Dear Friends,
We got a lot of stuff done yesterday and got a visit from Ryan, Bree, and Mia, as well as Amber. It was awesome to see them and that little Mia just steals my heart every time I get to see her. She was quite fascinated with the little old men and they seemed to be quite taken with her, especially Frank.
I was thinking about that question a little bit, too. The one about what I have learned. Something occurred to me.
Luckily for me, I’ve always had that voice in my head that told me to ease up and not go all the way to the dark side. I’ve ignored it, of course, on a few occasions and those have always come back to bite me, but most of the time, I listened.
Speaking of luck, I feel fortunate that it was the loudest voice in my head, at times. I’ve written about how my particular brand of addiction likes to talk to me. It would tell me things like “You need more beer in the beer fridge” and why not spend $100 at the dispensary to get the ‘free’ stuff. What a dumb voice that is.
It would bargain with me and try to convince me to drink a little more or smoke a little earlier in the day or buy a little more. I learned, in a self-destructive way, to appease it and give in to the things that couldn’t hurt me immediately, but it was all destructive.
I am so thankful that I have learned how to silence that voice. It has no power over me when I am not under the influence of weed or booze. It’s been quiet for a while now and I have enjoyed its silence. I have enjoyed my thoughts being clear.
Without a doubt I can still mess with my own brain, but the ways that my inner voices talk to me now are so much more positive. I don’t wallow in the anxious moments or worry about the things there is nothing I can do anything about. I just deal with what I can deal with and think about what my end goal is or how I can create situations where everyone wins.
That’s enough of a mental workout on its own and requires no cluttered thoughts of nonsense or self-destruction.
*****
I was planning on going to see Granny yesterday, but Uncle Joe called and said she wasn’t feeling up to visitors. It’s too bad, too, because she would have gotten a visit from Mia. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see her, but I did have a nice talk with Uncle Joe.
My plan was to thank Granny for helping us get our house back in 2007. She gave us the down payment for the house which was a nice little chunk of change. I wanted to be sure and tell her that I am very grateful for her help.
She and my grandfather pretty much made sure that everyone had a house at one point or another. They bought my aunt and uncle’s house and gave my mom a sweet deal on the house they live in now. They helped Ryan’s mom and I get our house back in the day and I’m pretty sure they did the same for Ben and his ex.
I’m sure there were others, too. That’s just what they did and I’m so grateful for the help. I was thinking about how hard it would have been for Rhondi and I to get a house at that point. We might still be renters if she hadn’t decided that we needed a house.
After my grandfather died, she told my mom one day that she thought he would have wanted us to have a house and she wanted us to have a house, so that was that. We started looking. We looked for about a month, maybe two, before we found the house we have lived in for the past 17 ½ years. We became a family here after several years of ups and downs and rough times. Most of the roughness was my fault, but I have worked hard to make sure that nonsense would never happen again.
I hope that someday, I can do similar things for my kids and grandkids. It’s going to be hard, for sure, but it can be done.
*****
As for today, it’s just the first day of the last week before winter break. There is work to be done. If those lovely little twits know what’s good for them, they will work to make this a good week.
*****
A breath of fresh air came into my life back in 2019. I got wind that Ex Hex was coming to town and being a fan of Mary Timony, I pitched an interview with her. Long story short, she was delightful, and the show was quite good. What was even better was that I got to spend some time with their record, It’s Real.
Now, I was on a role in 2018 and 2019 of writing about these killer female fronted bands, so I super open to loving the Ex Hex record, but I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. For those next couple of years, I listened to It’s Real a lot. It sounds kind of like if you took the best parts of Pat Benatar and put that into a killer post-glam meets post-indie band.
I may have coined a thing there, too. Post-Glam/Indie meets Pat Benatar is kind of exactly what Ex Hex sounded like. I’m using past tense because I fear that they have ceased to be a thing. I hope I am wrong, but I do know that Timony has put out some solo stuff and toured with it recently. There were no Phoenix stops, though.
The vocals across the board on It’s Real are quite lovely. Both Timony and Betsy Wright sing lead on different tracks, as well as laying down some excellent harmonies on most of them. Their voices blend nicely and create this really lush top layer for the somewhat stripped down, power chord laden songs.
“Tough Enough” is the opening track on It’s Real and it is not flashy at all, but damn if it isn’t catchy. The main riff is super rock and roll-y and it would have been perfect on one of the 80s teen movies soundtracks. I could see this playing in the background while Tatum O’Neal and Kristy Macnichol rode around in a bad ass convertible.
There is a vulnerability in Timony’s vocals that I have always dug. She just sounds honest as hell when she sings and that is a great quality to have. It’s kind of oozing out of “Tough Enough.” Great song.
The rest of side A just charges along with that ‘Benatar gone 70s glam/indie pop’ thing. “Rainbow Shiner” kind of has a grown-up Runaways thing going, too. Timony and Wright do some great guitar work on this one, too.
“Good Times” is full-on indie pop. It’s about as upbeat as the side A gets. It also has that early 80s vibe. More appropriately, it sounds like a missing track from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack.
Most of the songs are kind of mid-tempo and “Want It To Be True” is super contemplative. The vocal harmonies rule on this one, though. I like it a lot.
“Diamond Drive” is pretty upbeat, too. It kind of reminds me of The Vaselines for some reason. Must be the garage-y, grunge kind of thing that has some sunshine in it. It’s another fun one and the chord progression in the pre-chorus is killer.
There is also a cool guitar riff in what I would call the bridge about the two-minute mark in the song. “Diamond Drive” is a really killer song. People totally slept on this record and that’s a bummer.
Side B starts off with “No Reflection.” It’s another pop powerhouse. Totally anthemic guitar riffage happening here. When I talked to Timony, she was very forthcoming about how much she was enjoying playing guitar in a different way from her previous work.
“Another Dimension” is a decent track, but I like “Cosmic Cave” a lot more. It’s got a whole Ramones thing going on. There is also some vibrato, surf-style stuff going on with the guitar and a bitchin’ bassline. I’m also totally down with the vocals on the bridge part.
“Radiate” is super 80s new wave. The drums are locked into this super tight groove that makes it seem like something people in brightly colored clothes and flipped up collars should be dancing to on a new ensconced dance floor. Perfect song title, I suppose, on this one.
“Talk To Me” finishes off this tight little ten song record. This is a bit more of what I might have expected from a Mary Timony record. The guitar sounds dreamy and great. When the song kicks in, though, what a rad ending song.
When it is over, it is just over. Luckily there is a 2014 record by Ex Hex called Rips. It does rip, too. I highly recommend it, too. It’s a bit more upbeat, but I went with It’s Real because of the whole Benatar vibe. I’m a child of the early 80s, what can I say? Those are my jams and It’s Real is, too.
*****
See you tomorrow.
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