Thankful Thursday - Music

Well, it's that time again!  It's Thursday.  Thursday is the day to think about things that I'm thankful exist.

(I know, I'm not always as good at allitteration as I would like.  I think my favourite-ever allitterate thing is the character V's introductory speech to Evey in V For Vendetta:

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
  
 The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
  
Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. 

Brilliant. And SUPER not-on-topic...)

So there are SOME things I've specifically avoided including in previous Thankful Thursdays because, they're just too OBVIOUS, you know, but then how do you sum up everything you're thankful about in that one thing in a blog post about five things? Like, how do you write one-bullet-point-worth on your family or something.  So I skip those.  For now, anyway.  O:-)


Today, I want to write about one of those things I've been holding back on. I want to write about music .  And so, without futher ado, or tangenting onto fantastical, lengthy movie quotes, I give you:

Thankful Thursday

The Music Edition

Let me just preface my list with a reminder that I AM a Kin grad, and do NOT have oodles and oodles of formal music training, so this is a VERY VERY amateur list/opinion/whatever. I love, dabble in and appreciate music, but leave the being-amazing-at-it stuff to other people.  Who, you know, know what they're doing.

1) My Stereo & The iPod dock

(from: http://www.oaktreevintage.com/Sony_Stereo_Parts_Unit.htm)

When it's quiet in my house, like, there is no noise, and I'm NOT reading a book, I get twitchy.  Or at least, I FEEL twitchy. It just feels wrong.  My days rotate between Little Miss' movies or specific, Little-Miss friendly music options from my iPod as far as background noise.  Sometimes if she's watching a movie in the livingroom and I'm cleaning in the kitchen I can keep both the tv and the tunes turned down low enough that the sounds don't overlap each other and make me overloaded-with-aural-stimulation twitchy.   

I can't NOT turn on music.  

Anything and everything. 

Though, on Little-Miss-free days the music is different, and definitely louder - she doesn't care for Josh Groban yet - horrors, I know - and I save cranking Amy Lee's insane vocals for kid-free time - I dunno if she's ready to appreciate the hardish-alternative-rock genre yet.  She (Little Miss) loves Michael Buble, anything by "Finn & Rachel" (thank goodness Glee keeps putting out albums or Don't Stop Believing may have become the death of me...just have to skip the odd song so I don't have to worry about my kid busting out into "do you want to touch me, there, where!?!" in the middle of church), the "green baby" (Wicked soundtrack. She LOVES how in the beginning there's a baby and it's GREEN -makes her laugh every time.).... anyway, we have a pretty good playlist, I'd say. 

That wasn't the point. Wasn't I going for a tangent-free Thankful Thursday post? Oy! 

If I didn't have my stereo, we wouldn't have our constant tunes.  And you know what?  IT'S BROKEN. My stereo isn't working.  One of those things you don't realize how important it is until it's gone. It's a great stereo, great sound, cd player iPod dock that CHARGES the iPod so when I take it off to go for a run or something my battery is all ready to go.... 

and it's BROKEN! 

You know what, though?  We have a backup! OH am I grateful for our backup! Because, you know, my stereo's broken, and in this house that means we'll get around to getting it looked at or replacing it in like, a year or two (we really have to figure out what makes us tick and tap into that... hahaha we'll function much better...) and I would have been dying going music-free. Or putting cds into the DVD player and listening via the tv - have you ever tried that? Ugh. Even if you have a great-sounding tv usually it's just not the SAME.  

Anyway, the backup doesn't play cds, and doesn't charge my iPod, but it PLAYS my iPod, and it sounds decent, and it's a lifesaver. 

2) My Piano

This picture is old, from our last house, like, the day after we got the piano, or something. I was pretty dang excited. It even made our Christmas letter that year. I'm a nerd, I know.

I don't get to play it as often as I would like - there's so much to do, and SOMETIMES when I sit to play Little Miss hollers "STOP PLAYING!" hahaha, and it's not the fantastic, best-piano-ever I grew up with and learned on, but it has a nice rich sound, not one of these horrid tinny pianos, it's pretty, we spent a whopping like, $200 or something on it....I think?? Don't remember, but it was a steal.  And I LOVE being able, occasionally to sit and flood the house with music.  

Thanks for my lessons.  Thanks for whatever the heck it was you did to get me through the every-kid-wants-to-quit part of music lessons and getting me to a point where now, as a 'grown up' I'm proficient enough to be able to enjoy myself.  

3) Singing

Last year's production of "Saviour of the World" - singing "Alleluia" with the women's chorus behind us. Such an amazing experience. Though I hope none of these ladies kill me for posting this...I think I look the scariest with all that ridiculous stage makeup on!

