My Lovers

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a long and rambling musical journey that many readers will find unbelievably boring. My apologies to these readers, but this is my blog and if I want to talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd, I'm going to talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd. So chew on that. And enjoy the '70s-tastic bikini babes, Billy Joel's pompadour, Three Dog Night's über-tight pants and David Bowie's blond, snaggle-toothed ambition.

I have torrid love affairs with songs.

I have relationships with albums and song-creators, too, but they're more long-term arrangements. More stable, steady things. But it's weird with the songs. They come out of nowhere. Usually they're songs that are older than I am. From artists and eras I have no real connection with. They've just been quietly existing in the ether my whole life, and then I hear them, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the 100th time, and my mood and the temperature and the scenery and everything is perfectly tuned, and they'll knock the wind out of me. And for weeks, sometimes up to a month, that solitary song — that four minutes of melody and music — will be the only thing I want to hear. I'll listen to it over and over and over. I'll dream about it and wake up singing it. Usually I spend ridiculous amounts of time picking it apart, learning every word, working out arrangements on my acoustic guitar.

And then, as suddenly as started, it will end. I usually forget how to play it. I forget most of the lyrics. But I always have fond memories of it.

The first affair I remember clearly struck when I was 13 or so and just learning how to play guitar. I stumbled on some documentary on TV that included Lynyrd Skynyrd's entire 10-minute live rendition of "Freebird". The last four minutes or so, with the dueling guitar solos and the crazy build right at the end, floored me. The '90s bands I was listening to at the time didn't play like that. They couldn't. They could try for decades and never be able to pull off that kind of energy. Fortunately my dad had the album on vinyl. I don't think he'd listened to it in years. But I warmed up the turntable and sat in the living room with the headphones on and played it until I was capable of rocking out to that song with the best of the bearded Confederates, who, I would later learn, were the primary sharers of my enthusiasm.



The next most vivid affair struck some years later, my freshman year of college. I'd caught a ride back to Idaho Falls from Logan, Utah, where I was studying, with a friend from high school who was a huge Billy Joel fan. We were listening to a greatest hits compilation, and the only Billy Joel song I knew from Adam — "Piano Man" — came up. And I realized, all at once, that I loved this song. The waltzy beat, the theatrical vibe, but mostly the dark, storytelling lyrics. It's a fantastic song. I promptly learned it and played it several times in coffee shops. (I thought I was being terribly clever: a girl with a guitar singing about being the piano man.) I still get an adrenaline rush when I hear Billy sing, "Aaand the PEEE-AH-NO sounds like a CARRR-ni-VAHL ..." That was my favorite part to sing.



A couple of years ago I'd taken up listening to the oldies radio station in town, which had taken up playing "One" by Three Dog Night on a pretty steady rotation. I must've heard it before, but the stars were in alignment this time. I found myself sitting in parking lots, unable to turn off my car's engine until the song's whopping three minutes were over. Something about the tension of that one-note guitar riff against the thumping bassline and splashy drums, and especially that snappy break toward the end. For such a stereotypically mellow band, the song rocks. Hard. I love it. If only it were a couple of minutes longer.



I once again find myself in the throes of a new passion.

I'm not entirely sure how "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie ended up in our iTunes library, but it did. And a few weeks ago our eyes connected from across the room for the first time. I'm not sure if it was the recent news that there really might be life on Mars, or if there was some other cosmic force at play, but I woke with the ethereal chorus in my head one recent morning and knew it had begun again. I've been humming the haunting melody for two weeks straight and have almost mastered the bizarre chord progression. As I was practicing it the other evening, slouched on the couch with the guitar lying across my stomach, the baby went berzerk, kicking and punching at the guitar and tickling me like crazy. I don't know if that means he's a fan or if he's had enough of the Bowie already. It doesn't really matter. The affair hasn't run its course yet and until it does, baby's gonna be gettin' more.

I still haven't the foggiest idea what Mr. Bowie is singing about, but it's something big. I mean, just listen to him. You can't fake drama like that.






JEM