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| This album is just so good for a good mood! :) |
I must need my head checked...I have a super fun weekend (we found a really neat record store!) with my niece, the best weekend in ages and then I come home and read sad stuff.
Or maybe not so much sad as stuff about being solitary. Still, it does strike me as relevant, though I will not fall back into the bad habit of keeping to myself all the time, when I'm not working or with my niece.
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| from the short story collection Little Whispers by Karen Campbell |
This is good advice for single travelers...if you can fight an almost instinctive shyness that comes with being around with people you don't know...
Social scientists have found that making such connections, whether traveling or not, boosts happiness, and yet strangers in proximity “routinely ignore each other,” as Dr. Epley and his colleague Juliana Schroeder put it in the Journal of Experimental Psychology last year. During a series of nine experiments, they saw again and again that we underestimate other people’s interest in connecting.
How to break the ice then? Dr. Epley suggests simply saying to that stranger on the bus or in the cafe: “Hi, I’m visiting. Can you tell me what I ought to see in town?”
“Everybody loves to brag about their city,” he said.
Or offer a compliment, he suggested. “I think you’re just best off in your relationships if you’re transparent with people.” (This is not to gloss over any genuine concerns about talking to strangers, Dr. Epley said. But we’ll address those in a bit.)
As experienced solo travelers know, opportunities for pleasurable connections are everywhere: trains, planes, parks, bars, museums, walking tours, group hikes. Yet should all that fail, technology provides seemingly innumerable ways to increase the odds. Obviously dating websites and apps like OkCupid and Tinder can facilitate in-person get-togethers around the world. Yet the travel industry has its own tools, designed not specifically for romance, but for friendship.
You can read more here:
And this op-ed, especially the part below, really spoke to me, because it's how I see the hypocrisy of how love is defined and by whom.
Despite how some people may see gays and lesbians, love is love, not politics nor an agenda. I may not have love in my own life, but I still want others to have it, always:
A straight woman puts a photograph of herself and her beloved on her desk at work and it’s merely décor. A lesbian displays the same kind of picture and it’s an act of laudable candor or questionable boldness: a statement, either way you cut it. She knows that some people’s eyes will linger on it too long, or will turn from it abruptly. She has to decide not to care.
And a politician who says awful, hateful things about gays and lesbians can still find a warm enough reception and plenty of traction in one of our two major political parties. The Republican winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012, Rick Santorum, has said that the marriage of two men or two women is no more like the marriage of a man and a woman than a tree is like a car or a cup of tea is like a basketball. He has also lumped homosexuality together with incest.
I'm not going to go into a Monday in a funk, though, so I think I'll put on something kind of mellow, but also kind of different...one of my favorite Herb Alpert albums is Rise.
Review by Thom Jurek [-]
If the 12" single of Herb Alpert's "Rise" hadn't taken over the charts the way it did back in 1979, one wonders if anyone would have gotten around to checking out the Tijuana Brass, or if Alpert would have gone down in the books as the guy who had a number one with a Burt Bacharach tune ("This Guy's in Love with You"). Instead, the cut energized the entire dance club generation with DJs looking for new grooves and even ended up being used by Sean "Puffy" Combs on the Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotise, albeit in a drastically re-morphed form. The single began as a disc track composed by Alpert's nephew Randy and his pal Andy Armer. Alpert suggested they slow the groove way down and turn it into a slow mover. They issued it without an album to go with it, simply as a single on A&M. Club DJs picked up on it and began using duplicate copies either to let the percussion break go on a bit longer before trumpet kicked in, or playing one copy just behind another, creating a call and response melody with the trumpet and the rhythm section. After the single stormed the charts and stayed there all summer, eventually hitting the number one spot, Alpert, Armer and friends went about assembling an album to capitalize on it.
They did well: Rise hit number six on the Billboard pop chart. The rest of the tracks are a slew of originals and covers. The set opens with a small pomp and circumstance intro called "1980" that Alpert composed for the Olympics that year, assisted by the late Michel Colombier on keyboards. Alpert also composed the ballad-turned-Latin-dancefloor fire walker "Behind the Rain," (originally composed for Gato Barbieri's Caliente! album) that has its own appeal in the 21st century with chorus-like backing vocals. Other tracks include the Armer and Randy Alpert "Rotation." This cut, introduced by hand percussion, bells and shakers is another soulful groover with a killer, soft-spoken keyboard line that's lite funk and hypnotic. A looped synth line enters in place of a bassline. Handclaps, fingersnaps, and Alpert's trumpet from the distance play a melody not unlike the one on the "Lonely Bull." Effects, washes, reverb, and mild distortion create a futuristic backdrop to this otherwise beautifully melodic tune. Alpert plays his in the pocket soul-drenched melody lines over the top and one of the first "chillout" tunes was born. The 2007 version of the album includes an alternate version with digital delay on the trumpet as a bonus track. Speaking of bonus cuts, Alpert recorded an updated version of Rodrigo's "Aranjuez" introduced by a steel string playing the flamenco intro and backed by hand percussion and the popping bassline of Jerry Knight to full-on 1/2 disco tempo, creating another melodic classic for the floor complete with marimba played by Julius Wechter from (where else?) the Tijuana Brass! The handclap and vocal whoop-up in the middle adds to the celebratory nature of this version. By its end the tune is unrecognizable and has become a disco anthem with strings, with Steve Schaeffer beating the hell out his kit and keyboard loops layered on top of one another. It's still an amazing thing to hear nearly 30 years later. There is a brand new mix of the cut contained on the 2007 edition.
