Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Weekly Song Challenge

 


Another week and a song challenge by Jingle, Jangle, Jungle. Unbeknownst (this sounds like a word to me so I am keeping it in) to her, she has tied in with a theme for my movies tomorrow but i won't tell you which theme she tied in with..I'll let you guess.  Here are the 3 themes:

A SONG WITH BROTHER OR SISTER IN THE TITLE

A SONG ABOUT A NATURAL DISASTER

A SONG WRITTEN OR PRODUCED BY MUTT LANGE

1. SISTERS ARE DOIN' IT FOR THEMSELVES BY THE EURYTHMICS-1985

I love this song which I found very empowering when I was 21 and hating when the construction men whistle at me (now, if they whistled I would smile and thank them!). I danced to this many times loving anything by this band. They are one of the few rock concerts I went to and it was great. By the way, Aretha Franklin sing with Annie Lennox in this song.

2. BLIZZARD OF '77 BY NADA SURF-2002

I broke my rule of choosing the first song that came into my head(Hurricane by Bob Dylan) because I lived through the Blizzard of '77. I was curious if there was even a song about this and I couldn't believe it when I found out there was and this is pretty damn good! I grew up in the country where we got all the Buffalo weather. My brother and I were lucky that we made it home just before the blizzard hit. We were also very lucky that we did not lose our power but many were not as lucky with some dying because of this storm. I recall listening to the local AM station who kept the lines open for anyone who needed help. The DJ got very angry, rightfully, at one woman calling in because she was out of smokes! He tore a strip into her and I was ticked about that. Afterwards, I had fun in my big snowsuit climbing up the drifts (not man-made) with my friend and sliding down them but not before ducking under wires(they were near the top so you just had to lay flat at first before you could sit up as you flew down). I was tickled pink being out of school for 2 weeks because the school was completely under a snowdrift.

3. MAN, I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN SUNG BY SHANIA TWAIN-1997

When I saw her at the Grammy's, I thought she was the sexiest thing and I am no gay but I can appreciate how well she sang this song, making it sexy, strong but never vulgar or derisive to women. Shania was married to Mutt Lange for something like 17 years when she found out the dog was having an affair with her best friend. She divorced Mutt(what a stupid name) and he continued his relationship with her, now, former best friend. Her husband and Shania compared notes and...now they are married. Talk about a Soap Opera.

What 3 songs would you choose? Have you been through any natural disaster?

Some Blizzard of  '77 picks...





No that is not me or my brother. My parents never thought of taking a picture. pretty cool though since this is the top of their house.

11 comments:

  1. Hi, Birgit!

    I enjoyed watching Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics and U.S. soul queen Aretha Franklin performing the modern feminist anthem "The Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves," a song that goes right along with my current post featuring women's libbers of the late 60s. It's nice to know you liked The Euthrymics so much that you went to see one of their live shows. Their videos played often on the MTV station where I worked in the 80s.

    I never heard that song about the Blizzard of '77. Living through a natural phenomenon of that magnitude left an indelible mark on you. Thanks for sharing the startling pictures of snow piled and drifted so deep they look like production stills from a fictional disaster movie. Shirley it is every kid's dream to have his or her school buried under a mountain of snow and receive two extra weeks of vacation! During my 30-some years as a Penna resident, I lived through a few blizzards, but nothing like the one you experienced. I have lived through several terrifying hurricanes down here in Florida and a few up in PA as well. Hurricane Agnes, which wreaked havoc across the Keystone state in 1972, caused widespread flooding, $2.1 billion in damage, and loss of life.

    I thoroughly enjoyed Canadian cutie Shania Twain's performance of the country pop hit "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" The video is described by Wiki as << a role-reversed version of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and "Simply Irresistible" music videos. >>

    Here are my picks in this week's Challenge:

    BROTHER OR SISTER SONG: "Tell It All Brother," a top 20 hit in the summer of 1970 for the late Kenny Rogers and his band The First Edition.

    NATURAL DISASTER SONG: "New York Mining Disaster 1941," the 1967 debut American single by The Bee Gees and first single by the Brothers Gibb to reach the charts (top 15) in both the U.S. and at home in the UK. I picked this song because it's about a miner trapped in a cave-in and because it also makes mention of a landslide.

    MUTT LANGE SONG: "Waiting for a Girl Like You," the glorious 1981 power ballad by Foreigner, was produced by Lange. The Muttster also provided backing vocals on the track. Released before Halloween 1981, the single set a record on the Billboard chart. Wiki sez it << achieved a chart distinction by spending its record-setting 10 weeks in the number 2 position of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, without ever reaching the top. >> The song was blocked from the #1 spot nine of those weeks by Libby Newton-John's smash hit "Physical."

