Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Blood's thicker than water
A post with epic quotes while I think of what to post next.
Or more like, the first few are epic, and the rest are long rambly quotes from a contact about who else but Michael Steele?
"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."
Will Rogers
"Burn! Burn! It's funny that we're dying at the same time. It is pretty funny isn't it." "We made an agreement that you would kill them right?" the Michael's parents barbies say.
"Oh my god! Oh my god! I'm so scared! Oh my god! I'm so worried!" the Michael barbie says while laughing.
"They're so alive!" the Sue barbie says to the Micki barbie when her parents are dying.
"Oh my god! They're dying! Please help them. They're dying! No! No! Sue, shut up and help them!" the Micki barbie says to the Sue barbie (who is singing 'I Will Take Care Of You' really terribly) when her parents die.
"Anyway, on that particular night, Doug Haywood had convinced Jackson Browne to come down and see us. After we played, I saw Jackson and Micki sitting at a table, seemingly engaged in a serious conversation. I thought, "Wow, Jackson is hitting on Micki," and he was. But when I talked to her afterwards, I thought she'd be all flattered and excited, and instead, she was going, "Argh, I hate it when guys give you that silent, sensitive look, and don't say anything---how am I supposed to react to that? What am I supposed to do?" It cracked me up."
Andy Robinson
"Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies."
John Q. Tullius
"Meddle not in the affairs of the dragon; for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Anonymous
"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces."
Judith Viorst
"Therapy is expensive, popping bubble wrap is cheap."
Anonymous
"I don't want to be a musician, I want to be a rockstar!"
V. Peterson
"Michael is one of the best musicians I've ever played with, and I've played with some of the best musicians in the world."
Eric Meade
"The Bangles proved that male groups aren't the only ones that do stupid things on stage: Vicki Peterson and Hoffs seemed to relish tossing their hair, duck-walking and striking corny poses that even heavy metal artists would cringe at.
Steele, on the other hand, exuded a dignified, rock 'n' roll cool that would have made David Bowie proud."
An old concert review
"Another fun fact is that while Micki was the best guitarist in the group, #2 is actually meant to be Debbi. People who knew them were amused and weirded out that the rhythm section were much better guitarplayers than the 'guitarists'."
"Another one I heard is with Make A Play For Her Now.... the story goes is that Micki laid down a quite cool solo for it, and Vick couldn't top it.... so she ended up dragging in Vinnie Vincent late at night to play the 'solo', just because she felt better about having an outsider play the solo than one of her bandmates."
"As for how good a guitarist Micki is, one of the roadies who was with them in the 80s said that she 'could play circles around Sue and Vicki'. They also remembered her jamming on Jimi Hendrix/Led Zeppelin/Cream songs for fun and kicking ass on lead guitar."
"Though speaking of which, one thing I find amusing about Vicki is that she was a cheerleader in high school, while Micki played flute in her school band."
"Just to add to what I was saying about her intelligence, but a roadie who knew the whole band said that while Vicki was quite good at the English lit sort of stuff, Micki was just very intelligent across a very wide range of topics, like that in conversation with people although she was always casual and friendly, she'd also be able to talk about all these subjects (music, books, politics, art, whatever) in heaps of detail and that sometimes people were 'amazed' by her."
"And apparently they did say crap to her sometimes, like teasing her for caring that much about getting things how she wanted them to sound, which they thought was the producer's job. (They prettymuch thought whatever they did was good enough.) Which I think is a ridiculous attitude to have after what they went through with Kahne, but it took them longer than Micki to realise he was a dick anyway. As for the recording at night thing, the others knew about it, but the injoke was that Micki had just happened to have 'insomnia', and Brad had just happened to be in the studio to record her..."
"Another one I heard is that sometimes she'd 'disappear' backstage after concerts, and the others would find her still talking to fans, because she liked getting into proper conversations with them. Yet another person I've heard from remembered that while they were all nice (she met them at an instore), Micki was the only one to give her full eye contact the whole time. To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say she was less than really nice."
"That's true.... its probably lead to her doing less than she could have with more self-belief, but at the same time it just makes her so human and relatable, you know? And even inspiring in a way...that if you're doubting yourself, you can think, she's so talented and still doubts herself too." (This is like my life inspiration.)
"And for a pointless fact about her looks, that friend I quoted earlier who met her and the band says that she's actually taller than her 'official' 5"8/172cm. She thought that Michael was actually more like 176-178cm, because she (the friend) is 5"7/170 and also wearing boots with a 7cm or so heel, and Michael was barefoot and still as tall as her. :)"
"I'm sure the experiences with labels and assholes like Kim/David didn't help with her esteem issues. I dunno--even though you can't just reading about it makes you just feel like you want to hug her and say 'you know, screw them, you're a great person', or something. And I think she won in the end by never letting these people turn her into something besides her natural self. Though speaking of Kahne, part of it was that she realised he was an asshole before the others did (he flattered them more, and Michael didn't buy it when he tried the same tactics on her), so for a while they thought she was wrong to question him as he was the producer... He also hated her because unlike the others she always insisted on staying in the studio and checking what he was up to, because he preferred the band to just leave him alone so he could do his 'work'."
"As you know, David Kahne was a petty asshole who liked trying to overdub the group with studio musicians when he could, to live up to his wannabe Phil Spector dreams. So this went OK for him with Sue/Deb/Vick, who he got to overdub fairly often on quite a few songs. Unfortunately, his dream got ruined because he wanted to overdub Michael too, but had to give up on it because he couldn't find a studio bassist who could play the parts as well as her."
"Supposedly Vick was even overheard telling someone that what Micki did 'gave the song air'." (About the song 'Let It Go'.)
Shane, Facebook messages
Some of the stuff (hmm, especially the one about Michael being so 'human and relatable') are just so inspirational. I don't know, it's just that she's been through so much and yet turned out an amazing person and never let the setbacks hit her too hard (and hey, she's literally been to hell and back in the music industry).
But okay I'm rambling again.
End post.
Platoon outing tomorrow~after buke!
Posted at 10:54 PM
