POSSUMS LIVING IN THE GARAGE

On last weeks blog, I mentioned being on vacation, tidying up the garage and cleaning up the cat puke. I haven't gotten around to the cat puke yet. The reason being that I've been busy battling a family of possums living in our garage.

We have about five trash bags of bottles and cans that I was going to take to the local recycler. When I picked one of the bags up, the hairs on my back stood up. There lying on the floor of the garage was a mother possum and her litter. Mind you, it wasn't such a horrifying sight that made my hairs stand up, rather, it was the total unexpectedness of it.

We called Animal Control and they took away the mother, who had gotten tangled up in a plastic bag, and one of her young ones. Several times, while picking up plastic bags, I encountered other joeys, which is what young possums are called. The dogs next door to us have gotten two of them. So all in all, there have been six taken away or killed and one that got away and still on the loose in our garage. The officer who came by said they can have up to ten in the litter. So there might be more. I did a little research on a website called The Possum Pages. It said they are born the size of bumble bees. The ones we have are the size of rats. Possums are also the only marsupials in North America. Marsupials are the only animals that carry their offspring in a pouch. One other interesting fact is that they are one of the few animals that have opposable thumbs. So take that Focker.

Isn't this a blog about music, some might be wondering. Well it is, and I was wondering of a way to tie it in to music. There aren't that many songs about possums that have become hits. In fact, I've only found one. The song is Possum Kingdom by The Toadies and it isn't really about possums at all.
Possum Kingdom is a State Park in Texas.

The song, however, isn't about the park either. It may be about a stalker or a rapist or about vampires. There are different interpretations to what the lyric "I'll show you my dark secret" means. The "I'll never die" lyric has been used as the impetus for the song being about vampires.

Whatever the song is about, it's still a good song which I never would've mentioned in this blog if it weren't for the possums living in our garage.

Vacation by the Go-Go's

Vacation is a song by the Go-Go's that was released in 1982. From the brief reading that I did about the song, namely Wikipedia, there is not enough in the story to merit a podcast. Although a decent podcast could be made just about the Go-Go's and them being the first band with all women band members who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. They should also be known as probably the only successful band with both a hyphen and an apostrophe in their name. What other band has an apostrophe in their name? And why Go-Go's? What does that mean?

That's pretty good for the band and really sad for women in general. Why did it take so long for women to accomplish that? Is there something about the nature of women to make it really tough to be in a band?

There have been lots of accomplished women composers who sang and played their own instruments. But they were solo artists. From Carly Simon to Joni Mitchell to Carol King. And now Norah Jones and Alicia Keys are doing it. Gwen Stefani and Pat Benetar and a host of other women don't count because they were in a band with men. And of course, The Supremes and all those Motown girl bands don't count either because men wrote their songs. Even Beyonce, who is incredibly talented and was in Destiny's Child with all women and wrote hit songs, doesn't count because they didn't play their own instruments. They do, however, count in the bands with apostrophes in their names.

So the Go-Go's are just about in a league of their own. But forget about them. The reason the song is on my mind, though, is because I will be going on vacation next week. Which usually means I will be doing chores around the house. Including, cleaning the mold under the sink and the cat puke in the garage. I'm so looking forward to it.

IT'S "TAXMAN" TIME

Tax season is almost over and newscasts are sure to dredge out the one hit song about taxes during their coverage at the local post office. I'm talking about The Beatles song "Taxman". It's not easy to make a hit song about taxes. But somehow The Beatles managed to do it. The Beatles thought the song was so good that they put it as the first song on side one of the "Revolver" album. The album itself is considered one of the best albums ever. Most lists rank it in their top five. It's also one of my favorites. Along with "Rubber Soul" and "Meet The Beatles" and "The White Album" and, I can keep going.

George Harrison was actually the one who wrote it. He asked for and got help from John Lennon. John supposedly helped George, but very reluctantly. Apparently, he didn't want to piss off his writing partner Paul McCartney. George didn't ask help from Paul because he knew he wouldn't get it. Paul did, however, play lead guitar on the actual recording and this includes him playing that terrific guitar solo.

One of the lyrics to the song is, and this is the taxman talking, "Here's one for you, nineteen for me." The thing about that lyric, which is pretty incredible, is that George wasn't that far off. Taxes for the upper tax brackets in England back then were incredibly high. In fact, most of their money did go to pay taxes. I guess George found out the hard way and decided to write a song about it. Must be nice to be like that. Something bugs you, bam, you write a hit song about it. It must be nice.