Steady as She Ohs

There are things I know I shouldn't like, but do. Or at least think I shouldn't like. Mostly because you, yes, you, like them. And I don't want to be like you or at least so many of yous. I assume, perhaps very wrongly, that quality is inverse to popularity. (Yes, perhaps this is an excuse for my self in the world, sure.) Of course I mostly mean yous who don't read this blog, but that's most of the yous in the known universe. So the majority of you are safe, if philistines.

And I can see I already need to start again. (How many of my entries begin this way? You readers are so patient with me. Both of you.)

I like the Eurythmics. There, it's in print. Don't love them, but have to admit they put on one of the best live shows I've ever seen about 1983 or so and here I am for the second time blogging about one of the best moments from that evening, a rising, ecstatic, SST of a solo by Dave Stewart to close the song. Yes, the silly YouTube of a performance of the song semi-similiar to the one I experienced isn't really a video but space shots backed with a bootleg. But it's quite a bootleg. Out of this world, you might say.

One of the best parts about "Jennifer" (beyond it being the name of the lovely lass who plucked my virginity) is its simplicity (and I'm talking about the song, not the lovely lass or my virginity)--so few words, so few notes, it might as well be Steve Reich and roll. But that steady as she goes just makes the ever-lifting end solo all the more needed, all the more damn right and lovely. And then there's the Laurie Anderson toss-off "ohohohohs" that are the line where the human and mechanical make the coldly beautiful, and therefore all the more unexpected, as we tend to like our beauty warm, don't we. (Digression: And who better for Annie Lennox to channel than Laurie Anderson, a fellow traveler on the androgynous express, which reminds me of the time as a graduate student instructor when I made the kids go see Home of the Brave, indeed I was one of those teachers, and one stunned and protected mid-West coed wrote in her viewing log "she's not very ladylike.")

Then again, that's the whole point of this entry--you never know what life might throw on your plate for your delectation. Things can be steady and patterns emerge but when they break--like the clever clicking of the drumsticks bit you can see starting at about 3:17 in this concert footage (plus odd claymation and too much ad for my liking but...) --at the least you end up with a smile on your face. At most you get transported. And to quote Laurie Anderson:

And you you're no one
And you, you're falling
And you, you're traveling
Traveling at the speed of light.