Take Me Home, Country Road by John Denver

We come to love music in different ways. Sometimes it’s from learning a song and performing it and other times it’s from hearing a song. One time I came to love a song from singing along to a German Polka band.

Several of my close friends after college relocated to the Cincinnati area for their careers and my wife and I often visit them. On my first trip to Cincinnati, my friends took me out a bar/restaurant called the Hofbrauhaus.

We got a table in the main room, got some nice fresh pretzels and lots of good beer. The evening was off to a great start and as we were catching up a band started their set, which consisted mainly of a drummer and an accordion player. They played everything from tradition polka music to German drinking songs to Sousa marches and pop songs like “Sweet Caroline.” The atmosphere was fantastic and everyone in the room was singing along and dancing to this incredible band on stage.

Every time the band played a song that people knew everyone would stand up on the wooden seats sing along and rock out. My favorite song they played that night was “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

I didn’t know the lyrics, but catching enough of the words to just sing through the song with the room full of people was one of my favorite musical experiences. Maybe it was the people in the room or the beer in my stomach but man, that song felt so good to sing at that time and ever since then “Take Me Home, Country Roads” has been on my favorite songs.

Like most people in my generation, I rode off John Denver as kind of being wimpy, white-bread, country-pop music. Looking at pictures of John Denver it seemed clear that not was he an artifact of the my parents generation but an artists that only the lamest people in my parents’ generation enjoyed.

There is some truth to that presumption. John Denver’s music is non-threatening and appeals to a specific crowd but he captures a sense of reverence and nostalgia that may come off as a little corny. The thing is that is exactly how our memories are sometimes.

John Denver released “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in 1971 and it became one of John Denver’s signature songs. This song is a well-loved anthem for the state of West Virginia and is played by the West Virginia University Marching Band at the beginning of every home game.



The melody of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is simple and doesn’t move around across a wide range of note. However, the rise and fall of the melody is carefully crafted and creates a sense of direction. In the first verse, the melody in the verse rises to “Blue Ridge Mountains” and then rests on a lower note on the word “Shenandoah.” The word “river” has a slight rise on its last syllable that propels the melody into the next phrase.

The second phrase of the verse is similar to the first phrase but instead of having a slight rise in the end of the phrase, the chorus picks immediately begins. There is space between the first phrase and the second phrase of the verse, but there is no space between the second phrase and the chorus. Making the end of a phrase happen at the same point as the beginning of the chorus, this phrase elision, sweeps up the energy of the previous phrase like wave gently pushing the listener forwards into the chorus.

The melody in the chorus rises up to the middle of that phrase and descends as we would expect, however the way that the melody rises is both dramatic and unexpected. “Country Roads” rises up, meanders on “take me home” and then descends to the low note on the word “place.” Instead of having a steady build to the top of the phrase on the word “belong,” there is a jump up to “-long” of “belong” that brings a sense of yearning and a genuine feeling of purpose.

This is a song about missing home, about wishing you could be in the place that you feel most comfortable and the long notes in the chorus and the reminiscing verses bring a sense of warmness truly capturing the feeling of being home. Yes, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” sounds like the music equivalent of a sepia tone photograph but it’s feels real and I can’t really imagine this song sounding any better then when with John Denver singing this song with the pop country background behind him.

This song mentions a lady’s voice, a mountain mama, and a miner’s lady. There are hints of a girl that flow through this song like reflection of light in a stream. They song doesn’t tell a cohesive story but instead presents different images that like a mosaic which instead of presented an image creates a feeling.

Nostalgia is a tricky feeling. When you have great memories of a place and you revisit the location, often they aren’t as amazing as you remember. I went back to Hofbrauhaus and it was fun but it wasn’t as magical as the first time that I visited but I still had a great time. In some ways the feeling of wanting to go back, that nostalgia was better than actually going back.

