Posts Tagged ‘Music’
Here is a song to bump you for Friday afternoon, and through the weekend. I can’t get enough of it.
I realized the pink tulip lips photo in the last post was appropriate to my mood lately. Pretty, awesome and a little nuts.
So I threw together some music to go with it. Something to listen to, to accompany your state of flux, if you also happen to be having one. Very dreamy and subversive at the same time.
Happy Monday.
XO
I watched bits of Laurel Canyon all weekend, which was playing heavily on cable while I was stuck in bed with the flu. It is very much a character film, but one of those in which the dialogue is almost an accessory to the story, told effortlessly through visuals alone: incredible locale, gorgeous people (and, well, ok, likely the photography had something to do with it).
Los Angeles seems so overwhelming but there is such a familiarity to Laurel Canyon for me.. somehow I live there someday, and I drive some (biofueled) beat up Mercedes, and I throw little get togethers for my visual art and musician friends.. we dine outdoors under vines that form the roof of my poolside patio, lit with lanterns in the dusk. There are glasses clinking.
I have always been drawn toward both Laurel and Topanga Canon for their wacky history and propensity for attracting boho musicians: Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, The Rolling Stones, CSNY folks. These characters were gods in my youth, not just (or even necessarily) for their output but for what they represented: a counterculture my parents swore off their earthly possessions for, marched for, and believed in. And I have inherited the reverence for that moment in American history though the boomers have long since bought gas-guzzling SUV’s and traded their guitar picks for laptops. I carry the gratitude for what music meant to a generation at that moment and it still means something to me.
Listening to music in this sense can be a form of respecting your elders, full of the same good intentions as reading a classic novel or making your grandmother’s jello salad for Thanksgiving. It reminds you of where you come from, both literally and figuratively, thereby keeping you honest when you decide where you’re going next.
So I went upstairs and picked out 5 records to play, by artists who struck a definitive electric guitar chord in my life, and ones that will continue this long Canyon float into Monday. They’re playing right now in the living room.
Rickie Lee Jones- Evening of my Best Day
Sly and the Family Stone- Fresh
Lenny Kravitz- Mama Said
Bonnie Raitt- Heave a Heart
Liz Phair- Exile in Guyville