Voices

In 1983, I was at Chimacum High School in the farthest boondocks of Washington State. I was 15. Alternately a good kid and a raging lunatic. I was woefully unpopular and growing out an unfortunate asymmetrical haircut. I was learning to drive and listening to the Stones and The Who and Duran Duran and I even lip-synched Irene Cara's "Why Me?" at a talent show.

The man I will soon marry was 22, in a band, managed by Barry Manilow. They dressed him in white leather and razor-cut clothes and a bandanna. He had a small son. He was a rock star in California. Had we met then, I'm sure he would have been nicely dismissive. I would have been too young. He is good. So good and so kind. And I was such a dork.

I took the scenic route to where I am now. There is no way I would have predicted that it would take a good 27 more years until I got married. No less, to a man with three children and one grandchild (still taking suggestions on what to be called as Evan's grandmother. My grandmother preferred "Grace" or "Gracie").

I do believe that time knows its own way and travels in the path it is supposed to. But I do wish, the tiniest bit, I could have been the girl with the fake ID and too much eye makeup in the audience who could have scored a makeout session with Steve after the gig.
 

Across the Great Divide

The first time I saw Nanci Griffith was in 1993. Jefe and I were leaving our messy, gritty, extraordinarily fun lives behind in Gallup, New Mexico, where we learned to be reporters and we'd finally gotten the hang of the two-step. I'd pretty much sabotaged the relationship, even though I was deeply, madly connected with this quirky and funny and kindhearted Yalie on a cellular level. Raised by my single dad, I didn't know how to take space or talk about what I wanted without causing major collateral damage. He held on for unknown reasons. He didn't want to marry, he didn't want to leave. I suppose he loved me, though to this day I am unsure why.

When we outgrew what is arguably the worst newspaper in the country, it was my turn to choose where to live, and I picked home, Washington state. My grandmother was getting older and becoming more still. My dad was in his big house, sometimes with his longtime love Holly, sometimes without. I imagined great reunions with high school friends who had stayed on the Olympic Peninsula.

We piled my 1984 Ford F-150 (with dual gas tanks) to the brim with our secondhand furniture and the Native Art we'd collected in our time in the Southwest. Me and my truck and he and his yellow VW Rabbit made our way north, stopping in Los Angeles for a few nights with his hipster aspiring director friend (who got horribly offended when I called "This Boy's Life" a "movie." "It's a film," he said, rolling his eyes and clucking his tongue). But Hipster was able to hook us up with tickets for The Tonight Show, where we saw Nanci for the first time. She sang "The Sound of Lonliness" and I was struck with inspiration and love and peace and longing and everything you want from a beautiful song.

Of course, Jefe and I didn't last out the year in Seattle. We'd imploded, crushed by past misdeeds and terrified of the uncertain future. When we broke it off for good and he decided to move back to New York, I stared at myself in the mirror and howled until my face disappeared.

If this were a movie, there would be a montage here: Me living in a cabin in the woods. A dozen different boyfriends including a rogue Irish man and a painfully urbane Irish man. Moving to Seattle to take a job as a magazine editor. Repeat appearances of some boyfriends. Leaving the job and becoming a freelance writer, playwright, producer, voice-over and commercial actress. Death of father. Moving to LA for bigger universe. Taking work at a corporation, and, shockingly, settling in.

The last scene of this montage would be me meeting Steve in the spring of 2008 at work, though we'd spoken on the phone a couple years prior when I had questions that needed answers. This ruggedly handsome, impossibly blue-eyed man would turn out to be the best man I had ever met. The most solid and trustworthy and easy and generous and fun person I could imagine. It was my profound delight to agree to marry him.

His birthday was last week, the second anniversary of our first kiss. Aside from the Bacon of the Month Club gift, I got us tickets to see Nanci. There she was, same as before, only we were close enough to hear her slap the guitar and to see the wisps of gray in her pulled-back hair. She was a queen and made it all look so easy and regal.

And when she sang "Across the Great Divide," tears rolled down my face. She sang this:

"The finest hour
I have seen
is the one
that comes between
the edge of night
and the break of day
that's when the darkness
rolls away."

That time of my life was bookended by Nanci. The first time I heard her, I was embarking on an uncertain journey, about to navigate my ballistic behavior associated with subconscious deep regret of losing and hurting the one man who I thought I should have married. Sitting there Friday night with my head resting on Steve's shoulder, I realized that my old journey is done. I don't need souvenirs or diaries or postcards from it. I am on a new path, clear and clean and pure. I am smarter and better as a human being. And this time, I am not alone.