If we hold on to memories for the purpose of trying to replicate them we will continuously be disappointed but if we keep them in our minds as places we can go to find comfort and happiness we will never be alone and always be at home.

Feels Like Home by Randy Newman

Linda Ronstadt recording
Chantal Kreviazuk recording

When I left home to go to college I never imagined that there would be any other place that I would call home.

I grew up in Mercer Island, Washington, which is a small suburb of Seattle that lies in the middle of Lake Washington. There's a tradition in my family of moving away from home. My mother and father came to America from Taiwan, my brother went to college at New York University and it only seemed to make sense that I would take opportunity to explore another part of the country. My brother went to a great American city so I chose Chicago to be the city that I would explore and I applied and got accepted to Northwestern University.

My freshmen year, I missed home a lot. I met some great people through Marching Band and my parents visited as much as they could but it was hard. I remember some nights feeling lonely and lost. My home seemed so far away and at times it seemed to physically hurt how much I wanted to feel the comfort of being at home. At those times, I would think about my parents coming over to a country in which they didn't even know the language, leaving all their family and friends and I would tell myself, if they could handle that, then I can make it at Northwestern.

As time went on, I joined a fraternity and lived in a frat house for three years. Slowly without thinking about it, I noticed that I would refer to my dorm room as "home." Sometimes people would ask if I was talking about my "home, home" which referred to my home in Washington or my "home" which was my dorm room. I don't remember the moment when I started thinking about my fraternity house as my home and when that happened I didn't seem to miss my "home, home" as much.

Maybe it was because I had made great friends and knew the town of Evanston and Chicago better, but I missed home less and less as my years at Northwestern progressed. I found that this happened again when my wife and I moved in together to Downers Grove another suburb of Chicago. When we first moved there I found myself missing home but as I began to know the town and feel comfortable in my surroundings I started calling it home and missing home less as the time passed.

After two years in Downers Grove, my wife and I moved back to Evanston and somehow our condominium felt like home quickly. I had lived in that same condominium during graduate school but something while Diana was finishing up her undergraduate degree at Northwestern but it never really felt like home during that time.

What my made condo feel like home so quickly? What was it that turned my Downers Grove apartment, my fraternity house and the house in Mercer Island a home? Is it about the building itself, the surroundings or is it something closer to the heart? Maybe the answer to this questions lies in “Feels Like Home” by Randy Newman.

In 1993, Randy Newman, most known for the music he composed for the Pixar films Toy Story and Monsters Inc. presented a musical he composed based on the story of Faust by Goethe and also utilized elements from Milton's Paradise Lost. The story is based in modern day with God and the Devil fighting for the soul of a University of Notre Dame student Henry Faust. The character of Martha who is trying to trick the Devil sings “Feels Like Home.” The setting and purpose of the song is to deceive but the emotional truth describing how people can bring us to the feeling of home is intimate, honest and genuine.

This song is about intangibles. Emotions that we can’t describe in words, so instead of trying to explain these emotions, Newman illustrates specific moments and situations that helps us feel theses magical and indescribable moments.

The song begins describing the emotional meaning that physical aspects can bring. Newman describes “something” in the eyes that makes him want to lose himself in his love’s arms. He hears something in her voice that touches his heart that makes him feel an emotion that he hopes will last forever. It has been said that love songs make sense when you finally fall in love and unless you have seen and heard that “something” that is being described it’s impossible to really know what Newman is singing about.

It is all of this that Newman sings “Feels Like Home.” This is a feeling of comfort, warmth and being safe. It is something that we see in each other eyes and feel in each other’s presence. It’s in our pain and in our happiness, which we work to express to each other. Though it is impossible to completely understand each other’s emotions through this struggle, we begin to better understand each other and even more so ourselves.

I don’t think home is just a building and I don’t think it’s just the people. It’s the joy in our lives, the struggle in the dark and a place in our heart. Home is a feeling that represents the best parts of ourselves and this feeling reminds us that no matter how far we travel, home will always be with us.


