music – hellomelissa.net

Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.

January 4, 2017January 4, 2017 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Tonight, Flora showed me some of the stuff she’s been listening to/watching on YouTube with her friends. A lot of the content still seems remarkably adult, despite being creepily sanitized for young ears via Kids Bop, the Mini Pops and children’s YouTube channels.

Tonight’s example, the Haschak Sisters covering Kanye West’s ‘classic 2005 hit’, ‘Gold Digger’:

(Aside: ZOMG, didn’t 2005 just happen?! How is a song written then a ‘classic hit’ now? Oh… math. And the passage of time.)

Part of me is uncomfortable with young girls singing a song and making an accompanying video about some nasty female stereotypes. Another part of me is really impressed at the production values these ‘amateur’ videos have.

I guess this is no worse than when my parents gave me a copy of the ‘Rock ’87‘ compilation tape for my sister and I to listen to. I remember my father playing it and singing along to the Paul Lekakis hit, ‘Boom Boom (Let´s Go Back To My Room)’ VERY LOUDLY. I’m still cringing in embarrassment about that, and my dad’s been dead for nearly 26 years. I can’t even remember the last time I heard that song. However, in the name of research, that streak has now been broken. You’re welcome.

(Another aside: this song didn’t even have a music video way back when but a video was made for YouTube nearly a decade ago. Paul Lekakis still seems to be performing live here and there so good for him.)

After I watched the videos she showed me, I asked her when she was going to enter her metal years because that stuff doesn’t scare me. I was laughing when I said it but it reminded me to keep working on her media literacy skills and checking in on what she’s actually watching online because it’s not just Baby Alive videos.

That said, if pop music is her biggest rebellion, we’ll be doing okay.

Grampa Simpson with Homer and Barney — It’ll happen to you… (it happened to me) (This is one of my favourite Simpsons episodes. Pretty sure I’ve quoted this before on the site.)

My favourite album of 2013

January 3, 2014 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I don’t keep up with current music the way I used to. That happens in your 30s when you’re not in the entertainment industry. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will.

When I heard that Monster Magnet (Wikipedia entry) – one of my all-time favourite bands – was releasing a new album and doing a North American tour, I got a little excited.

Here’s how I told Sean:

Texting with Sean about Monster Magnet — Good thing I know how to get caps lock on my phone.

By the time I got home from work, Sean had already purchased tickets to the show. He’s good like that.

I listened to the pre-released tracks online, put the release date into Google Calendar and scoured music blogs for any information I could get on Last Patrol. On release day, I purchased the album from iTunes as soon as I got home from work. I’ve played it constantly ever since.

An aside: Tracking and learning about music (and everything else) is so much easier in the internet age. That really makes me appreciate the work and effort music (or any pop culture) superfans put into their fandom pre-web. Zines and tape-trading took more effort and likely cost more when you don’t include computer/smartphone/internet costs (since those are used for more than supporting your fandom). Think of the postage costs alone!

The concert date rolled around and I was getting a little worried. The show was on a Tuesday night and it was going to start late. Going to work after a late night isn’t as easy as it used to be. Sean and I arranged for a friend to babysit. I was looking forward to having a night out with Sean to see a concert that I was really excited about.

My early morning after a late night never happened. The show got cancelled the day before it was scheduled to go on. Suck it, influenza. Sean and I were both disappointed, but probably not as much as the guy I saw on Facebook. He said he was flying in from Thunder Bay just for the show. I really felt for him – I’m not sure if he was able to cancel his plane ticket.

Sean has recently gotten back into vinyl and he’s been expanding his collection. As much as I appreciate digital music and its portability, rock music sounds so much better on a turntable. Sean picked up the vinyl version of Last Patrol, and the gatefold really makes the artwork pop. This record was pressed on orange vinyl, which makes it extra cool. Sean’s turntable is set up in our mancave and I snapped some pictures of the album last night (click for larger image):

Monster Magnet's 'Last Patrol' on vinyl — Rock music really does sound better on vinyl.

Have you read this entry and still not looked Monster Magnet up on Youtube? Here’s the official video of the first single, ‘Mindless Ones’. If you like your rock music heavy and with a bit of trippiness, you will like this.

Do you pay attention to music? How do you keep up with your favourite bands? Tell me about the music you love.

Living out rockstar dreams in my car

October 28, 2012 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Sometimes I think the only time I get to use my whole voice is when I sing.

I don’t sing professionally and I hate all the singing shows on TV. My singing is limited to my car, games of Rock Band and rare karaoke nights.

I’m not a good singer – I wreck my throat after one karaoke song and I’m completely untrained. I like music but I’m not as up-to-date on current trends as I used to be.

When I was a teenager, I learned to play my favourite songs thanks to OLGA. That site is long gone – a casualty of the ongoing battle of the music industry versus the internet. I even wrote a few songs. I never played them publicly, but if I’d had better self-esteem at seventeen, I may have.

