Beatles Album of the Week

I'm going to switch it up a little this week with the release of LOVE, the soundtrack to the Cirque Du Soleil show of the same name. It is a brilliant mash up of sorts, as George Martin, the Beatles producer, went back to the original master tapes and recreated every song from the ground up. Take the drum intro from this song, the vocal harmony from that song, add a hint of a guitar riff from another song and you have a whole new feel to these long beloved songs.

The majic of this album is that an experiment like this could have gone horribly wrong. Taking music that is so familiar and loved by so many people and tweaking it in this way could have been reduced to nothing more than a cheesy gimmick, but the album just sounds so fresh and alive. If you haven't seen the show you there is no substitution for hearing this music through the amazing custom built theater and sound system at the Mirage but if you can't make it too Vegas, this album is the next best thing.

Look what a mess we've made of love

The Bachelor is an awful awful show. It pains me to admit this but I actually spent a good amount of time watching this run of the Bachelor (I have not spent more than 2 minutes watching the show before this season). Who thought this show was a good idea? It is brutal. What good comes out of taking a sinlge guy and 25 single girls and then making a game show out of the whole thing in which the winner gets a shot at marrying the guy. Explain to me how this turns out good for anyone!

The girls who don't win: they leave being rejected and felling like they wasted their time, especially the very last one, who spends her last few days on the gameshow wondering if she will be engaged to this guy only to find out she was just like the previous 23 losers, only she got her hopes up more than they did. She probably is the biggest loser of them all.

The bachelor: he meets a woman who will potentially be his wife on a game show and during the process opens himself up to falling in love with multiple girls. He goes an a multitude of potentially romantic dates, kissing every girl he can get his hands and then he is required to send the girls off one by one until he finds the one he wants to be with and in the process he is conditioned to not get too attached to any one girl because you only have so many roses. Sounds like a guy any girl would be lucky to have.

The girl who wins: Lucky her right? I mean what little girl doesn't grow up dreaming of being proposed to in this way, after her future husband arrives at her as his choice by a process of elimination, and then being proposed to on national TV. Then the best part is after all of this happens they get to watch the whole thing together as the show airs. Someone tell me why we don't have a live feed from the lucky couples bedroom as they watch the show as it airs. Just imagine him trying to explain every romantic encounter with the other girls who didn't win to the winning girl. "Hey at least you won, right?"

tomkat makes me sick to my stomach

Just a short post so I can be on record with my prediction. I think that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will be divorced by April 2008.

Beatles Song of the Week 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0

I'm not sure how far I am behind in this category and I am too lazy to go through and figure it out but I think I am at least two weeks behind and probably three so here you go.

For this week I pick Run For Your Life. This is a song of pure jealousy and rage because a guy suspects his "girl" of cheating on him and of course in early Beatles fashion it is singable and poppy which kind of masks the jealousy.

The chorus goes like this...

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end little girl

and then one of the verses says...

Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I've said
Baby, I'm determined
And I'd rather see you dead

Don't try to read into this selection at all. I am not jealous of anything or anyone, I just think the song is good.

For last week I will select She's a Woman.

I am selecting this to offset any chance that you think I selected the previous song because the bride is giving boys the eye.

She don't give the boys the eye,
She hates to see me cry,
She is happy just to hear me say
That I will never leave her.
She don't give the boys the eye,
She will never make me jealous,
Gives me all her time as well as lovin',
Don't ask me why.

She's a woman who understands.
She's a woman who loves her man.
That one is more autobiographical for me than Run For Your Life.

And finally I will select Till There Was You, a cover of the song from The Music Man. The Beatles actually played this when they performed for the Queen and a recording of that performance can be heard on The Beatles Anthology 1 disc 2. Good song from a good play.

One Bank

Where do I even start? I mean this is just absolutely...(searching for the right word)... awkward?! hideous?! painful?! awkpaineous?! There it is! This video is awkpaineous!

3 questions come to mind.

