Well, you've probably noticed that I haven't posted on November's Song of the Day. That's because I kind of quit it.
Here's the deal -- I was actually hosting the month, and for awhile things were going swimmingly. The theme I picked was Songs With a Color in the Title, and I started it out with "Red Skies at Night" by The Fixx. It was doing so-so -- some people got it, others who just don't have that '80s sensibility called it cheesy, but I'm kind of used to that. Eventually I added a second rec, the seriously weird "Let's Make the Water Turn Black" by The Mothers of Invention, from their classic LP We're Only It for the Money.
But something happened along the way that happens a lot to me lately. OK, not just lately. I got aggravated with my fellow man. "Not you!" you say. "You're usually so even tempered." I know, right?!
It started when one of the chaps, with whom I get along fine, decided for some reason I'll never understand to give a score of .01 out of 5 to Peter Gabriel's "Red Rain". To "Red Rain"! If they'd have done that to "Red Skies at Night", I'd have been annoyed, but Jesus, who gives a score like to Peter Gabriel, especially on one of his best songs? I thought maybe he was just trying to torpedo it because he didn't want to win the highest score for the month, but he swore that that was just his assessment of the song, and that there was "nothing good about it".
Anyway, I took a breath and tried not to let it get to me. I was even thrilled a few days later when one of the guys whose musical taste is usually the total opposite of mine actually gave a 5 to my Zappa song. (To be fair, I knew he'd score it pretty well because he loves Zappa, but I wasn't expecting a 5.)
Then it all went horribly wrong. Somebody recommended Prince's "Purple Rain". Now I've never written about it here, because it's just never come up, but I consider Prince to have been a total goofball, an artist just too ridiculous to take seriously. Between the phase he went through were he changed his name to a Squiggle, to the time at the beginning of her career where he tried to talk the singer Vanity into going with the name "Vageena", the guy was just a total goober. Sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that's how I feel about it.
I never really liked Michael Jackson -- his style of pop was just never my thing -- but at least I understood why so many people revered him, and even I went out and bought a copy of Thriller (like everyone else). Prince I just never got, and I've always been mystified that so many musicians I respect hold him in such esteem. (Go watch the trailer sometime for his "classic" second film, Under the Cherry Moon and then try to tell me that he wasn't a total idiot.) The most I'll give you is that I actually like "When Doves Cry" and I sort of half like "Raspberry Beret". But on the whole, the guy was a bowser. (For the record, Denise likes him. Go figure.)
Anyway, I gave "Purple Rain" a mediocre score, a 2.4 or 2.5, something like that, and I expected to get blasted for it. But then, much to my amazement, one of the regulars gave it an even-lower 1 out of 5, and declared that while he actually rated the song much higher than that, from now on, he was going to give any song that anyone rec'd that was a classic an automatic 1, in protest. And right after that, another one of the guys also scored it a 1 and said he was going to do the same.
Now, in a way, I get it. The actual idea of Song of the Day was always to rec a somewhat obscure song that you like that you think might have flown below other people's radar. Instead, we've had songs like Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" and Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" win the month, and that is kind of weird. But as soon as you start ranking songs strategically, on any other criteria than what you actually believe the song deserves, you've gone down a dark hole. It's a short step from there to, 'I think Running Up That Hill' deserves a 4.8 but I'm going to give it a 2 so my song has a chance."
Anyway, right about that point, my aggravation meter went off, and I just needed to get away. It was either that, or I was going to start getting into arguments that would make me more and more irritated. So I made sure the gang had what they needed to finish off the month, and I removed myself from SOTD.
If any of you want to know how it turned out, you can find the list for the month at Sputnik Music Song of the Day November 2021 and the YouTube playlist at November SOTD playlist. The winning song for the month was the rec for November 30, "Blue Leaves, Red Dust" by Youth Group.
I mentioned Thanksgiving because it's relevant to the discussion of my "aggravation meter", and why, as I've spoken about before, I find myself becoming more and more of a housebound shut in. Because it just seems that more and more lately, when I have to deal with other people, I just hate it.
Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't the family or friends at Thanksgiving, it was other people.
Here's the story -- at around 1PM or so, I left to pick up my brother at the train station. I got there a little early, pulled into a spot, and waited for the train. As I did, much like the playground scene in The Birds, first one car showed up, then another, then another ... you get the picture.
And it was all going fine, until one pinhead got the bright idea that instead of pulling into a spot, he would wait right at the front of the lane that people would be using to leave the parking lot once they've picked up their parties. Because he was obviously way more important than the rest of us, so why should he have to wait?
Sure enough, a minute later, another brain surgeon sees this and says, "Great idea!" and pulls in right behind the first fellow. Pretty soon, you've got a train of these VIP's parked one behind the other, and blocking in those of us who pulled into actual parking spots.
The train arrived and my brother found me right away. But of course we couldn't go anywhere, because there was a line of cars behind us locking us all in as we waited for the original fool to move. And naturally, his party were the last people off the train, and there about four of them, and they all had suitcases that they had to spastically try to shove into his car before he could move and let everybody else start to leave the parking lot.
As you'd expect, as this was going on, I was narrating all of this to my brother, in between shouting out the car window, "Hey, you want to step it up there, Blondie?!" to the last of the morons trying to fit a suitcase into a car as though it was a square peg and the car was a round hole. (Actually, to her credit, I think the reason she was having so much trouble was she was flustered, because she, at least, had the good grace to be aware that she was mucking up the progress for everyone.) And my brother was laughing hysterically, because, well, he's my brother and he knows me.
The moral of the story, of course, is that I continue to grow older and crankier, and less and less tolerant of the foibles of my fellow human beings.
Anyway, I'm not exactly sure where this blog will be going in 2022. I'm not going to shut it down, because I still want to continue the My Favorite Artists series, and if Omicron allows Denise and I to go on the 80s cruise in March, I'd like to write about that, too. But I'm really not expecting to be going back to live shows anytime soon, especially with COVID seemingly picking up steam again. (In fact, we had a bit of a scare this week, as Denise had been exposed and also was showing symptoms. Luckily, she tested negative, and she's almost better now.)
So while I've been trying to at least write two entries a month over the course of this last year, one of which has been my monthly description of the Song of the Day list, I don't know that I'll have the material to make that happen anymore. But when I figure it out, I'll let you know.
In any event, I'm trying to finish up my listening for 2021, so if nothing else, I'll have the year-end Best Of lists coming out in a few weeks. Until then, if I don't get another post up before the end of the month, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
