(Yeah, I got no photos for this post either. This one is a publicity shot.)
I’ve been living the high life!
I rarely if ever go “out on the town” but this weekend I got to do it twice! Two nights in a row!
And, why not? It’s the weekend, and it’s Mother’s Day. So maybe I deserve it a little bit.
I had made plans to go walking on the beach with my friend Karin on Saturday night. We do that sometimes, as we both need to get out of our houses and see nature on occasion. She takes care of her invalid mother but has Saturday nights off. But when my next door neighbor called and proposed the babysitting swap, and I saw no weekend in the next five that it would be possible other than this weekend, I cancelled the walk, and went out with the hubby to the swanky cocktail lounge.
As it turned out, the neighbor cancelled my reciprocating babysitting job because her baby was horribly sick, and so suddenly I had Saturday night free again! I called Karin, who had gone to the beach alone anyway, and told her I was coming to get her and we were hitting the town!
We headed off to one of the other places that had been recommended to me when I was looking for fun places to go in San Diego. It’s a funky coffeehouse called Lestat’s and it seems they also own the space next door, and had turned it into a little music venue with 10 or 12 tables near the stage and a handful of theater seats. Totally simple and intimate.
That night, the guy at the door told us, three very respected and well loved San Diego singer/songwriters were playing. One of them was Gregory Page (no, not THAT Gregory Page) who was touted as the “Bob Dylan of San Diego”.
We stopped in the coffeehouse, got some mocha and tea, and headed next door and got a table down front. There were all of 15 or 20 people in the audience. I noticed the gold sign on the wall said “The Gregory Page Stage” and my friend Karin said she had seen him perform many years ago, maybe right here on this stage.
He was awesome.
I wouldn’t call him Bob Dylan (but then I wouldn’t call anyone but Bob Dylan “Bob Dylan”) but he was a fantastic guitar player and his songs were very melancholy and often humorous. I would say his style was more toward Eric Clapton. Acoustic Eric Clapton. With an Elvis Costello twist. Dipped in Neil Young.
Yeah, sorta like that.
It was clear he knew how to write a song. And just as you were getting lulled into the melancholy he would make you laugh and snort mocha out your nose!
He tried out a lot of new songs on us, reading them out of a handwritten journal laying on a chair. It was really low key, and so nice, sitting there with a good friend, sipping mochas and getting lost in a song.
Next up was Lisa Sanders. She was very good too, in a whole ‘nuther way. She had an awesome voice, kind of like a one-woman Indigo Girls, and wrote songs about her turbulent youth and about her life now which is clearly colored by her turbulent youth! Her songs were full of angst and yearning, sorrow and jubilation, and faith.
It was a really sweet evening, especially coming on the heels of a night out with Michael. I almost felt like my old, college-years self again!
I spun around clicking on the links to the upcoming performers at Lestat's and was pleased to find out that most everyone that performs there seems to be really talented, singer/songwriters who's style is right up my alley. Apparently Jason Mraz and others got their start here. It seems, by reputation, to be a good place to find the "next big thing".
I will be be back there again, soon.
Here are a couple links to videos from Gregory Page (including a little Christmas song showing his sillier side) and Lisa Sanders if you want to go check them out. I gotta say, neither video really does them justice, but it'll give you an idea.
Enjoy!
Over at Mama Says Om, they are offering a giveaway of a CD by Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback called "It's a Big World" and I would really, really love to own it. You can hear clips here. My friend Wannabe Hippie mentioned this CD on her blog awhile back, with a link to some samples of the music. This music is some of the sweetest lullaby music you may ever hear, and is the kind of thing you wouldn’t even mind listening when there are no kids around.
It’s a good soundtrack for drinking tea while reading the Sunday paper, or for dozing in the hammock while listening to the kids playing happily nearby. Even after listening to snippets of it on their website, I found myself singing them to myself later in the day, not even knowing the rest of the song!
