All posts by Dona

47. A doll named Dido – and a singer too

Song Blog

I rarely listen to the radio – even NPR – unless I’m stuck in a car on a long drive with my husband. A couple of years ago we were listening to a radio station somewhere between Maryland and Illinois and a song came on that we both really liked. Radio stations do not always give the name of the song and artist, so I used the search function on my cell phone to search the Internet for the snippet of lyrics I’d memorized: “no white flag above my door”.

The first link on Google took me right to the lyrics of a song by Dido.

Ok. We found a song by Dido. We liked it. The end.

That is not the exciting part!

The word Dido clicked a switch in my mind – it completed a circuit that had been going haywire for a couple of years. See, I’d been searching the Internet in vain for reference to a book about an evil doll that I’d read over and over as a child. I found a website dedicated to finding lost stories, but never found reference to the story I’d read. But now I had a name for the doll. It wsa Dido.

I’d been searching using the terms evil doll. There are a number of stories about evil dolls out there. But search for Dido evil doll and you get a link to a book called a Candle in Her Room by Ruth Arthur. Bingo! I eventually bought the book at a reasonable price – from somewhere – don’t recall where though. My limit was $25 including shipping and handling.

Unfortunately when I read it as an adult, the story fell flat.

Oh well, it makes for a good story.

Thanks Dido! (we bought the album too)

Watch her singing White Flag on Letterman

46. Spring Cleaning

Music,

Have you ever thrown everything out of a closet while looking for something? I have. Today I was looking for a cd I knew I had and cleared out our CD cabinet. The coffee table is now piled high with CDs.

I’d been planing on straightening it out anyway. So here is my chance. I’m also ripping all the CD’s I care about and putting them on an ultra portable hard drive – so they are readily accessible to whatever computer I may be using.

I’ve even found some CD’s we will probably donate. The kids don’t like Aaron Carter anymore, and Dean never liked the Sugar Cubes CD I gave him. I’m also planning on storing most of my Dan Bern bootlegs elsewhere. There is not enough space for all of them.

There were also some CDs I’d forgotten we had. For instance – the soundtrack to Room With a View.

I liked the movie okay- although I only saw it once – but I’ve not listened to the soundtrack in 15 years. I bought it for one specific reason – to listen to while I gave birth. However the music did nothing for me at the time – just made me cranky. I think a character on Thirtysomething used it as her labor music, so I, being also a thirty-something woman who was about to go through labor, thought it would help me. Nope – Kate Bush helped me more.

I just listened to some of the soundtrack. I still am not all that impressed – and I’m not even giving birth.

45. ‘cept under our feet*

Song Blog,

The first time I heard Michael Franks was after school one day during my final teaching year. Carolyn and I shared a room – she was the mainstream teacher, I was the special educator. After Carolyn left for the day, Howard would slip around the folding wall that separated the rooms. We’d talk about life and marriage. Teaching and children. Books and music. Blacks and Whites.

One day Howard played an album I’d never heard of. I liked it immediately. I don’t remember the song that hooked me, but Howard told me how he and his wife loved the music of the musican, Michael Franks. How they tried to get to his concerts whenever he was in the area. He showed me the album cover – a man’s hands cupped, holding a dragonfly. The album cover was in sepia tones, as are the photographs in the liner notes.

Howard loaned me the album, but after a while I decided to buy one for myself. I liked listening to it in the car on the way home from teaching. It calmed me down before getting home to my own children. My husband thought the music was ok, but he didn’t really like it all that much – typical of his reaction to most music I listened to.

A couple of years later I bought another Michael Franks album and was in for a shock: Michael Franks is white. Michael Franks is not African-American. Michael Franks is not Black. He is white.

See, Howard was African-American. I assumed that his favorite musician would be too. The album cover was ambiguous. It still looks like a Black man’s hands holding the dragonfly.

When I listened to the songs again, after the discovery, they sounded different to me. Isn’t that weird?

Here he is playing Eggplant (which is actually one I don ‘t know)

And wouldn’t you know it – he’s going to be at the Birchmere this weekend!

* obscure reference to Dan Bern’s Different Worlds