Do You Speak Your Truth?

Knock. Knock. Who's there? Me. Again.

Are you shocked?

I know. Me too.

Posting back to back is downright a-mazing.

Here's the deal, peeps. It just smacked me right upside the head that my long awaited concert is next Friday. As in less than a week away. Yes, Train is coming to Atlanta next Friday night. I am so totally and completely psyched. I got out my IPod this afternoon, put California 37 on shuffle, and soaked it in... again. Man, I love that album.

While I was listening, I said to myself, "Robin, you have seriously got to share the deliciousness that is this album with your blog friends. So many people are still in the dark about how awesome Train is. If you start today and post at least one song off the album every day, you can cover a good many songs before C-Day (Concert Day)." So, I decided to go for it.

Then, I had to decide what to choose and why. These are always the hardest choices. Every song on this album is so revealing about Train in different ways. Stylistically, they are all a bit different, which I totally love. Don't you hate listening to a singer or band and come away thinking that every song sounds exactly the same? No chance of that with this band. They really dug deep and found their sound, which is totally unique, but not remotely the same as any other song on the album. I love that.

The other thought that kept running through my head was how honest Pat was in so many of these songs. Pat is the lead singer and does a lot of the writing, for those of you not in the know. Some of that honesty was so raw that it reminded me of another favorite singer (can I bring up Marshall Mathers and not have this become an MM post????). When you live in the spotlight and decide to write about your life, it means writing about other people. Period. And the people who were crappy to you end up not looking so good. If those people are your exes and still wield some power over you because you share kids, you have to decide whether or not you or going to live in fear of them or not. Or are you going to tell your story with fearless truth and courage? And then let the chips fall as they may. I have to say that I respect someone who steps up and lets it fly.



Anyway, this is not the first cut off the album. It isn't even a particularly long song, but I feel taps the attitude of the album very well, so I think it is a good place to BEGIN.



Knock knock, who's there?
2012 is a brand new year
Cleaning house, singing songs
Shedding light and righting wrongs
Ding dong the witch ain't dead
She's still trying to take my bread
Four more years 'til my girls all grown
Then the b*tch gotta have to leave me alone
It's all good 'cause I'm as happy as a flea
On a mountain of dogs you see
A little music cured all the hurt and put hate in six feet of dirt

I was looking for some heaven
There's no need to look no more
California 37
Took me right to heaven's door
Knock knock, woah oh
Rock and Roll
California 37 took me right to heaven's door

Here's to those who didn't think Train could ever roll again
You were the fuel that I used when inspiration hit a dead end
San Francisco got it done 415 took the 911
Thank you all for believin' in
We won't let you down again
Truth is, it was attitude
Replaced greed with gratitude
Then replaced a pretty key dude
It's all truth not being rude
Making love now, not mistakes
Working hard instead of looking for breaks
Came all the way from the eighth Great Lake
And found 37 reasons to stay

I was looking for some heaven
There's no need to look no more
California 37
Took me right to heaven's door
Knock knock, woah oh
Rock and Roll
California 37 took me right to heaven's door

I was looking for some heaven
There's no need to look no more
California 37
Took me right to heaven's door


Okay, I just had me a time with the italics, large, larger, and largest functions. For those of you not in the know, Pat is divorced with two kids. He remarried in 2004 or 2005. And he had two kids with his new wife and they are very happy. Obviously, that first marriage not so much. And they are still not getting along. However, I have seen pics of him and his two oldest kids and they are great with their dad. He doesn't talk much about they whys and wherefores of it all, but clearly it is not good! See the italicized portions for clarification.

There was speculation that Train would not bounce back. Pat talks about this in a Studio Session that I will post in a later blog. When you have discord in a band about your "sound," you have discord. They needed unity about who they were. Apparently in order to get that unity they had to pare down the band. Well, core values and goals are a must. If your destination isn't the same you will always be tugging at each other and spinning your wheels. It is a strange sort of marriage. I love the part about how they turned it around: replaced greed with gratitude and then working hard instead of looking for breaks. They realized it wasn't working at the root, which explained the lack of success on their last two albums prior to Save Me, San Francisco, which had the hit Hey Soul Sister on it. However, something had to give. And that was it. They had to strive for gratitude and hard work. And when they did, it turned everything around. They made something incredible.

Let's look at one more song for fun. This is their current single. It even has a video. As you will soon see, it is stylistically very different from everything else on the album. I love the lyrics. I love the beat. Actually, I love everything about this song. Just LOVE it.



Isn't that hilarious? I freakin' love the video, too.

They just put this T-shirt up for sale on Train's Official Website, due to fan outcry, after Pat wore it on a morning talk show. It was previously only available at the concert. Now you can buy it on their website. I wish it came in purple...