#1 How long do you think they practiced this before their performance? My guess is there was at least 4 to 5 power lunches spent writing lyrics and maybe another 2 or 3 late night office jam sessions where they loosened the ties, rolled up the sleeves and let the good times roll.

#2 Why is no one in the audience laughing? How long can you hold it in? I mean that "What's in your wallet? It's not Capital One." line alone was enough to make me pee my pants. This song is the definition of unintentional comedy, and if the audience can't appreciate that when it's happening then it's their loss. Most likely they were all sitting there in complete shock and horror, hoping that this wouldn't find it's way onto youtube so they could avoid questions and comments from friends and family like, "Hey weren't you away at that Bank of America and MBNA merger celebration last weekend? Don't lie! I know you were because you asked me to feed your cats. One Bank man. One Bank." and "Those guys were good! It will only be a matter of time before they are playing at The Department of the Treasury!"

#3 How does a song like One get picked to represent the merger of two banks who are, by the rendition's own admition, in it for the profits. Maybe it's just me but I would have gone with a cover of Chain Hang Low by Jibbs.

You're so vain, you probably think this blog is about you

You know that Carly Simon song You're so vain?

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't You? Don't You?


If the song isn't about him who is it about? If you are singing a song about a person's vanity, it is about them. Jokes on you Carly Simon, he wins in the end because the song is about him.

Until We Feed The Starving Blood Is On All Of Our Hands

I was listening to this Joseph Arthur song today in the car and it reminded me so much of the message of the Hebrew Prophets, especially the first part of the song. However I do think he is missing one of the important ingredients that the prophets had...hope. Joseph Arthur is not Jewish or Christian (as far as I know) but I do think that the children of God would do well to pay attention to and reflect on this message.

Anyway here are the lyrics to All Of Our Hands for you to read and ponder.

All Of Our Hands

Until we feed the starving, blood is on all of our hands
Babylon is burning and there is no promised land
Until we clothe the naked all of us are damned
Dreams are just for savages calling themselves men

And in time fire will rain down
On our head
The sky will open up
And life will be bled

We are all the same spirit, we are all the same love
And still somehow we've chosen to slaughter the white dove
There is only one energy just different sets of clothes
For human beings to dress up and protect what no one knows

So in time fire will rain down
On our head
The sky will open up
And life will be bled

All of us will fall into the same hole
And all will reunite into the same soul
The death that we allow is the death that is our own
The murders we commit are committed in our home

So in time fire will rain down On our head
The sky will open up
And life will be bled

Murdered by indifference, murdered by our greed
Murdered by our riches taken from the ones in need
Murdered in our churches and murdered by belief
We who just do nothing shall be murdered in our sleep

In time fire will rain down
On our heads
The sky will open up
And life will be bled

Truth is just a word said to the ones who plead
What will we get back when we plant a poison seed?
Consumed by our consumption that can never be enough
The hungry are attacking, they are swallowing our blood

And in time fire will rain down
On our head
The sky will open up
And life wil be bled

The victims are now victimized and the world is inside out
Everyone is terrified the faithful are in doubt
Religion is a gimmick we want back the god they stole
But everyone is fighting to go deeper in the hole
Some believe salvation comes when the world is gone
But we have been forsaken, there is nowhere we belong

So in time fire will rain down
On our head
The sky will open up
And life will be bled

90 in November

Are any other CA residents bothered by the fact that Thanksgiving is a few weeks away and it feels like we are living on the surface of the sun? As a lifelong resident of southern california, I don't like the rain, but to be honest I wouldn't mind some right about now. This is just ridiculous.

Beatles Song of The Week 7.0

I let the bride pick this week's selection and she chose Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the song of the week. This is the first song on the album by the same name, which by the way, was the album for me that started my Beatles love affair. I still remember in high school hanging out at my friend Mike's house playing basketball in his driveway listening to music. It sounds funny, but during those times at Mike's, my relationship with music went from casual interest to intense fan. For whatever reason, Nirvana, the Grateful Dead and of course The Beatles stand out as three bands I can remember listening to in Mike's garage in between games, and specifically I remember that fateful day when our mutual friend Dylan brought over an album called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was immediately struck by the album's cover and then while listening, the diversity of musical genres that existed on the same record was something I had never encountered before. It is brilliant, and to this day it is a record that all other pop/rock records aspire to.

