music :: what's your delight?

I am terrible with music and I can't even believe that I am giving advice on music but this is just meant to be a light... what are your 10 favorite things-type post. I have so many favorite things right now, my shop, my sweet customers that come and actually remember our old shop on Main Street and say that they missed me, big *heart* goes out for all that and my kids are the biggest delight. I'm not home as much anymore but they are handling it with true rigor - homework, chores, and new challenges - it's all been a good thing.

But life is not always a bowl of cherries, I know that... I have found that music is my drug - I have a new relationship with music that I never had because I play music all day in my shop - well not on Sundays when I listen to all the storytelling on NPR. These are my top five searches I have found in Pandora. I shared some of these with my sister and she told me I should write a post about it and so here it goes.

1. My most favorite Pandora search is "Billy Paul" - he sang "Me and Mrs. Jones" (one of my all-time favorite songs). Well he died recently, just about the same time as Prince, and as tribute to him I did a Billy Paul search and it's the most delightful music for the entire day!

 2. You are not going to believe this but my second favorite is "Gordon Lightfoot" - I have no idea how I came upon this but it's great! I just let it go all day long and it's perfect, it makes me laugh.

3. I read an article about Benjamin Clementine in the T Magazine and bought the album and I love it - it also makes a great Pandora search. You end up with a bit of bluesy songbird-type music.

4. Johnny Hartman is one of my later in the day searches and I love it - just a cool lul that helps me finish off the day. And we all need a bit of romance in our lives, we would starve without it.

5. The Eagles is my last... this is a bit similar to Gordon Lightfoot but just slightly different.

E N J O Y...

rip :: Prince

A hero to so many and one of the most unique individuals on the planet, we are so lucky he chose to share his great gifts with us - thank you Prince. If you are like me, from Minnesota and at a certain age we felt that Prince was our secret - we didn't really know that the world knew so much about him or was going to know so much about him. He owned our local dance joint - First Avenue and brought great acts there and occasionally showed up to play himself if we were lucky.

I feel compelled, as so many do today, to tell my Prince stories - I have a few, we loved him - but I also didn't feel cool enough myself to be a real groupie. When I was in my first year at college in Minneapolis a girlfriend and I skipped school for at least a week and signed up as extras for a movie called Purple Rain, we dressed up like nightlife Prince groupies - a bit Madonna a bit Prince - and showed up at 5am to sign in as 'extras'. Dancing all day, it was so exciting, but we honestly thought... "I'm not so sure about this movie..." we were just happy to be with the music and dance! (and we got paid something like $100/day) and the song Purple Rain, we just loved that song the moment we heard it, by the end of shooting we knew every word and we would sing it to each other constantly (while waving our hands in the air like we were supposed to during the movie shoot!). I got to be in a scene with him and Morris Day, I was so electrified by Prince I was almost immovable. I don't remember much about what I did in school that year but I will never forget that week.

If we weren't at First Avenue we were at Graffiti's a small dance-pit place that was previously a bank, with tall ceilings and graffiti painted everywhere, it had all of this ornate stone architecture. There was a Mezzanine where nobody really sat, except for Prince - every once in a while he would stop in. This night was Halloween and I was dressed as A Prince (not THE Prince), I was asked by his guards to come and sit at his table and as I stumbled to try to tell him that I was not trying to dress like him, I was really just dressed as a random Prince in a fairy tale... I actually got a smile from him, that never happened, but it did... to me!

In later years I saw him in an elevator, I drove into his driveway - his home was near my sisters house so we used to smoke pot and then say to each other... "let's go look at Princes house" seemed like a good idea at the time... haha...

He was a signpost for us quiet and shy Minnesota folk, the way he stayed in Minnesota, the way he could have done anything but he stayed there and just painted his house purple. Be your own guide to your unique future and let it take you where it will.  I am shocked to know that he was only six years older than I was, when he made Purple Rain he was 24 years old! Just march to your own beat and keep your integrity. Prince will forever live in my heart and represent a unique future that we all can cultivate of our own.

rip - prince