Darling Be Home Soon Acoustic Cover

Darling Be Home Soon by John Sebastian

Here's where I ruin that John Sebastian song everyone likes.

I think this song is usually sung much more upbeat than the words tell it to be. John Sebastian performed it on a lark at Woodstock, which I think is so cool. He just happened to be backstage and they needed an acoustic act, so he grabbed a guitar, took the scaffold, and happened to have Darling Be Home Soon in his head from his days with Lovin' Spoonful (they'd recently broken up).

He tells the whole story in this awesome book I love.

I enjoy the idea that all a person wants is to talk with his lover while she's away. I'm kind of going through this with someone right now. All I can really imagine is lying in bed and discussing and hatching adventures we can go on together.

I hope my interpretation conveys that feeling a little more than the original. 

Snoopy Museum Tokyo

SNOOPY MUSEUM TOKYO

You're speaking Japanese Charlie Brown

The Peanuts are a part of the American experience. It has helped shaped almost everyone born in the last century, and maybe it will continue to, but who knows? When my friend who is really into Snoopy told me she wished she could go with me to Japan so she could go to the Snoopy Museum, I felt I had to go out of obligation. I doubted whether I would enjoy it since I didn't consider myself a huge fan who needed to make the trek to another museum about another comic, but I remember how much I loved seeing the Tin Tin museum in Europe years ago, and figured I'd give it a go. I'm glad I did.

A little surprise twist pulling the exhibit together

The Snoopy Museum is one of the most heart-string-pullingest exhibits I've ever seen. It's called Love is Wonderful, and it dives deep into the relationships between the characters of Charles Shulz's famous comic strip. It becomes aparent that it could also have been called Love is a Toturous Beast Forcing You to Die Alone. But it saves you from that with cute imagery and real hand-drawn comics and an incredible layout. There's a part when you turn a corner and realize there are cuts in the walls that frame a picture of Shulz and his sweetheart, an image you walk past in the beginning, so you're looking back on a love story in someone else's life much like you do in your own, and contemplate how his experiences colored his iconic work.

It gave me goosebumps.

Gift shop totally packed

They even have a kite-eating tree

Snoopy through the ages

You're a foodtruck Charlie Brown

Missing You (John Waite) Sky Jack Cover

In the 80's John Waite belted out this bad boy for one of the greatest songs of his era. It was his biggest hit, and he's still singing it. He even did a country version with Alison Krauss. Tina Turner did a version of it in the 90's that I always thought was kind of an Ike burn song. It's been covered a million times. Brooks and Dunne, Rod Stewart, and tons of others have done it. I hate pretty much all the covers, including even the Alison Krauss duet. It always sounds overly earnest or over-produced or just too loud.

I think it tracks better as a stripped down sad and quiet song. You could argue that a belting lament is always welcome on a record, but I'd say the song's too good for that.

I love how old-fashioned it is. It mentions long-distance lines, which is so funny because there's no such thing anymore. It reminds me of how hard (and expensive) it was to have a long-distance relationship back in the day when you could barely hear someone through the static of a long-distance phone call. You might as well send a telegraph to be clear. So he sends his lover's soul a telegraph! That's really funny and sappy and such a true feeling for a little pop song.

I love how he admits to lying to himself and how he confesses to his hyperbolic desperation. The confessional parts of the song are simply great because they're intimate and relate-able.

Anyway, here's my sad version of it. I'm noticing myself looking down a lot in these videos. I'm looking at the microphone. It looks like I'm reading or something, but the whole point of me doing these is to really live in the songs, so I memorize the lyrics and change them a little when I sing. I do actually care for you to know that I'm not reading these lines. 

Tea Time with Sky Jack: The Love Episode

MY NEW PODCAST IS UP
The Love Episode explores entropy, inertia, shutting down suitors, standing up dates, and repeat victimization.
Also available on iTunes, Google Music, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Bad Romance

This is where I ruin that Lady Gaga song everyone likes

Bad Romance is a grossly underrated song.

The two halves of the song mirror each other wonderfully. Ugly is echoed by horror, and disease rhymes with design as the first lines of both halves so that all the stuff in the middle is sandwiched together perfectly.

Plus, all the movie references in both halves strengthen that bond. Leather studded kiss in the sand is a reference to Sandy getting her leather kiss in Grease. And psycho, vertigo, and rear window are all references to Alfred Hitchcock movies.

What do all the movies have in common? The horror of romance? The dangers of love? The acceptance of our worst attributes? Who knows? Who really cares? Thematically, it works with the mechanics of the song in such a tight way that all the weird French stuff and the Fashion/Real Bitch bridge thing that happen in the original version are there just for fluff that work because the rest of the song is so damned strong.

My favorite part of the song is "I don't want to be friends." In the original version I swear I hear "I don't want to be French" the first time she says it after the French part of the song. But that could just be my lying ears.

Who can't relate to the sentiment of wanting more than friendship from someone? The complete letdown and heartbreak contained in the last few lines of the song, the idea that even a bad romance is better than friendship, is something I think everybody can relive at the close of the song. For a pop song to leave you lamenting one-sided love is impossible, so Lady Gaga belts out the chorus a few more times in the original.

It's a tricky little song in a lot of ways. Bad Romance has plenty for your brain to suss out and it happens to come in a fun package. I hope you like my stripped down version of it.