Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2025

Sing-along Café 2025-04-24

I love this week's theme: Canadian Artists!  My playlist keeps growing as I discover more and more music performed and written by Canadians. I know a lot of Canadian music. Canadian icons like Anne Murry, Gordon Lightfoot, and Shania Twain have so many great songs! I love the Barenaked Ladies and Walk Off The Earth. Now, I'm often surprised when I discover that a band is Canadian, but, I shouldn't be. Somehow, I feel that we're always listening to American music, too heavily influenced by the US, and all the big stars from the UK (Ed Sheeran, Elton John, Beatles, Queen,...) too. (Don't we all love a British accent? Another topic for another time.) Broadcasters have to play a certain amount of Canadian content (CRTC regulation). Wikipedia says that the CBC has a 60% CanCon quota; some specialty or multicultural formats have lower percentages. So, we do get exposed to quite a bit of our own artists' work. (Affirmative action? Another topic for another time). We en...

Sing-along Café 2025-04-10

Wednesday was the International Day of Pink, a day to wear pink to support diversity and to stand against bullying, homophobia, and transphobia. When I planned this week’s theme, I had remembered that, so we used my Songs for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion playlist. Last night, and Wednesday, I forgot, so I didn’t wear pink on pink day, and got a little confused thinking it was yesterday. But, for me, any day is good to celebrate diversity and to think about all the ways good, worthy, and beautiful people don’t conform to stereotypes, gender roles, and other societal expectations.  Diversity is kind of my thing. Singing is #My Thing. I’m also fond of dancing, but in the same way I love singing, as a natural part of enjoying music, with friends and family. Or in a club, like the Pink Pony Club, wearing high heels (if you can, and if you feel like it)! I remembered many happy times dancing with friends at disco clubs, staying out late, wearing heels (so many years ago!). We talked ab...

April 27, 2025 Angel's Concert: Let's fill the church

Share this poster far and wide, and get people there to hear this beautiful soul play the piano with heavenly precision and beauty. $25 well spent. 

Sing-along Café 2025-04-03

Our songs about celestial events theme turned into "celestial events and other changes".  So, days changing with sunrises and sunsets, the equinox marking the seasons changes, and the motions of the moon and planets turned into the seasons of our lives, and then, trying to change the world, because "that's just the way it is" doesn't make sense when everything changes, always.  We enjoyed lots of excellent old songs, even when we couldn't think of how they fit into the theme (Red wine changes me, is how). We talked about how some melodies seem to have come from an eternal source, divine inspiration, or from somewhere in our DNA, they're so good and comfortable and singable right away, as if they've been there always, or alternatively from outer space (David Bowie). We  talked about how a song can make you cry or move you so much that you need to stop the car, pull over and stop to listen. Then there are songs that seem sad, feel melancholy, but a...