Boom Boom Clap

Eldest had a birthday party last week, at the little red caboose in City Park. My back took the stain remarkably well. Tolstoy and his boyos spent the night, and after the kids went to sleep we tossed back a few cold malted beverages. Fun evening. Great cake.

Oh my God, was it great cake.

Eldest has a tendency towards the treasuring of material things, for reasons I will not go into now, so it is heartening to me that the birthday CD mix I give her every year is always among her favorite gifts. She keeps them all; if they break, she asks me to burn a new one.

This year, a new wrinkle. All her favorite songs up to now have been culled from the tastes of the lil hux and me: Dylan, the Beatles, Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, KT Turnstall. This year new influences are entering the mix, bubblegum tweener pop music, mostly Hannah Montana. It was a sweet moment to hear her (and boyo one, no less) sing along to it on the ride home. I could summon up some snark about Ms. Montana representing pre-packaged pop stars and the idolization of celebrity, but since I was singing Monkees tunes at about the same age of my own boyhood, it would ring false. I like the Monkees. And it is hard to get more pre-packaged than them.

And here's a confession I feel free to make since few of you know my real name: I have a sneaking fondness for Hannah Montana's "Hoedown" ("boom boom clap, boom de-clap-de-clap"). If you accuse me of this in my actual life I will of course deny it, and promptly delete this post. But I feel my secret is safe with you.

Don't let me down.

Pogue Mahone*

Saw a great Pogues concert this weekend with Tolstoy in Denver. It takes a lot to get me outta the house and to a real concert these days, but the toothless, drunken, and still brilliant Shane MacGowan was fronting the band again, so I went.

The place was like a huge crowed Irish bar. Everyone singing, dancing, hugging, fighting, surging, screaming. I've been to concerts before where the crowd was singing along - Springsteen comes to mind - but the singing was self-conscious, more like they were replaying the album in their head, or pretending to be a rock star. This was different. Singing as communion. What I'm guessing it must've been like to be at a bar or a beer hall before TVs, before jukeboxes, when all people had to entertain themselves was each other.

Here's one of my top ten songs of all time. Shane and the band look a lot older now. So do I.



*Kiss my ass in Gaelic.