Good choice Bride.

Turnover

First let me say that I really loved "Love", the Cirque show that the bride and I went to see last weekend. It was brilliant and my opinion on the whole bizarre european acrobats, while eerily spot on, was nonetheless broadened by their beautiful performance. Some of the performers walked about in the audience pre-show and let's just say I was made a little uneasy by their presence. Not only do they "stay in character", you kind of get the sense that these people are always this way; they are their character. It's like the time that I worked at Halloween Haunt at Knott's Berry Farm and noticed that all of my fellow employees were as scary out of costume as in. I often found myself thinking, "Wow, you really are a vampire!"

Now on to a completely different subject...USC Football. They lost today to Oregon State 33-31 and I really am not as upset as I thought I might be. When they lost in the Rose Bowl in January it was like someone had bagged on my momma, punched me in the gut, fired me from my job, and then stole my cd collection only to burn it in a bonfire rather than to marvel at my excellent taste in music, all in one day. It was terrible. I mourned for weeks. Still to this day it hurts, almost 10 months later. I also still remember watching the Cal loss in '03 (USC's last Pac-10 loss prior to today) in a sports bar in Phoenix, because I was there for a convention, which I ditched to watch that heart-wrenching game.

But today is different.

Now of course today wasn't for the national championship like the Rose Bowl vs. Texas. But if the rankings were to be believed, USC was in the hunt for yet another national championship, having been ranked 3rd in the BCS prior to todays game. But I knew better, and have thought that USC was overrated the whole season.

I just have never felt right about this team. There is just something missing, maybe a few things actually. I really don't like them. It is hard for me to say this, but I don't think they are done losing. Of course I recognize that I was spoiled with the previous USC teams that played for 3 straight national championships, but I really don't miss those teams. Pining for the good ol' days is not my issue.

Ultimately it comes down to the quarterback. Football is a team game, but there is no doubt who is the leader of the team; the QB. I can't stand John David Booty, USC's QB. This came as a slow realization. Little by little the confidence I had in Booty after the opening game against Arkansas dwindled as each week he and his team seemed to escape defeat rather than achieve victory. After the Arizona State game two weeks ago, which USC barely won 28-21, no thanks to John David Booty, who had 2 turnovers resulting in 14 points for ASU, I said to myself, "I just don't like John David Booty." And it is safe to say that today's performance (another fumble and interception) didn't improve my view of him.

So what do you do if there is someone you don't like at all leading your favorite sports team? Well the beauty (and the curse) of the college game is that everyone has to run out of eligibility sometime.

Beatles Song of the Week 5.0 and 6.0

So today you get a two for one, or really last week's song and this week's song together.

This is a special edition of BSOTW, because this weekend my bride and I will be seeing the Cirque Du Soleil performance of Love in Sin City! I have to say that the only way I would ever go to a Cirque show would be if it was themed around Beatles music because, quite frankly, European acrobats scare me. In all honesty I am a little apprehensive about the whole thing because there is just something about circus-type performances that rub me the wrong way. There is a reason that the words "circus" and "freak" seem to go together so well. Who knows, maybe I will have a different opinion after the show. However, the fact that the theater was built specifically with this show in mind and that George Martin, the Beatles producer, was involved on the musical side of things, makes me very excited to see it.

Anyway, with all that in mind, my Beatles songs of the week are Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight. If you are familiar with Abbey Road then you know that these two songs blend in together and essentially form one beautiful piece of music.

I love the lyric from Golden Slumbers:

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles await you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry
and I will sing a lullaby

These are words of comfort and reassurance. Singing lullaby's reminds me of my grandparents, who would sing to my brother and I when we would stay over at their house.

