I don’t know.

Right now, I’m conteplating so many things:

-selling my new scarves in my etsy shop

-opening an ArtFire account

-throwing random stuff up for sale on ebay

-eating nothing but cake for dinner for the entire month of March

-how I should start packing for the move

-when I’m going to finish my next mix CD I’ve got rolling around in my head and on this little yellow index card

-why I can’t stop listening to this song

Always questioning:

-why I’m a bad daughter

-how much is too much for my etsy shop

-am I the theif or the creator

-why you are always on my mind

-why reality tv is so captivating

Day One: Pictures of Me

I don’t mind where you come from
As long as you come to me
But I don’t like illusions I can’t see
Them clearly
I don’t care, no I wouldn’t dare
To fix the twist in you
You’ve shown me eventually what you’ll do
I don’t mind
I don’t care
As long as you’re here

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s all the same

Hours slide and days go by
Till you decide to come
But in-between it always seems too long
Suddenly
But I have the skill, yeah
I have the will, to breath you in while I can
However long you stay is all that I am

I don’t mind, I don’t care
As long as you’re here

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s always the same

Wrong or Right
Black or White
If I close my eyes
It’s all the same

In my life
The compromise
I’ll close my eyes
It’s all the same

Go ahead say it
You’re leaving
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are now
If you take me for everything
Do it all over again
It’s all the same

Meeting Brendan James.

January 10th, 2009

I met Brendan James.

I was tooling around The Space in early December, thinking about dumping my account. I was swimming around in “Edit Friends” thinking about how cool it was that I have or have had all of these awesome people in my life over the last few years. I decided against dumping my account, because I remember how everyone was like hands-to-mouths in shock when I dumped my Facebook (okay, all two or three of you). I thought about perusing my bands and wanted to see if anyone was going to play local. Very few ever do because Phoenix is the place to play, big gigs, big crowds and all. It isn’t that I don’t want to travel to Phoenix to see some shows but it is a hassle. It isn’t like back home, Boston was what 40 minutes, sometimes under a half an hour depending on traffic or how late you were. I drove to a Radiohead show and I swear we got there in like 23 minutes. Great Woods, now that’s a different story. That’s how the drive to Phoenix is… forever… and it’s two lanes of forever. And forget about getting home before 2am, which is cool when your 18 and young but not when your sleep is so much more important than even food. Oh, damn do I not miss that parking lot at Great Woods. Lucky if you made it out under 2 hours.

So I was checking the shows calendar in Tucson and I see Brendan James is coming in a week. IN A WEEK! Sweet! Don’t know who he is? You can read about him here. His music is destined to be celebrated for a long time to come. It is genuinely heartfelt, heartwarming and heart wrenching all at the same time. Brilliant. His voice is warm and touching and gets into the deepest parts of you. His delivery is honest and open and brings you into it’s sunlight like a long awaited embrace. Refreshing and renewing.

I scooped up two tickets for under $20 and the show was at Club Congress; what a cool place that is! Stepping into it you forget where you are and think you’re back in Portsmouth, or better yet, the Back Bay. It’s stylish and historic, the perfect setting for this music. Mike and I enjoyed some beers before the show and then approached the stage for a unforgettable set. Brendan was fighting off a cold and apologized for it a few times but he never lost his composure or his musical professionalism; you could tell that he really really cared to give us the best show he possibly could. Tucson was nearly his last stop on his Mtv tour and you knew he was giving it his all and that’s all you could ask for. He played lots of tracks from his album The Day Is Brave and then mixed it up with lots of new stuff from his upcoming album. All of the songs were outstanding and exactly how I had hoped they sounded live, beautiful. He even played my favorite, All I Can See. I was mesmorized.

After the show, Brendan and his band mates came out to the front of the house to sign autographs and to meet the people who had come out to see them play. I think that is awesome. I haven’t been to a show that intimate and personal since… the Murmurs in Cambridge, what 1996? Maybe Liz Phair in Boston, 1997or8? You are wishing these small venue artists success but at the same time you would never trade these kinds of experiences for anything. (I was about half a mile from Robert Smith in ’97 but would have given a limb to be in the front row/at least I wasn’t on the lawn.) Being that close to them when they play, being able to share with them their emotions through their music. Being able to meet them afterwards and let them know that lyrics like, “I want to know where the stength of a person lies, in their past or their future. Is it in the way that they hurt or they love themselves or is it all an illusion?” have reached the nether of your being (although I didn’t tell him this, I was too star struck.)

