She's Not a Hoop Widow This Year!

This is how it works right? Sharing a common interest will always bring spouses even closer together. Perhaps sharing a closet will help that matrimonial bond even more than sports!

Made this one for Dalene, with a picture that Hayley posted for her weekly caption contest. I was going to submit it, but since its now a voting contest, I decided I didn't want to enter it. I figure that either (a) I win, and its not fair because I've been doing this for quite some time now, or (b) I lose, and then question whether I'm still good enough and wonder if I should've advertised people to come vote for me, blah blah blah. So anyway, I posted it here, and I will probably send it to her as a non-voting entry to make life a whole lot easier for everyone! If you want to create your own caption and see if its good enough to win, head over to her site and snag the photo and caption away!

Sorry I haven't been around much, but I've started to do so spring cleaning around the apartment, making some repairs and cleaning out the closet. I have so many cassettes, CD, and VHS tapes that are just sitting in huge plastic bins. I don't really know why I'm saving them other than the fact that they probably aren't worth anything anymore! I was on a hunt for my Saturn and Dreamcast games, and have yet to find them, but I still have another 14 plastic bins to look through. Lots of memories in those bins too, and its good to relive a bunch of my life while sorting through mementos, photos et al. even though I probably should've be such a hoarder. I've boiled down 8 bins to 5 bins so I am moving stuff out the door, but its hard to throw away the past even though you know you aren't going to need any of it in the future. If I owned a house, preferably a large one, I wouldn't have to do this, but at a certain point in time, you really do need to keep things simple in an apartment.

For some reason, there are no complete Concrete Blonde CD's on youtube, so I will post some of my favorites. I followed them early on, when I first heard, "Still in Hollywood" back when I used to tape Night Flight on USA network. My parents wouldn't let me stay up, but they let me put in a VHS tape and record the whole thing and I'd listen to it on Sunday since I had a VHS player in my room (actually I had 2 because we found a used one so I would save the stuff I liked onto another tape and just reuse the 1st one each week.) I found so many cool songs and groups, like The Residents, Laurie Anderson, Suicidal Tendencies, and a really young Red Hot Chili Peppers who had just made a video for "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes".

I bought their debut on cassette from Bradlees that day. The rest of the songs weren't as punky as "Still in Hollywood" but her voice did, and still continues to give me chills when I hear her sing. Johnette just has a voice that is so seductive and emotional that you can't ignore it.

This song is of course their main hit, and probably set them up for a crash, as they never really were made for the radio, especially the radio that was around in 1990-1992. They had a chance when Nirvana broke through, but more of the meat-headed bands broke through Kurt's wake, and Concrete Blonde were always a bit more subtle musically, though they still could stomp around.

Honestly, they were just too good for the mainstream, who didn't deserve them, although they really did deserve all the accolades anyone could heap upon them.

Their cover of a Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows" is a classic, and its quite memorable in on of my favorite movies as a youth, "Pump Up the Volume" which starred Christian Slater. Its amazing that I sort of see the parents side much more now than when I was a teenager, but the movie still affects me to this day, since it never tried to solve anything, but just made you think.

She still tours occasionally as Concrete Blonde, and its a bucket list concert for me, since she doesn't seem to tour the east coast that much. She had a band called, "Pretty and Twisted" with the guitarist from Wall of Voodoo after Concrete Blonde had broken up, and its just as good as Concrete Blonde ever was. Not sure why it only put out one album.

Hopefully this last one will show up as it wouldn't let me load it through blogger's uploading video mechanism. That song just sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.

So, if you can search it out yourself, Bloodletting is the most consistent CD, but I would recommend pretty much every album they put out, and hunt down the "Greatest Hits" or "Best of" compilations too. My actual favorite is called, "Still in Hollywood" and it collects many B-sides, covers, and live versions. This band is one of those that really shaped the Dee part of me when I was young. I can't put words to why, but it just feels like Dee in musical format.