"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule."

~Frederick W. Robertson

Stick To The Status Quo (from High School Musical)

Whether you love, hate or are simply mystified by High School Musical, it is undeniably the most successful film musical franchise of all time.

The soundtrack to of High School Musical sold over 4 million copies making it the best selling top-selling CD in 2006. 7.7 million viewers watched the premiere broadcast of this film and the DVD release set sales records as the fastest selling television film of all time. There have been successful two sequels (with another one rumored to be in pre-production), and merchandising including backpacks, lunchboxes, school folders, and clothing (working in an elementary school, I’ve seen it all).

I don’t necessarily think that something is good just because it’s popular however when something is as huge a success as High School Musical it becomes part of our culture. In order to stay culturally literate and have a better understanding of the art that my students enjoy I felt that it was necessary to watch High School Musical. Well, I was able to avoid watching it for three years but I glad I finally did.

My inner music snob (which over the years has diminished) did not like the idea of such a pop music orientated musical. The mass popularity of it could not possibly be a good thing. That sort of thinking does not make the most amount of sense but there is a feeling that great music, true “art” music is not something that the masses could ever understand so therefore something so popular cannot possibly be good. Now, even though I disagree with this idea it does make sense on some level as many of the greatest pieces of art are not really all that popular. The why’s and how’s of that are part of a different discussion but regardless High School Musical was not seem appealing to me.

So on the Sunday night of Valentine’s day weekend my wife and I sat down and watched High School Musical. It’s not bad, actually it’s very good. I am making this statement with an important caveat. I say that, not comparing it to other musicals like West Side Story or my personal favorite Mary Poppins but in considering the artists’ intention and how effective they accomplishes their goals. If a song is made with every intention to be sad then saying it’s a bad song because it doesn’t make you happy isn’t really a fair assessment of the quality of the artist’s work. However, if it is clear that a musician is trying to make you happy and the song does not express happiness then it is not an effective piece of art.

If you are over the age of twenty, no fifteen, you probably are not going to enjoy watching High School Musical. If you don’t enjoy the sound of modern day pop music, seeing people randomly break out into song and dance sequences (that are both inexplicable and mystifying) and predictable and derivative plots then please don’t watch High School Musical. You are not going to be happy with your viewing experience. However, if you can put yourself in the mindset of an 8 year old this is transcendent musical experience.

High School Musical like many modern musicals speaks in a musical language that is both familiar and non-threatening. With shows like The Lion King and Jersey Boys, the audience knows exactly what to expect musically. They are no artistically challenge to the audiences’ ears. The artistic adventure comes in other ways like the puppetry in The Lion King and the sets in Jersey Boys. Maybe the lack of familiarity of the music in musicals is a reason for the decline in the popularity of musicals and that is probably the reasons we’ve seen more and more musicals use pre-existing music.

Every song in High School Musical pulls form, chords, harmony and even lyrics from pop music. This is mostly a late 1990s sound with slight nods to hip-hop. For most kids growing up this is their musical language. If you are going to draw people in to see a musical you might as well speak to them in a language that they understand, and High School Musical does this incredibly effectively.

This film exists works within “musical logic.” One has to suspend their level of disbelief quite a lot to believe that Troy, the main character can sing as well as he does without any training or intention to be a singer. This isn’t any less ridiculous than a nun teaching a bunch of children their Do, Re, MI's over in 2 minutes. (ask any music teacher you know and they will tell you that it takes MONTHS to teach kids to utilize their Do, Re, Mi’s like they Von Trapps do).



The plot is well nothing extraordinary, but it makes sense why it is so simple. the other day I was talking about what my favorite book was to some of my fourth grade students and started to explain the plot to Grapes of Wrath. They were of course utterly confused. Young kids need to be taught about good guys and bad guys, the way plots develop and how stories usually play out. There is a rhythm and language in the way that plots are put together and having a musical that follows in a predictable way deriving many of its plot points from other stories helps teach children the way that stories are told which is an essential and important part of their education.