We wait in line for a little bit and then it is our turn, Mike bought me a cool poster of the tour for Brendan to sign. The first thing I do is shake his hand and tell him how much we loved the show. OMg, I’m going to get a cold! Of course I said that in my head and not out loud. It will be my first famous cold. I didn’t say that out loud either. Then I didn’t know what else to say, I’m sure I was mouth agape and all googly eyed. Mike took it away and was his normal friendly self, he is that way around everyone, calm and collected. He told Brendan that we were from Derry too and the look on his face was amazement and you could see that twinkle of homesickness in his eyes, the kind I get when I miss things like leaves, apple picking and the ocean. Mike added that we were also Class of ’93 Pinkerton and Brendan said that he was Class of ’99 (I felt old 🙂 and then he said, “Go Astros!” We laughed all together and it was so sweet. Mike shook his hand too (famous sickness!) and we thanked him again for a great show and I told him to feel better soon.

Yay! It was so much fun! We stepped out into the cool air of the night and we knew we just had a great time and my mind always races through experiences like that, flying around in a pool of this-is-what-life-is-all-about and I’ll remember this forever because Mike and I experienced it together and that is so special to me. Walking to the car I looked down and saw that Brendan had written on my poster, “To Tara, Go Astros!! Brendan James”. How cool is that?

(Neither of us did ever get the famous cold 🙂

Best of ’08: Music

Every Avenue- Shh. Just Go With It

Boys Like Girls- Boys Like Girls

The Cab- Whisper War

Forever The Sickest Kids- Underdog Alma Mater

Brendan James- The Day Is Brave

Valencia- We All Need A Reason To Believe

Thriving Ivory- Thriving Ivory

High School Musical 3 Soundtrack

The Cure- 4:13 Dream

David Cook- David Cook

Fall Out Boy- Folie a Deux

Ummm, hello!

October 7th, 2008

Best thing since bread came sliced:

Ipod offering… because it’s poetry month, you get two.

August 24th, 2008

These words have been with me since 1989 and they are the most beautiful and haunting collection of nouns, adjectives, verbs and emotions ever placed next to each other.  You can see what inspires me here, almost like a magnified glass:

hopelessly drift
in the eyes of the ghost again
down on my knees
and my hands in the air again
pushing my face in the memory of you again
but i never know if it’s real
never know how i wanted to feel
never quite said what i wanted to say to you
never quite managed the words to explain to you
never quite knew how to make them believable
and now the time has gone
another time undone
hopelessly fighting the devil
futility
feeling the monster
climb deeper inside of me
feeling him gnawing my heart away
hungrily
i’ll never lose this pain
never dream of you again

untitled- the cure

The show of shows; poetry through sweating.

August 19th, 2008

My partner in crime, Ricky, and I went to the show of shows on Tuesday night here in Tucson, at The Rock. Getting to the show was like a comedy of errors, absolutely the best kind of preface to a most amazing evening. Nothing that runs smoothly has a very exciting conclusion, this being the pinnacle example of that. We both had to be up pretty early that day, it being the day we were supposed to get our new register system installed at the Eagle. Nothing goes without a hitch there either and to both of our dismay the new registers didn’t happen, so the day was long and dragged because it was just another day at work with nothing to distract us and take up the time before we went to the show we were looking forward to for so long.

Finally!– we are off, I agreed to drive because Ricky’s usually the chafferer for everyone else/I never get to drive with Mike, I like driving, I feel cool, that’s really the only reason. I go to pick him up at his house, and let’s just say he literally lives in the desert almost up a mountain. Seriously. Now, historically there are three things I do very badly: math, gymnastics, and reading and understanding directions and maps. I mean there are probably a ton of crap I do badly, but those are the top three. And I don’t mean like pummel horse or balance beam gymnastics, I just mean I’m not actively dexterous or flexible. Where the hell am I going with this… my point exactly! It should take 15 minutes from my house to Ricky’s house but since I got lost twice, er, three times, it took almost triple the time (but I think I only admitted getting lost twice, and only now am spilling my beans, oh well…) I finally get Ricky and we’re off! Hooray!