Stay tuned for more Train and some cool 3-4 minute Studio Sessions with Train to see how the new record came together. I think you tend to like a band better when you feel like you have a better sense of who the people actually are. And they are always just people. It's when they let you in and get to know them a little bit, you can see that they are really COOL people.

Stay away from those crappy Purple Scions everyone. They can be killers... lol.


all images except the T-shirt found on facebook, of course
where the crazy people live

you can find the T-shirt on Train's official website

More Important To Be Right Or Be Loved?

I am always amused and awed when I get an email from one of asking if I am okay. It makes me realize that I haven't blogged in a week or so and you are wondering if I have kicked the bucket. Blogging friends truly are wonderful. My regular friends can go months and not think anything of it. Kind of a sad commentary, no?

I think I mentioned that my mom has been watching the Oprah Network. Well, she has sucked me in, too. I like "the story behind the story" and I like shows that are digging for personal truth. Sort of like what I try to do here. If you are having difficulty in your life or your relationships, work it out. A show that is now ending on OWN is The Judds. Apparently Naomi and Wynona have had a volatile relationship forever. There are so many reasons for it and they get into all of them. I try to imagine being a teenager and having my mother for a mom and a boss. So not cool. That made the transition from mother-daughter to mother-friend an unnatural one. They love each other like crazy BUT...

I think about how hard it would be to work that out on television. On the other hand, if no one worked out their issues publicly, other people wouldn't have the opportunity to learn. If Chris didn't write her weight loss/life blog, no one else would have all that great information. If Phoenix didn't write her love each better blog, I wouldn't stop and think I could be doing that better. If Shoes didn't write his crazy ass blog, I wouldn't laugh every day. If JJ didn't write his philosophical stuff, what would I think about? If Lira didn't post her struggling actress tips for others, they wouldn't have that foundation. [I could go on and on about all of your great blogs but my hands would lock into position over this keyboard. ALL of you are amazing.] This is what we do for one another. We live our lives out loud for ourselves and other people. Some do it in writing and others on TV.

I have learned so many things watching Naomi and Wynona interact. First of all, people often are the most cruel to the people that they love most. Second, if there were a device to take words back, everyone would buy one. Third, revelation is a slow process. I think it is because you have to understand yourself before you can understand another. Think on that for a while. Yikes. Fourth, it is essential to speak your truth. Until you do that, you do not feel free. You are shackled by silence that eats your soul. It is only in speaking your truth at all times that you can remain free. That doesn't mean shouting it with the most pain and bitterness you can throw, but speaking it gently with the solidness of its truth. That is all.

Last night, Wynona said how important it was to her to be right. All of these years it has been so important to be right. She never saw before that if there were a choice between being right and being loved, being loved was so much better.

The answer here is not to cave in to everyone else on everything just so that you are loved and they feel good about themselves. That just makes you a doormat and you lose your truth (#4). However, everyone deserves to be heard and both can be right from their viewpoint. Acknowledging another person's rightness is okay, too. It is saying I hear and love you. And that is where Naomi and Wynona arrived. Some people never get there. One person is right and another is wrong. There cannot be two right viewpoints on the same situation that are different!

Look at what that little bit of learning did for their relationship. Now they can apply that to all of their relationships. Everyone who watched that show can start processing that in their relationships. Powerful stuff.

I called the kids on Saturday just to talk to them. I had been trying to get hold of H-Girl all week. I had talked to C-Man last weekend. My ex called me yesterday to wish me Happy Mother's Day. He told me that the kids said we'd talked the day before AND that they'd said they'd wished me HMDay then. I corrected him by telling him that I had called them, but nothing had been said about Mother's Day. After we hung up, H-Girl's cell rang. It was C-Man calling to wish me HMDay. He was rushed b.c. it was close to their bedtime. I thanked him and told him to go on and get ready for bed. I asked about his sister. She came to the phone, but she was clearly ticked off by her tone of voice. I asked her how she was, etc. I could tell that she was not going to say HMDay, so I just told her good night and she said good-bye. And that was that.

I sent my ex an email asking him not to do that in the future. The kids are old enough to know the holidays. If they want to call, they will. If they don't, they won't. But forced expressions of love are not love. And I am hoping that H-Girl unwittingly employed tactic number one on me. People are often the most cruel to the people they love the most.

N is for Not Afraid

A friend of mine emailed me with some comments on the last blog. She indicated, once again, that I am much funnier in bullet points than I am in paragraphs. I think it is because I have a sarcastic personality and you can't really get a good jab in with a paragraph format. It is only in bullet points can you sink one. I am a real fun one at parties, too. Nothing out of me and then *BAM* I nail the sarcastic jolt when least expected. Of course, my friend had a few other comments. I think I shall address those and anything else that comes to mind in bullet points, since I am insanely funnier that way.

