all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Thursday, December 11, 2003 np: the pogues - if i should fall from grace with god i'm in the midsts of my capstone class for my education major right now. at guilford, a capstone is sort of like the final seminar for your major. it's been an intense, two week course full of a lot of summing up and coming to terms with how we've progressed as teacher/learners in the past four or so years. it's quite sad, actually, cos i adore all the people in the department and will miss working with them this closely. my group's final project presentation is tomorrow, but the first group went today. their project centered around the potential (and proven) importance of music in academic education. and one of the things that came up was compiling a list of songs that mean something really important to you for one reason or another. mostly songs that remind you of a certain moment of time in your life, or of an entire period of your life. and i thought it would be interesting to take the songs one by one and every so often sprinkle in an explanation of why one meant something to me. so we start today. this is partially inspired by jenny's posts about meaningful people in her life, positive and negative. just every other post or so for awhile, she had a new person to talk about from her past. it was a fascinating way to dissect a life. and i think this will work just as well. notes from underground - entry I (notice that great play on the word 'notes?' yeah, i knew you'd like it): "raise up" - petey pablo. "raise up" is a fluke. it is not the kind of song that would usually mean something to me but for a handful of instances. first off, it may be one of the few hip hop songs that ever got national exposure while specifically givin' it up to the old north state. second, at the time that it began its timbaland-infused, meteoric rise up the charts, i was getting ready to go to, and eventually living in, london. being abroad changed me in ways that i'm still noticing to this day. third, september 11th happened. which affected all of us, naturally. being away from home and wanting in a way to be there, but not wanting to leave the encompassing existence in london. "raise up" became a chaos inducing song. our group of american students was likely to burst forth in harmonic re-creation at any moment. especially in pubs. especially in filthy mcnasty's. james had the interesting position of having his 21st birthday fall on september 11th that year. to be honest, it falls on september 11th every year. but you see what i mean. i forget now if we went out before jame's birthday, or after. i want to say before, although i could be wrong. for his birthday he wanted to go to filthy mcnasty's, this whiskey bar up near the angel tube stop. it is apparently a frequent hang out of shane macgowan (formerly of the pogues). everyone took turns buying james a drink that night. and nearly the entire guilford group was out. so we're talking close to twenty people. by the end of the evening, everyone was quite tipsy..and as the bar began to close, james who had for legitimate (but far too complex and lengthy-story-wise) reasons removed his shirt, began to twist it 'round his head like a helicopter. if you know the song, the chorus goes: "north carolina! c'mon and raise up! take your shirt off and twist it 'round your head like a helicopter! north carolina! c'mon and raise up! this one's for you? uh-uh! this one's for who? us, us, us!" we all sang along. and despite the fact that only a handful of us (if that many) actually originally hailed from north carolina, our adoptive home was guilford. myself, of course, was born here in north carolina and aside from having lived in london during that time has never lived anywhere else for any large parcel of time. hearing "raise up," or even just thinking about it, brings a smile to my face. not because of what it is. the song is nothing more than a dirty-south anthem with good production. it's no "the times they are a-changin'" or even "fight the power," for that matter. what it is is a reminder of a time when i was desperately happy. and despite the world tragedy that enveloped us while we were there (and the one that developed in afghanistan while we were there as well), we had our ties to home. an ironic twist to going abroad is the sometimes insane craving you will get for any miniscule iota of facile, american pop-culture. sometimes home calls in mysterious ways. there are a whole list of songs to choose from here, so i'll progress through the list a bit at the time. some will be shorter than that, some longer. we'll see. but i find it fun to write about music in this manner. the orders have started to come in through the amazon links, so thanks to all of you who have purchased something so far! remember, buy anything at amazon by clicking through my site to get there and the revenues i receive as an associate are being donated to the Triad Health Project. i really appreciate it. one of the drawbacks to having your wishlist up is that it's easy to see what someone bought for you. so, mom, thanks in advance for those items. i'm quite excited. there are updates at the j's indie/rock site. i'm on the air tomorrow night from 10pm - 12am, so tune in. posted by J. Neas | 12/11/2003 11:55:00 PM
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