30 Day Song Challenge - Part Three

day 10 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
One of my hugest regrets was that the DJ at our wedding totally stank.  I always said that my wedding playlist would be carefully chosen, to make sure that there’d be no annoying pop fluff and Top 40 annoyances.  And in the end, we were so busy trying to sort out everything else that we went to the Yellow Pages and hired the first person who fit our budget.

So, 9 years late, please accept my sincere apologies (those of you who may have attended my wedding) for the totally shit music.  Sure, we danced our first dance to the below song (the only one we could agree on at the time; another hasty decision) but I violently opposed the rest of the DJ’s playlist, it was wrong wrong wrong.  If we’d been married 5 years later, we’d have had a computer by then and we’d have snobbishly arranged a series of mix CD’s and hired our own PA.  

If I could go back in time to August 2002 (in addition to making sure that my arse was considerably smaller at the time, of course) I would ensure that the following soppy little gems were included in the setlist:

day 11 - a song that you wish you could play

When I was about 11, I begged my Mum and Dad to let me have piano lessons.  I really enjoyed them, and did reasonably well.  But when I reached university I stopped playing.  Not good enough to enter the BMus programme at Western, I opted for the Comparative Literature course and, hoping to find a kindred spirit while I was away from home, I chose an “idiot-version” music appreciation/performance course from the prospectus.  I didn’t find a single friend there; the lecture was filled with people who out-played, out-smarted and out-performed me at every turn – you know the type… those child prodigies whose strict parents forced them to spend 4 hours at the piano every day, who were “persuaded” into the school of dentistry, or law, who wanted a “fun” course to take?  I had this piano tutor – ugh, she was a shrew – and (no doubt fuelled by my obvious disinterestedness and lack of commitment) one day told me, “Your hands are wrong.”  Apparently, according to her, I hold my fingers wrong at the keyboard.  Something about the tips of my fingers and the pads of my fingers.  Funny how the alleged deficiency escaped the notice of the examiners at the Royal Conservatory, but she was resolute in her insistence that I try it her way and bellyached about it c0nstantly.  It knocked my aptitude two grades lower and took my confidence with it, and I dropped the course shortly after.  So the song I wish I could play?  Anything along these lines:

day 12 - a song from your childhood

My propensity toward music-snobbery isn’t accidental, as those who know me well would surely bear witness.  It was genetically bestowed upon me through my Dad.  Along with his green eyes and short temper, I inherited from him an obsessive music fanatic chromosome.  I lost count of the amount of times my brother and I were plonked on the middle cushion of the sofa (that precise location of course being equal distance between the two speakers) while my Dad waxed lyrical/melodic/rhythmical/harmonious (delete as appropriate) trying to get us to hear the same thing that he heard.  It could have been a line of melody, it could have been a phrase with a particularly pretty harmony, a lyric, or a riff or a chord progression, whatever.  Much to his perpetual dismay, we never heard it – of course, our Dad’s music was Dad Music – but I get it now.  My friend Lindsay and I affectionately dub these “Rewinder Moments” – you know what I mean… when you find a part of a song that you think is so amazing that you can’t even get to the end of the song before you have to rewind back to the beginning and hear it again.  Anyway – what a long winded way of arriving to the point – the songs from my childhood I would choose:













And I’ve already linked to The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright here; but that song would be amongst these as well.

day 13 - your favourite song at this time last year

Well, that’s easy.  I just looked at my blog archives for the day closer to this date… turns out it was my post on Adam and the Ants that I was listening to this time last year.  

Stay tuned -- more later.