Meador Manor

Original Sin

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Granger Meador

April 6, 2013

Original Sin by Pandora’s Box

For over a year I posted each month about a “new” song I particularly enjoyed. But I became preoccupied with other activities and my new discoveries dwindled. So at the start of this week I decided to suspend that monthly task. But today my 12,000+ song music collection was on shuffle and an old Jim Steinman song was dealt, prompting me to link and write. (You can always search for my song posts by clicking on the music tag in the cloud in the right sidebar of this website.)

Jim Steinman’s bombastic rock opera is a guilty pleasure of mine. His songs are typically quite long, linking together several motifs, with extensive lyrics. Most of his best songs are dark tales of sex and sin, and Original Sin, which originally was performed by Pandora’s Box, is a classic example.

Unfortunately, Original Sin lacks the humor and interweaved contrasting motifs of Steinman’s best songs, such as one finds in I’ll Kill You If You Don’t Come Back and You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth. The prior song’s “Bless all the girls” segment is a wonderful and welcome break from the driving main section, and those verses take me right back to my high school days, perfectly capturing the terrible wonders of teenage sexuality. The latter song is one of my all-time favorites with Steinman’s beautiful piano licks and Todd Rundgren’s tremendous production; the closing crescendo is wonderful, and I can’t help but clap along at the end.

The video I found for the Pandora’s box version of Original Sin features sensual art from Luis Royo, another form of guilty pleasure, and is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. His Fallen Angel is quite striking to me; you could build a tragic story around that pictured moment in time.

Taylor Dayne did a modified cover of the song, but it did not chart. Bonnie Tyler is another female artist who did great versions of Steinman songs, with him producing her album Faster Than the Speed of Night.

But of course the artist most closely associated with Steinman is the mighty Meat Loaf with the fantastic bombastic Bat Out of Hell, Dead Ringer, and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell albums. Meat did a cover of Original Sin on his Welcome to the Neighborhood album.

No one sings Steinman better than Meat Loaf, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the original Pandora’s Box version to order the album CD (it was not available on MP3 from Amazon or iTunes), which was made with Jim Steinman and has their original takes on several songs Meat Loaf would later cover on Bat Out of Hell II.

Some of Steinman’s lyrics are especially good, right up there with other choice bits which speak to me. The scrap of verse which hooked into my ears today and drew my full attention to the song, which had been playing in the background, was:

I’ve been looking for the ultimate crime
Infinite victims, infinitesimal time
And I’m so very guilty for no reason or rhyme

This and other Steinman songs supply plenty of reasons and rhymes for this sort of guilty pleasure.

Original Sin

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

You can dance forever
You got a fire in your feet
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough
You can fly and never land
And never need to sleep
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough

It’s not enough to make the nightmares go away
It’s not enough to make the tears run dry
It’s not enough to live a little better every day
Everything that they taught us
Was nothing but lies
Everything that they brought us
Was nothing but bribes

But it’ll all be over now
All I wanted was a piece of the night
I never got an equal share
When the stars are out of sight
And the moon is down
The natives are so restless tonight

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

You can lose yourself in pleasure
Till your body’s going numb
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough
You can always take whatever
You conceivably could want
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it will never be enough

It’s not enough to make the nightmares go away
It’s not enough to make the tears run dry
It’s not enough to live a little better every day
Everything that they taught us
Was nothing but lies
Everything that they brought us
Was nothing but bribes

But the lies are over now
All I wanted was a piece of the night
It never had to get so dark
When the stars are out of sight
And the moon is down
The natives are so restless tonight

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
For an original sin

I’ve been looking for the ultimate crime
Infinite victims, infinitesimal time
And I’m so very guilty for no reason or rhyme
So now I’m just looking
And killing some time
Endlessly searching for the ultimate crime

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

I’m applying for a license to thrill
Going out on the edge
Moving in for the kill
There’ll be hell to pay someday
So put it all on the bill
Cause we’ll always be paying
And paying until
We’re beyond expiration
With a license to thrill

I’ve been looking for an original sin…

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Unexpected Obsolescence

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Granger Meador

March 30, 2013

From the Google Graveyard

Planned obsolescence has been a driver of our consumer culture since the Great Depression. I tend to resist it with respect to durable goods: my car is 12 years old and has over 200,000 miles on it, and my home repairs include appliance repairs, rather than replacements, whenever practical. However, the fast pace of technological development forces me to upgrade computers and related devices more frequently. I tend to buy high-powered desktop systems and use them for about five years, but I’ve been replacing my iPhone every two years and have frequently replaced my Kindle book readers and iPads.

