ever seen in a live show.  The camera panned over the audience and you could tell it was hitting them too to see him like that.  This is it and he knows it, and we all know it.  The weight of the moment, of the end of a 30 year career and, too soon, a life.

It would have been a natural note to end on.  But he wasn’t going to say goodbye in sadness.  He pulled out three more songs, ending with “Ahead By A Century” before he said, “Thank you for that” and left the stage for good.

No dress rehearsal.  This is our life.

My eyes are still swollen from crying.  But I heard music in my dreams.

 

SHOW NOTES: Steely Dan, The Dan Who Knew Too Much Sunday, July 10 at SPAC

(Not my photo; alas, I was in no man’s land.)

I haven’t been to SPAC in about 15 years, but I was absolutely not going to miss seeing Steely Dan in my own backyard.  My friend Thor was my date, and although the forecast was foreboding, we arrived armed with umbrellas, ponchos and chairs so that we didn’t have to sit on the wet, muddy ground.

My biggest worry with SPAC was that since we had lawn seats, the sound wouldn’t be that good.  Those fears were quickly assuaged when Steve Winwood took the stage.  He couldn’t sound more clear if I was listening to a CD in my car.

The show was PACKED, even up to the lawn.  Pretty sure I saw Mr. Funk, the high school music teacher who tried to get me to undress in front of him after a 10th grade performance of Anything Goes.  If it was, he didn’t recognize me, but I’m sure I’m just one in a very long list of teenage girls he’s creeped on over the years.  I was not going to let this ruin my night.  Nothing can ruin Steely Dan.

Sat next to three very giddy boys who were having the time of their lives.  They were there mostly for Winwood, who played for a solid hour as the sun set.  First show I’ve been to where the space was big enough to warrant screens, so it was nice to be able to see Papa Don up close, even if at times I felt like I was watching a concert film.

Steely Dan came on just before 8:30 and fucking killed as always.  Papa Don was a little hoarse, straining with a chain-smoker’s rasp on a few of the early songs, but by about the halfway point, he’d figured out how to work with it.  Cameras stayed mostly trained on Fagen, to the point where I was a little concerned that Uncle Walt wasn’t there at all.  But by “Hey Nineteen,” he got the spotlight for his mid-song ramble, which is always the highlight of the show.   “Steely Dan fans are the best fucking people in the world!” he said. (TRUTH)  This was a little more loving than seeing him at the Borgata, where he proclaimed Atlantic City “The seventh circle of hell” (TRUTH).

The Danettes were a touch over-mic’d, but maybe that’s because I miss Catherine Russell and have an irrational dislike of Carolyn Leonhart.  I think she’s fine doing recorded backups, like “Pixaleen” and “Almost Gothic,” but she puts too much of a white-girl blues spin on this and is consistently out-sung by the other two Danettes.

This was the most fun I’ve seen them have at a show.  Papa Don was surprisingly chatty.  They played for a solid hour and a half to a great crowd who managed to be excitable without being obnoxious.  No TV babies here.

SET LIST:

“Black Cow”

“Aja”

“Hey Nineteen” (Uncle Walt invoked Jerome Aniton, calling us “You pretty, pretty little ones” in the ramble)

“Black Friday”

Donald Fagen is my bae
(Photo: Joseph Sinnott)

“The Caves of Altamira” (I swear they played this just for me)

“Kid Charlemagne” (Papa Don needs a lozenge)

“Two Against Nature” (Everyone started chatting)

“Dirty Work” (The Danettes took this one and I watched a drunk mom coo this to her grown-up sons)

“Bodhisattva” (“What a night! I’m buggin’ out, ya’ll!”–DF)

“Daddy Don’t Live In That New York City No More” (Walter Becker sings)

“Godwhacker” (No one wanted to let Papa Don play the melodica)

“Josie” (Thor’s favorite!)

“Peg” (Abbreviated version from ones I’ve seen in the past; no melodica)

“My Old School”

“Reelin’ In The Years”

ENCORE: “Pretzel Logic”

They got the shapely bodies…they got the Steely Dan coffee mug…

Like any good Show Biz Kid, my Steely Dan t-shirt collection is something of a prize.  But alas, the merch table left something to be desired.  The girl’s shirts looked like something off Cafe Press, not like my much beloved Rockabye Gollie Angel shirt or the Dukes of September shirt I wore until it disintegrated. I bought a coffee mug instead.

