Month: May 2010

1979 Was a Great Year

/ Deb / 2 Comments

In honor of my youngest sister’s 31st birthday, and in an effort to forget how old that will soon make me, here are, in no particular order, my Top Five Favorite Musical Memories of her:

1.  “Sara Smile” by Hall & Oates. She hates this song. I mean really, really hates it. Which makes it all the more fun to sing it to her, or to call her and leave it on her answering machine. Or to play it at a wedding and dedicate it to her.

2.  “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, Def Leppard. My middle sister’s bachelorette party and a little place called the Grizzly Bar, she danced like nobody’s business, and I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

3.  “Best of What’s Around”, DMB.  A show at the Gorge in 2000, they opened with Don’t Drink the Water.  Towards the end of the song, I told her that I really hoped that they played Best of What’s Around.  Two seconds later, they launched into it.  I turned and punched her in the arm.  Hard.  And she’s never let me forget it.  Every time I hear the opening beats of that song, I think of throwing a right hook.

4.  “Are You Gonna Go My Way”, Lenny Kravitz.  A sister weekend at her apartment in Bellingham, and some cookies.  And that’s about all I can say.

5.  Theme song from Jurassic Park.  The summer that Jurassic Park came out, we had a blast together.  I was home from college, and we spent the summer doing crafty projects and being goofy.  We saw Jurassic Park and were genuinely scared in the middle of the afternoon, dissecting how we would handle it if a velociraptor appeared next to the car on the way home.  To this day, she does an awesome impersonation of a dilophosaur.

Happy Birthday, Janie.  I love you!

Book the Villa, it’s a Sign

/ Deb / 1 Comment

I feel it’s only fair that I fully disclose the Cheese Factor for this post…..it’s fairly significant.  Courtesy of, quite possibly, one of the all time cheesiest songs around: none other than the catchy “Mambo Number Five”.

We traveled last weekend to California for the wedding of a college friend of my husband’s.  Amongst observations of how officially “old” we all are getting,  I found myself feeling reflective of all the times we had shared over the past 20 years….football games, trips, parties, weddings, babies.

At the reception, discussion turned to a trip to France that six of us had taken eleven years ago — long enough to feel like a lifetime — two weddings and five kids ago, between all of us.  We mini-vanned through Paris, Provence, and the French Riviera, drinking wine and butchering the French language at every turn. 

Memories of that trip flooded back to all of us — Gary, the weird fellow American who seemed to be following us in Paris; getting a speeding ticket and having to pay it on the spot; the fabulous dinner in Beynac and the castle tour (in French) that none of us understood, yet we played along, laughing at the tour guide’s jokes when everyone else did.

I don’t remember who said it first:  We all need to go back!  Rent a villa, bring the kids, shop at the farmers market and cook meals in fields of lavender……wouldn’t it be great?   We could see some of the same old sights, drink some great wine, and the kids would have fun too.

The band finished and the inevitable DJ dance music had begun, and then it hit the airwaves:  Mambo Number Five.  This song had haunted us throughout France that fall (and really, where didn’t it haunt everyone that year?).  We heard it everywhere we went, and it has always reminded me of that trip.   The other song of that trip was a catchy little rap tune called “Tomber la Chemise” by the French group Zebda,  but it’s highly unlikely that any of us will hear that song again anytime soon.

I proclaimed it to everyone as a Sign…..a Sign that, YES, we all need to go back!!    Sure, it was a few glasses of wine into the evening, but come on, how often do you hear Mambo Number Five anymore?   And short of hearing the Zebda song, this has GOT to be the Sign!  

I am a big believer in Signs.  I love Signs.  Very rarely do I follow them, though.  Maybe that is part of my problem — it is, after all, about the follow-though.  Otherwise, the Sign loses its significance, and then you convince yourself that it wasn’t really a Sign anyway. 

Everyone (I think) agreed with me, and the coming weeks will determine whether there is any follow-through.   The evening ended with a late night trip to In-n-Out Burger.  What that is a Sign of, I don’t know, but I sure hope the France trip happens.

You Know I Would

/ Deb / 1 Comment

My six year old daughter has a new favorite song.  She asks for it every time we get in the car, and I am happy to play it, especially if it holds off any discovery of Miley Cyrus for at least a few more years.

Luckily, I have three versions of “Out Loud” by Dispatch…ranging from acoustic to a raucous live version with a children’s choir, to suit her every mood (and mine).  She knows all the words and sings them with a sweet little toothless grin.

She doesn’t know it, but I love watching her when music is on.  No matter what she’s doing, if it’s a song she likes, she’ll start grooving in a mindless, automatic kind of way.   She’ll give her opinion on any song, and her favorites are usually some of mine too.   Is she going to be the barefoot dancing girl in the flowy skirt at concerts 15 years from now?  I don’t know, but I sure love that she loves music too.

Today I listened to Out Loud without her around and suddenly it hit me, enough to bring tears to my eyes:

“If you were out walking, heard the cold night coming, would you call my name, cause you know I’d come running.”

No longer just a profession of love, this song has become, to me, an anthem to a mom’s love, and her kids growing up way too fast.  At least for now, both of my kids will still hold my hand in public, and I treasure it every time.

The Keg’s Around Back

/ Deb / Leave a comment

I’ve never had the experience of meeting someone and wondering where they had been all my life. But now I can say that I have had it with a band.

Holy crap, how did I not know about the Black Keys? I am completely hooked on them these days, thanks to my youngest, more musically hip, sister. I felt like a kid in a candy store when I realized that they have more albums than the one she initially gave me.

Gritty, grainy, stripped down – makes me feel like I should be watching them play in a party house with a beer-soaked floor, keg cup in hand. Which is a good thing…figuratively, anyway.