    Have a wonderful day, dear friend BB. See you tamale in the balcony "At The Movies!"

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  2. Wow, now that is a blizzard!
    Blanking on the first one, but the second I would say Devon Townsend's Stormbending. For Mutt Lang, any of Def Leppard's early albums.

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  3. First thought after reading the themes is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Maybe because I live in Michigan?

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    1. P.S. What I loved about the blizzard of 77 when it came through Michigan is that they predicted 'flurries'. Somewhere we have a picture of me standing in a snow tunnel in front of our garage.

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  4. I learned a lot in this post. I didn't know who Mutt Lange was. And I hadn't heard of the blizzard of 77. The big one for me was the one in 1978. I remember 8 foot snow banks but that's not as much of the photos you shared. I really enjoyed those.

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  5. I love Annie Lennox, and it was so well done with Aretha joining her. I've never heard of the other two. I had NO idea who Mutt Lange was/is, which is a shame, since I love Foreigner, The Cars, and Def Leopard.

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  6. Good gracious! I've never seen so much snow!!!

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  7. Excellent picks! Yes, I've experienced a natural disaster. June 6, 1976 - The Teton Dam broke, causing major flooding in Eastern Idaho. Our home was safe, but I recall helping out so many others. My mom took on several loads of laundry. That is a smell that does not come out easily! We also volunteered by making lunches for those doing the cleanup of the towns. My dad worked closely with the farmers helping them restore their land for the next season's crops and animals.

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  8. I like your choices, Birgit. I'd never heard Blizzard of '77 before. How interesting that you could find a song about something you lived through. I've been through a couple of blizzards, but they were nothing compared to yours. My choices: 1. Sisters, as performed by Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas. Clooney does the number with Vera Ellen, who danced beautifully, but couldn't sing. So Clooney sang her part and then sang the other part and it's movie magic! 2. I'm having a hard time with this one. The songs I can think of aren't really about natural disasters, such as James Taylor's Mud Slide Slim. I guess I'll go with We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel, although the disasters in it are created by humans. 3. Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman, sung by Bryan Adams and written by Adams, Michael Klamen, and Robert John "Mutt" Lange (what an awful nickname but maybe he earned it by being a creep). The song is so pretty and it's used in Don Juan DeMarco, a movie I like and haven't watched in a long time so I need to get out the DVD.

    Love,
    Janie

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  9. Birgit,

    Good picks! The only song I didn't know is Blizzard of '77. The same year you had your big snow storm in southern WV we had flash floods that left our county a natural disaster zone. DH was a senior and the school was closed for a month as the water filled the building several feet. The school I attended wasn't shut down that long, maybe two or three weeks. I got horribly sick as it happened in the spring. Allergies or cold/flu and getting the Typhoid shot and I was in one bad shape! Shania Twain was super sexy back in the day. I love this music video and how horrible her husband cheated on her with her ex-best friend!

    Here's what I told Mary...

    I would've gone with either "Daniel" by Elton John or "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" by The Hollies for Brother/Sister song titles. Natural disasters? Hmmm... "The End of the World" Skeeter Davis. I didn't even know who Mutt Lange is so I had to look him up and the first song title I knew that my eyes fell on is "Loverboy" by Billy Ocean.

    Have a great day, my friend!



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  10. Just a couple of notes on the Blizzard of '77, which almost seems like a dream now. It was very local, confined to the Niagara Peninsula, Western New York state and perhaps parts of northern Pennsylvania. That's likely why so many have never heard of it. But we can certainly share the memories, can't we? I was a fairly accurate estimator of distances and I know we had 40-foot snow drifts. I remember paying close attention to that. I also remember the informal network of snowmobilers who were servicing rural areas by providing food, meds, and necessities such as formula and diapers. And, yes, we were out of school for two solid weeks. It was truly surreal.

    The first category is an easy one for me, and once again I refer (as have you in a previous blog entry) to "Little Sister" by Elvis Presley, truly one of my all-time favourite Elvis songs.

    The "natural" disaster one is tougher and I too thought of Dylan's "Hurricane" but that song has nothing to do with an actual natural disaster. So I'll suggest a Johnny Cash tune about a great flood called "How High's the Water Mama?" Give it a listen. Simple but classic Johnny Cash song.

    As for Mutt Lange, easy to paint him as a scoundrel for fooling around on Shania Twain but there is likely so much more to that story that we'll never know about. That being said... how on earth could he stray for anything else when he had Shania at home!?! Anyway, he fooled around with and eventually married Shania's best friend. As for Shania, she ended up marrying the ex-husband of her best friend. Essentially, they swapped partners. As for a song, "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC is a fabulous tune to have on your resume... sung so emotionally by Bon Scott (who shares a birthday with me), by far the superior frontman for that band. RIP Bon!

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