I’ll be seeing them one more time this year, at the Beacon Theater in October for “By Request.”  Matthew & I put in for “The Second Arrangement,” because of course we did.

Independence Day: Resurgence Is The Worst Movie Ever Made

Ah, why, did you, you, see this, ah, terrible movie?

Independence Day: Resurgence is the single worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life, and the only reason I’m mad about it being a flop is because this means I have no one to talk through the pain with.

“But Libby,” you might say, wise reader that you are. “You knew it was going to be stupid. Why did you go see it?”

The same reason everyone goes to the movies in the summer: Air conditioning.

You see, it’s about 700 degrees in the second floor walk-up apartment Ian & I call home, with 200 percent humidity, and that’s with two fans running.  It is too hot to eat.  Too muggy to sleep.  There was one escape, and that was to the movies.

You must understand one thing about me–I LOVE Independence Day because I love Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum and the 4th of July.  Before work got in the way, we used to have extravagant 4th of July parties, with Fizzball, a potluck dinner and an annual viewing of the film (with Rifftrax, obviously).  I gave President Whitmore’s iconic speech at my friend Eeon’s wedding and he gave it at mine.

I’ve stepped away from movie reviews of late, but I have to share this one. Otherwise, it will eat my soul.  There are some spoilers in here, but who are you kidding, you’re not going to see this crap-pile anyways.

ID4-R was, quite frankly, the most profoundly stupid film I have ever seen in my entire life.  Worse than Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  Worse than Let’s Be Cops. Joyless, boring, simultaneously shot-for-shot of the original while still being entirely baffling and confusing.  It was so unmoored that I kept hoping someone would say “Welcome to Earth!” or “Kick the Tires & Light The Fires” just to ground me back into the fact that, yes, this was a sequel if Independence Day and not just a random series of leftover test footage from the first one.

I’m not even sure if each of the main actors knew they were in the same film.  Jeff Goldblum seemed to think he was doing a Saturday Night Life parody of an Independence Day sequel, being adorable and wacky and quote-y/quirky while wearing glasses.  Bill Pullman’s agent should be fired for handing him an Oscar-bait script about a former pilot who has Parkinsons, but wants to fly one last mission to show his daughter that he loves her.  The Lesser-Hemsworth believed he was standing in for Channing Tatum (or possibly Ryan Gosling although I’m not entirely convinced they aren’t the same person) and I think the Maika Monroe thought she was auditioning to be in an all-girl remake of Top Gun (please do not make an all-girl remake of Top Gun).  Judd Hirsh must have been heartbroken to arrive at the premier, only to find out that he was not starring in a heartwarming family drama about a grouchy old man who learns about love and the true meaning of family from a school bus full of orphans after Hurricane Katrina.

There was also a Direct-to-DVD Will Smith (Jesse Usher, who, I was surprised to find out, was not the 90s R&B star), and while they kept focusing on the kids of the last movie as the main characters of this one (Not-Singer Usher & Not-Daisy Ridley), they completely neglected to mention the family of Randy Quaid, the guy who flew up into the ship and single-handedly saved the world in the last movie.   For a movie that is entirely based on “look at all the stuff we have from the old film, everybody!” it was a noticeable absence.

Nothing made sense, there was no character motivation (some of the recurring characters didn’t even have names!) and, spoiler alert, everybody’s loved ones die.  Stripper-Turned-Hospital Administrator Vivica A. Fox falls to her death in front of Not-R&B-Usher (Will Smith is dead before the movie starts) and then Bill Pullman dies to save everyone, and Jeff Goldblum’s ex-wife/wife again died in a tie-in novelization car crash so that he could try to bone Charlotte Gainsbourg, who needs to put her stringy-ass hair up in a ponytail or something.  Even Lesser-Hems is an orphan before the movie begins, which he uses as an excuse to be a total douche.