The internet churns at an even faster pace. Companies and services come and go, with a long list of services I once relied upon which are now essentially defunct. I don’t particularly mourn dead online services like CompuServe or WebShots, but they certainly were useful to me in their day. But it is disruptive when the plug is pulled on a service you still rely upon. In a couple of weeks CableOne, my internet service provider, is pulling the plug on its webpages service, which forced me to relocate/recreate some websites with new providers. But what really has irked me is Google.

Google has a history of creating extremely useful free services, luring me into relying upon them, and then killing them off. This has happened with Google Notebook, will happen shortly with Google Reader, and will happen later this year with iGoogle. Slate has a nice Google Graveyard where you can put a flower on the graves of services you loved in their day.

My iGoogle homepage

I use iGoogle as my homepage, having set it up with a number of RSS feeds which show me the latest articles from a variety of favorite websites. That includes a list of articles pushed to me via Google Reader. I like to scan article headlines from certain sites and always read certain webcomics via Google Reader. Now I have to shift over to an alternate service for my RSS feeds and I might as well switch my homepage to a new service as well. What a pain! These services are not obsolete for me, even if many people now rely upon Twitter instead of RSS, dip into the random posts by their Facebook friends, or use FlipBoard and the like on tablets to see news articles.

I want to retain my one-screen listing of article headlines from my favorite sites which I can quickly scan each time I activate my desktop browser. So I’ve been looking at possible Google Reader replacements and the same for iGoogle, reading through one set of suggested alternatives after another, and there is an exhaustive listing if I get desperate.

Thus far I’m playing with igHome as an iGoogle replacement and it looks like Feedly is a good replacement for Google Reader, but no one has written a Feedly gadget for igHome yet, so I’ll keep using iGoogle and Google Reader/Feedly for now.

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Snow Break, Day 3: Kemper & Nerman

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Granger Meador

March 23, 2013

Crying Giant (click image for slideshow)

My last day of Snow Break 2013 in Kansas City was spent at modern art museums. I struggle with much modern art, especially the less representational modes, but recently I got a real kick out of the modern art pieces at Crystal Bridges in Arkansas. So I braved return visits to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

I dislike the spider motif at the Kemper, based on the sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. Given my frustration with much of modern art, I’d prefer they play off their Crying Giant sculpture by Tom Otterness. For example, a close friend of mine loves Capri by Brendan Cass, while I struggle to appreciate his bold abstracted style of landscape painting. But we both enjoy the huge portrait Count Basie by Frederick James Brown.

Source Figure

I liked looking directly up at Dale Chihuly’s Campiello del Remer, Ireland glass chandelier, but the highlight of the collection for me was Source Figure by Robert Graham. The original sculpture of an African American woman is at the source of a fountain at the Bunker Hill Steps in Los Angeles. The three crabs at the base are mysterious and lend themselves to ribald commentary. But the woman’s figure is sensual, and the museum has cleverly placed the sculpture in an exterior alcove with windows highlighting views of her profile and setting her against Architect’s Handkerchief by Claes Oldenburg and Cossje van Bruggen.

I then drove miles westward to the Nerman Museum on the campus of Johnson County Community College, where security guards kept a careful watch as I progressed through each gallery. The museum cafe featured some nifty cylindrical light fixtures which caught my eye, but Do-Ho Suh‘s Some/One was the real eye-catcher with its large hollow robe composed of gibberish-covered dog tags.

Some/One by Do-Ho Suh

Bones were prominent in the permanent painted collection since they were major features of Brad Kahlhamer‘s Eagle Fest USA, with its prominent skulls, and Allison Schulnik‘s Skipping Skeletons, which had them skipping through prominent 3D flowers of thick paint.

I’m impolitic and crass enough to interpret Tomory Dodge’s Wasteland as a commentary on much of modern art, but I did appreciate Stephan Balkenhol’s rough-hewn wooden Man Lying on Platform. My favorite painting was the abstract Miasma (2) by Marc Handelman, which is a dark version of his sunburst painting Miasma. The much better (2) version is more powerful at a distance than close-up.

It was a snowy drive back to Bartlesville, a fitting conclusion to this Snow Break.

