Thoughts about Prince Seven Months Later

I had my i-pod on shuffle the other day while riding my bike when a Prince tune came on. His song, Let’s Go Crazy, is so prophetic that it gave me chills. I listened to it twice in a row.

The song starts with Prince talking, giving sort of a eulogy.

“Dearly beloved

We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called ‘life’

Prince. Courtesy of Google Images.

Electric word, life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time

But I'm here to tell you
There's something else
The afterworld

(Harp music here)

A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night…”

Then he sings about how to get through life.

“Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own…”

and..

“If you don't like
The world you're living in
Take a look around
At least you got friends…”

Little Richard. Courtesy of Google Images.

He sings about the elevator. WHAT? You say? The elevator? Yep. The elevator. What if the elevator is death? Is the elevator death?

“We’re all excited

But we don’t’ know why

Maybe it’s cause

We’re all gonna die

And when we do (When we do)

What’s it all for (What’s it all for)

You better live now

Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door

Tell me, are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?

Oh, no let’s go!...”

Prince is (was) pretty avant-garde, but I think he was also a musical genius. This is probably why I didn’t “get” some of his work.

Rick James. Courtesy of Google Images.

But this song got me thinking of some what ifs..

What if Prince did not die in his elevator, but instead instructed his people, his handlers, to announce that, upon his death, they should say it took place in the elevator? That kind of thing sounds like a Prince move to me.

I think Prince could be considered a healthy mix of the flamboyance of Little Richard, the funk of Rick James, the sexuality of Elvis (remember his hip gyrations?), and the fashion sense of Michael Jackson.

Elvis. Courtesy of Google Images.

What if Prince didn’t die from a similar drug O.D. as Michael Jackson? Maybe he was sick and didn’t want people to know. That seems like a Prince move, too.

I read that Prince had started writing his autobiography and it was to be published in 2017.

It’s also weird to me that Paisley Park, Prince’s home in the suburbs of Minneapolis, has already opened as a museum, much like Elvis’s Graceland. In fact, they’re both managed by the same company.

How could a product as big as Prince get a museum opening off the ground just six months after his death? Maybe the deal was done by Prince himself far before his death on April 21, 2016.

Michael Jackson.
 Courtesy of Google Images.

I think Prince had total control of every aspect of his life. Perhaps even right down to how his death would be played out.

I know this post is not exactly “timely,” in fact, Prince’s death is probably considered old news by now, but Let’s Go Crazy prompted me to write this. And as you may know, I like song lyrics.

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself,

~Nadine

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

My phone’s storage was at maximum capacity and I was having difficulty sending things so I decided it was time to go through my pictures and delete the junk and then download the rest onto my computer. As I was scrolling it occurred to me that I take a lot of pictures of signs. Maybe it’s my love of words or maybe it’s my darker side’s sense of humor. Or maybe it’s both.

In 1970, Canadian rock group called Five Man Electrical Band had a song called “Signs.” Back in the day, you could buy an individual song to play on a record player. It was called a 45. Since there were 2 sides to every record, the other side - the B-side, or flip side – was typically a song that wasn’t going to make much of a commotion in the music world.  This particular song was the B-Side and it went BIG! (In 1990, some twenty years later, the band Tesla re-released “Signs." They changed the lyrics a bit as to create a more up-to-date/raw version fitting for the day and times.)

I got a kick out of seeing these signs on my phone again and thought you might too. I’ll throw in a little of Five Man E B's lyrics just for fun!

I was at a stoplight and noticed the sign (right)
on the back of a pick-up (above).

 "A Bar Walks Into A Man"

A gas station in Wisconsin. I guess it's a contest! (?) 

An old building in Boston. The date:
August 4  A.D. 1817
(I'm pretty sure the  plug in was added later!)

This sign was in the door at a real legit. business in the Quad City area!

"And the sign said, "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said, "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat, I said, "Imagine that, huh, me workin' for you"
Whoa, oh, oh"

A sign back stage at the Grand Ol Opry (Above)
The famous Tootsies in Nashville (Below)

Climax Springs, Missouri

French Lick, Indiana got a lot of attention this past weekend!

Who names these places anyway?

My father-in-law's fav saying: "You can sleep when you're dead"
Scared the crap out of my kids when they were little!

On a building at a Y intersection in Nashville, TN

I may have gotten carried away here....and I have more signs that I didn't share! 

The end of the song goes like this:

"And the sign said, 'Everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray'

But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all

I didn't have a penny to pay

So, I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign

I said, 'Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me, I'm alive and doin' fine,' woo"

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself!

