Author: Deb

"Oh, You Like the Banjo, Eh?"

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……asked John Butler of the Moore Theatre crowd, when we all cheered as a stagehand brought one to him.  “Well then, let’s have a little hoedown”.  Best line of the night; totally cracked me up.  My sisters and I have called his shows ‘hippie hoedowns’ for a long time.   It seems to be the only way to describe  their concert scene.

Recently I was popping off to some friends about how you shouldn’t go to a concert if you intend to sit down, and how it irritates me to see people sitting like deadbeats at a show.  I think my actual words were, “if you intend to sit down, you don’t deserve your ticket.  Go home and listen to a CD”.  This is mostly true, but of course I don’t really have that extreme a view on it.  I fully support sitting down when it’s a really shitty song or as a form of social protest, such as when DMB plays any of their new crap.

I just want everyone to have their Concert Moment.  That’s what I’m in it for — the one moment in the concert where you say to yourself- YES, this is why I am here.  I usually get that Moment, and if I don’t, I never go back to see the band again.

So at the John Butler Trio show, my sisters and I had the requisite group of ex-frat boys in front of us.  A small price to pay for otherwise awesome Row 6 seats, I must say.   And watching those dudes was almost as much fun as watching the band.  They danced, they sang, they did fist pumps and high fives for songs they liked.   They were having their Concert Moment, and I loved it.

My sisters loved watching them too, but more as spectacle.   Together, we have been known to wreak some havoc on fellow concert goers.  Two that come to mind are 1) the Gum Butt incident, and 2) the pelting of a couple who were making out during an entire Pearl Jam show.  Lucky for the frat boys, however, we all behaved ourselves this time.

And the hippie hoedown was a blast for all three of us, even with our differing views of the Perfect Concert.  While I love standing shoulder to shoulder with sweaty, dancing strangers, my youngest sister would really prefer not to.  She’d like to sit down, and once proclaimed that anyone standing and dancing should be banished to a “designated dancing section”.

Given that she’s entitled to her Concert Moment too, she might actually be on to something.

1979 Was a Great Year

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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

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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

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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

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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.

"Buttercup! Buttercup!"

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My sister dubbed it a “90’s Love Fest”, and that’s exactly what it was. Complete with Doc Martens and long shorts, worn with a long flannel, slyly shouldering a vintage “Drop in the Park” tee shirt.

I’ve been to lots of Pearl Jam shows over the years, but have never seen the grunge look out in such full effect as on this evening. Perhaps Brad’s first show in years, and the potential of a (surviving members of) Mother Love Bone reunion, were enough to bring them all out. At any rate, The Showbox was packed, and we were all ready for a little walk down Seattle’s musical memory lane.

And what a walk it was. I lost track of the number of different musical collaborations up on stage….various versions of back-in-the-day Seattle bands, culminating with a reunion of the surviving members of Mother Love Bone that blew my mind.

I never again saw the dude that I had seen in line with the “Drop in the Park” shirt, but it hit me at some point during the evening that he could not have been at that show, unless he was about 10 years old at the time.  A free Pearl Jam concert at Magnuson Park, three weeks into my law school career — I was at the show, instead of in the law library, which kind of speaks for itself.   I bought one of the shirts but never wore it and ended up giving it away…..(so who knows, maybe my old shirt was at The Showbox with me,  on someone else’s body?)

It was refreshing to see the ubiquitous Seattle drink-in-hand head-nod: that disinterested method of rocking out that I only see from vintage Seattle concert-goers. And no cell phones taking pictures; it could have been 1992 all over again. Except for the fact that I now have two kids (and an awesome husband who offered to stay home so I could have a night out with my sister).

The cab dropped us off at 2:30am, and I spent the next day paying for it. Totally worth it though; as my husband quipped, “that’s the life of a rock star, man”. Exactly.

Good Tunes, Like Sisters, Come in Groups of Three

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For anyone who has ever said that I am too structured, check out how I’m living on the edge these days:

Instead of listening to designated playlists, or “shuffle” on my ipod, lately I’ve been listening to songs in alphabetical order.

I love things in groups of three, and I love juxtaposition (both the word, and the actual effect). Imagine my delight when the following three songs played in this order:

1. Don’t Disturb This Groove (The Station);
2. Don’t Drink the Water (DMB); and
3. Don’t Stop Believing (Journey)

I laughed out loud at how different these three songs are, and how I love them all nearly equally, for very different reasons:

“Don’t Disturb This Groove” conjures visions of my middle sister, cruising her Honda with the sunroof open, the wind fluttering through her big hair. I don’t know if she ever actually listened to this song (as opposed to the Color Me Badd that I know for a fact was blared), but it’s all within the same genre….the 80’s/90’s slow groove….whatever happened to that?