Great art is able to appeal to people who are beyond its target audience and High School Musical doesn’t really do that. It’s effective, it’s fun and well-crafted. The actors in the film commit completely to the characters. The production is excellent in the way high school atmosphere is created and in the intricate and impressive dance sequences. However, unlike a musical like Mary Poppins, which speaks not only to kids but also to adults, High School Musical lacks depth. Like many things that children love, most kids will probably outgrow High School Musical and only look back at it in a nostalgic way to remember how it made them feel.

The film’s major theme is the creation of the adolescent identity. Young adults want to assert their own identity and be individuals while at the same time they want to fit in with everyone else. The song that captures the spirit and innate conflict in this struggle is “Stick To The Status Quo.” Three students have the urge to express their true passion and the other students at the table encourage them to, but when they express something that doesn’t fit in with their clique they back up and tell them to stick with the status quo. This song expresses the way many young people feel who want to get something else but don’t feel comfortable because of peer pressure. We can’t fault the other students too much for not understanding why they want to be something other than they appear to be. By the end of the film, the student body comes together beyond the cliques to support each other in a way that speaks more to friendships then to cliques. This may not be realistic but is a nice thought.

High School Musical is about working against the status quo to be true to yourself, embracing your passions as Gabriella reminds us, “Do you remember in kindergarten, how you'd meet a kid, and know nothing about them, then 10 seconds later you'd be playing like you were best friends, because you didn't have to be anyone but yourself?” Though that may sound overly simple, but that might actually be all it really takes to make meaningful connections with people.

Even thought I enjoyed High School Musical, I’m probably never going to watch it ever again but I’m glad so many young people love this show. It has a great message and is a fantastic introduction to the world of musicals and music in general. I love the excitement that kids get when they have a piece of art that they love. It encompasses their whole lives, they want to experience it repeatedly, and it may annoy the rest of us but their excitement is a beautiful thing that leads passion and love for art that stays with them for the rest of our lives.

Come What May (from Moulin Rogue!) by Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman

"Come What May" film clip

For the first dance at my wedding my wife, Diana and I took a dancing lesson. This is actually a common thing for people to do. Most dance studios have a “wedding package” which typically include multiple sessions and personalized choreography. Now this may seem a little silly but the fact is that many people don’t feel comfortable dancing in front of a large crowd of family and friends.

Diana and I didn’t want a choreographed first dance but we wanted to feel a little bit more comfortable on the floor and have some ideas so that we wouldn’t be stuck in the generic “left foot, right foot” side to side slow dance. It didn’t help the fact that the song that we chose "Calico Skies" by Paul McCartney which had an up-tempo triple meter.



So we met with a friend of ours who taught dance and we had a lot of fun with our lesson. We learned some basics, a dance step that worked, how to do some turns and how to end the dance. For the next two weeks before our wedding, we practiced and both were looking forward to our first dance.

At the receptions, after the wedding, we enjoyed a beautiful dinner, heartwarming toasts and cutting cake. It was now time for our first dance. The music started and Diana and I approached each other. I was thinking about my posture, making sure right arm was firm, keeping my eyes up, and the dance steps steps. By the time, the first verse had started all those thoughts left my mind and for a moment, it was like we were floating.

About half way through the song, Diana surprised me. She reached up, put her hands behind my neck and pulled me close. My first thought was “hey we’re not doing our dance steps that we practiced what’s going on?” But, as our dance became the typical side to side slow dance and I felt her close to me, I realized that it really didn’t matter about the dance moves or even the song, it was just about sharing a special moment with her and showing all our friends and families how much we loved each other.

My brother Ed and his fiancée Laura are getting married tomorrow and as I think about how amazing it’s going to be I can’t help but think of the magical dance that Diana and I shared on our wedding day. Ed and Laura, you’ve chosen a great song for your first dance. "Come What May" from Moulin Rogue! is a beautiful song that captures the love between you two and the spirit of your wedding.