~Nadine

Parodies Are Fun

Parodies are fun. 

Saturday Night Live has proven that. Presidents, politicians, actors, and other famous or infamous people’s actions and words have been the fodder for SNL parodies for forty years now.  My favorite parodies from SNL have to be “Celebrity Jeopardy" skits.  Norm Macdonald’s Burt Reynolds and Darrell Hammon’s Sean Connery characterizations are hilarious. Jimmy Fallon plays an exasperated Alex Trebek to a T. 

The sly creators of Sesame Street have kept mommies and kiddos entertained for years.  Their parodies not only teach little ones numbers and letters, but offer sometimes frazzled and often isolated child care providers a good laugh. I personally laughed my head off the first time I saw Polly Darton, a country singing muppet that looked very much (in every way) like country singer Dolly Parton on Sesame Street. (My babies stared at me like I’d gone mad…)

There are lots of song parodies on the internet.  Just type ‘parodies’ and you’ll get an impressive, never ending list of videos to satisfy your creative funny bone. The king of parodies is of course, Weird Al Yankovic.  He’s been around for a long time. And he’s not so weird.  I watched an interview on line recently where Al (we’re on a first name basis) talked about his creative process when deciding which songs to parody, what the topic of the parody should be, and how to write the parody.  He also stated that every song he writes must get the original singer’s approval before it can be recorded. Think way back to “Fat”, a parody of Michael Jackson’s Bad, and more recently “Tacky”, a parody of  Pharrell William’s Happy… and every parody in between.  That’s an impressive run.

I like parodies because they're by nature something that has to be copied/imitated well to be good.  That's much more difficult I think than just writing your own song or skit.  It takes creative problem solving to make sure a parody sounds like the original and makes sense in its own right.

I wrote my own parody while attending the EIWP at St. Ambrose University.  I’ve talked about this class in previous posts. One of the things we did at least two afternoons a week was an activity called Writing Marathon.  During a Writing Marathon we organized ourselves into small writing groups then we picked several places around the city to visit to and just sit and write.  We found inspiration most everywhere we went. With a shout-out to Starland Vocal Band, here is a parody I wrote during a Writing Marathon.

Afternoon Write

By Nadine Roth

(With apologies to Starland Vocal Band and in appreciation of Weird Al Yankovic)

Gonna find my pen gonna hold it tight
Gonna grab some afternoon write
My motto's always been 'when I write, it's right'
Even if it starts: “It was a cold dark night.”

Everything's a little clearer with your muse at play

And I know the revision’s gonna be there any way
Marathon invite. Afternoon, write. Afternoon write!

Thinkin' up stories feed my appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon write
Rubbin' pens and pencils together starts sparks igniting
And the thought of publication is getting so exciting
Marathon invite. Afternoon, write. Afternoon write!

Wrote a poem this morning that was so polite
My fellows assured me that it didn’t bite
But it’s gotten me a thinkin’ and I’m sure I might try grabbing a little afternoon write.
Marathon invite. Afternoon, write. Afternoon write!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Sometimes a song lyric can stop me in my tracks.  The song Jolene, by The Zac Brown Band, is about a guy who lost the woman he loves – his whole life really - to cocaine addiction.  In that song these lyrics flatten me:

“A picture of you holding a picture of me in the pocket of my blue jeans…”

The poor couple in this song can’t even get together in the same place long enough to have their picture taken with each other, no wonder they can’t make the relationship work (well, that and the cocaine…)  So sad.

I remember when I was a kid during the Vietnam War my young, newly married aunt would sit on my grandmother’s front porch to write letters to her new husband who was somewhere ‘out there’ fighting a war.  My aunt wrote to him several times a week on super thin airmail paper called Onion Skin. And every single time she did, she would bring out an 8x10 framed photo of him in his uniform to set by her on the step as she wrote. 

My picture that’s worth a thousand words was taken right after my daughter became a mother.  In the picture there’s new baby paraphernalia taking up all the surrounding space, but in the center of the photo is my daughter, now a new mommy, sleeping on the couch with her hand in the bassinette. Even in her sleep, she is protective of her baby.  And lying at her feet?  Well that’s her buddy Gus, who is the self-appointed protector of his owner and gladly accepts the job of protecting her new babe, too.  I thank my son-in-law for seeing the beauty in this moment and capturing it.

What is your picture of? Is it a picture in your mind, a memory?  Or is it one you can hold in your hands?  Both are worth a thousand words.