Hey music lovers!

It’s that random day of the week that I finally finish and publish my weekly music post.

Moody Blythe to my left is pretty excited.

You can mostly see it around her eyes.

This week in Jackie’s musical A-Z we’re at H.  Which, just to pause, brings us almost a third of the way through the alphabet.  I have to say I’m pretty psyched I’ve made it this far on this A-Z musical ride.

With that said, this week I’m thinking about house and home.

My husband and I bought our house at the end of 2007.  It’s a 1968 three-bedroom bungalow.  At the time of purchase it had one bathroom, wacky kitchen, and every wall in varying shades of pink.  It was the house we could afford in the neighbourhood we wanted.

Since then, we have built our family, renovated and spruced it up, and made it home.

It is, in every way:

Our House – Madness (1982)

It’s where our day-to-day life unfolds; where we brought each of our newborns home to from the hospital; where I learnt how to cook.  Where we commemorated the painting over of the last pink wall during our kitchen renovation (demolition and rebuild while pregnant with our first.  I moved back with my folks for a quick spot).  Where I’ve watched more Netflix than I care to admit and practiced my Spanish with Dora.  And while I’ve enjoyed my Carlsberg years of sharing ownership with our lovely bank, in a couple of years, when we’ve paid off the mortgage, it will be ours in even that sense.

Having so happily nested in our very, very, very fine house makes me appreciate all the more not being:

Homeless – Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (1986)

I honestly love the entire Graceland album for its eclectic use of a variety of music, but this song is beautiful.  The music is from the melody of a Zulu wedding song.  I also love that I read that the phrase “we are homeless” is similar to the words a Zulu uses when proposing to his bride.  The idea and thought that it may be about finding home with your future bride, rather than “strong wind destroy our home” and “many dead” makes me hopeful.  And the thought and my imagined visual of moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake always has a bit of a calming effect on me.

Whereas this next thought?  Not so much.

She’s Leaving Home – The Beatles (1967)

It’s funny.  I never looked up the origins of this song until I chose it for this post.  When I was younger, I always thought it was about a young girl running away or possibly setting out on her own – though the tone implies the first.  As a parent?  This song now unsettles me in an entirely new way.  Thoughts of the day my girls leave, grow up, move out.  Even removing the “running away” scenario, it leaves an off feeling in my stomach.  Perhaps I’ll be ready by then.

But yes, the actual story?  Trusty Wikipedia shows me I wasn’t far off as a teen.  The song is based on a newspaper story Lennon and McCartney had read about a young girl who had left home and not been found.  While most of the details in the song are made up, the article was actually about a girl named Melanie Coe, who ran away at 17.  Upon hearing the song, she is said to have agreed it was mostly accurate.  Although she didn’t meet “a man from the motor trade”, but rather a croupier; and left in the afternoon while her parents were at work, not the morning – creeping out as they slept.

And rounding out the tale with a bit of harsh reality, she was found ten days later because she’d let it slip where her boyfriend worked.  She returned home pregnant and had an abortion.

I have no way to transition from that thought, so I’m not going to try.

Instead, I’m going to liven the mood with a house party and a bit of aspirational home gazing.  I aim for this to be my summer home one day:

Home Alone – R. Kelly featuring Keith Murray (1998)

Now that’s the kind of party I want to go to!  The song brings me back to dancing in the bars during my undergrad.  So perhaps a kind of “home” in my soul.  Memories of fun and carefree times.  And listening to the lyrics (they aren’t deep, we don’t need a poetry circle) I can’t help but really like the one where “rich girl; poor girl get the same respect.”  So much better than this song, where the poor girl doesn’t even get dinner in exchange for the wonder of hanging out with awesomeness that is the singer.  “If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal;  If her daddy’s poor just do what you feel.”  Always left me wondering if the poor girl’s “do what you feel”  might include standing up the presumptuous chump of a singer.  Just saying.

But let’s get back to the party house of equal fun, shall we?  Because that was a good party.  But a great party just might result in:

Burning Down the House – Tom Jones and the Cardigans (1999)   

I know I should give you the Talking Heads for this song, but it’s forever Tom Jones for me.  So this is what I found, it’s the video with, I suspect, some … inverting time lag issues?! But hey, in my house?  We except a few quirks.  So this will do.  I Contiki toured in my 20s and did my first tour shortly after Reload (this album) was released.  We danced across Europe to Sexbomb, so I bought the album, which had any number of lovely covers, including this one.

I loved this album right up until the moment someone broke into my car, parked outside my future husbands’ (apparently more) ghetto (than I’d realized) apartment building, and STOLE it.  Along with a series of Jean Leloup, Louise Attaque, Dan Bern and random British dance CDs only for purchase in Europe (this will matter in a moment, swear I’m not being pretentious) and camping equipment (see, that makes me relatable again, right?).

So aside from having to miss a day (and thus pay) of contract work to go get my smashed in back window replaced, two weeks later I FOUND a good many of my CDs at a used CD store in Ottawa.  All sold to the store by the same person.  On the same day.  Figuring that the odds of there being a kindred spirit out there spontaneously selling a similarly eclectic mix of Euro Dance, Québécois music and American Folk was pretty rare, I called the cops.  They contacted the nice fellow who’d sold my stolen goods to the CD store.  From what the cops told me, while he was an individual on parole living in a half-way house on a street name that they gave me (so it would have been easy enough from there for me to HUNT HIM DOWN) he told them he’d bought them in a grocery store parking lot from a couple selling them to …. be able to afford to buy formula for their baby.

Cue violins.

But that was the end of it from the cops’ perspective.  No proof and moving on to real crime.  I had a rabid “I’m not gonna take this!” moment while talking with a lawyer friend who explained I could, with the info that I had, likely file a complaint against the individual with his parole officer because selling stolen goods (whether he claimed to know they were or not) would likely be a parole violation.  A few days later, after I calmed down, I decided I didn’t really need to burn down the house on this one, so to speak.  He likely needed my crap more than me, it was bad luck on my part, and that’s that.  To quote the song?  The time for jumping overboard was NOT here.  It still pissed me off, but wasn’t a fire worth fighting.

For what it’s worth?  The store gave me the CDs they hadn’t resold yet back.  But the icing on the cake?  I didn’t get THIS CD back.  Because the CD store WOULDN’T TAKE IT from the dude who broke into my car.  They didn’t think it would sell!  If the Powers That Be are listening – I’d love that CD back; along with Dan Bern’s Smartie Mine, which was apparently equally unmarketable, and so I’ve never found it again.

But now, with that trauma out-of-the-way, you’ll have to excuse me.  I’m not at my best and need:

Home For a Rest – Spirit of the West (1990)

This is the song that, at my university during my undergrad years was EVERY frosh group’s SONG.  My first year during frosh week?  TOTALLY OUR SONG.  I was a frosh guide for the next three years.  At which point, I discovered, it was TOTALLY EVERYONE’S SONG.  But I passed kindergarten, so I’m all good with sharing.  So I’m ending with a bit of Canadian content for you all.  I’ve posted this song before, but it fits here.  It’s about going out and living life to the fullest – and then coming home – to home – to recharge.  It honours all things “home” while equally being a great pub anthem.  Let’s all jovially link arms and just dosie-doe, m-kay?

And with that?   I’m done.  Take me home!