Golden Slumbers then leads into Carry That Weight, which in turn harkens back to You Never Give Me Your Money, creating a musical inclusio for the last run of songs on Abbey Road. Now here is a big if, but imagine if Lennon was never killed and somehow, someway the Beatles decided to do a reuinion tour, or even just one more live performance. And imagine they played live that run of songs from You Never Give Me Your Money to The End.

Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to see the Beatles live, without European acrobats.

When bands die

It has been too long since I last posted. I still owe you, the faithful reader, a Beatles song for last week and it is coming time to declare one for this week as well. My lack of attention to this blog is not due to apathy but rather just plain ol' busyness. I have a lot of reading for school, which even though it is now 11:43 pm, I should be doing instead of blogging. Man it feels good to be a slacker student again. I will do Carl Jung, who said "Hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil", one better by saying "Busy is the devil." I think the two go hand in hand.

Anyway the occasion for my writing is that I have found out that a very good band has broken up. Acceptance, which released an album entitled Phantoms last year, broke up in August, after their lead singer decided to leave the band and get a "real job." Why am I only now finding out about this? Well, because they announced the break up in a blog on their Myspace, and you already know how I feel about that place (if you don't check out the archives!). Myspace has become the source of information distribution for many artists, which I understand because they are "connected" to the fans so easily through their page, but folks like me, who don't have their own Space get left out, because bands are neglecting their standard websites to maintain their Myspace. I'm not kidding. Go to their website. It makes it seem like Phantoms is just now coming out.

So, knowing this, and being tired of wondering when the next Acceptance record was going to come out, I finally checked their Space yesterday and found out the bad news. I wonder what a reasonable mourning process is when a band dies. I really like music, so is it ok for me to be sad about this? I mean truly sad? I really was looking forward to another record from them and now all I have is Phantoms, which will now have this "Man this record is good but I wish I had another Acceptance record" stigma attached to it. I feel the same way with "Till we Have Faces" by Noise Ratchet. There needs to be another Noise Ratchet record after that but no, that's all we get.

Oh well I can always listen to the Beatles. Which reminds me...

Sufjan Stevens at the Wiltern

Monday night my bride and I and two of our friends went to the Wiltern in Los Angeles to see Sufjan Stevens in conert. I literally haven't been the same since. Music really does have the power to change people, and Sufjan's music is very powerful. I'm still deciding if it was the best concert I have ever been to or not, but the fact that I can't decide doesn't mean I think it wasn't as good as it could have been, it just means I have been to a lot of concerts. That makes it hard to choose the best one.

They say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That phrase is usually quoted to state that there is no objective way to measure beauty. But at the concert on Monday there was this tangible sense of beauty. I mean it was real. You could not only hear it but you could feel it, touch it. And I got the sense that I wasn't the only one beholding it, that everyone in the room was feeling as beautiful as I was. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but does beauty from time to time take on a form that becomes so overwhelming that everyone has no choice but to behold it?

These are the words that come to my mind when I try to describe the Sufjan Stevens concert.

A couple of my favorite performances from the night...
The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us
The Dress Looks Nice on You
He Woke Me Up Again

Beatles Song of The Week 4.0

Two of Us which is on the album Let It Be.

It's a great driving song with the repeated line "We're on our way home, we're going home."

That's all I have to say about that.

Beauty and Commerce

This is the most beautiful commercial I have seen in a long while. It just gives me the chills when I watch it. The song, which is called Half Acre and is by a band called Hem, is so beautiful and haunting. I love that Liberty Mutual chose to send this beautiful message with their advertising money rather than try to sell me something I don't need in the first place.

Watch the video and then go do something kind for someone else.

I'm a seminarian!

