Well, I needed something to make me churn out a post since I haven’t in a while.  What provides more inspiration than some of the crazy folks who hang out over at 20SB?  Some of us came up with Bloggerstock, and then there are some, like Sara from Sara Swears A Lot, who come up with the Karaoke Blog Ring (of Death).  What is KBOD?  Well, each month a theme is picked an people make video blogs singing along to songs that fit the theme.  This month, the theme is alcohol related songs.  Something about St. Patties day and drinking and what have you (despite the fact that it isn’t really my holiday).

This month I am hosting a video by Lorn from Czech You Later.  Lorn is an English teacher in Prague and has quite a classic taste in songs that one might sing while drunk.  On the other hand, you might have to be drunk to actually get all of the words to this song out and actually make sense!  I suppose that if I told you that this is probably Don Mclean’s most famous song you should know what it is.  If you don’t, well then you had better learn yourself some classic rock!  This is also a great song for karaoke because  probably anywhere that you sang it, everyone would sing along.  One more hint if you have not figured out what the song is yet, Mclean wrote it primarily about the day Buddy Holly died. Figured it out yet?  Or did you just skip to the video and push play?

Here is a little not from Lorn:

Hey it’s lorn here for another round of kbrod…this time drinking songs! my guest this month is the lovely john and i have to say a big thank you to him. something you should know about him…he knows the words to every. song. ever. made. i’m not kidding. the man’s amazing. so i decided to test his lyrical skills with one of the longest songs ever! ha. also, this song has been a favorite of mine since i was little. there’s a cassette tape somewhere of an 8 year old me singing karaoke style to this song using my little fisher price tape deck with microphone (you remember those). my parents still joke about it to this day, so this is also a shout out to them. hope you enjoy, and feel free to sing along because i know you know the words too. many thanks to my wonderful host alex and don’t forget to check out rio over at my blog!

Well, without further ado, here is Lorn singing Don Mclean’s “American Pie.”

So, there you have one of the most iconic American songs!

If you are looking for my post, you can find it over on Shelly’s blog, Shelly Talks too Much.  If you want more information or to see a list of participants in the Karaoke Blog Ring of Death, you should visit Sara’s blog!

I will also take this time to put in a shameless plug for Bloggerstock.  We have a fun topic this month and would love it if you got involved.  If you want to find out what it is all about you can visit the site, or read some of the Bloggerstock posts on my blog.

That is yours truly in the chilly waters of Maine at "Two Lights" on Cape Elizabeth.

Yes friends, that is how I spent my day off today.  After a week of hot and sweaty weather, Ruth an I jumped in the truck and headed for Cape Elizabeth for some scuba diving.  This is certainly the way to beat the heat, with the water temperature dropping as low as 55˚F at our deepest depth of 32 feet.  It is a little chilly at first, then you get used to it, and then later on you start to feel cold, but it sure was better than being out in the hot and muggy weather!

We had a very successful dive day today.  We visited a different dive shop than where we went last week and they were much nicer and friendlier.  We will probably visit them again for our future diving needs while we are here in Maine.  The whole experience in their shop was better and I think that it set a much better tone for the rest of the day.

When we got to the dive site we saw another pair of divers who were just coming back in.  One of them was dragging what appeared to be a pretty old boat anchor crusted in barnacles and such.  It was actually pretty impressive that this guy had lugged it all the way back from wherever he found it.  It could not have been easy since it looked pretty heavy!  They told us the conditions were pretty good and we gave them a hand getting back up the beach to their car before we suited up to dive.

Everything about our dive day went really smoothly.  We got in and acclimated to the water, swam out and really had no issues getting down, equalized and on our way.  We saw a whole bunch of crabs of various varieties, a couple fish including what we thing was a flounder, but we didn’t see any lobster.  We saw lobster traps, but no lobster.  I suppose that leaves us something to look forward to on our next dive.

After returning the gear and returning to camp we pretty much did an about-face and headed off to dinner.  This was the first time this season that I went to the 302 for dinner and it was good.  We met up with some of the other staff there and then went to see Livingston Taylor in concert.  That was a lot of fun, he is a great performer.  I actually sang with him back in high-school at some concert in Newton.  It was fun to see him again years later!

So, a pretty good day off, very fun and very successful!

Rick & Rocco’s Final Exam

This year is the last year that classes will be held in the building that I went to high school in.  Frankly it is about time.  They have been working on the new building and it will open for use next year.  The class of 2010 will be the last class to graduate from the Newton North High School that I knew.  Ironically, my mother’s class was the first to graduate for this building.

Over the past week there have been lots of celebrations, commemorations, and events related to the move.  Last week the theatre department had a big reunion performance called Kiss the Stage, which I was a day late to be able to go to.  However, last night, in the very last performance on the Lasker Stage was the final Rick ‘N Rocco Show.  Rocco is a 50′s rock and roll show that started when my mother was in school and continued until I was in school and then stopped, and for one last time they got the band back together to do one final performance.

When I had heard that they were doing the show and I would be around I knew that I wanted to go.  Of course yesterday morning some of the guys at NNHS gave me a shout to ask if I wanted to help.  So I ended up being involved with the show which was a lot of fun.  I got to run the lights for the last show at the theatre.  Sure, some people may say that it is only high school, but it is kinda sentimental.  I mean, I haven’t really been back there for a long time.  There were a bunch of alumni involved in the show and there were even more who came just to see it.  I can’t think of a better send off for the building.

The other really sentimental thing about the night was that we also celebrated the retirement of T (yes, we all called him T or Mr. T when we were in school and he also plays Rick in the show).  T was the choir director at NNHS and he also was the musical director for the musicals that the theatre department produced.  As I spent four years singing in the choirs and working on the shows it was really great to be invited to his retirement party.

