WAY more excited about this than I should have been, I clicked, hit play, and CANNOT STOP LISTENING.
Songs that used to be on my MySpace profile:
1. "Leader of the Pack" (The Shangri-las) - Best use of sound effects in any song. Ever.
2. "No Matter What" (Badfinger) - One of the first artists signed to the Beatles' newly-formed Apple label, Badfinger was originally called The Iveys, and scored their first hit with the song "Come and Get It," penned by Paul McCartney. Don't you feel more educated now? Most people do when I start spouting off Beatles (and Beatles-related) facts...
3. "21 Guns" (Green Day) - AHH, 21st Century Breakdown. At the time this song was featured on my profile, I publicly ranked this album as greater than American Idiot. I was wrong. But it's still great stuff.
4. "Before the Lobotomy" (Green Day) - See above.
6. "Circus" (Britney Spears) - See above.
7. "Womanizer" (Britney Spears) - Okay, three in a row was a little overkill.
8. "I Kissed a Girl" (Katy Perry) - Actually, this one I have no explanation for. I don't even like Katy Perry.
9. "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" (The Swinging Medallions) - I first heard this song on our local oldies station and could hardly believe what I was hearing. Don't let Leave It to Beaver fool you. Our parents were listening to scandalous things in the early- to mid-sixties!
10. "See You Again" (Miley Cyrus) - Aww, I always liked this song, because I'm 12, but now it has special significance for me because the last time I visited Kara before she died, she tried to talk me into making Post Secret postcards with her. I...declined. But she made one, and on hers, she admitted that she listened to this song about a billion times after her first date with her then-brand-new boyfriend. Oh, Kara...
11. "Bad to Me" (Billy J. Kramer) - Of all the songs that Lennon and McCartney wrote and then handed out to other artists, this is my second favorite. (Nothing beats "World Without Love.")
12. "How Far We've Come" (Matchbox Twenty) - This was the first song I downloaded from iTunes after I bought this computer. I know this because any time I listen to my "Purchased" playlist, this is the song that starts us off. I still love it.
13. "It's My Party" (Lesley Gore) - I put this up when Jake Watch ended. I thought I was making a coy statement about my frame of mind, but thinking about it now, I can't imagine anyone putting enough thought into my MySpace profile song to catch any subtle messages I was trying to convey.
14. "World Without Love" (Peter and Gordon) - See "Bad to Me."
I know there were tons of others (I specifically remember "S.O.S." by Rihanna being in there at some point), but that was probably enough in terms of recording my MySpace history. Just interesting enough to provide nostalgia, but not thorough enough to cause any real embarrassment.
Well, except for the Katy Perry thing. I'm still confused about that.
Love this list!
ReplyDelete“Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan and Dean comes a close second to “Leader of the Pack” with the sound effects, but nothing beats the lookoutlookoutlookout!! of ‘Leader’. Ironically, Jan Berry’s near-fatal car crash occurred close by.
I like Bad finger’s “No Matter What” but I like “Come and Get It” a little more. “Come and Get It” was in the movie, “The Magic Christian” with Ringo and Peter Sellers. The story was written by Terry Southern. (I feel like there must be a 6 degrees of separation in there, but I don’t know what.)
“Bad to Me” Billy J. Kramer was of my very favorites! You know Brian Epstein had a total crush on BJ and even though he couldn’t sing Brian signed him up anyway because he was so pretty.
“World Without Love” by Peter Asher (brother of Jane, Paul’s long ago girlfriend) and Gordon Waller is such a pretty song.
. . . and Lesley Gore – Lesley of the perfect flip hairdo! Thanks for the nostalgia ~
Billy J. Kramer was SUCH A DREAMBOAT!!! I have had a crush on his 1964 self since about age 14. *wistful sigh*
DeleteAnd I, too, like "Come and Get It" better than "No Matter What," and I think "Come and Get It" was on the list at some point but it must have been earlier in the timeframe and disappeared along with "S.O.S." and countless others... (??)
Leslie, this comment is so chock-full of awesome factoids that I have nothing more to add except I hope that everyone who reads this entry reads through your comment as well. :D
P.S. "The Magic Christian" is the one, elusive Beatles-related movie I have NEVER been able to track down! I mean, I've even seen "How I Won the War" and I feel that's way more obscure...