Moulin Rogue! is the kind of film, a student of culture like myself loves. It has more musical references then any other musical I’ve seen featuring intriguing and inventive reinterpretations of popular music. Watching this film for the first time was like cultural overload. My mind raced trying to keep track of all of the references. The amazing thing about the film wasn’t necessarily the music itself but how the music served the dramatic arc of the film. All of the references would have been meaningless if not for the tragic plot and engaging characters. As much I love the medley’s and hearing “Roxanne” being sung as a tragic tango, the song that always got to me is my favorite song from the film is the only original song composed for the Moulin Rougue! “Come What May.”

The song starts with Christians describing how the world just seems different because of the love that he feels. It starts simple with singing that almost seems unsure. It’s like he is beginning to understand his feelings as he sings. As he asks “listen to my heart” the notes become longer and more dramatic. Then Christian sings “but I love you” at the end of the first verse which through its intimacy and honesty feel more real then any other line in the song.

Satine, Nicole Kidman’s character sings in the second verse about how the world seems perfect and that her life doesn’t seems “such a waste.” Even though our minds tell us that the world is never perfect, at certain moments in our lives our hearts helps us feel that the world is perfect. That feeling is not one of solitude but comes from sharing not only our joys, but also our grief with the ones we love.

Enjoy your first dance. Yes, everyone is watching, but that’s okay. I know you’ve been practicing and trust me you will look tons better than you think you will. Everyone is wishing you well and basking in your joy. For a moment, the world may seem like a perfect place and I hope that you will bask in that feeling.

Laura if you feel like forgetting the dance moves for a moment and just pulling Ed close, go for it. It’s your moment and you two should do whatever you want. People are at the wedding to witness true love, your true love. No dress (even though I know your will be sublime) can make a bride as beautiful as the happiness that she is feeling with her new husband and I have no doubt that will shine like the stars.

My Girl by The Temptations

"My Girl" music video
"My Girl" from The Temptations television movie

Like most boys, my brother had various interests as we were growing up. There was a stage when we were both really into comic books, but my brother lost interest. In college, I got into professionally wrestling and passed that on to my brother and I eventually lost interest in that. However, the one thing that lasted for both of us that we’ve always shared throughout our entire lives is our love of music.

My brother started violin and as the younger brother I was quick to imitate. He started taking piano lessons and I insisted on learning that instrument as well. My parents never planned it this way. They knew music was important and could help both of us develop but they never thought it would become something that we would fall in love with.

I followed Ed to high school, joined jazz band, just like he did, then things seemed to start splitting off. I joined band and learned to play the saxophone as my brother went to New York University to study music technology. The hobby of composing, which we had both engaged in early in our piano lessons, became central to my study of music. I went to Northwestern to pursue a bachelor in music composition as my brother went on to do his master in music technology. With twist and turns of life my brother no longer works in the field of music and I am a music teacher.

I think about the wealth of music experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to experiences and there is something that’s always present. It’s there every time I listen to a song, explain a melody to a friend or write about a piece of art. The focus, the center of it all is the fact that I love music and it’s my brother who showed me what truly meant.

My dad as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts shared the music of his childhood with us. . The enthusiasm and joy that he got out of the music in his life was infectious and my brother got the Motown bug bad. The song that captured his imagination was “My Girl” by the Temptations. How many people do you know that can only name the original members of the Temptations as well as the many different replacements and group permutations from their start as the Elgins in 1960 all the way up until the 1980s? Ed is the only person I’ve ever met who knows this information (the scary part was that he knew this all of this in 8th grade).

He not only listened to the music of the Temptations but also researched their history through books, videotapes and anything he could get his hands on. If there was television performance or appearance, he would tape it and we would watch it repeatedly. I didn’t really understand all of this when I was in younger, and sometimes I would get annoyed that Motown was all he was listening to and talking about, but more often then not, I just wanted to be as excited as he was.