T was an amazing teacher and a great friend.  I spent most of my weeks at school looking forward to the times that I would get to spend in his classroom.  I loved to sing then and I still do now.  I sang first in the freshman ensemble, then in the Concert Chior and in the Family Singers both my junior and senior years.  Yes, that meant that I was in two choirs for two years.  We had the opportunity to sing some great pieces and do fun concerts.  I even was a soloist in The Messiah which was a great experience.

Here is one of the piece that we sang in Family Singers.  Right now it is one of the only ones that I have on my computer.  I have more on some of my other drives, but they are not with me right now.  This piece however is a good one.  It is called “To You I Call.”

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Singing in the choirs in high school under the direction of T was probably one of the most important things in my musical career.  Learning how to sing in both large groups, small groups, solos and quartets was invaluable.  Learning to sing in mixed groups not standing with your section or singing with an orchestra was great.  We learned how to be independent, to work in groups and collaborate.  There were plenty of life lessons that came out of that classroom, things that are probably more important and more useful in day-to-day life than came out of other classes.  I certainly never asked myself: “When will I ever use this?” about anything in the choir room.

Mr. T had a great influence on many people’s lives.  Going to the show and then to the party and seeing not only the people who I knew from school, but the alumni spanning a whole range of years was amazing.  As T put it, everyone who came to wish him well you could sit with and talk to for hours about their experiences at NNHS and in his classroom, and how that helped get them to where they are today.

Of course, when you put all of these musical people in the same place at the same time what should happen but the instruments come out and the singing starts.  We had people playing guitar (including myself), we got T playing the piano and everyone sang.  Songs from all over the place.  It really was a great thing to stand around the piano again with a whole bunch of people who stood around the piano with T over the years.  This is what we do, it is really the best way to celebrate anything!  I mean, we sang until 1:00 in the morning.  At least we didn’t get in to singing something like “Kiss Today Goodbye,” because, while it might have been appropriate for the occasion, I think we all would have been crying by the end.

Well, everyone has to move on sometime, and while NNHS will be a different place without T, hopefully whoever takes over that position will have the same lasting impact on the students.  I am sure that I would not be the same person I am today had it not been for the time I spent in Room 127 at NNHS, had it not been for T.  I wish him and his family all the best and I hope that he enjoys his retirement.  I will always keep the memories of his classes close, and I will always be thankful I have them.

Thus ends an era as we bring down the house.

Yep, there were a million things that I could have been doing yesterday and I didn’t really do any of them.  Well, that is probably not true, but I could certainly have been more productive.  I did meet the new neighbors, well one of them anyway.  I don’t remember her name (not that I would post it), but I believe that she is a student at one of the schools here in Salt Lake, and she is either married or is living with her boyfriend.  To me, she seemed young to be married, but this is Utah after all.

What I really did yesterday was fiddle around with making a recording of me playing guitar and singing.  I am not really sure what inspired me other than it was a nice day and my mother woke me up with a phone call to tell me that it was National Hamburger Day, whatever that means.  I don’t think the phone call was really inspiration other than getting me out of bed.  I am sure the neighbors would have accomplished that though with the moving in and such.

So, what song did I work on?  The great traditional folk tune, Shenandoah.  I laid down two guitar parts, one on 6-string played capo-five and one on the 12-string played open.  I also laid down a “drum” track by just banging away on the back side of the 12-string.  It was actually pretty effective.  On top of that I laid in a few vocal tracks and played around with all the effects that Garage Band has built in.  It was pretty cool.  I think that I even came out with something that I like.  It is no professional recording, but it is nice.

There are a couple little mistakes that I made, but I felt like they were small enough to just leave in.  I did make a whole bunch of takes on both guitar tracks to get where I am and, to be honest, I just didn’t feel like going back again.  Last summer my brother, a camper, and I performed an arrangement of this song.  Maybe I can get them to lay in the parts that they played, specifically mandolin and harmonica.  On top of that I have a friend who plays and makes indian flutes who might be interested in collaborating.

In any event, I am looking forward to the summer and playing and singing a lot again.  I am sure that I have mentioned that before on my blog.  It is a lot of fun to do.  As always, comments and critiques are always welcome!

It has been a while since I have done a music post on Monday.  Last night I pulled out my guitar to play for a while as I was feeling inspired by the nice weather.  I like playing the guitar, and I am looking forward to the summer and being back at camp and doing a bunch of playing.  There is definitely something about the nice weather of the summer that makes me want to do more playing.

Last summer, my brother and I played together at camp.  Unfortunately he won’t be there this summer as he finally has got a “real” job.  Last year we tried to do a tour of 90′s music every week at campfire.  Though we did throw in a couple other folk songs like “Shenandoah.”  I also brought back some favorites of the kids and staff like “Freshmen” by the Verve Pipe.  Hey, does anyone else remember that song?  I have always been surprised by how many of the kids who were born well after that song was recorded know it and ask for it!

So this year I need new music to bring to camp.  I am always up for some classic rock and I have a couple songs that I had started working out last summer but never played.  I also thought that maybe I could bring some newer music to the summer.  I am pretty sure that I will find the opportunity to play “Fireflies” by Owl City.  I bet that the kids will know it and be able to sing along.  I like getting the kids involved.  I am also sure that I will be asked to learn a bunch of songs on short notice to play for services at FA.  I like doing that as I get a few newer songs in my repertoire.

This summer I also have the added bonus of heading off to camp with Ruth, who also likes to sing.  I know that she has some ideas for songs to do which means that I will have some new material there.  She keeps telling me that we should learn some Nora Jones.  I can do that, we just need to pick some songs to focus on.  I am looking forward to a music filled summer!

So, if anyone has some suggestions of songs to learn for the summer, please, let me know!