Sunday, September 18, 2016

More Music Musings, Vintage Abominations

For poem-writing reasons which shall remain shrouded in secrecy for the moment, I recently went to YouTube to listen to Amy Grant’s song “Thy Word.” I don’t really identify as a Christian anymore except vaguely in spirit, and as such, I’m not a fan a Christian music, but I remember loving that song as a kid. The lyrics “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet/and a light unto my path” were enormously comforting to me. I didn’t understand exactly what the lyrics meant, I just knew I wanted a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Of course, all of my friends made fun of Amy Grant at the time, so I had to be secretive about my love of “Thy Word,” but I’m a grown-ass woman now and if I want to nerd out to a cheesy Amy Grant song, I will do so, loudly and proudly. In my opinion, it actually holds up pretty well as a piece of music.  

Speaking of music, since I re-joined my neighborhood gym and started working out again, I’ve been on an interesting journey of finding a decent work-out music mix. I recently switched from an i-Phone to an Android, so I have Google Play now, and they have all of these pre-set “stations” you can pick from for various activities. Most of their workout stations were bizarre. The music was either too repetitive and electronic-y, or the songs were chock full of nonsensical rap lyrics that were also too repetitive, including one by a female rap artist who kept singing in a threatening tone that she was going to park her car, get out and “pop it”. (She just kept repeating that, and I don’t know what that means, because I am an old.)  I need the music to change up when I’m trying to stay motivated. I need a mix of beats. I need excitement, because I hate exercising and I must have every distraction at my disposal so I don’t quit after seven minutes. I finally discovered a station that plays the likes of The Runaways, The Donnas, and The Pretty Reckless, and I love it.  I’ve been discovering some awesome girl bands I had no idea existed, and may even start liking music again because of it.

Last weekend, Mr. Typist and I decided to go the Fremont flea market and look for a set of vintage salt and pepper shakers, convinced we could find a plethora of cool, unique designs. It turns out that in the entire market, there was nothing in the way of vintage salt and peppers shakers, unless you count one set of wood and silver ones, which cost $22.00 apiece. So I decided to do an online search for “vintage salt and pepper shakers” and oh, boy. The results were frightening. People had terrible ideas about salt and pepper shakers back in the day. I have never seen such a lurid collection of bizarre, impracticable, and vaguely (and sometimes overtly) racist household items. I suppose that’s what I get for romanticizing the past. So we remain salt and pepper shaker-less at the moment. But I’m convinced that one day I will be browsing in some shabby second-hand store and I will come across the most gorgeous, tasteful and unique salt and pepper shakers in all the city, and they shall be enshrined our kitchen, and our dinner guests will gasp with admiration when they see them and beg us to tell them where we got them. There are no shabby second-hand stores left in the city, and we never have dinner guests, but hey, a girl can dream, right?


Here are The Runaways playing “Cherry Bomb,” which is a great workout song, IMHO.


--Kristen McHenry

No comments: