Usually, I write here about music I'm listening to. After picking up my guitar for the first time in months, I started thinking about the creative end.
I'd like to know about the instruments you play. I don't care if you are proficient; most people aren't. If playing is a recreational activity for you, if you are able to pick out a tune of some sort or lay down a beat, that's good enough for me.
I am an actively mediocre guitarist, but I will also take credit for the piano. I took lessons for about three years in middle scchool. I don't remember any pieces, but I can still find my way around a keyboard and sheet music if I need to. I am also an awesome air drummer, but all my efforts at translating that to real drums have failed, so I won't claim percussion.
I hope you can see that this is wide open, with only the most modest of criteria. I can't make a poll with every instrument, so there are some general categories to take in some more uncommon instruments. If you choose a group category, I invite you to comment and get specific.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Lip Service
From This Year's Model by Elvis Costello.
The whole album remains a huge touchstone for me, over thirty years down the road. I hate to say that he peaked so early, and there were other high points, but there, I've said it. He never did better than this. For me, the album is intractably linked to the repressed anger that was my internal life in my teen years. The powerlessness, the humiliations, the rejection by the fairer sex. It's all here, and much more articulate than I was at the time. Where I was left speechless, Elvis spoke for me.
"Lip Service" is built on a strummed 12-string riff, much brighter musically than the lyrics would warrant. The singer appears to have gone with the preemptive strike, rejecting before he can be rejected. Going through the motions, with sincerity the fallen victim.
"When did you become so choosy?
Don't act like you're above me,
Just look at your shoes."
"Lip service is all you'll ever get from me"
The whole album remains a huge touchstone for me, over thirty years down the road. I hate to say that he peaked so early, and there were other high points, but there, I've said it. He never did better than this. For me, the album is intractably linked to the repressed anger that was my internal life in my teen years. The powerlessness, the humiliations, the rejection by the fairer sex. It's all here, and much more articulate than I was at the time. Where I was left speechless, Elvis spoke for me.
"Lip Service" is built on a strummed 12-string riff, much brighter musically than the lyrics would warrant. The singer appears to have gone with the preemptive strike, rejecting before he can be rejected. Going through the motions, with sincerity the fallen victim.
"When did you become so choosy?
Don't act like you're above me,
Just look at your shoes."
"Lip service is all you'll ever get from me"
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