Aureantes' Lair

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Oh, btw -- if you've missed catching me on IM and I haven't replied to offlines, it's 'cause of my YIM acting up and 'encountering problems' every time I sign on.  A good reboot oughta clear it, but I have to post lingering shite and get the windows out of the way first.  So don't panic at my silence there -- as I've often said, temporary silence usually just means technical difficulties, not that I'm pissed or disapproving or anything (anyhow, if I were pissed, I would be certain to make it clear exactly why and wherefore and at whom...).  Just assume that I haven't had time to read anything for the past couple nights, and we can talk when we have opportunity to do so in a reasonably stable and non-selfdeleting medium. 

So....last Thursday after an abortive attempt at a pickup rehearsal for the musical (long story*), my mother (aka the producer) and I went out with Kevin (aka the male romantic lead) to this pizzeria-and-bar called Moretti's, out at Rt. 53 and Algonquin Rd., to sing karaoke.

Ordered a tall vodka and tonic and started leafing through the catalogue of songs they had -- there was one song I had very strongly in mind to sing even before walking in the door, and that was "Forever Young", by Alphaville....it's one of my favourite songs ever since I first heard it on the radio back in the mid-'80s, and has this late-summer-night and yet beyond-space-and-time sort of sound that has always just transported me...back last year in my group AlchemyGold, that was one of the three songs I posted lyrics/soundclip to as having been most influential in my life/personal philosophy.

And especially these days, I read a lot in these lines,

Some are like water, some are like the heat;
Some are a melody and some are the beat...
Sooner or later they all will be gone --
Why don't they stay young?

And of course,

So many adventures couldn't happen today,
So many songs we forgot to play,
So many dreams swinging out of the blue --
We'll let 'em come true...

(which when I was younger I always heard, not necessarily wrongly, as "So many dreams winging out of the blue -- Well, let 'em come true!" Same difference, same feel to my mind....)

So, that was a definite one to do.....and then I found more, and made my selections carefully, sticking to what I figured I could do without forgetting the melody or structure atall (sorry, I still have to work up "Bohemian Rhapsody", though that is definitely in my target repertoire....:P). And then was slidin' out of the booth and up to the stage in the corner and back again, looking all cool and cocky in my dark-brown leather bomber jacket, hair kinda spiky and all. Final songlist, in the order I sang them:

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel, of course)

2. Forever Young (Alphaville)

3. It's a Sin (Pet Shop Boys -- and the DJ said he hadn't heard it in ages, so that was a blast -- not to mention that my mom liked it right off, never having heard it before, which I totally was not expecting, seeing as it's so over-the-top dark and dramatic and consciously deviant....I think everyone enjoyed that one, to be honest, except for Kevin...)

4. Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan, naturally) -- and this was the thing that I hadn't foreseen, really -- I actually do sound like Bob Dylan when I'm hitting that place in my voice -- I get that same timbre up there, and one of the other guys nearby who'd been singing quite a few as well congratulated me when I got back to the table and said that he'd actually had to look up at the stage and make sure that someone was really singing live and it wasn't a recording.


So, I was feeling pretty good over all that, and I'm all fired up to head back there one of these nights, preferably with Miriam along as well, and maybe brush up on some U2 and Queen and Sting -- "Fields of Gold" is one that my mother'd like to hear me do.

She didn't do atall badly herself, by the way, for it being her first time ever doing karaoke -- I coached her quickly on how to hold the mic when she got up to the stage, and she eventually got the hang of the monitor and the timing of the animation. She sang "The Way We Were" as a solo, and then had me up there doing harmony with her (an octave down) on "Annie's Song" -- which sounded really good, btw. We had a great time, and I got some definite reassurance/inspiration/whatever that I can really do this stuff pretty damn well at the drop of a hat. Even if my hand holding the mic was going all quivery with adrenaline when I first started....heh, I don't think anyone noticed that....

One of these days, I'm gonna have to get a party together there and really have us all take over the stage for the night. Everybody in the local region, you just might wanna practice up.... >:)


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[* The deal with the 'abortive attempt at rehearsal', btw, is that the church where the plays and their rehearsals are held was booked for different and conflicting activities, and the room across the hall from where we were was occupied by a hypnosis or meditation group, so it eventually became clear that we couldn't do anything at performance volume -- whether singing or running our lines -- without being too loud for someone's tastes. At which point I said we might as well just go out and do karaoke as planned, 'cause there was no way we were getting any real rehearsal done there.)
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