Kesha
September 19th @ 9:45pm
Upper intramural fields, Clemson University, Clemson, SC
S. wore:
K. wore:
L. wore:
I wore:
Talk about usual suspects--all this crew has been on AC at one point or another for going to a concert with me! K. and I surprised L. with with a ticket to see Kesha with us for her birthday, and we were all stuffed into my Prius for the twoish hour ride to Clemson. The school's performance/production group brought Kesha in, and since she hasn't done a great lot of live performing recently, we jumped at the chance to see her live (again for most of us; this was L.'s first time). K. dumped an entire bag of glitter into her weave, and even now at work I find little clusters of purple glitter on the carpet and in the bathroom. But anyway--the show was supposed to start at 9, and when 9 rolled around, we were still waiting in line and my poor friends experienced their first fan crush. (Or maybe poor me, since it wasn't my first by a long shot.) We finally got around to getting into the field Clemson had blocked off for the show and the show didn't start until 9:45pm, but it was great. Kesha looks happy and healthy and sounds fantastic, and while her set was nothing new, it was still a lot of fun and involved an enormous blow up rainbow to celebrate gay marriage's legality. Kesha mentioned that she was sick all day and her doctor told her to cancel, so I'm really glad we didn't end up with another Miley situation, especially since we had to drive almost two hours to get to Clemson! And Kesha just ain't that kind. She made it happen, and it was awesome.
And as a note: of all the concerts I've been to, I've never been to one whose parking situation was as well done as Clemson's. The Intramural fields were all used as parking, and they were all very well lit (they have sports lighting so our pictures turned out great, and we were super safe!) Clemson's production club also had the police on hand to help direct traffic. This is probably peanuts to them compared to the games at Death Valley, but still--for those of us who are used to pitch black parking lots and sitting for an hour waiting to get out of the lot in the first place, the organization and setup of the concert were greatly appreciated!
Locket: heirloom | Sweater: JCPenney | Skirt: Belk | Tights: Target | Flats: Banana Republic
It took me a LONG TIME to post my Valentine's Day outfit, y'all. I'll explain why in my next post, but for now, let me tell you what I did for Valentine's Day.
I spent Valentine's Day at work, and then I went food shopping, came home and fed the horses, made dinner, let the horses out, and cleaned my room. You read that right: I cleaned my room. My boyfriend has, until very recently, been working nights, and he had to work Saturday night, while I had to work all day, so there was no overlap in free time. (I got to see him Sunday though!) I am currently on call at home 24/7 because my parents, those jerks, are on vacation in the Florida Keys right now--they've been away since Friday (2/13) and won't be back until Sunday evening (2/22)! So to get home at 7pm and feed the horses, and then cram down a plate of food and be back out at the barn by 9...I was exhausted. I had bold plans to go to the gym and maybe watch Clueless, but I ended up looking at my bedroom and noticing a giant pile of clothing in the corner, which was screaming to be PUT AWAY ALREADY.
So happy Valentine's Day to me: nothing screams romance quite like cleaning.
ugh stupid extra long liner
Coat: Eddie Bauer | Cardigan: Target | Skirt: Ann Taylor Factory | Flats: Target
We need to talk about Beck's win for the Album of the Year Grammy.
I made a semi-serious commitment to listen to all five Album of the Year nominees so I could review them for work, where we post staff picks every few weeks on our website. I purchase all the music for our library system, so I try to review a lot of music. Pro bono publico, you know. I listened to all five albums, and the only one I wanted to listen to again was Morning Phase. I've found that a lot of albums now are more a compact set of singles crammed together onto one disc, but Beck's album was a comprehensive piece. You can't take a song out of it an make it a single. It is truly an album, and that is what I loved so much about it. Morning Phase suck with me. At work, I called Beyoncé the album that would win, X by Ed Sheeran the album that should win (he's an excellent songwriter), and Morning Phase was the album that I quite selfishly wanted to win, because I liked it.
So fast forward to Grammys night, and Beck wins. And I die. And then Kanye West ruins it. And then Beck saves it. And then Kanye ruins it again.
I made the mistake of looking at Twitter at one point, and I was overwhelmed by the typical "who is this hippie" tweets. But I also saw a few tweets that claimed this was discrimination--that instead of "giving" the award to a black woman or a gay man, Grammy voters "gave" the award to a white man. Just so we're clear, Sam Smith--the gay man in question--walked home with four Grammys, so that complaint is null. Beyond that, though, Sam Smith is also a white man! In addition, Beyonce also won three Grammy Sunday night. So that complaint is also null. What disappoints me most, though, is that a number of people have decided to shake away the great equalizing that music can do. You don't see who makes the music when you listen on the radio, turn up your iPhone, open Pandora. You hear the sound first, and everything else comes second. Music has this way of subverting and rising well above the basic differences we have to bring us together, to give us shared experiences. The albums are what are nominated, not just the people who performed the work. But instead, some viewers/listeners were ripping away the experience and looking just at a scrawny white Scientologist on the stage and making judgments based on that.
Fortunately for us all, Morning Phase is about much more than that. It's a smart album, and for my review at work, I compared it to the way moss grows on a tree: the album's beauty grows on you slowly at first, and then all at once. Beyonce's album may have been a new way to market, but it wasn't the most exceptional album of the year. Sam Smith sang about the same thing for 40 minutes straight. Ed Sheeran tried, but failed, to vary his music quite enough to make it count. And Pharrell put out some jams, but there was no cohesion to the album. Beck managed to strip away all the negatives of the other nominees' albums while containing their positives, all while putting his own touch on the work. And that's why Morning Phase deserved to win. I'm quite glad it did.