I LOVE to sing. LOVE it.  And I can carry a tune, which in some circles makes me a fantastical singer.  hahaha Which idea cracks me up, honestly.  I'm a sporty gal who learned to sing belting out tunes in the car, I guess. I don't know.  But I can sing some things. I know my boundaries - I am definitely an alto hahaha  

Anyway, I don't know even how it happened that I got labelled as a "singer."  I don't know if I'll ever see it, because it's just not me! hahaha I mean, I've always sung in choirs and whatever, but sometime after I was married and living down here someone up and decided I can sing. And that was that. Weird, right? 

Sometimes they're right.  Other times....oy.  hahaha Which obviously means I'm NOT a singer, I just get lucky. 

But I love it. It feels GOOD to sing - I heard something about singing for 15 minutes a day boosts your happy-endorphins some oodles-ish amount.... it's pure awesomness, really. 

So I don't remember who it was or what happened that lead up to it, but whoever it was who decided I'm a singer, I still think you're wrong, but THANKS for all the fun and happy-endorphins I've gained since then. 

4) Shuffle, iTunes & Playlists

(from: http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/16599/apple-ipod-classic/)

Remember when you didn't want to listen to just one cd so you listened to the commercial-ridden radio all the time to get the variation you wanted in that moment of musical need? REMEMBER that??  Ugh, or having to sit, with a blank tape in the deck, listening ever-so-carefully to the beginning of each song in case it was the one you were hoping to tape so you didn't have to go buy an entire album just for the one awesome song??  Or....maybe I'm the only one who ever did it....wanting to spend an evening listening to a certain list of songs and having a pile of cds beside your player and putting in one, listening to the song, taking it out, putting in the next, listening to that song, and on and on and on until you made it to the bottom of the pile and had your this-type-of-song fix?? 

THANK YOU, APPLE, FOR MASSIVELY SIMPLIFYING MY MUSIC LISTENING LIFE!!  I can shuffle through my iPod and it's like commercial-free radio of all my favourite music. WIN!  I can go to iTunes and purchase the one song off the album I can't get out of my head 'cause it's so brilliant. WIN! And I can MAKE a playlist  of all those songs from those cds I have that are all alike in some way and I want to listen to together in a string.  I LOVE MY IPOD. 

And thanks for my iPod, which I totally found at the bottom of my Christmas stocking one year - yeah, that was a stunner of a stocking stuffer!

5) Musicals

(from: http://amaliehoward.com/wicked-the-musical-a-new-take-on-a-classic/)

 I have loved musicals for as long as I can remember. Back in the day before dvd players in cars Mom & Dad would keep my brother and I quiet on the long trekk to Florida in the car with the soundtracks from Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. We listened to other neat tapes like Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call, Mozart's Magic Flute (the kid-dramatized version with a little girl navigating her way through the musical trying to stay out of the clutches of the evil queen... and the birds falling in love.....)....what else? Some mystery with Vivaldi's tunes set in Italy....I don't even remember. But I LOVED it. Loved loved it.  For my birthday I saw Les Mis when I was 9, and Phantom when I was 10.  I LOVED them.

Phantom became my favourite.  There was a lengthy period where I tried desperately to wear out our cassette copy of the soundtrack, as I listened to it every. single. night at bedtime to fall asleep to.  And the one time in our basement I had a sleep over and felt it necessary to, along with the soundtrack, re-enact the entire production for my two girlfriends. (shaking head - oy the horrors of remembering one's childhood - what was I THINKING??)

Anyway, as an adult I've seen both these musicals again. And while Phantom will always have that childhood-special-spot-in-my-musical-heart I have come to the obvious realization that Les Mis has WAY more heart. hahaha I was disappointed with Phantom last time we saw it. I've never been disappointed by Les Mis.  

I LOVE musicals. The good ones, anyway. I've seen some pretty lousy ones and some phenomenal ones, and some mediocre in-between-y ones.  I LOVED Fiddler on the Roof.  LOVED Billy Elliott for the absolutely mind-blowing DANCING, ohmigoodness.  Something Happened on the Way to the Forum....not so much love. 

Wicked? Oh. My. GAWSH.  I could do an entire dissertation on my love of this musical. It is unbelieveable. It was another birhtday present, though I was 28 and not 10, and I purposefully went into it knowing nothing about it except it was the Wicked Witch's back story. And that I've always been a big Wizard of Oz fan.

Elphaba is incredible.  And having now read the three Wicked books, I can say as great as they are, the musical's version of Elphaba's story is unfreakingbelieveable. I ADORE it.

I can't write enough about this. hahaha THANKS, Mom & Dad, for instilling an appreciation for musicals in us, letting us be entertained by live theatre and the soundtracks, encouraging (or maybe just allowing? hahaha) our fixations on characters.....

Thanks, folks, for putting the shows out there. Thanks for adapting great stories into amazing stage productions, and adding music so I can be that much more transferred into the world of the envelopping story.

See? I told you I couldn't sum up "music" in one bullet point - I don't even think I've done a good job in an entire, really really long blog post! But the menu-tune on "Tangled" is calling me over to press play and hunker down to enjoy Disney's latest release with two little girls who aspire to be princesses.  I'm just watching to enjoy the singing...  ;-)