No seminarian isn't one of the signs of the Zodiac (I'm a leo). I started seminary this week at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and I love it so far. It seems like it will be fairly manageable as far as scheduling and stress and all those time constraint things. I don't have too many assignments in my two courses (Hebrew Prophets and Christian Ethics) but I do have a ton of reading, which is fine by me because I love to read. It just feels good to be learning again. Because I am only going part time I am afraid it will take me a long time to finish. My goal is to finish the degree in less than four years.
I'm sure the ethics class will give me a ton to rant about here on the ol' weblog so stay tuned for my thoughts on Just War Theory, Abortion, Stem-Cell Research, and Immigration, among other fun topics! Also I could get going a Creative Apathy Featured Prophet and switch it up from time to time like the Beatles Song of the Week. Man, isn't seminary fun?!

Beatles Song of The Week 3.0

I'm gonna go with If I Fell which is on the soundtrack for A Hard Days Night. I picked it because I like the scene in the movie in which the song is played. Ringo is "sulking" about a tv crewman touching his drums and John sings the song to him, while making faces, in order to cheer him up. If you haven't seen A Hard Days Night, you should go rent it and watch it. It's great.

Beatles song of the week-2.0

This week I am gonna go with You Never Give Me Your Money as Beatles Song of the Week. It comes from the album Abbey Road which is such a unique Beatles album. It is hard to get into the album because it such an album of contrasts. For example listen to Something and Maxwell's Silver Hammer back to back. If you didn't know any better you would think it was two very different bands recording these songs. Or maybe more contrasted yet, listen to I Want You (She's So Heavy) and Here Comes the Sun back to back.

Well the reason I picked You Never Give Me Your Money off this album is because it's the moment that the album (finally) settles into a groove. When I hear the simple piano that opens the song I just start feeling like things fall into place and all will be ok with the world. And there is no better theology than the refrain that ends the song: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
All good children go to heaven.

Let's see that one again

Conclusive Video Evidence
Man I hate bad officiating. And in this day and age where every little detail of a sporting event is covered in every possible angle, there is no way soemthing like this should happen. I am a huge USC fan and most of the time I will root for PAC-10 teams in interconference play, as was the case on Saturday in the Oklahoma Oregon game. But PAC-10 officials missing a call like this just makes the conference look bad. Why have instant replay if it doesn't work? I don't know one person who would look at the video evidence and say that #1 Oregon didn't touch the ball before it went 10 yards, and #2 Oregon recovered the kick. And yet someone did look at the video and concluded both of those things. The link above proves that whether they touched the ball or not Oklahoma recovered the kick. How can the officials clear out the pile and then give possession to Oregon when the ball was in the hands of an Oklahoma player?

It really hurts me to write all this, because I hate Oklahoma as much as the next USC fan, but they got robbed.

If I was as much an Oregon fan as I am a USC fan I would be ashamed of that victory.

Beatles song of the week

A new feature here at Creative Apathy... Beatles song of the week! I pick a Beatles song every week and then let you know which one I picked. How cool is that?

By the way, for those of you who didn't already know, the Beatles are my favorite band.

So for the first ever Beatles song of the week selection I choose (drum roll)...Happiness is a Warm Gun. (and the crowd goes wild!)

Happiness is a Warm Gun can be found on disc 1 of the White Album. Part of why I love the Beatles so much is because they were almost like 4 bands in one. When the inner strife started to take it's toll on the band, they began writing and even recording more and more individually. For example the song before Happiness is a Warm Gun on the White Album is While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a distinctively George song. I don't even really think of this song as a Beatles song, I think of it as a George Harrison song that he let The Beatles put their name on. Then Happiness is a Warm Gun is a distinctively John song. It has a darker tone and just feels like John Lennon. Then after Happiness is the distinctively Paul song, Martha My Dear. The song sounds like a show tune with strings, horns, and even the piano at the beginning setting the melody. Ringo's turn doesn't come until 5 songs later on Don't Pass Me By, which like other Beatles songs that Ringo sang lead on (Yellow Submarine, Octopus's Garden etc.) tends to be a little annoying after repeated listens.

Unfortunatley I can't give you a link to itunes so you can download the song or the album and hear it because there isn't any Beatles music on itunes. Just do yourself a favor and buy The White Album and any other Beatles albums you don't own yet. Tune in next week for Beatles Song of the Week version 2.0!