The Best 6 Minutes of Your Evening

Thanks to my new friend Kevin Bronson (yes, THE Kevin Bronson of Buzzbands.la) for turning me on to this. If you are a fan of live music, or even if the closest you've been to a club is at your cousin's penny-ante poker game, bookmark his site.

Soundtrack of Our Lives

Could It Be Magic - Barry Manilow

When you're 40licious, you have a very specific soundtrack to your life. My first memories of music were dancing for anyone who would watch in my dad's home office, the long leather couch a stage, to Teresa Brewer's "Put Another Nickel in Music Music Music." Later, there was listening to disco and yacht rock on a Snoopy transistor radio under my pillow -- Little River Band, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers, Eric Clapton ("Lay Down Sally" seemed like a very dirty song to me). And then on to junior high and high school for a stupefying cocktail consisting mainly of New Wave/Southern Rock/Led Zeppelin/Journey/REO Speedwagon/Foreigner/Loverboy, infused with the adolescent yearnings of the FAME soundtrack. (I also lip synched Irene Cara's "Why Me?" at a talent show in a gold lame top over a black pleather miniskirt.)

There are the breakup albums, with the Cranberries and Ani Di Franco leading the pack. And always through everything, Beatles, since I took it upon myself to illustrate what Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds might look like.

So I don't know why it is that tonight, getting ready to hunker down for my homebody Saturday with a French film (I'm in a phase, but please do get Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, you will be so much richer as a person for seeing them), and I do a little channel flip to see Tony Orlando and some middle-aged woman with a Mom haircut hawking the Time-Life collection "Romancing the 70s." It's a monstrous compendium of 156 songs. These songs are in my DNA. I've heard them all thousands of times. And I don't know why I am so riveted by the clips of Anne Murray, Neil Sedaka, Lionel Ritchie, BJ Thomas, Captain & Tenille -- there are scores -- in their 70s flair and gloss. But I am, and I can't turn away, and choking back tears is a futile effort.

My first reaction is to wonder why I am so moved by this music, these wide collars and far out hairstyles. A mental check confirms it is not PMS.

It is because the 70s were about summer breezes and midnight trains to Georgia and morning breaking. Danny's song and Annie's song. Or knocking three times and taking a little afternoon delight. Asking if you know where you're going to.

I can't think of a contemporary song that grabs me in the exact same spot. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe it's because I know I'll never love this way again.

It may surprise those who know me that I am crazy for Christmas music and have more than 450 songs from various artists on my iTunes (who knew there was a Barbershop Christmas!?). It may NOT surprise you that I am also a HUGE Beatles' fan, and this is one of the most fun products from them. It may help to take a belt of something stiff to join in the fun before you watch this. Or smoke a ton of pot. The lads are having a jolly good time.

Keep checking back as we count down the days to Christmas with video and song!

Yes, We Think We Can Dance

For some, it's glorious to watch Phelps glide through the water as if he were wrought from the loins of Neptune himself. For others, the ceremony and passion of nations coming together in friendship and sport warms cockles and muscles. For the McGradys, however, we've found our competition ... and we're in it to win it.

Ladies and gentlemen, sports fans and culture aficionados alike, it gives me tremendous pleasure to introduce two of my favorite people on the planet, Eirik and Bjorn McGrady.

Good Vibrations

California Girls

Last night my friend scored tickets to see a live, intimate taping of Brian Wilson at the Nissan-Yahoo concert series. It was the two of us, Brian's amazing band, and about 200 of our closest friends, including
Harry Shearer, a/k/a
Mr. Burns, a/k/a

Derek Smalls.

And Rodney Bingenheimer and Darrell Hammond.

Plus we saw Kelsey Grammar walking by.

Star sightings aside, it reminded me why classics are classics. I was never a huge Beach Boys fan -- never had anything against them. That music is just packed into the soundtrack of my life, along with Billy Joel and Earth, Wind and Fire and the Monkees and of course the Beatles. Among, oh, about a hundred other bands.

But last night, Brian, like a stately old king that had barely lived through many wars, headed up a band bursting with fresh young talent. They played classics and new stuff. And as hokey as "Good Vibrations" may sound on your AM radio, it brought me chills. He was masterful, rode easy on his legacy.

After a rendition of "California Girls," I realized that's what I am now. And that makes me happy.