“Don’t Drink the Water”…..both of my sisters, numerous DMB shows at The Gorge (“there’s plutonium in the water”?). Dave opened my favorite show ever, in Vegas, with this one. Good times all around.

“Don’t Stop Believing”…..again, my sisters, this time with a K-Tel tape and a boombox, and a family camping trip to Yellowstone, listening over and over until the batteries warbled it to a stop.

Three little tunes, different stages of my life, peacefully co-existing side by side in the digital age. Perfect.

Jerry Garcia in Solid Gold

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Today I listened to an old Dave Matthews Band show from August 9, 1995. This was the day that Jerry Garcia died, I had just taken the Bar Exam, and, three years later, it would be my wedding day.

This is what music is all about for me. I remember that exact day so clearly — driving in my old car, a.k.a. “Solid Gold”, when I heard that Jerry had died.  I was bummed that I had never gotten around to seeing the Dead in concert. I was never really into their music, but I have always loved the pot-smoking Dead Heads.   It was on my list of things to do, but darn law school got in the way.

The other thing that occurred to me was that, in 1995, I was barely a DMB fan yet.  Otherwise, I probably would have been at that show, which was in Eugene….and was a great show. My DMB memories of that 1995 summer, though, consist of a Madison Park apartment and the guy who would, exactly three years later, become my husband.

On that August day in 1995, I had no idea where I was heading, or how big a part of my life DMB’s music would become. What if I had been at that Eugene show? Or what if I had gone to a Dead show before Jerry died? Would things have turned out differently somehow? (or, to borrow a line from Dave…..”could I have been anyone other than me?”)

And yet, of course, the beauty was in not knowing what would unfold. The years since then have been filled with love, great music, and more happiness than I could have asked for.  Many years and countless concerts, and two kids later — I listen to Dave from long ago, and marvel at it all.

Deondre the Life Coach

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The song that has been rocking in my head for the past few days is accompanied by a dancing guy in a red track suit, a Kenny G lookalike, and a wrestler with a snake on his shoulders. The SNL skit of the fake TV show “What Up With That?” is hilarious on its own, but doubly hilarious when talked about and improvised all weekend with friends.

We got back from Las Vegas late last night. I should be exhausted, but instead I feel like I have the freshest perspective that I have had in a long while. Was it the cocktails? The gambling? The In-n-Out burger? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.

I did a triathlon last summer. I had a mantra that I repeated in my head, throughout: “a clear head, and presence of purpose”. In the water with each stroke, trying not to panic: a clear head, and presence of purpose. As I pedaled my bike, making it closer to the finish, free of any mechanical issues: a clear head, and presence of purpose. It was not until the final mile of the run, when I knew that I was going to finish, that the mantra left my head. At that point, all I could do was grin.

For some reason, that popped into my head today – as a similar refrain, but with a “what up with that” edge. OK, so I need to figure out what I want to do. (What up with that?) And it hasn’t come to me yet on its own. (What up with that?) Or perhaps it has, and I am too scared to make any steps. (What UP with that?)

I love music, but I also love the written word. I think that’s probably why I liked being a lawyer, because lawyering is all about words. Lawyers love to argue over seemingly obvious things such as the meaning of the word “reasonable” (hence volumes of case law on the “reasonable person” standard..…and, even better, in the realm of sexual harassment, the “reasonable woman” standard).

When Bill Clinton (a former lawyer) dumbfounded the nation with his infamous “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” statement, I totally got it. Only lawyers love that kind of statement. Only lawyers hear that statement and say “you know, that’s a good point”.

And that’s the part of being a lawyer that I do miss: the words; the reasoning; getting from point “A” to point “B” via a well-structured argument.

The art of writing has been calling to me for a long time, and I’ve either ignored it, or dismissed it, believing that I had to choose either the law or writing, because my love for both was incompatible. But I now realize that they are, really, one in the same, and that is where I should be.

I am confident that it is possible distill it all down into the perfect career that nestles right into my life. I don’t know yet what that will look like, but I feel like I am on the right path. (What up with THAT?!)

I’m finally starting to feel like I’m out of the water. I’ve racked my bike. Now I just have to put on my running shoes, and get to the grin.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

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I recently had a dream where, throughout, I was wearing an aqua blue tube top. What was unique about this tube top (aside from being a tube top) was that, in the center of it, there was a huge Ghostbusters logo.

The rest of the dream is fuzzy….but near the end, I looked down and noticed that, to my dismay, the logo was peeling off (must have been a 70’s iron-on), and that the top was starting to tear in the middle. This upset me greatly.

Dreams are inherently odd and usually defy meaning, but……REALLY? A Ghostbusters tube top? What could this possibly mean? That I am watching too many ghost shows? That I have a hankering for Charlie’s Angels fashion? Or perhaps, deep down, it saddens me that Ray Parker Jr. was never recognized for the musical genius he truly is.