I Never Had Big HAIR

My daughter's in choir this year. A few nights ago, they had this big concert performance thing with the other high schools in the city where we live. Mostly, the choirs sing the kinds of songs you'd expect high school choirs to sing: old songs, frequently religious in nature, that sound very somber and serious. Mostly, it's uninspired, safe choices, but that's the way these things go, right?

Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions even when the school is staying within the paradigm, but, generally speaking, the music isn't very... exciting.

However! One of the schools did a whole 80s-themed set with music by the likes of Tears for Fears and Queen. It was a lot of fun, and the kids even dressed in (mostly) 80s styles. The one thing they didn't get right? The HAIR! Not a single one of them had appropriate 80s HAIR!

Now, look, I get it: 80s HAIR takes a certain amount of commitment, possibly more than is appropriate to ask of a high school student for a single evening's performance, but I think it would have taken their performance up another level.

But, then, who am I to talk? I never had 80s hair.

Hey! It's not my fault! My hair was already thinning by the time I was 15, and you can see the progression of my hair loss in my student IDs/yearbook photos. No, I can't show them to you. For one thing, I only have one of my yearbooks (and that not exactly on purpose), and, though I still have my student IDs (at least, I'm pretty sure I do), I have no idea where they are in the catastrophe of boxes that is my garage. (If you want to buy any of my old collectible stuff, make sure you check out my eBay auctions!)

At any rate, the whole HAIR thing got me to thinking... And I kind of wish I had an old 80s photo of me with big HAIR to post: But do I really? Okay, no, not really. Don't get me wrong; if I had one, I would post it, but, alas...

Oh! But the HAIR thing got me thinking; I'm just not sure about what. How weird things were in the 80s? Where things actually weird in the 80s? Would I go back and re-live the 80s and high school if I could? The answer to that used to always be "no fucking way," but I've been rethinking that a bit lately. Not because I would want to go back to the 80s for its own sake, but it's clear to me now that the 80s was when we really started to go off the rails as a nation. Reagan's presidency was a disaster and set up for so much of what is going on today. So, yeah, I would probably choose to do that all over again just so that I could be more politically aware at a younger age and start working then to stop what is happening now.

And, well, opt out of "christianity" at an age where I could have been saved from "christianity" and its harmful effects.

So, anyway, one of the songs that choir sang was "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," and that also got me thinking. I mean, would I want to rule the world? At this point, oh, absolutely! Which I never would have said when I was younger. Or even a few years ago. So, I thought, hey! I'll write a post about that in relation to the song! I mean, that would be cool, right? But...

The problem arose when I looked up the lyrics to the song... What the fuck? What does any of that even mean? Which reminded that I have actually looked up those lyrics before and had the same thought. Other than the line, "Everybody wants to rule the world," which is pretty self-explanatory, the rest of the song is nearly meaningless phrases joined together by... nothing. And maybe that's what the 80s were like? Anyway... Because it's probably still a good song, here you go:

Bohemian Rhapsody (a movie review post)

To be honest, this is going to be less a review and more a reflection. Just so you know.

I was never into Queen when I was growing up. It wasn't my kind of music. I grew up in a house where almost all the music that was played when I was a kid in the 70s was 60s folk music. Until I was about 15, my musical world mostly consisted of Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Bob Dylan. With a little bit of Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, and "Believe It or Not" thrown in. It didn't help that the church we went to held to a view that rock music was of the Devil. I don't know that that was ever explicitly said (at least not until I was a teenager and started to listen to a bit of rock), but the attitude was pervasive enough that I didn't have trouble picking up on it.

That said, songs like "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" made me uncomfortable at best. However, it was "Another One Bites the Dust" that was the first of their songs that really entered my world. One of my best friends (who was a two grades ahead of me and someone I really looked up to) was really into Queen and that song in particular. A song that was the target of the religious Right as containing a secret backmasked messaged about the fun of marijuana. My friend had the album on vinyl, so we spent a not inconsiderable amount of time spinning the record backwards trying to hear it. Yeah, we never did.

Of course, that was only the precursor to the debate over Mercury's sexuality. One of many of similar debates including Elton John, George Michael, and, well, never mind... There was no debate over Boy George; everyone had already made up their minds, whether it was true or not.

Maybe if I had been more invested in the music of any of these people, then I would have cared more about the "discussions," but I didn't need to defend my listening choices against the attempted vilification of these people and their music by the "church." Not that I thought it should matter. Whether I liked the music or not had nothing to do with whom the singer (or members of the band or whatever) was fucking, and, if I liked it, I didn't much care what other people had to say about it, as was entirely apparent when I did discover rock music at 15. I didn't understand why it should matter to anyone.

But it did. To the point where my friend, the one who loved Queen, got into an actual fist fight over whether Freddy Mercury was or was not gay. It was very (very!) important to him that Mercury not be gay. The other boy was just taunting him over it. Imagine his surprise...

Needless to say, I have a much greater appreciation of Queen at this point in my life. Both for the band and for their music, even if "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" will never be among my favorite songs. I have an even greater appreciation for Freddy Mercury and who he was as a person. He may have been a musical genius, at least when he was in collaboration with his band mates, and he died too young. He was younger than I am now, which is difficult for me to grasp for some reason.

The movie was great. I won't go back to the theater to see it again (because there are too many movies we need to see coming out right now), but I am going to see this one again. Rami Malek was incredible. I'm not familiar enough with him to know how incredible, but he was outstanding. All of the actors playing the band members were great. By my standard of knowing a good movie by whether it makes my wife cry, this movie was great. I think she spent a solid 15-20 minutes in tears toward the end of the film.

I think this is one of those "must see" movies. If you like Queen, it certainly is. I think if you don't like Queen, it probably should be, too. There are too many struggles highlighted in the movie that we are still dealing with today for people not to see it. Of course, the people who probably ought to see it most, won't; because that's how that kind of thing goes. It doesn't mean they shouldn't see it, though, just that they are too closed-minded and uncaring to understand.

Oh, and I just have to say, the bit with Mike Myers over the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" was epic.

Here's my closing thought, one I had during the movie:

What if I'm not pretending to be someone I'm not but pretending to be someone I'm not yet.

Tree in a Tree (pictures I like)