Driving, tra la la… OMG I FORGOT THE TICKETS!!! In a panic, I mean panic!– I u-turned like nobody’s business and had to backtrack to my house to get them. Tucson isn’t very big but no matter where you need to get to it’ll take an exuberant and almost unnecessary amount of time to get there. But not the trek home and back, I must have been on the wings of concert angels because I think round trip for the retrieval took about ten minutes when it should really have taken about a half an hour. So that was the start of our adventure…

We get to the place, and with a little help from his GPS phone thingy we get almost lost in a little web of turn here for your destination, no here, no now go left, go right, go straight up a camel’s ass… GPS is hilarious when it can’t pinpoint your location exactly, it just knows that you are there but it wants to get you right on top of the place. We park, I scratch my hubcap, don’t care and we get out. We’re walking up to the place and we run into AE Jon who is playing the show with his band Tonight We Have Rhythm, he’s nervous, smoking and shaking, understandable, playing in your town with two very amazing bands. We get in line and it is just an array of bubble gum, eye liner, long and big hair, stripes and neons, girl jeans on boys, and fun fun fun. Surprisingly I wasn’t the oldest person there and also of note, there were normal looking kids there too. I don’t know why that surprised me because we were normal looking so why wouldn’t there be other “normal” looking people.

We get inside and it is crazy small, for those of you who grew up clubbing around Manchester it was like The Web only without that wacky seating arrangement, so it was just stage and floor. It was going to be sardine city. Oh, and it is about 100 degrees outside and that made it about Burning Hell degrees inside. But I loved the place, it was seedy and dirty and awesome, exactly how it should be. Now we wait. Ricky met up with a ton of people he was really good friends with in high school, good, now we have our own crowd. You could tell this crowd was young and rough and ready to bring the pain. No seats, only sweaty bodies all clamoring to get as close to the stage as possible.

The first band comes on, the front man is obnoxious and obviously coked up and if he wasn’t, well then he needs some serious attention. They were crappy but some people dug it so who am I to judge really. Their set was way too long though and then we had to wait again. My friend’s band came on and they did their thing and they were awesome! It’s a really cool thing to see someone you know, someone who you see in everyday situations totally rock out on stage and really be able to show what they love to do. It was great, and their sound is right up my alley, so I know there are good things to come from this band. Keep a look out!

Mayday Parade are next and they were super great! At this point the crowd is going crazy.  Slamming up into me and everyone else.  And you know there was that girl and that guy.  Those people who have total disregard for anyone else and just completely bust out and not care if you get a fist in the face or an arm to the gut; as if that can be called dancing.  I think it was at that point that Ricky and I decided that if you can’t beat ’em (and we did literally beat those two) then you might as well join ’em.  So we did, we danced, we sweat and we slammed back!  It was hilarious and awesome and such a rush.  I’ve always wanted to do that and not care how much it would hurt or how I would look, and I’m so glad I did.  That set was great but we were really there for the next band.

Forever The Sickest Kids were incredible!  I was so taken at how comfortable and happy they were to be on stage.  I’ve never seen a band like this play, they were all ecstatic to be there and really belted out everything they had.  That’s a show.  They were animated and energetic and that is what moved the crowd, or at least that is what moved me.  I had to go to those energy reserves that I didn’t even know I had to keep up, but you know what I did.  A year ago I never would have been able to do that, so it was such a personal triumph for me.  I was totally taken away and forgot who I was, where I was and what was going on in my life and just left it out there the way the music did.  It rocked.  That’s what it did.

It was one of those nights, the best kind.  Ricky and I left the place and our bodies were all wiggly and tired.  We couldn’t hear until late the next day, and I think I haven’t yet caught up on my sleep from that night.  That’s the rock and roll lifestyle I guess 🙂 (I am so hardcore… not really.)

Okay, here’s the ultimate biggie of the night!!!  Ricky caught a drum stick from FTSK and he gave it to me!!!  How wicked awesome is that!

iPod offering.

August 3rd, 2008

I’m in love with the colors in your eyes
Oh those oceanic eyes
Keeping secrets deep and beautiful
My love for you is a fire

You have confidence in the tried and true
But you doubt promises and I promise you
You got the most amazing way
Of setting aside the roaring waves

When swimming in the river we all shall be
Joyful in the cool of an evening breeze
Out of all the wonders my eyes have seen
I’m just glad to be a part of your history

For three long years I’ve waited on a sign
That I might be your rescuer
But now a wondering vagabond I must be
Just being glad to be a part of your history

And all the lights stuck in your eyes
Believing promises just like a child
Maybe one day you will see
That I’m just glad to be a part of your history

-Brad Kooistra “History”

Hear it here.