Its funny, I always imagined one of the best parts of motherhood was singing to your child softly, in the rocking chair, while breastfeeding. I knew I didn’t have the best singing voice, but it’s not all that bad either. But when my first baby came, and I quietly sang to him in the night, he would burst into tears, inconsolable. When I stopped singing, he stopped crying. And it went on like that.
To fulfill that little fantasy of motherhood, I had to quietly sing to him after he fell back asleep, before I laid him back in his bed. All for my own benefit.
This was all the more disconcerting as he grew older and developed a love of all things musical. He had to own a toy piano, a harmonica, a drum, some castanets, a saxophone… whatever new instrument he learned about, he wanted to play. And he learned to sing songs quickly and loved to sing them.
But if I tried to sing along with him, he would scold me. “Mommy! Stop Singing!”
One day, I asked him, “Why? How come you get to sing, but I don’t?” and he answered, “Because when you sing, its like you’re being mean to me!” He was in a cranky mood that day, but that hurt.
So, I ended up playing him lullaby CDs before bed. I tried to get him to listen to things I would like, mellow songs from Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkle, and the like. But he always asked for something else. Lullabies from the Beatles came next. Nope. He did like those nature discs that had some classical music along with the sounds of birds chirping or the ocean waves. But the one he always went back to was one that came as an advertisement from a PHARMACEUTICAL company, for some drug for children and infants!! And he has been listening to it over and over, night after night, for about three years straight.
This is fine for him. But, I have to listen to it too, through the baby monitor.
Now, understand that I am the mom who doesn’t like advertising things unless I REALLY like the product. I won’t wear those free t-shirts you get from companies with their logo on it, no matter how cool it looks. I don’t like my kids to wear those shirts either, and it bugs me, all those useful things like clocks and pens and cups and soap dispensers and LULLABY CDs (!!!) that my hubby comes home with, because my frugal side has to battle with my non-advertising side.
Which brings me back to “It’s a Big World”. See, I already know I like the music on this disc. It’s so sweet and soothing. If I can’t win Noah over to it, I can just play it in my own room, drowning out his music coming over the monitor!
And, I can start my twin toddlers out early on some music I like listening to over and over again.
Hey there everyone.
First off... while hopping around reading some of the blogs I like to look at, I ran across a revamped site of a photographer whose stuff I like, and as it turns out, she put some music on her webpage that I just fell in love with! Its by a group called the Be Good Tanyas. Maybe click over to their song The Littlest Birds and have a listen while reading the rest of this post. Its so sweet and happy!
I am still on the laptop and will be for awhile so I don't have access to my Adobe Photoshop, so there may not be any photo-goodness for you for a little while.
I am supposed to be cleaning and fixing up my house for my looming visit from the parents and my sweet niece. But instead I am working on a little project that I have been wanting to do. Noah is learning to read and I wanted to make some phonics flashcards for him. So I got a pile of index cards and have been looking up all the sounds that are out there in the english language and putting them down on each card. I also made a whole bunch with all the words you need to know when reading your first sentances. Words like "I", "who", "what", "do", "they", "see", "run, "Dick", "run".
No, I did not make a card that says "Dick" on it. I doubt Noah will be reading Dick and Jane in this day and age.
In case you didn't know, my son Noah is a linguistic genious. No, really! I was pointing at letters and telling us what they were called before the age of 2. And he was telling us what sounds they made before we taught him those things. Like it was just already there in his head. He was sounding out words at this third birthday. That was a year and a half ago. Then the twins were born.
And where is he now? He is still just starting to sound out words. With the crazyness that twin babies brings, we have totally dropped the ball in teaching our little word genious to read. He would be SO far ahead if we had had the time to work with him more. But I am assuming with some work and some flashcards (now that the babies are a bit less time consuming and can play on thier own for some period of time) that Noah will be jumping ahead in no time. Leaps and bounds! Sky's the limit!
So how didja like that Littlest Birds song? Sweet, huh?
Noah: Stop singing, Mom!
Mama: I thought you liked music!
Noah: Only I get to sing!
Mama: How come only you can sing? Why can't I sing?
Noah: When you sing, its like you're being mean to me!
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