They Mean What They Say

Having trouble getting the brain in gear tonight. Thought I'd keep this post mercifully short (although it likely won't end up that way--trust me, it could be much longer) because it's torture for all of us when I'm really stretching for humour. So although I'm not particularly witty and urbane this evening, here's my offering.

We experienced the very best/worst of the changeable Alberta weather today. Here's a brief timeline of events.

4:35 - sitting in class, sunshine streaming through the windows, wondering if I need to actually put on my sunglasses to see my paper.
4:45 - Meet wife and child downstairs. Clouds begin to roll in.
4:55 - Get slushee beverage from convenience store. Rain begins.
4:57 - Rain becomes torrential; wife, child, and I get soaked walking the three blocks back to our place.
5:05 - Sky clears, sun shines.

Unreal. There's a saying out here that if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes. And every word of that is true.

I could write at least three more paragraphs dedicated solely to meteorlogical phenomena, but you don't come here to talk about the weather now, do you? No, you come for, well, I'm actually not sure why you come, but come you do. And I appreciate it.

As promised, here are some more pictures that we took this weekend. This first one is my wife showing her artistic side...

That has to be in the running to win some sort of contest, doesn't it?

These next two have a story behind them. We were driving to church on Sunday (we attend a church that's in a town about 25 minutes south of us) and it was an absolutely stunning day. Sun shining, clear skies; the kind of day that makes you give days like today a pass. It's not quite a one-to-one ratio (I'll need several more spectacular days to make up for another day like today), but it's at least something. It was the kind of day where you could see for miles, quite literally, especially here on the prairies. And that was proven true when we looked out the window and saw this on the horizon...

Can't quite see what I'm talking about? Here's a closer look...

MOUNTAINS!!! Glorious, wonderful, majestic mountains! And even though they looked so close, we knew they were so far away. But it was incredible (a) to see mountains so unexpectedly, and (b) to see the juxtaposition of the two elements of Canadiana (wheat fields and mountains). Now I know why the next "county" over is called "Rockyview." Pretty spectacular stuff, if you ask me.

Is nothing sacred? As Steph was watching Entertainment Tonight this evening, a little piece on Rod Stewart came on. Now, normally I don't pay much attention when his ugly mug comes on the screen (sorry, sexy mug *shudder*), but I was struck by what he was singing. Evidently he has a new album out. Now, I'm not exactly sure when it became cool in the music industry to cover other people's songs as a way to make a living, but it sure seems that the idea of putting out an album of standards is all the rage nowadays. Rod's done his share of them, and now he's decided he's going to tackle, and take a deep breath, classic rock songs. The first song on the album (and the one he was singing on the aforementioned TV show) is CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain."

Two questions. (1) If you're John Fogerty, what possibly comes over you to allow your songs to be used in such an awful, awful way? Was he drunk? Possibly. Was he high? Could be. Then again, knowing the music industry he probably had no say in it whatsoever. *Wild rant alert* That's the problem with the music industry: artists don't have possession of their own creative property. It's a real scandal--the bigwigs and fat cats get all the cash, while the artists are abused and mistreated. In fact, an artist can't even hand out copies of his own songs without permission of his record label. Does this strike anyone else as weird? In the process, good musicians get pushed aside for commercially-produced, cookie cutter bands. And the worst part is that we just swallow it, hook, line, and sinker, thinking that we're making a musical trend when all we're doing is following what the man wants us to think.

Here's my second question (even though I've transitioned it, I'm still going to put the number in brackets, just in case any of you chose to ignore the wild rant above and skip straight to the next numbered point): (2) what demographic do you think they were going for? Two options here, which I will conveniently not number 1 and 2: (a) the generation that grew up listening to these songs, in which case that generation needs to get out of the LAME and back into the rock and roll. What makes you, in middle age, suddenly not like the music you've grown up with? Is the internal monologue really like this: "Hmm, I'd sure like to listen to that CCR again, but this time without those rowdy electric guitars"? My suggestion? Buy a rocker and take up knitting, gramps.

The other option for target market: (b) the parents of the generation that grew up listening to this music, who secretly harboured a desire to listen to it but just couldn't get over the fact that there were rowdy electric guitars. The internal monologue here might go something like this: "Oh, I'm so glad someone has finally done these songs in a nice, respectable way."

But that's just the thing with rock and roll, isn't it? This is music that defined a generation; it's the soundtrack of the anti-establishment era, and to see it being pushed into the establishment's mold is disheartening. All of a sudden, it doesn't seem so cool anymore. It's like the current trend in music--bashing George W. If everyone makes an anti-war protest album, it's not so counter-culture and cool anymore; in fact, it just becomes another commercial venture--even though you think you're really "sticking it to the man", you're really just doing what the man says (see previous wild rant). It becomes the thing you were railing so hard against. Same thing here, really--making these songs "respectable" takes away everything they stood for--it turns it into the very thing it was fighting against.

That sure got bogged down real fast, didn't it? I'm not really an anti-establishment kind of guy, but I'm just really sick of being a sheep. If we as a society decided it was time to start thinking for ourselves again, I think we'd be in a lot less trouble than we're in right now. But that's just my opinion, and I hope you have one too.

That's about it for this evening's rants and raves. Thanks for coming by, and I hope to see you again tomorrow.