Ed taught me the lyrics to “My Girl” and showed the genius of it all. Smokey Robinson the composer, recognized as one finest lyricist in popular music wrote effortless rhymes.

I've got sunshine
On a cloudy day.
When it's cold outside,
I've got the month of May.

The opening seems so cliché but that is only because it is deep in our culture. Two opposites, sunshine and clouds, followed by feeling cold and instead of saying that something about feeling warm Smoky brings the imagery of the month of May, with a rhyme that seems so organic that it seems it that the words were created to be arranged in this way.

I remember listening to “My Girl” with Ed as he pointed out how the instruments worked together. It starts with solid bass line, the short guitar chords on beats two and four and the other instruments playing different rhythms at the same time to create a groove. I still remember the moment when Ed told me to listen to the stings and I heard it not only reach a euphoric peak in the instrumental bridge but also how the strings paint the rest of the song like a rainbow colors a clear blue sky.

Watching how my brother came to love “My Girl” inspired me to take my own path exploring the world of the Beatles and falling in love with their music. I’m sure Ed was just doing the older brother thing, sharing and playing with his younger brother, but what he did set me on path that has taken me to this very moment expressing how much I love music.

When we love something, we want to know everything about it. We can’t help it. It becomes an obsession. Yes, like being “in love” this obsession passes but if it is truly love something deeper is left. It’s that indescribable feeling of pure joy and comfort. It’s that person that no matter how often you talk to you still want to know more. It’s having something so close to your heart that it feels like part of you, the best part of you, that never leaves you, because it is you.

My dad used to play badminton with a bunch of friends and he would open early so that my brother and I could play. This was a Friday night tradition which my whole family enjoyed. Sometimes my mom wouldn’t come, we’d play a couple games with my dad, and later our mom would come pick us up. While waiting at the entrance of the gym for our mom after we were done playing, my brother would teach me the Temptation’s dance routine for “My Girl.” God knows how many times he must have watched the tape of them performing to learn but he loved it, and I’m so glad he shared that with me.

Every time I hear “My Girl” I think about those moments dancing to the “My Girl” playing in our heads, working through the routine and I smile, think of how much I love my brother and how thankful I am for all that he has taught me.

Isn’t it great how music expresses feelings that words can’t expresses? Well, you know that moment right at the end of instrumental bridge when it builds into David exclaiming, “I don’t need no money,” with sheer joy and bliss?

That’s exactly how I feel about my brother.

Thanks Ed

All You Really Need Is Love by Brad Paisley

"All You Really Need Is Love" wedding video

Anyone who says that planning a wedding is a stress-less, easy, enjoyable and wonderful experience either hasn’t planned a wedding or is the kind of person that sees a glass that is half-empty as over-flowing.

Now I’m not saying that there isn’t enjoyable parts of planning a wedding, but in helping plan me and my wife’s wedding and in my friend’s experiences I have yet to find anyone who have not faced unwanted difficulties and challenges in preparing for the wedding celebration. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not venting some deep, unresolved issues from my own wedding experience, I just think it’s interesting how the craziness of planning a wedding sometimes makes us lose sight of the point of it all, the marriage.

Wedding in America is an industry. There are magazines, websites and stores dedicated to creating the perfect wedding. There are vendors including caterers, photographers, florists, DJ’s, musicians, wedding coordinators, wedding planners, design specialists and pretty anything that you can imagine, however small the detail in a wedding, there’s a person who spends their lives just working on that.

It’s a little ridiculous . . . ok, it’s a lot ridiculous. If you call up a hotel and tell them, you are having a company banquet, they will give you a price but if you call the hotel again for the same space with the same number of people at the same date and tell them it’s a wedding reception, the price will double. This is not an exaggeration and is a symptom of this wedding “thing” that our society has created.