It was a grim film that utterly lacked any sort of hope or redemption, and yes, it did end on a “Let’s make another movie” kind of cliffhanger that no one could have possibly given a shit about.  “Intergalactic War!” says Brett Spiner.  “Who cares?” thinks the audience. (there were six of us in the entire theater, presumably, also without AC at home) It was a pointless exercise in garbage film-making for people too old to get lead roles anywhere else (Hirsh, Goldblum, Pullman) and too bland to head up their own franchise films (Baby Helmsworth, Not-Usher, Lady-Pilot).

This is a movie that has no reason for existing.  It’s not a world we ever asked to go back into, let alone 20 years later.  These aren’t endearing, iconic characters we want to revisit.  Let’s be real, David Levinson’s only redeeming character trait in the first movie is that he’s Jeff Goldblum at peak hotness.  The original is a fine movie on it’s own, but compelling characters were not one of it’s strengths.

If I could do it all again, I’d stay in the apartment and sweat.

In Praise of Adult Contemporary Radio

I was not a cool kid.

Yes Please!

While my sisters and peers were in love with Devon Sawa and JTT, I was crushing on Matthew Modine in Cutthroat Island and Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.  While they were listening to Mariah Carey and Blink 182 on Fly 92, I was calling in to B 95.5, the adult contemporary station, in hopes of hearing George Benson’s “Turn Your Love Around.”

When I discovered The Smiths and Siouxsie & The Banshees in high school, then Tom Waits in college, I could finally feel cool.  Sure, it was a hipster-goth kind of cool, eschewing the flair-leg jeans and trucker

Bask in my total fucking coolness (or don’t, who cares.)

hats of the early-2000s for Doc Martens and cabby caps.  I discovered a lot of incredible music during this time period, aided by some awesome mix CDs from great people.

But as I edged up into my 30s, I began to miss the music I listened to in my youth.  During one of our many, many long drives to grad school, Matthew & I both realized that, for all our show-off mix CDs, full of neo-swing and industrial and 80s music, that we both really, REALLY loved Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs and the like.  It was extremely validating to find someone who didn’t think that music was stupid and lame, who could admit that it was hella-fun to pull up to a red light in a bad Bronx neighborhood with “Portable Radio” blasting and have the dude in the next car look over and give you thumbs up.

And then Matthew discovered Yacht Rock.

Yacht Rock, for those of you who’ve never spent five minutes with me, is a Channel 101 show that showcases the (fictional…or are they???) stories behind smooth classics like “What a Fool Believes” and “FM.”  Created by JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair, it ran for 12 episodes in 2005 and is the funniest thing I have ever seen.  I quote it constantly, reference it often on #RecordSaturday and make everyone I know watch it.

Echoes of Love indeed!

I also think Ryznar is super-cute; he has that gentle midwestern handsomeness that I really like in a man (see also: Jay Karnes, Bob Odenkirk, Mike Nelson)

In watching Yacht Rock and listening to their great Beyond Yacht Rock podcast, I realized that, hey, a lot of this music I tried to pretend was super-cheesy and dumb was not only technically awe-inspiring, but cool as fuck. And knowing that there were other lite-FM junkies out there, many of them around my age, made me feel like I was part of something.  Listening to Waits and Morrissey was always about setting myself apart, showing how cool and unique and deep I was, but finding other people on Twitter and in real life who lose their damn minds when “Sweet Freedom” comes on the radio has been a deeply rewarding experience.  I’m re-discovering music I’d forgotten I loved, finding new bands (Pages! JaR!) and letting my “I still know all the words to a LOT of Amy Grant songs” flag fly.  It reminded me that if you love something, it’s always cool no matter what anyone else says.

So in summary, I was a trend-setter on the rediscovery of adult contemporary.  You’re welcome.

Song 53

“Song 53”

What is a poem to a creme brulee?

A tap, a crack, a crumb

Burnt sugar on your lip

And what is a creme brulee to a song,

An echo, little words

To taste upon your tongue

What is a song to a body

willing, a kiss like June

This fire in your mouth

But what is a body to a poem

Between sweet lines, this breath

Is all I have to offer

It’s been awhile since I wrote a poem; a year, in fact, since I began this one.  A whole year for 12 lines.  I am not a prolific poet, but I like this one, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I had the first stanza (in a slightly modified variations) almost instantly; the rest just came in the last month, composed in a prototype notebook with a concertina spine and mismatched hotel paper that I keep just for scraps of poetry.