Alpert, wanting to charge the disco scene, had re-recorded the Crusaders' "Street Life" with Joe Sample on piano amid the synthetic keyboards. The marimba adds to the vibe and the slowed downtempo, as the melody is ushered in by strings before Alpert starts blowing his tight, sharp little vamps. Sample's piano is a solid accompaniment to James Jamerson, Jr.'s bass playing, and the whole thing rivals the Crusaders' version because of the deep, soulful melody in Alpert's playing. And who would have ever thought the prog rocker Pete Sinfield and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker's tune "Angelina" (recorded for Brooker's first solo album) would end up here as a faux calypso tune with a pedal steel guitar in it? The studio was the lab and everything was possible then, though hearing it now it's amazing they could accomplish all this back then. What this leaves is "Love Is," penned by Bill Withers, and delivered here rather anemically by Alpert. But it isn't the vocal that sells this, it's the drop dead bassline by Louis Johnson and the woven-in keyboard lines. Alpert plays fills around and through his vocals and turns the song into an anthem of celebration. What it all adds up to is an extraordinary recording that stands the test of time as a bona fide classic of the late disco/pre hip-hop era. The pop charts would have none of it these days. But eating this up as folks did, pre-MTV, with simply the radio going nuts trying to introduce the next single from it, Alpert, his nephew, and Armer stumbled onto something that would reinvigorate Alpert's career as a recording artist and as a producer. [Rise was reissued with the bonus tracks mentioned above in 2007.]
They did well: Rise hit number six on the Billboard pop chart. The rest of the tracks are a slew of originals and covers. The set opens with a small pomp and circumstance intro called "1980" that Alpert composed for the Olympics that year, assisted by the late Michel Colombier on keyboards. Alpert also composed the ballad-turned-Latin-dancefloor fire walker "Behind the Rain," (originally composed for Gato Barbieri's Caliente! album) that has its own appeal in the 21st century with chorus-like backing vocals. Other tracks include the Armer and Randy Alpert "Rotation." This cut, introduced by hand percussion, bells and shakers is another soulful groover with a killer, soft-spoken keyboard line that's lite funk and hypnotic. A looped synth line enters in place of a bassline. Handclaps, fingersnaps, and Alpert's trumpet from the distance play a melody not unlike the one on the "Lonely Bull." Effects, washes, reverb, and mild distortion create a futuristic backdrop to this otherwise beautifully melodic tune. Alpert plays his in the pocket soul-drenched melody lines over the top and one of the first "chillout" tunes was born. The 2007 version of the album includes an alternate version with digital delay on the trumpet as a bonus track. Speaking of bonus cuts, Alpert recorded an updated version of Rodrigo's "Aranjuez" introduced by a steel string playing the flamenco intro and backed by hand percussion and the popping bassline of Jerry Knight to full-on 1/2 disco tempo, creating another melodic classic for the floor complete with marimba played by Julius Wechter from (where else?) the Tijuana Brass! The handclap and vocal whoop-up in the middle adds to the celebratory nature of this version. By its end the tune is unrecognizable and has become a disco anthem with strings, with Steve Schaeffer beating the hell out his kit and keyboard loops layered on top of one another. It's still an amazing thing to hear nearly 30 years later. There is a brand new mix of the cut contained on the 2007 edition.
Alpert, wanting to charge the disco scene, had re-recorded the Crusaders' "Street Life" with Joe Sample on piano amid the synthetic keyboards. The marimba adds to the vibe and the slowed downtempo, as the melody is ushered in by strings before Alpert starts blowing his tight, sharp little vamps. Sample's piano is a solid accompaniment to James Jamerson, Jr.'s bass playing, and the whole thing rivals the Crusaders' version because of the deep, soulful melody in Alpert's playing. And who would have ever thought the prog rocker Pete Sinfield and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker's tune "Angelina" (recorded for Brooker's first solo album) would end up here as a faux calypso tune with a pedal steel guitar in it? The studio was the lab and everything was possible then, though hearing it now it's amazing they could accomplish all this back then. What this leaves is "Love Is," penned by Bill Withers, and delivered here rather anemically by Alpert. But it isn't the vocal that sells this, it's the drop dead bassline by Louis Johnson and the woven-in keyboard lines. Alpert plays fills around and through his vocals and turns the song into an anthem of celebration. What it all adds up to is an extraordinary recording that stands the test of time as a bona fide classic of the late disco/pre hip-hop era. The pop charts would have none of it these days. But eating this up as folks did, pre-MTV, with simply the radio going nuts trying to introduce the next single from it, Alpert, his nephew, and Armer stumbled onto something that would reinvigorate Alpert's career as a recording artist and as a producer. [Rise was reissued with the bonus tracks mentioned above in 2007.]
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