Pretenders, "Hymn to Her"

Two friends of mine in recent days lost strong women who were important to them. With my condolences, I offer the Pretenders' "Hymn to Her", a goddess tribute of sorts from their 1986 album Get Close. I hope it offers some comfort in difficult days. "She will always carry on / Something is lost, but something is found."

Pilot, "January"

I'm running out of days to appropriately play this. Here's "January," Pilot's barely charting follow-up to the smash "Magic," which I think deserved better. Aren't they just jolly?

They Might Be Giants, "I Palindrome I"

A Facebook friend reminded me of a song very appropriate for today's date. But what I really love about TMBG's "I Palindrome I" is its beautifully bitter opening line: "Someday Mother will die and I'll get the money / Mom leans down and says, 'My sentiments exactly, / You son of a bitch.' "

At any rate, happy 01/11/10.

Yvonne Elliman and Cast, "Could We Start Again, Please?"

My posts became fewer and farther between this year as I found I simply had less to say - about music, about my life, about the human condition. 2009 proved for me a downer of a year on the whole, and writing about it would only have reinforced and magnified it. Better to turn away from a mostly sorrowful year and decade and look ahead.

And so we come to Mary Magdalene, Peter the Denier and the other cast members of Jesus Christ Superstar, looking to a Jesus who was right but betrayed by many of those closest to him. Do I believe their remorse when they sing "Could We Start Again, Please?" No, not really - especially since they can't resist the dig, "You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home." But I give them a B+ for effort. Yvonne Whinyface Elliman sings with genuine pain and anguish, and the Rice-Webber arrangement is nothing short of tear-inducing.

So the '00s, a period of considerable pain and suffering, come to a close tonight. But the slate shall not be wiped clean: those who were poor and hungry at the close of the aughts will be poor and hungry at the start of the teens; those in war-torn lands will continue to fight and kill for their lives; and most of the rich will continue to pretend that they all don't exist or at least are something short of human. I can't stop them; I can only clean up my meager backyard. I may continue this blog if I begin to feel passionately enough about music and my relationship to it again. Until then, thanks for reading this far.

Go in peace.

Annie Lennox, SING Public Service Announcement

Annie Lennox's efforts in the fight against AIDS are longstanding and commendable. It's a privilege to share the work she and her nonprofit SING are engaged in: to get people in South Africa tested and treated for HIV, and to eradicate the stigma against those who are positive. Indeed, Annie is herself not HIV+, but her point with the shirts she's made fashion of is, So what if I were?

Thank you, Ms. Lennox, for fighting the good fight in often sorrowful times.

The Pointer Sisters, "The Pinball Song"

Happy 40th birthday, Sesame Street. You were my favorite block to hang out on through most of the '70s.

And happy 11/10/09 to the rest of you. Here's a fitting Sesame Street tune for the date. Betcha didn't know this was the Pointer Sisters singing these pinball songs, huh? Molto grazie to the fan who linked them all together as one long clip.

Grass Roots, "Midnight Confessions"

The Grass Roots, prefab though they were in ways, were underrated insofar as the product they produced. Some of my very favorite songs of the 1966-1972 pop goldmine era came from them, from "Where Were You When I Needed You" to "Two Divided By Love." With their double-barreled vocal pair and the highly unorthodox (to my eyes) drumming of Sean Penn dead ringer Rick Coonce (seriously, he plays the drums as if he's twirling a Chinese yo-yo), they came up with a lengthy string of trash-single (and I use that term lovingly) pop gems.

Of them, "I'd Wait a Million Years" is my favorite (and a topic for another day), but the most interesting is "Midnight Confessions," an admission of desire for an unattainable other, a feeling we've all had at one time or another. I've worn that T-shirt more than once or twice myself. My friend Mike called my attention to Meatloaf video vixen Karla DeVito's version, but I'm afraid I have little use for it: she turns a genuinely painful situation into camp, in an unfunny way (she's crushing on a guy who beat up "Weird Al" Yankovic for his mustache and glasses? Really?). Like Toni Basil without the gleeful overlighting, Jane Wiedlin without a mission, Cyndi Lauper without a tool to pleasure herself: Just somehow missing the point.

And that's more than enough parentheticals for one day.