This is a birthday poem for an unnamed recipient.  The title reflects this.  I have not started on next year’s poem.

Tear Down To The Bones

When I was a teenager, I LOVED buying thrift-store clothes and altering them.  (Like everything I did, I did this before it was cool.  What can I say? I’m a trend-setter).  I was a teen in the age on JNCOs and pointy-toe stiletto boots, and a goth girl, to boot.  I had to make due with what I had, but as a result, I had some amazingly cool clothes.

And although my days of wearing cigarette-cut pants trimmed with neon purple boas are over, the ability to tear something down and salvage the good pieces again is really coming in handy on my Work in Progress.

I’ve written almost two full first drafts of a new novel, and both of them are going to be scrapped.  The first draft was like a pair of fancy cut-offs: Cut out the pieces with the holes worn through, but embellish what’s left.  The second draft, it seems, is going to be more like an old concert shirt, stretched and faded beyond use.  Cut out the best part and see if there’s something else you can sew it onto–a tank top, a tote bag, a throw pillow.  Make something useful out of scraps.

One of my biggest pet peeves are people who get precious about their work.  Who can’t make necessary changes for a variety of bullshit reasons–their characters are their “friends” (ugh) because this is how the story “came to” them, etc.  They’re just words.  There will be infinitely more of them.  Characters aren’t real people, they exist solely to move a story forward.  You’re the god, your stories can and should change to better showcase the REAL story that sometimes we don’t even see emerging until the second or third draft.  Being stubborn about something that isn’t working is stupid and pointless.

That doesn’t mean you have to throw away something that isn’t coming together.  That’s just wasteful! But rather, look at the strengths of the story, see what can be salvaged, and use it elsewhere.  Sid in The Big Rewind was lifted wholesale from a short story that never got published.  Jett was an accidental update of a character I had written just out of college.

(This is also why I am a fan of notebooks–you’re less likely to throw something away in a fit of rage and writer’s block).

You can’t wear that Tori Amos shirt out of the house anymore.  It’s full of holes and stains and is stretched too thin.  But it doesn’t have to go in the garbage as long as you’re willing to get out the scissors and needle.  Likewise, don’t be afraid to admit that a story just isn’t working as it’s written.  Ask yourself if it could be written another way — a poem, a different genre, a new POV.  Would a bland, troublesome character be better off as a different gender, race, class, love interest, villain?

 

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Plastic Clive Owen is a better Dwight than Josh Brolin could ever hope to be.

Tonight I will do the exceptionally stupid.

Tonight I will watch Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For.

Yes, again.

Let me explain:

I’ve spoken before about how Sin City is one of the most important films of my 20s.  But the story I don’t often tell is this.

A Dame to Kill For got my friend Jason & I back together.

The trailer for Dame… dropped in March of 2013.  I watched out of masochistic compulsion and the need to feel sorry for myself.  I was finishing up The Big Rewind, I was missing Jason, who I hadn’t spoken to in seven years, and the trailer’s existence seemed to be telling me All right, Cudmore, let’s do this.

Little did I know that he was watching that same trailer and thinking All right, Jason, let’s do this.

I asked Corey, who is a wonderful magical unicorn from space to put him in touch with me.  He called two days later, and it was like we’d never not been friends.  We danced together at my wedding.  I got to see his awesome sister Sarah again, and have since met up with her just on her own for lunch, nurturing an even stronger friendship than we had before.

And without this stupid bullshit garbage-fire of a sequel, I probably would have never had the courage to reach out to him.

There’s no place in this world for our kinda fire…

 

So tonight, Jason & I are going to watch it together, long-distance, texting the whole time as a means of checking in and making sure the other person hasn’t a) wussed out or b) died of sheer awfulness.  We’ll buy the same bottle of wine and imagine that we’re back in the couch of one of our terrible, over/under-heated post-college apartments, we’ll groan and make stupid jokes and probably eat too many snacks.  It’s the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days.  They’re back.

And we’re ready for war.

I’ll also live-tweet it, because that’s what I do.  Join me, won’t you?

New Notebook: Arche/SuperCola

Introducing Arche/SuperCola!

Time for a new notebook!

