(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. Ugh, I'm inundated with spam email - nothing I do gets rid of it. I've unsubscribed, I've filtered, I've clicked it as spam. It makes it very hard to find necessary emails.

2. Trying this again here...name 13 albums off the top of your head to know you by. Doesn't have to be perfect, has to be the sort of list in which, you think, damn, I forgot that one.

My difficulty with this sort of thing - is I don't remember the names of albums. I have an MP3 player that plays songs from albums, which I mix up.

So here's my lame-ass attempt at it:

Cat People - David Bowie
Purple Rain - Prince & the Revolution
American Idiot - Green Day
Lost in Space - Aimee Mann
God is Someone Else - Joan Osborn
The Man in Black - Johnny Cash
Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
Kids are Alright - The Who
Abbey Road - The Beatles
Fade to Black - Rolling Stones
Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell
Rhapsody in Blue - Gershwin

3. Listening to Tina Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries - and all of a sudden up pops Emily Prager, who is sis-in-laws semi-legal stepmother (in that they never got married but have been living together for ages, and pseudo-adopted a Chinese girl together that sis-in-law is barely on speaking terms with.). I've met Prager - she's the author of A Visit to the Footbinders (which I read, and promptly forgot, as I am wont to do on occasion.) I did not like her. I did manage to strong-arm my brother into getting Prager to get me an informational interview with her editor at Random House - when I was ill-advisedly trying for a job in the NYC publishing world. (Ill-advisedly since the NYC publishing world is the most toxic industry on the planet bar none. Few outrank the entertainment and publishing industries in toxicity. Well, maybe advertising and real estate development.) That was back in the distant 1990s, when I was 28 and a touch wet-behind-the-ears. Not the somewhat cynical and seasoned fifty-six year old that I am now.

Anyhow, Brown describes Prager as a sweet door-mouse of a thing, who comes across kind of bewildered and bookish. I'm laughing.

Hmmm, famous people that I've seen or met, who I wasn't overly impressed by. Truth is people are just people at the end of the day. And the fame is kind of toxic in of itself and colors everything.

* Roger Daltry (not performing, and at a marketing launch that I was working as an intern at)
* James Marsters (on stage performing)
* Davy Jones (marketing launch of a DVD)
* Martin Landau (ditto)
* Barbara Bach (Ringo Starr's wife and well in the Spy who Loved Me)
* Lorraine Braco (ditto)
* The actor from the Sopranos and Bruce Springsteen's band whose name I forget
* John Chancellor
* Barbara Bel Geddes
* Tony Dow
* Sidney Pollack
* Emily Prager
* Dennis Lehane

Those are the ones that I remember? There may be more. I'm not counting the ones I've invariably passed on the street.

Comments

[pantherinsnow]

I really enjoy getting to know people through the music they like/love. There's something about music, more than books or films or television shows, that gives a sense of a person's inner world. We have several albums that we both appreciate, it looks like. Rare to find another Joan Osborne fan (I guess I'm not a huge fan, but her first three albums were important for me). Talking Heads definitely aren't the most common cup'o tea, either.

You have just about one decade on me--I turned 45 last December.

[shadowkat]

There's a bit of a technological generational gap between us, I think? It's the thing I notice most between those born after 1970 and those born before 1970. How we all handle tech. And the closer your birth date is to the 00s, the more at ease you are with high-tech. My niece showed me how to use my mouse pad on my Apple computer. Thinking it was obvious.

Music? Not so much. I think there is more of a one between those born prior to 1960 and those after?

That said ? I listen to all my music via my BOSE earphones connected to my Iphone. (And have no interest in going back to clunky stereos, CD players, Cassett players, boom boxes or Record Players. I like MP3 because I can do playlists - or rather turn the thing into my own personal radio station - with no talk, and songs selected randomly from my collection, skipping over those I don't want to hear.)

At any rate, I only have one of Joan Osborn's albums (on my MP3), and a few songs from other albums here and there. Cathedrals is one that is from another album. I love that song. So, not sure how big a fan? She's a bit like Sheryl Crow, Michelle Shocked, Nora Jones, and Alanis Morrissette for me - in that I tend to only have one of their albums or songs here and there? But find them hit or miss? Same with Lady Gaga for that matter?

I also have people no one has heard of? Like a former classmate, college housemate's album: Sand Sheff (who writes off-beat country/folk songs that kind of sound like a poor man's Johnny Cash. (a phrase my father often used to describe a similar band, but not quite as famous like say the Monkeeys are a poor man's take on the Beatles?) I like off-beat non-popular stuff. And a lot of the older 1980s, 1990s, and 1970s, 60s stuff.

[oursin]

I met Marianne Faithfull - we were both sitting around waiting to be interviewed (separately - she had a new album out and I had just published a book on a pioneer abortion law reformer) on Woman's Hour, and she was charming.