So sorry to bring this up here, and I hope I'm not being rude for asking but . . . I started reading your blogs only about maybe two years ago and you've mentioned Kara here and there. However, I've only ever been able to piece together that she was your best buddy who sadly passed away. I have always felt very sad for you but have sort of wondered more about her and the situation. Maybe I'm over-stepping it here and that's all the info you care to divulge (or all we're ever really supposed to know) -- which is completely understandable but . . . for whatever reason . . . she's gotten to me and I feel like I missed out on knowing a fun and nice person. If you could, and if it's okay, could you tell us more about her? [Or maybe you've already done this in the past and could repost the link?]. Thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for asking, Leslie. :) Sometimes I forget that I've never really told her whole story, but just mentioned her here and there. I did put up a post on ISJ when she died, but I've never given an overview of our friendship and maybe that's something I should think about seriously writing about in the future...
DeleteBut the short of it is that yes, she was my best friend! The best friend I've ever had, even. :) We met our first day on campus at college and for the next ten years, we were pretty inseparable. She's the only non-family member I've ever actively fought with over the years and remained very close to. We happened to be fighting over the summer of 2010 because...well...for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I was having (what I thought was) the worst year of my life and she was having one of the best of her life and I didn't think she was being supportive of me and my melodrama.
Words were exchanged...mostly from my end...and then in October of that year, she came to Nashville for an academic conference (she was going to Indiana University) and I decided to go over to see her for the day and try to patch things up.
When I got to Nashville, she was sick, and I wound up cutting the trip short so she could rest. All we did was go to lunch, but it was a nice lunch...and as I left, I told her we'd catch up more when she was feeling better. And that was the last time I talked to her.
She died of pulmonary embolism; she'd had knee surgery about seven weeks prior to driving to Nashville, got a clot in her knee on the drive, and it moved into her lungs. She actually made it all the way back to Indiana two days after I saw her, but collapsed in her boyfriend's driveway and died at the hospital.
I'm very glad that I got to see her before she died, but I struggled for a long while with guilt over not taking her to the hospital, and not making a better effort to reconcile with her earlier in the year. I'm okay now, and can talk about all of this without getting upset, but I kind of lost myself for a while last year, and looking back on it, I can see quite clearly that I was lonely and looking for someone to fill the void in my life that she left (i.e., someone I could call any time, to talk to about anything, and who could be just as catty and juvenile as I can be :)).
She was an incredibly fun person. She was obsessed with Russia and loved to drink vodka and speak in Russian. She liked folklore and ghost stories. She had a killer crush on a football player our senior year of college that I still teased her about years after the fact. She's mentioned through ISJ! the book because she was with me on my first stalking mission, and talked me through a bunch of the bigger drama of Jake Watch. She's also a major player in my second book - which I'm still working on wrapping up - and it's with some sadness that I know that if there's another book about my adventures through life, she won't be part of it.
So that's the short version! I still miss her, and probably always will, and it's been a goal of mine to just mention her when she pops into my head, just like I would if she were still alive. :) She was a very good person and a great friend and I'm better for having known her. :)
Oh wow, this was exactly what I was hoping to hear . . and if you ever care to go into it more it's definitely something I'd be happy to read about. I've had friends I've known - ups and downs - for 30+ years so I can completely understand the level of friendship you guys had. As for beating yourself up over things . . you're human and if you didn't do that then I'd seriously have my misgivings about you. ;) But the fact that you did only shows the level of your love for her. You did what you could for her and you never can know what's going on - you always second guess yourself after the fact. She knows you loved her, and that's all that's really needed. I'm so glad to know you had a friend like her. And yes, I heard her mentioned . . like you said . . just as pop-ups in your posts. Hence the intrigue. And I am sorry that I missed out on knowing her. But now I feel like I just met her. :) Thank you!
DeleteThank you so much, Leslie, both for reading all of that and for leaving such a wonderful response. :) Your words mean a lot, and it makes me especially happy to know that I've given you a glimpse into who she was. You've also inspired me to write more about all of this; I almost didn't reply back to you last night, thinking I could leave it until morning. But all the sudden I just felt I had to share some of it, and I know now there's a lot more in me. I think sometimes people aren't exactly sure how to react when I mention her, but you asking for more wound up being a great gift for me. So thank you. :)
DeleteI am glad that you took it the right way (I was afraid you might be upset at me for asking) and that you felt good writing about her. I'll be looking more for Kara here. :)
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