Just imagine the Mamas & Papas sing these words. At least that’s how it goes in my mind. I had / am having a super laid back lazy weekend. The work week was busy and stressful for a self-doubting overthinker as me, so sleep and rest was called for. I still added quite a few things to my to-do-list for this weekend. I only did a few of the few, did some that weren’t on the list and I have to let myself be fine with that for now. I still need to work on my to-do-list / get-things-done routine though. Obviously.
The Olympics in Paris are part of why I didn’t get that much done. I like watching it. Random sports I usually wouldn’t know or care about. But give me a German participant going for a medal or a personal best or a participant with an interesting / moving story and I’m all in and will cheer for them. I’m easily impressed, I admit it. Taking part in competitive sport on that level is impressive either way. So far I’ve watched field hockey, swimming, basketball, canoe / kayak slalom, judo and probably some more.
Watching some of the judo competition brought back vague memories of having done judo for a bit when I was a child. Not for very long and I have no idea why I even started with it. Looking back I guess friends of mine were trying it out and I just tagged along. Which also could be said for the other two sports I played “competitively” as in being on a proper team in a league when I was younger: badminton in my early teens and volleyball in my later teens. Both were definitely more of a tag along with my friends than my own decision to try it out. I did enjoy it, I think, but I have no idea if I was any good. I don’t think I really was a sportsperson back then and even now I’m very elective of how I want to exercise. But seeing those people compete on TV got me thinking. Remembering. Remembering also made me feel quite old.
I can’t recall I’ve ever watched canoe / kayak sport before. That looks challenging and impressive. At least I’m impressed, even though it didn’t work out for the German participant in the picture this time.
In other regards I’ve also been reminiscing quite a bit this week. About music and fandoms. Not related, though the fandom was my music fandom (Frank Turner) which shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Earlier this week I was listening to the radio in my car and the opening chords of “Uptown Girl” came up. The Westlife version from 2001 not the original Billy Joel version from 1983. This put me on a weird train of thought about cover versions as such and how they sometimes / often get a life of their own, because the generation of music fans who learn of this song through the cover version might not even know that it’s a cover. They might never check out the original version. I know I didn’t for all the late 80/ early 90s hits (cover version) of my generation. It took me quite a while to learn that those songs are cover versions. To me
“Knocking on Heaven’s Door” belongs to Guns’N’Roses (1990) (originally Bob Dylan, 1973)
“I Will Always Love You” belongs to Whitney Houston (1992) (originally Dolly Parton, 1974)
“I Drove All Night” will always be a Cindy Lauper song (1989) even though it was originally written for Roy Orbinson. His version was only released after the Lauper one, so it’s not really a cover version. I’m a bit on the fence about the song anyway, after “Eating before Swimming” (Frank Turners quite weird but interesting side project) made me aware that the “crept in your room, woke you from your sleep to make love to you” lyrics are a bit… strange. At least they manage to give these words a new vibe with their version.
Back to “Uptown Girl”. Do we think that there are people who actually believe that this song is a Westlife song? How can that be? How long were Westlife around anyway? Or are they still? (Quick check on the internet: they are… again) And how can it be over 20 years that they had their big success?
For over a decade now my memory of when a song was released or when a song was in the charts seems to be quite skewed and often leads to the biggest “OMG you are so old” moments. I always think that it hasn’t been THAT long ago and it always turns out it’s been over two decades or longer. I’m going to be 50 next year, so of course my personal music journey started almost 40 years ago. I stopped keeping up with what’s in the charts about 25 – 30 years ago. I’ve been a travelling Frank Turner fangirl for 11 years now! Old as fuck!
Which is a nice segue to my last “remember the good old days” moment from this week. Yes, I know this makes me sound like a grandma, who sees the past through rose-tinted glasses. I’m not on Twitter all that much anymore (and try to limit my time on Instagram) As much as I sort of defended Twitter for a long time when others already had realized that ship had sunk, by now even I am just so fed up by the trolls and bots and right-wing nutcases. You all know what it’s like.
But back in the day of my early Frank Turner fandom Twitter was one of the two places for me. Remember: self-doubting overthinker and thus not social and outgoing in real life. “Meeting” people online and staying in touch online was always easier for me than offline at gigs or such so especially in fandoms the internet was quite helpful for me. From time to time I mourn that version of Twitter from the mid-2010s. When I pondered that I started to remember the 2nd place: the forum on frank-turner.com and mourned that as well.
Because I also met / made some gig-buddies through there. I know times have changed and message boards / forums are a thing of the past. Let’s not dwell on how something from only a decade ago can be a thing of the past. When does “the past” start? And no, Discord servers might be similar to message boards, but they are not the same and also they give me an awful headache! Which – to bring this back full circle . makes me feel so very old. I am! I’ll be 50 next year. It’s safe to assume that half my life has been over. And I’m usually fine with that looking forward, but it sometimes feels weird, because I DO NOT feel like almost 50. Does anyone ever though?
I hadn’t planned to bring up another “old” theme now, but it sort of fit. Originally I didn’t want to go out today, even though I knew I probably would enjoy it and activity is a good thing. Being old and all. Until noon today my desire to be a sloth won but then I decided to go for a walk after all. Combine it with checking out an outdoor concert venue I’ll be at in August and get an idea where to best park the car the day before to be able to get back home quickly at night after the gig. The venue is located in an innercity park about 20 minutes drive away (probably 1 hour with public transport / walking during daytime hours). I had a stroll around the park, which was much bigger than I thought. And quite overgrown in some areas, which gave it a bit of a derelict vibe.
The outdoor venue as such seemed much smaller than I thought, but that will be fine. I also got a good idea of where to best leave my car and even went for another walk closer to my home, because I still had some podcast left to catch up with. So a successful outing all in all.
Back home I kept ignoring my to-do-list some more and was watching more Olympics instead. Which might be what I do for the next few weeks. We’ll see….