I'm not sure being An Expert being interviewed by Famous Person for some documentary really counts as meeting them, though in that case I can score Bob Geldof? (niche aspect of WB Yeats' career)

[shadowkat]

Well, considering I was counting seeing them while I was standing around at an event, or giving them water for one, while manning the entrance booth (Daltry, Lorraine Braco, Bach, Landau)? The only one I actually had a conversation with was Prager and Lehane. Although we did Q&A's with Davy Jones, Barbara Bel Geddes (Leave it to Beaver fame - this was in high school drama class in the 1980s), Tony Dow (ditto), and Sidney Pollack (his kid went to the same college, and he came to our school to do a Q&A for my Cinema class).

[cjlasky7]

My Ten Favorite Albums:

Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
The Roches, The Roches
King Crimson, Red
The Who, Quadrophenia
The Kinks, Village Green Preservation Society
Dave Edmunds, Repeat When Necessary
Dave Brubeck, Time Out
Al Green, Greatest Hits
Richard Thompson, Rumor and Sigh

A lot of these albums are tied in to very special personal experiences. I will never forget going to Tower Records in Manhattan and having the Roche sisters personally sign their first record. Or seeing Al Green at BB King's with my future wife. Or watching Richard Thompson in concert in Edinburgh. Or sitting in open mouthed awe as King Crimson blasted their audience in the streets with "Starless" from the Red album. Or....

You get the idea.

I know all these albums backwards and forwards. They are building blocks of my life.

Isn't that what having favorite albums is all about?

[shadowkat]

It's not really about favorites? Just 13 albums off the top of your head, no looking them up, and to know you by. The view - is if you can name them off the top of your head without looking them up - then they must be vital to you in some way?

"name 13 albums off the top of your head to know you by. Doesn't have to be perfect, has to be the sort of list in which, you think, damn, I forgot that one."

Not quite the same as favorites?

[cjlasky7]

But these WERE off the top of my head! As I said, I have a very personal connection to all of these albums. But since we're talking 13, not ten, let me add three more:

Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
Elvis Costello, King of America
Fairport Convention, The Cropredy Box

Stevie is here because it's just a great record.

Costello is here because the bonus disk on the reissue has a NYC concert he did with the Confederates and T-Bone Burnett. You might actually hear me singing from the audience.

And Fairport? I was there for three glorious days of music in the hills of Oxfordshire in 1997.

So many great albums from great artists. 50 wouldn't narrow it down.

[shadowkat]

See? This is too easy an exercise for you? You can probably name 100 different albums, the songs on all of them, and the artists...while I'm not even sure I named actual albums. I've been waiting for somebody on Twitter or here to say - wait, that's not the actual name of an album!

I like Elvis Costello. He's an interesting musician. But I can never remember any of his songs for some reason or other? They just don't resonate. Of course this means nothing - I can't remember the rest of your list and I just looked at it today.

I might be able to do ten songs off the top of the head to know me by...but I'm not sure I can do it without cheating and looking them up.

[shadowkat]

Went back up to read the list.

Hmm. I know Joni Mitchell - and have Court and Spark, of course. (I had a boyfriend in college who was obsessed with that album. Is that the one with The Circle Game? Because he sang and played that song on his guitar endlessly.)

I know King Crimson - my brother and his friends adored that band. As did a lot of guys I knew in college. And since then. But I can't remember if I have anything of theirs? Hmmm.

The Who - I've met Daltry and interned with the Marketing Manager, seen their musical on Bway when it first opened, and I love their music. But can't remember the names of their albums.
The Kids are Alright - was the name of the album and DVD release (which I did the party for).

The Kinks - lots of people I knew in college adored them - so I had their stuff on cassette for a bit. My brother liked them. I don't know if I have anything by them now on the MP3?

Al Green - I got stuff on. I think.

Dave Brubeck - I've heard of but don't think I've listened too.

Richard Thompson - I have stuff of on Mp3.

[cjlasky7]

Yeah, this was an easy one for me. But I'm a former music critic and I'm kind of obsessive about music history and classic albums.

* "Circle Game" is on "Ladies of the Canyon"--a few albums earlier. "Court and Spark" is when Joni started to explore jazz; "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris" were the pop hits.

* "Village Green Preservation Society" is one of those albums unappreciated in its time (1967); it's almost pastoral, in contrast to the Kinks' usual rep as hard rockers. (It appeals to insufferable music snobs like me to "discover" lost albums that no one else appreciates.. )

* I remember seeing The Kids are Alright at a midnight showing in my local movie theater about...oh, forty years ago! The print sucked. The music was incredible.

[shadowkat]

Thanks for the info and insights.