I can’t believe how fast I went through Lucca.  This new WIP (working title: The Lords of Yesterday) has me scrawling scenes even more than I did in the early days of The Big Rewind.  It’s a much different book for me, so I’m letting myself play with POV and scene variation, as well as a TON of beautiful collage work.  I’ve really gone kinda crazy, and I regret nothing.

Lucca was experimental in paper usage and texture.  The map pages were pretty, but writing on them proved useless, so they ended up being collage pages.  The parchment was a nice surface and added color, but tended to smudge with the big fat gooey ink pen I use because my hands are basically claws now.  I don’t think I’d do the origami paper on the spine again.  It looked pretty, but took up valuable page space.

My original intent was to make a double-sided journal, like an old pulp novel–on one side, Crime Writing, flip it over, General Work.  But I’ve still got about half of Mona left, so the pages would end up being wasted.  I needed a new notebook, and I needed one fast, so I put what I had on hand to good use.

Arche/SuperCola is very basic in design, but represents the finest of all my techniques combined — multiple paper types, end pages, French stitch and metal accouterments.  I had bought the hinges for another project, but they proved to be merely decorative and basically non-functioning.

Back View

The Super Cola on the back is from a bag of candies Ian bought at the Chinese Supermarket in Albany.   I thought it had such a fun design that I wanted to incorporate it into this piece.  Packaging has served me well.

Now, about Arche Klaine and Chester Barklight: When I was a kid, I got Nintento Power magazine every so often at the bookstore (I didn’t have a subscription) and the March 1996 issue was my favorite.  It had Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG and Tales of Phantasia.  I loved the big-eyed look of anime, which, at that point, had barely made it to the states, let alone Upstate NY.  I loved Arche’s costume and made one for myself, right down to the weird tunic, all by hand.  The game never got a translation on the SNES, and the magazine probably got thrown out somewhere.  The costume was recycled into something else, and Tales of Phantasia was forgotten.

But as I started Lords of Yesterday, I got thinking about those old magazines and ordered a couple issues for papercraft.  And there was Arche, looking cheerful as ever, in between the pages.  I cut up the other articles for page collage and postcards, but I wanted to save Tales of Phantasia for something special….and this notebook was it.

French Stitch is my go-to because it’s flexible and I can do it while watching TV.  I had some brown sketch paper leftover from a journal my husband & I made for our honeymoon road trip, although I had to tape smaller pieces of it together to form double-truck signatures.  No envelope this time; while it was useful for keeping collage pieces, at the end of the notebook’s usage, it would be emptied.  Finally had a chance to use my beautiful, handmade clock paper as endpapers, which, the more I do, the more I’m a fan of.

 

Now I just have to get to writing in it!

 

Who Says Who The Muse Is?

Papa Don & Uncle Walt

I got in a Twitter fight the other day with some guy I went to grad school with over who “Rikki” in Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” is.  Common lore is that it’s a Bard classmate of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, author Rikki Ducornet, who claims to any half-baked rag that will listen that Fagen gave her his phone number at a party one time and, guess what?  She lost it!  Crazy, huh?

There’s just one problem with her story.  Fagen won’t confirm, and at times has flat out denied her account on multiple occasions.

But of course, Grad School Guy insisted that he “believed Rikki” and attempted to repeatedly mansplain Steely Dan to me, a girl who’s first chapter is titled “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me).”  Not a good idea.

(Matthew tells a great story of attending Donald Fagen’s signing for Eminant Hipsters and some smug douche insisted — to Fagen’s face — that he knew who Rikki was.  Donald said, “Oh?  You think you do, huh?” and went on to the next question.  As if I couldn’t love Donald Fagen more.)

What bothered me the most* is that his insistence that he “knew” who the song was about (despite mounting evidence to the contrary) ultimately strips the artist of their own intent.  If songwriter Fagen says the song isn’t about Ducornet, the song isn’t about Ducornet, end of story.  It’s his song.  He gets to say who it is or about.   And really, when has Fagen (or Becker, for that matter) been anything BUT cryptic?  I don’t think there’s a Josie, or a Peg, or Cousin Dupree or Charlie Freak.  They’re characters in a world that “rivals the Marvel Expanded Universe.” (“Hollywood” Steve Huey, Beyond Yacht Rock)

But by Grad School Guy’s logic, I could claim to be Rikki.  Or Darling Nikki.  Or Billie Jean.  Just because you say a song is about you doesn’t make it so.   When we tell an artist that we “know” who or what inspired their work, we rob them of their creative intent.  We can guess, we can interpret, but to have a creator, when presented with our interpretation, say “this is not what my work is about” and then we reply “Yeah, but you’re wrong about your own creation, because I know better than you” is, well, stupid as fuck.