My wife and I found it funny that during our wedding planning it seemed that we were worrying more about the wedding than our marriage. At the end of the day, the marriage is the point of the wedding, and not the other way around. One of the things that helped us keep this perspective was Brad Paisley’s sage advice that “All You Really Need Is Love.”

Brad Paisley’s concepts for his songs are hilarious. Here you have a friend asking Brad if he thinks that he and his fiancée have what it takes to be married and Brad says, “yes” because all they really need is love. The song has a nice medium pace as Brad explains how happy he is for the couple, then it kicks in high gear as he goes into his list. He lists all the stuff that you need for the wedding and the friend and his fiancée’s mood starts to change into a panic.

After Brad’s list, he slows things down and notices a weird expression on the couple’s faces as they look kind of pale. Try writing down all the things that Brad lists off while he sings and you’ll start to get the overwhelming feeling that comes with planning a wedding, which is exactly their “expression” on the couple’s face. Brad goes on with his second list, notices a tear on his friends’ eyes, and misinterprets their feeling of shock as happiness.

This song has a sense of joy and teasing. Paisley doesn’t sing like he’s trying to be the specter of doom but instead he sounds like a person who in genuinely happy for his friends and wants to help. The up-beat tempo and the amazing instrumental break all contribute to a general feeling of celebration.

As Paisley sings his list of wedding needs he doesn’t bogged down. He has a light tone and smoothly flows through the words. That’s exactly how people should try to take on all of these wedding tasks with a sense of humor and a wink in the eye because at the end of the day it really is all about love.

It’s the love between a man and a wife and love that is shared with friends and family. We cheat ourselves by focusing energy on pleasing just the bride, doing only what the groom wants or making decisions solely on what the parents want. Yes as a man, I was annoyed that every time we talked a vender they would only talk my wife. I’m not saying that it would have made me happy if they only talked to me and ignored my wife instead. That would probably get me even angrier.

What I think is idea would be a level of respect all around. If you truly love someone, you don’t spend your entire day doing every little thing just to please to them and always let them have them their way. Love is about being partners, sharing in the experiences and responsibilities of life and it makes me sad to think an event that is suppose to be about joining two people together often ends up being about just what one person wants. That seems to defeat the point of what that special day is suppose to symbolize.

My brother and his fiancée have less then a week before they get married. It’s been interesting watching them put together their wedding. I find myself sometimes thinking, “well, that’s not how I would do it” and then I remember that I had my chance to do it my way and it’s not really important how the details are done. Most people who come to a wedding don’t really care about the bar package, the chair coverings or the centerpieces, they are just happy to be there to share the day.

Through helping out with my brother’s wedding, I’ve gotten a level of perspective on my own wedding experience. There were some things that I was obtuse about and irrationally decisions that I made. I’m not proud of that fact and I hope I didn’t cause too much stress to my wife, my in-laws and my parents. I’m sorry if I did. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, I wasn’t exactly the kind of groom who was satisfied sitting in the corner while everyone else figured out what the wedding day would look like.)

However, I think I did the best I could, and it took time for me to figure out that it wasn’t all about my wife and I, but it was about everyone who was there on that day. It’s an indescribable feeling being in a room full of people who want nothing but to wish you well and help you celebrate your lives. If that feeling isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

The planning was sometimes stressful and not all that much fun but think about it, if planning is the best thing about the wedding, something is wrong. The wedding should be the best part, so I think it’s ok if you don’t love planning your wedding.

Ed and Laura, this Saturday, don’t forget, all you really need is love and I know there will be plenty of love between you and around you on your wedding day. Love will make that glass not only seem half-full, but will fill it until it actually is overflowing.

Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) by Jay-Z & It's a Hard Knock Life (from Annie)

"It’s a Hard Knock Life" from Annie:

1982 film version
1999 film version

My first memory of the term ghetto was when I was learning about the holocaust in elementary school as the area that the Nazi’s forced the Jews to live in. When I got to high school “ghetto rap” music emerged and the idea of a “ghetto” began to change in my head.

