The Gorge

The Last Show Before Everything Changed

/ Deb / 3 Comments

Remember Pete Yorn?  He had a catchy hit back in 2001, and a great album, musicforthemorningafter.  Pete weighs heavily in my musical past for two reasons.  First, in the days before iPods, his CD was in heavy rotation on a fabulous road trip my husband and I took that summer, and, second, he was the last show I saw before finding out we were pregnant with our first child.

We saw him at The Showbox in the late fall of 2001.  I love that venue, and it was a fun show – pretty mellow, good people-watching.  What was unique was that it was just the two of us.  Usually we attended shows with other people, but that night was just us.  I wore jeans and sassy boots, and we had a great time. 

On Christmas Day, we found out we were expecting our first child.  (The best Christmas present ever, yes?)  That show became etched in my brain as the last time that we were out on the town just as “us”….not us plus “Lil’ B”, our in utero nickname for our oldest.

I had a vaguely defined goal that I would be a hip pregnant woman, and an even hipper mom.  Nothing would slow me down.   I went to a few mellow concerts while I was pregnant, and I even went to Las Vegas (which really sucks when all you want to do is sleep).   The line was drawn, however, at The Gorge.  I bought tickets for the Sasquatch Festival but ultimately, while six months pregnant, sitting out in the desert heat (in the midst of neighboring herbal fumes) just didn’t seem like a great idea.  Also influencing that decision was the fact that my mother had threatened an intervention –  something along the lines of, “over my dead body are you taking my yet-to-be-born grandchild to that concert in the middle of nowhere”.  My sisters went without me, sold my tickets alongside the road, and I spent the weekend at home, nesting.  It was all OK.

Everyone who is a parent knows how hard it is to remember what it was like before the little ones came into your lives.  In the years since then, we’ve talked about that Pete Yorn show and always say, “wait…..who babysat?”, before realizing that no babysitter was yet needed.

If you know me, then you understand that I am overly sentimental.  Commercials make me cry, and my kids give me sideways glances at sad parts of movies, knowing that I will be crying.  So I am a sucker for this: TONIGHT – two kids, many shows, and a Big Birthday later – Pete Yorn is playing at the Showbox (SoDo location, but still!!).  I am looking forward to a date night out with my husband, and I know that the evening will be filled with nostalgia for me.   I still have the same jeans and sassy boots – although I probably won’t wear them – but I am so happy that, after all these years and through so many changes, my sweetie will still be at my side.

The Sweatiest Music

/ Deb / 1 Comment

I was thinking yesterday about what makes a good workout playlist.    What works on any given day is always up for grabs.  The lawyer in me, though, can distill it down into these essential elements:

1. VOLUME.  The music must be mind-numbingly loud, creating an audio cocoon that drowns out any peripheral noise.  I don’t want to be talked to when I have on headphones, so whether I can hear what anyone is saying is immaterial.

2. CONTENT.  Live recordings are best, but studio versions will do.  The perfect tempo is one that coincides with your running pace, resulting in a sweaty bliss as if you are dancing in the summer sun at The Gorge.   I have a recording of a really hot Pearl Jam show at The Gorge, and when those songs come on, it’s almost — almost — like being there again. And I’m usually just as sweaty, considering the temperature at that show was 110.

3.  TRANSPORT.  Creative visualization is a nice bonus.  If a song reminds me of a funny memory, it shifts my focus from thinking about how tired I am.  That being said, some songs have inexplicably made it onto my playlist, and I have no idea why.  Crosby, Stills and Nash only remind me of late nights in law school, and thus have no place on a workout playlist.  I can’t hit “skip” fast enough, yet I have been too lazy to remove them.

4.  CONTEXT.  And finally, of course, the music does not have to be music that you listen to at any other time.  Do I ever listen to Public Enemy or Soundgarden while I am making dinner?  No.  But are they a mainstay in my workout playlist?  Absolutely.

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!

Good Tunes, Like Sisters, Come in Groups of Three

/ Deb / Leave a comment

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.