 

Maybe the song is about Ducornet.  Hell, maybe “Rikki” is someone Walter Becker knew and he was the driving force behind the song.  We’ll probably never really know.  That’s between Fagen and Becker.  But when we insists we know art better than the artists, it’s problematic.  We’d never say “I know your work better than you” to a plumber, or a hairdresser, or any other professional.  But to artists, we feel that our interpretation can be the only one, even when presented with the artist’s own statement.  It’s arrogant, and I guarantee you that Grad School Guy would freak the fuck out if someone did that to him.

So what did we learn here today?  One, don’t try to mansplain Steely Dan to be because you will not will win.

But more importantly, don’t tell artists what their work is about.  Enjoy and interpret at will, but also listen when the artist is speaking.  This is their work.  They know it better than you no matter how many albums or books or movies or paintings you buy.

But hey, Rikki, if you’re still looking for a song to claim is about you, maybe try “You’re So Vain.”

Mix Tape Monday: The (Unrequited) Crush Mix

Welcome Back to Mix Tape Monday, the blog series that celebrates the lost art of mix-tape making.  Today is Part II of our “Crush Mix” series, the Unrequited Crush!

Now, there are two types of Unrequited Crush Mix.  The first is made up entirely of Smiths songs like “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” and is made for moping around because boo-hoo, your crush doesn’t notice you.

This is not that mix.

Rather, this is one that celebrates the unrequited love as a love that cannot ever be, but is still fun to have.  It’s the kind of crush that makes you happy and tingly because you know it can never be consummated, which is how it can remain so perfect.  This is a mix solely for you to listen to when you are feeling dreamy and excitable and giddy in love, so go crazy.

This mix is called the Grey Chalk Playlist (2014) and it’s fairly brief.

Fan Mail

Because I made this one for my TV-crush, I open it with a sound clip from one of his shows so I can hear his sexy, sexy voice.  It, ah, sets the mood.

I’m Goin’ Ahead With The Sex

Unlike the Crush mix, no one is ever going to hear this one except for you, so go ahead and put on the sultry tunage.  You know, the ones you practice doing an imaginary striptease to.  We all have them, so let’s gather them in one place.  You can never go wrong with a classic like Joe Cocker’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” or something trashy, like Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly.”   My opening number was “A Call From The Vatican” from Nine, because I’m a siren.

Sleepin’ With The TV On

If your crush is an actor, as mine is, here’s where you can put some songs about the glorious medium that is film/TV. Genesis “Turn It On Again,” Suzanne Vega “If You Were In My Movie” or JaR’s “Scene 29” were all ones I used, but there are plenty of other great movie tunes.  You may also want to put a song featured in one of his movies to remind you of all the good times you spent snuggled up on your couch under a blanket.

If the object of your affection is a writer (or a book character) use songs about writing — “The Book of Love” by the Magnetic Fields, “The Book I Read” by the Talking Heads, “Wrapped Up in Books” by Belle and Sebastian…you get the picture.  Celebrate their career–Van Halen, “Hot For Teacher” Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me With Science,” Dusty Springfield, “Arrested By You.”  Dig deep into your collection and find some gems.

Mrs. L. C. W.

Here is where you can imagine your life together.  He falls in love with you like Donald Fagen’s “Slinky Thing” and takes you to a restaurant where Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” is playing, then he kisses you to the Magnetic Fields’ “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing” and you get married and it’s beautiful and you dance to The 6ths “Just Like a Movie Star.”

Love Letters

Maybe you know the object of your affection well enough to have talked about music.  Heck, maybe you even have a “song” that you declared because you heard it are 100% not a stalker. I like The Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.”  I listen over and over and it makes me dreamy.  Close out the mix on a lovely note, drifting and imaginative.