Friday Night and the Lights Are Low ...

ABBA performs on Wonderama, 1976. My mother dated Bob McCallister, the host, in the '80s. He dumped her when he realized she wasn't rich. Jerk.


I remember being about 9 years old, at the height of the Disco Epoch, and imagining my teen and adult life being somewhat like the songs I listed to under my pillow on a Snoopy AM radio. There were a lot of songs about going out dancing. In fact, I think musicians were jailed and tortured if they produced a song that didn't involve the concept of looking fine and hooking up over a couple well executed Hustle moves. My adult life, I was convinced, would involve lots of lip gloss, some kind of boyfriend in a flared-leg suit, shiny long hair and of course, unlimited disco dancing, occasionally on roller skates.

I do rock the lip gloss occasionally, but I'm not sure when my other dreams bowed out. However, the music will always be with me, laser-etched into my DNA, my hard wiring. Disco is perennially happy and sexy and infuses hope and beauty into the most trite of activities (Car Wash, anyone?)

A couple years ago Special K snagged tix to Mamma Mia!, which is a "jukebox" musical built upon a skeleton of ABBA songs and a wacky story of a girl who isn't sure which of her mother's three lovers is her father -- so she invites the all! To her wedding! Dancing and copious alcohol consumption ensue! We saw Doogie Howser there and got up and danced with everyone, even though it was the "B" company in Thousand Oaks and there was an understudy!

And now (I am only explaining this to those who have been locked in the trunk of a 1973 Olds Cutlass for the past five years) Benny, Bjorn and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson went ahead and made a movie of the musical. With big stars. Which we decided we HAD to see on opening night at the ghastly Americana at Brand theaters where it's all mediocre and American and crowded and too expensive. HOWEVER, it was fun to see Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan cutting loose.

We didn't dance in the aisles this time, nor did we see Neil Patrick Harris. My advice to you: Even if you're not nutso over the movie, sit through the credits.

And to ABBA, I say, thank you for the music, for giving it to me.

F Me! / Also: My New Boyfriend - Part 3

I am actually doing it.

I have permanent nerve damage in my left fingertips to prove it.

I am practicing guitar.

I've understand that I will need to know exactly three chords for Nanci Griffith's "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness." I first heard this song when El Jefe and I were moving from New Mexico to Seattle. I knew why I was moving -- New Mexico was too dusty, too far from water and my family, we'd done everything we could do there and the next step was to become permanent fixtures in the grimy little town of Gallup. I'm not sure why he was moving, but maybe it was his best offer. We had begun crumbling as a couple. We stopped in Los Angeles and his friend hooked us up with tickets for the Tonight Show, just when Jay Leno had begun his reign. I can't for the life of me remember who the celebrity was, but Nanci played this song of a lover absent in spirit and I was enchanted. I want to learn this song on guitar. Maybe it's because I have a historical attraction to addicts. Maybe it's because it all seemed so familiar and sad and lovely. Maybe because it's pretty.

Three chords. C is easy. G is fun. But F???? Drat!!!! I must be missing a joint, or be severely anatomically incorrect.

My teacher is patient and kind and has told me to only practice F, and stop singing along. He told me, "I will not let you fail," which has brought all kinds of warm fuzzies to this whole process. In this late-night frustration, when F is a millimeter out of reach, I turned to ... my new boyfriend.

Introducing Justin Sandercoe.



And guess what? I hit F, and it rang out loud and true. Well, once or twice, anyway.

This Time Will Be Different

Rodrigo y Gabriela

This time will be different.

This time I will not quit when it gets hard.

This time I will pay attention.

This time I will work and work and work until I get it right.

This time, I will get good enough so that I don't have to try. So that I can translate what is happening in my head and my heart to the world. So that I can tell you I love you in lyric and melody without actually saying "I love you."

This time, I will learn guitar. From a real teacher.

There are 100 songs I want to be able to sing and play. I want to put provocative and too-clever poems to music, ala Ani di Franco. I want to mourn for sweetness gone like Nanci Griffith. I want to rock like Rod and Gab, John and Paul, Sinead, k.d., Prince.

At least 90 percent of my past beaus have been all guitar, all the time. True talents. But you know what? You can't learn guitar by osmosis, no matter how many bodily fluids you swap. And it's taken me until 40licious to understand this.

When I get my throwdown song, hopefully by the end of the year, I am nominating myself for the 40licious Hall o' Fame.