There was a time when hip-hop culture and rap music was on the fringes of society but now the influence of “ghetto culture” is clearly seen every aspect of our lives. While there are artists who have genuine experiences growing up in the ghetto there are many who do not and romanticize this idea of “gangsta life” to sell more records. This has led to feeling being ghetto is overexposed and a little tiring.

Now it seems that “ghetto” has become a word to describe something that is humorously lower class. There some who feel that it is detrimental to use the word “ghetto” to mock others. This may be true and in asking myself “what is truly ghetto?” my mind goes back to the ghetto anthem I heard in high school “Hard Knock Life” by Jay-Z.

One thing attracted me to “Hard Knock Life,” the fact that Jay-Z utilized a sample from the musical Annie based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. You know Annie with the curly red hair and the red dress with the dog and sings that “Tomorrow” song and how it’s only a day a way. Unlike most of the planet, my favorite song from Annie isn’t “Tomorrow.” I was also more intrigued by “It’s a Hard Knock Life” and when I heard Jay-Z’s version it blew my mind.

Rap artist have been sampling music since the art form came to life. Most of these samples come from soul and R & B music. The melding of show tunes into rap music is something that hadn’t been seen before in the mainstream culture and proved to me the unlimited possibilities of sampling

When I first came to know the “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from Annie and Jay-Z’s version of the song my fascination was mostly because I liked the melody. However, each time I come back to “It’s a Hard Knock Life” it becomes more stark and depressing and Jay-Z’s version gains a deeper level of meaning.

The original cast recording of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” which Jay-Z sampled is much slower than the film versions of the song. In the original cast recording, the tempo is at 120 beats per second, which is the standard American march tempo. Bands perform most traditional American marches like “Stars & Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa at this tempo. There is an instant feeling of marching, an almost protest like rally call that the orphans sing as the clean up the orphanage. The brash brass and timpani make it seem like a call to arms, an angry declaration of worker grievances, which mirrors the setting of the musical during the great depression.

Even though the girls are angry and complaining the fact they are doing just that is shockingly sad. Children who grow up in the lower class or without parents often do not realize what they are missing. They often think that their lives are normal and in some ways this is less painful the knowing what they are missing the children. In “It’s a Hard Knock Life” one girls complains about never seeing Santa Claus and another girl responds saying “What’s that?” She doesn’t even know that it’s a person and for that girl, her ignorance of Santa Claus means there is one thing less that she isn’t depressed about missing. With its stilted rhythm and jagged melody “It’s a Hard Knock Life” is a declaration of a different kind of ghetto life, one that these orphans dream of leaving and in “Hard Knock Life” Jay-Z has left the ghetto but has found that it hasn’t left him.

Jay-Z, in “Hard Knock Life,” describes his journey from living in the ghetto to becoming a successful rap star. He explains that is from the “school of the hard knocks” a place of fierce loyalty. This makes him feel responsible to help the people that he has left behind in the ghetto. In the second verse, he explains that he “flows” or raps for girls so that they do not have to strip to pay college tuition. Later in the third he explains how ghetto life is still inside of him, something that he can’t escape, “Hustling's still inside of me.” There is a sense of burden that Jay-Z carries with him. As much as Annie looks forward to tomorrow, Jay-Z is haunted by yesterday.

When asked about Annie, Jay-Z commented “I watched the movie and was mesmerized ... They're too strong to let life bring them down. That's the ghetto right there . . . these kids sing about the hard knock life, things everyone in the ghetto feels coming up ... That's the ghetto anthem.”

As much as we would like to think that we moved away from our hometown and our experiences growing up, we can never truly separate ourselves from all of that because, they are who we are.

When you are haunted a childhood that you know you didn’t deserve, a place that you feel you must give back to, a lifestyle that you don’t feel like you can ever move past, only then will you have a true understanding of what is ghetto.