The impossible task, Part 2.

July 26th, 2008

Before embarking on this quest to compile my favorites from my top musical influences of all time, I had to consult a source.  I’ve got all sorts of musical sources, my latest being my punk/rock/emo source and my other being my country source, I’ve got others but all of my sources are top secret.  But my source for all things great, being the music that we grew up on and what shaped who we are is Mike.  No surprise there.  I do tend to pick on him from time to time for not getting up on the times, not partaking in any new music.  Mike’s opinion is that no good music has been made since 1999.  I don’t agree, actually, I vehemently disagree, but to each their own.  So when it came to combing over my past he was certainly the one to journey that path with.

I introduced him to The Cure in 1992 and he introduced me to REM that same year.  I started him out with Cure-lite, with the album Mixed Up, like saccharine filled goodness for the maudlin newbie.  I mean I started out hardcore with (the best album ever created) Disintegration.  And he started me off slowly too with Eponymous, a compilation of early REM besties, letting me discover (their best album ever) Life’s Rich Pageant.  We would do our homework to these tapes, do our chores, do hum-drum everyday things to this melodies not knowing that we were letting these songs into the very fiber of our beings.

But this post isn’t about those two bands, that’ll be next post, if I can even come up with a nice and neat and presentable compilation of each, hence… impossible task.  We decided to tackle U2 first.  I had a love affair with U2 the moment I saw this, that video stays with you for a lifetime.  But I broke up with U2 when they started releasing crap, and I’ll say this, IMO I was hearing crap because I wasn’t ready for U2 to change.  Their sound had to change but at the time, 1990-1991, I just couldn’t handle it, I was changing too much already, I needed my music to stay constant and familiar.  I have since added newer U2 to my library because they have managed to recapture their original sound, like many other bands who have survived their sophomoric branching out, only to come full circle to what made them great in the first place: their honesty.

So I humbly present my U2 Essentials, in no way does this encompass a “best of” or “greatest hits”, these are the songs that influenced me, were expressions of bottle necked rage and emotion and were there for me in those ever changing times.

1. I Will Follow from Boy 1980

2. Gloria from October 1981

3. Sunday Bloody Sunday from War 1983

4. New Year’s Day

5. Two Hearts Beat As One

6. A Sort of Homecoming from The Unforgettable Fire 1984

7. The Unforgettable Fire

8. Bad

9. Bullet the Blue Sky from The Joshua Tree 1987

10. Running to Stand Still

11. Trip Through Your Wires

12. All Along The Watchtower from Rattle And Hum 1988

13. All I Want Is You

14. Silver And Gold

15. Walk On from All That You Can’t Leave Behind 2000

Bonus track: 16. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me from Batman Forever Soundtrack 1995

The impossible task.

July 25th, 2008

A co-worker, and friend, and I were talking about music the other day. It seems that I talk a lot about music lately with people in general. I want to take it all in, all of it. I have pretty much opened myself up to trying everything and anything at this point. I’m not sick of what I’ve been listening to so much as I want to add to my oratory repertoire. I want to try on new things, just like if you got a make-over, you are still who you were before but improved for the experience.

But then my friend asked nearly the impossible. We were talking about what music shaped us and I happened to mention my top musical influences, The Cure and REM, they happen to be #1 and #2. Unwavering too, because no one will ever knock them off their pedestals in my mind. Some come very close, like my #3 through #10, among them are The Smiths/Morrissey, U2 (only up until 1988), and Depeche Mode. My friend mentioned that he never had really delved into either The Cure or REM because he was mostly disillusioned by any music that had come out of the 80s. I can’t disagree with him really, as much as I love the 80s most of the music was crap. Most of the music being played on the radio was crap that is. But who remembers 120 Minutes in its heyday, 1986 on Mtv very late night, that is where the greatness of 80s music was finally able to peak its head out from underneath the pop crap heap.

My task is to compile a sampling of both The Cure and REM. That’s like asking parents to chose their favorite child. Or if I was stranded an a desert island and I could only bring these x songs, what would they be?

(For my own prosperity, I will list my findings.)