Music

Today’s the last day of the 30 Day Song Challenge, and it’s been a lot of fun for me. That’s partly because I love music so much, and spending a whole month thinking about the different whys and wherefores that brought me to the songs that I love has indeed been a “challenge,” but a…

The television show that I loved the most as a child was a vaudeville-type show created by puppeteer Jim Henson called The Muppet Show. Some of my very best Muppet friends appeared on the show regularly: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzy Bear, The Swedish Chef, Rowlf the Dog, Statler and Waldorf (pictured left),…

Funny enough, I was just thinking about “a song that makes me feel guilty” a few days ago, when I noticed that the ice cream trucks in my neighborhood were playing “Camptown Races” and a bunch of other tunes that seemed to be taken from Foghorn Leghorn‘s Greatest Hits. My selection for today is another…

Yesterday, I noted that I couldn’t believe I made it 25 days without picking a Johnny Cash song. Today, I can’t believe I made it 26 days without picking a Bob Dylan Song. Something must be wrong with this Challenge. Bob Dylan’s songs were the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. I…

Okay, so I actually can play the song that I’m selecting for today, but I play it badly. Despite my pretensions to the contrary yesterday, I’m not a very good guitar player. I never learned the scales, I don’t know anything about musical theory, and I can’t pick worth a damn. What I can do…

Oh man, seriously, I love ABBA soooooo much. No joke. I once said that if I were ever to get a tattoo, I would have “Super Trouper” tattooed on my shoulder. (For the record, no tats here. My skin remains as clean as the driven snow.) I kind of wish I did feel guilty about…

Like most people, I don’t listen to the radio as much as I used to. I do listen to NPR every morning as I’m getting ready, but as soon as the news programming is over I usually plug in my iPod. The same is true in my car. However, when I am listening to radio…

Let me just say at the outset that the ONLY reason I didn’t choose Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” for today is… Wait, I’m not sure… can we pick two? I used to love “Brown Eyed Girl” until I heard every cover band in the country massacre it and had to choke back throw-up in…

We’re halfway through the 30 Day Song Challenge today. Thanks to those of you who’ve been hanging in so far. Today I’m supposed to post a “song that describes me.” Before I do, I just want to offer something like a preemptive apology for my lack of elaboration on this particular selection. You see, this…

One of the terrible things that happened to music after the introduction of the iPod was that people stopped buying– and listening to– whole albums. Most people get their music one track at a time these days, which unfortunately encourages artists to produce hit “singles” and discourages them from producing albums with some kind of…