Snowy Drive Home

Click here for a slideshow from this day

< Snow Break, Day 2

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Snow Break, Day 2: World War I Museum & Rock ‘n’ Roll

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Granger Meador

March 22, 2013

Big Gun at World War I Museum (click image for slideshow)

On the second full day of Snow Break 2013 in Kansas City I had an early lunch at The Classic Cup Sidewalk Cafe at the Plaza; the Steak Frites was superb. Then I returned to Liberty Memorial, which I’d visited the night before for the view of its lit flame, to again tour the National World War I Museum.

I crossed the glass bridge over the poppy field, bearing in mind the famous poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. I captured some of the large graphics in the museum about the chain reaction of treaties and countermeasures which would lead to global war, along with the dreadful graph of dead and wounded by nation, underlined by the deployments by the respective countries.

I shot down the barrel of one of the big guns and gazed at rationing posters and the movie poster for To Hell With The Kaiser. Downstairs, on the way to the reference library, were numerous quotations from soldiers about the war machine which ground them to bits. New to me on this visit was a walk around to the high north wall of the promenade to see The Great Frieze by Edmond Romulus Amateis, which depicts the sufferings of war and the blessings of peace with images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and mourners as well as farm workers bringing in the harvest.

Granger the Guitarist

I had lunch nearby at Crown Center’s d’Bronx and walked The Link over to Union Station to enjoy the great Science of Rock ‘n’ Roll exhibit, where I saw an old record cutter and could play the guitar, keyboard, and drums a la Guitar Hero or Garage Band and mix tunes and sing karaoke (very poorly!).

Click here for a slideshow from this day

Snow Break 2013, Day 3 >

< Snow Break 2013, Day 1

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Snow Break, Day 1: The Arabia and Liberty Memorial

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Granger Meador

March 21, 2013

Treasures from the Steamboat Arabia (click image for slideshow)

I spent the last half of Spring Break 2013 in Kansas City, but since it was bitterly cold throughout my stay and it snowed, I am calling it a Snow Break!

I again stayed at the Best Western Seville Plaza hotel at Country Club Plaza, and on my first full day in the city I drove a few miles downtown to revisit the Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia museum. I first visited this splendid attraction years ago and recalled that the Hawley family and some of their friends had excavated the 1850s steamboat from under farmland off the Missouri River.

The boat was full of cargo and passengers a few miles from Kansas City when it hit a snag and sank. All of the passengers and crew escaped, but the boat and its cargo sank into the river bottom. The Arabia was buried for over 130 years in conditions which helped preserve its tons of cargo as the river changed course over time. The Hawleys researched its location, found it using an advanced metal detector, and excavated the wreck, recovering tons of nearly pristine cargo.

The Arabia

I pulled up before the impressive facade, posed beside the exterior bronze, and then joined a tour, seeing a satellite image and photos of the excavation site. An artist’s conception of the steamboat helped me visualize it since the wreck was nearly unrecognizable after the river swept away the upper decks. I recalled from my previous visit the large stern on display, with its tiller fashioned from a tree trunk by the crew after the original one had broken, and the large rudder. Back when I had visited the museum, they were still spraying down the wood daily with preservative, but that process is now complete.

I saw the beautiful buttons and trade beads and powder flasks recovered from the wreck, as well as some of the passengers’ personal belongings. There were oodles of pristine kitchenware, dry goods, clothing, and hardware. Even bottled foods were found intact. But some broken glassware was displayed to acknowledge that the violent sinking had damaged a considerable portion of the cargo. The snag which sank the boat was also on display.

I was glad to have renewed my acquaintance with the Arabia and its story, following it up with lunch at Rozelle Court at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I’ve already blogged about that beautiful attraction on multiple occasions, so I will skip onward to my evening visit to Liberty Memorial.

Liberty Memorial

I first visited this World War I memorial in 2010, but I had not photographed it at night when the “flame” atop the high tower is lit. The flame is actually steam lit by orange lights, and was de-activated by budget cuts in recent years. Happily fundraising has led to efficiency upgrades and it is back in operation.

The memorial’s huge lit tower and large adjacent sphinxes were impressive at night, as was the high view of Union Station from the memorial platform. I would return to this location the next day to revisit the impressive World War I museum located under the base of the tower. That day would bring the eponymous snow of this “spring” break.

Click here for a slideshow from this day

Snow Break 2013, Day 2 >