Those songs are long gone now. I can hear snippets in my head, but not much else. We’re all probably better off – the songs of a seventeen year old girl with an acoustic guitar pining for boys who wouldn’t understand aren’t songs for the ages.

These days, I sing along with the radio in my car. Now that I’m a commuter, I have more time in the car alone. Most nights the radio goes up loud and I feel free. I feel subversive when I roll into Flora’s school blasting something inappropriate. Then I turn it off and go get my kid. We ride home in silence most days because my girl doesn’t get loud rock music yet.

She may not ever, in the ultimate act of rebellion against her parents.

Fun fact: When I was pregnant, we tried to get Flora to kick by putting headphones on my belly. Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ was on my mp3 player and that’s what we tried with. She completely ignored us. Whatever – babies are fickle and kick when they want to. The day we brought her home, Sean had the radio on and Enter Sandman comes on again. The radio wasn’t loud but as I sat in the back with my newborn in a shell-shocked, WTF-do-I-do-now haze, I smiled because life was still happening even though I was now someone’s mother. I still liked the same loud music I did before I became Her Mother. That comforted me. That it was the same song that we tried to get her to kick for was an added bonus.

It took me a long time to learn to like to sing. On my first day of kindergarten, I decided I didn’t want to sing Head and Shoulders with the class. I did the motions but didn’t sing. My teacher noticed and asked me why I wasn’t singing. I didn’t answer. She then put her hands on her hips and asked me to say sorry for not singing with the class. I didn’t because I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t want to sing and I wasn’t doing it. The teacher didn’t like my silent defiance and I was told to go put my head down at one of the classroom tables.

In third grade, I was one of maybe seven kids in my class that was not invited to join the choir made up of primary-level kids (grades 1-3). Maybe it was because there wasn’t enough room for everyone on the stands. Maybe it was because they thought I was too shy (a reasonable assumption). I took it to mean they thought I was a bad singer. I did my extra reading and was happy but my relationship with singing took a huge hit for years afterward.

I think these stories lead up to why I like karaoke so much. It’s a forgiving medium. You can completely suck and still be cheered at the end. It’s hard to get up in front of people and make yourself vulnerable by singing. I think most people recognize that.

I subscribe to the theory “if you can’t sing it good, sing it loud”. This applies to life as well. Better to get up, own your issues and go for it anyway, than sit in the back and be mad that you wimped out yet again. I’ve done both, and I have lot more fun (or get a lot more said) when I actually get brave enough to potentially make a jackass of myself in public.

I know I’m not as good as I think I am in my head. I’m not as bad as I think I am either. At least I’m trying.

You should too. You don’t have to get on stage to try.

Concerts are about more than the music

January 29, 2012January 28, 2012 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Sean and I had a sorely-needed date night on Wednesday when we went to see Tool at the Air Canada Centre. It probably doesn’t actually qualify as a real date since a friend of ours came with us. A night out is a night out though so I’ll take it.

The concert was promoted with the warning of no new music on the setlist. Not exactly a greatest hits tour, but more of a reminder that they’re still around. Judging by the fact that the show sold out with very little advertising, I’m not sure their fanbase needed reminding. Sean and I enjoyed the show, although he would have preferred some shakeups to the setlist. We’ve seen Tool several times over the last decade or so and this was very similar to previous shows.

Concerts are great places for people watching. It’s fun to see the different kind of fans out there:

The superfan that pulls out his concert shirt from the first tour he ever saw to show everyone that he was with the band before they were cool. It’s rare that it fits properly if the band has been together for many years. (While I don’t wear my old shirts to shows, I do struggle with fitting into some of them, so I don’t consider myself immune to this phenomenon.)
The teenagers that you think couldn’t possibly have been old enough to listen to the band with any great zeal when their last album was released. (Tool tends to go at least five years between albums so this is a legitimate issue for them.) Maynard James Keenan (Tool’s singer) commented that some songs hadn’t been played since a lot of the audience were sperm. That was an exaggerated statement, but maybe now that Sean and I are no longer the youngest fans in the room, everyone else seems younger to us. Get off my lawn you kids!
The “fashion don’ts”. This comes up a lot at the shows Sean and I go to – the perils of liking hard rock and metal I suppose. Not the most fashionable demographic. Most people don’t look out of the ordinary, but I honestly wonder what rock some people crawl out from to come to the show. Wednesday’s highlight was a guy who was wearing a black goth-style full-length jacket. It looked more like a cheap bathrobe with S&M accessories. I don’t want to snark on someone’s fashion choices, but sometimes going to these shows feel like I’ve stepped into a timewarp. Some people don’t look any different than they did in 1996 (or whatever year the band you’re seeing was huge), bad haircut and all. If someone was to observe the outfit I wore, they would have said “she must have just come from the office”. Which I totally did, and I’m okay with that.

Sean and I used to go to a lot of shows before Flora was born and we had more disposable income. Now that concerts are an occasional event for us, I definitely appreciate all the little nuances more. We make the same jokes every time and we still laugh. We still love going together and that’s the best part of all.