A story about Kip Winger
I've never claimed to have sophisticated tastes.
I was trained, so to speak, in literary criticism, and my dad, who just retired as a classics professor, has been a jazz musician and an actor on the side.
But I've worked in journalism, I read romance novels, and I prefer J.S. Bach to Mozart. Not at all promising.
When my favorite romance novelist had a character who badmouthed Gustav Mahler, I asked the spouse what he thought. What did I know, after all? "Sucks," he said, though with more sophisticated language. "Modern crap." Ever curious, I went to YouTube, and the first Mahler clip I turned up fascinated me.
I've been listening over and over to the Emmy-nominated "Dick in a Box," which makes me guffaw. Less funny, for a woman of my age, is to read about Nikki Sixx's recent autobiography, with the happy revelations about boffing three generations at once--as I'm 53, that hits me where it hurts, even though I was never a groupie. Oh, and there is Metallica, to which I came late in life, and of whose politics I cannot approve. But because of a beloved former colleague and boss's passion for the group, I bought all their albums and even the "Live Shit" boxed set. The first thing that I said to this young colleague, years ago, after listening to the Black Album, was that it scared the heck out of me. I was surprised recently when I could listen to more than Balladica. (Yes, give me "Mama Said.")
ANYWAY--and it's no small "anyway"--I got to thinking about my favorite glam-metal act, Winger.
The hair, the ballet moves--hell, I was thoroughly hooked in the late 1980s and very early 1990s. And then MTV decided to go with rap and game shows.
Married women are allowed their tame animal lusts, as are married men. Tame.
I'd worked up a whole fantasy story about me and Kip Winger. I'd done the same with Star Trek's Mr. Spock and various other sexy but unattainable males. My fantasy story about Kip, which I'm trying to reconstruct, involved me with a guitar in my hands. That is quite a stretch, as I failed both in violin and in guitar even before I hit my teens.
Anyway! With this Timberlake/Mahler/Sixx harmonic convergence, I decided to look up Kip Winger on YouTube and elsewhere.
All those videos and all those concerts. The acoustic stuff. I dragged my husband up to my computer and played him two YouTube pieces. The first was the old video of Winger's "Seventeen." Ed, who never liked hair rock (silly man), insisted that I cut off the song. Ed is one of those men who say, "Just shut up and play!" I was still drooling. But when I turned on one of Kip Winger's solo acoustic pieces, the spouse was wowed. "The guy can sing AND play!" I knew that.
But I hadn't known until days ago about the album "Pull" (with the boffo anti-war song "Who's the One"), which I've ordered. And I certainly hadn't known about Kip Winger's solo career. I'd been sidetracked by the vagaries of TV, a full-time copy-editing job, and a fascination with the female side of the rock equation. Sarah McLachlan and Melissa Etheridge in particular.
So now I have to order all the rest of Mr. Winger's work in due course. Yes, even women my age have financial clout, but there's a matter of decorum.
I was trained, so to speak, in literary criticism, and my dad, who just retired as a classics professor, has been a jazz musician and an actor on the side.
But I've worked in journalism, I read romance novels, and I prefer J.S. Bach to Mozart. Not at all promising.
When my favorite romance novelist had a character who badmouthed Gustav Mahler, I asked the spouse what he thought. What did I know, after all? "Sucks," he said, though with more sophisticated language. "Modern crap." Ever curious, I went to YouTube, and the first Mahler clip I turned up fascinated me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7sgq-UgWR4I sent it downstairs to my husband, and he said it had definite promise. Perhaps.
I've been listening over and over to the Emmy-nominated "Dick in a Box," which makes me guffaw. Less funny, for a woman of my age, is to read about Nikki Sixx's recent autobiography, with the happy revelations about boffing three generations at once--as I'm 53, that hits me where it hurts, even though I was never a groupie. Oh, and there is Metallica, to which I came late in life, and of whose politics I cannot approve. But because of a beloved former colleague and boss's passion for the group, I bought all their albums and even the "Live Shit" boxed set. The first thing that I said to this young colleague, years ago, after listening to the Black Album, was that it scared the heck out of me. I was surprised recently when I could listen to more than Balladica. (Yes, give me "Mama Said.")
ANYWAY--and it's no small "anyway"--I got to thinking about my favorite glam-metal act, Winger.
The hair, the ballet moves--hell, I was thoroughly hooked in the late 1980s and very early 1990s. And then MTV decided to go with rap and game shows.
Married women are allowed their tame animal lusts, as are married men. Tame.
I'd worked up a whole fantasy story about me and Kip Winger. I'd done the same with Star Trek's Mr. Spock and various other sexy but unattainable males. My fantasy story about Kip, which I'm trying to reconstruct, involved me with a guitar in my hands. That is quite a stretch, as I failed both in violin and in guitar even before I hit my teens.
Anyway! With this Timberlake/Mahler/Sixx harmonic convergence, I decided to look up Kip Winger on YouTube and elsewhere.
All those videos and all those concerts. The acoustic stuff. I dragged my husband up to my computer and played him two YouTube pieces. The first was the old video of Winger's "Seventeen." Ed, who never liked hair rock (silly man), insisted that I cut off the song. Ed is one of those men who say, "Just shut up and play!" I was still drooling. But when I turned on one of Kip Winger's solo acoustic pieces, the spouse was wowed. "The guy can sing AND play!" I knew that.
But I hadn't known until days ago about the album "Pull" (with the boffo anti-war song "Who's the One"), which I've ordered. And I certainly hadn't known about Kip Winger's solo career. I'd been sidetracked by the vagaries of TV, a full-time copy-editing job, and a fascination with the female side of the rock equation. Sarah McLachlan and Melissa Etheridge in particular.
So now I have to order all the rest of Mr. Winger's work in due course. Yes, even women my age have financial clout, but there's a matter of decorum.
posted by aparker54 at 12:26 PM
2 Comments:
I don't like Mahler, but I agree with your husband. This shows promise. It's lyrical. It sounds like music instead of a mathematics lesson as interpreted by an orchestra.
Perhaps there's hope.
What about David Coverdale? La donna è mobile...
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