• She says that I shouldn't have laughed at H-Girl when she said she was "all about the learning." That sort of behavior on my part is likely just to make the kid angry at me.
• I say that the kid needs someone to call her out on her crap. She needs to know that she isn't snowing me like she is other people. Kids don't respect people they think they are manipulating. I want her to know that I have her number. 'Nuff said.
• My friend also indicated that blogger had this nifty bullet point program. Peeps, I am utterly lost on a computer. Hand to God.
• My mother used to tell me daily when I was a kid that I would lose my head if it weren't attached to my shoulders.
• What does this have to do with anything?
• Well, I know that there are some of you who think I should just learn how to do the design on my website. You are thinking, "It can't be that hard."
• I thought like that, too, for about three hours after I bought the domain name and my web hosting site. Into the fourth hour, I very nearly chucked my laptop out the window.
• Eventually I called the 24-hour 800 number help line to get them to put up a page indicating my site was under construction because I could not figure out how to write that on a BLANK PAGE and put that up.
• Yes, it is that bad. And that is where the head and shoulders business figures in.
• I tell you that and I share you this thing about the bullet points for this reason: I have been on blogger for over a year and didn't know that in the menu bar that it would create bullet points for me.
• Right now I am looking at the quotations and I can't figure out by sheer reasoning what that will do if i click on it. Clearly it will do something regarding quotations, but what? what? what?
• It should be obvious, but it isn't.
• It's hard to believe right now that I graduated with a liberal arts degree from college, isn't it?
• I know. I am having trouble digesting it, too.
• On Saturday night, we went to the pizza place for food and karaoke.
• Our usual karaoke guy wasn't there because his band was playing somewhere so some friends of his were filling in. This was a new experience for us.
• Not so much for them. They have their own business and their own equipment.
• Once again, too many kids were singing for our taste. Pretty much any kids are too many because most can't sing. They scream or talk into the microphone and it is monotone.
• However, the kicker this past Saturday was that there were only 8 people on the sheet to sing, but the teenagers took over every time it came to them. How did they do this? They sang solo, they sang duets, they sang trios.
• Three girls managed to hog the microphone for forty minutes every time the rotation got back to them.
• So, we we were there for three hours and sang three times. You do the math on that one. Eight people. Three hours. Everyone should have gotten to sing a lot.
• We almost didn't sing that third time because my mom was tired of listening to teenagers and kids scream into the microphone. The lady came around with the sheet to get our song to speed up the process, and my mom asked how far out we were. Turns out two kids were ahead of us, one of whom was singing.
• At that point, I was in favor of waiting and singing. We were there for three hours and had only been able to sing twice. Mom was ready to go, and said something about there being too many kids.
• I knew that was a pointless drum to beat. When you go to karaoke at a restaurant, there will be kids.
• The lady said if you want no kids you should go to a place that is over 21, and she was right.
• I said that the real problem was letting small groups of people monopolize the microphone. It was not right. It would be like me singing, my mom singing, me and my mom singing, my mom and another friend singing, the other friend singing, me and the other friend singing, me, mom and the other friend singing. We could tie up the works for forty minutes just like you have let those girls do all night, but we haven't.
• She didn't like what I said, but she admitted that it was a mistake and wouldn't be happening again.
• Now, would it not be happening again because I said something, or would it not be happening again, period?
• I got a nasty comment from the guy running the machine about being impatient to sing when he called me up.
• That tells me that even though the woman was very gracious to me, and admitted that I was right, she didn't relay it back that way to her partner.
• Most people just leave and don't come back if they don't like something. My mom said that if she finds out that our regular karaoke guy isn't going to be there, we will rethink going there in the future. And that was after I said something.
• People don't like confrontation. I didn't like it when I was married. My ex made it so uncomfortable that I eventually stopped speaking out about what I did and didn't like. What is and isn't acceptable.
• I am not doing that anymore. It is unacceptable to hog the microphone at a karaoke joint. I will tell you nicely. You can make one jab at me, but not two. And if it keeps happening I won't come back.
• I guarantee you this: for every one person who tells how it is, there are twenty who are thinking it and just not coming back. Be grateful for that person who speaks out.
• And if you are someone who is afraid to speak out, try it. It feels so good. It if is your truth, then it isn't wrong to say it. It is never wrong to speak honestly and from your heart.
• Trust me on this: the worst thing in the world is losing the ability to speak your own truth.
• The first Marshall Mathers song I listened to was Not Afraid. It was what hooked me on Eminem. The song is about not being afraid to do what you need to do, speak your truth, be yourself.
• Before you say that you hate rap or hip hop, know what you are talking about. I thought that I hated it, too. I hated it BEFORE I listened to it. It is dangerous to make those kind of calls. And it is also dangerous to hate an entire genre of music, because you never know when a specific piece of music will jump out and hit you where you live. Just sayin'.
• My mom has been watching OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) and loving it. Apparently, there was something on there about the new Oreo cookie. It is a regular Oreo covered in chocolate.
• I couldn't quite follow if it was on one of the shows or if it was a commercial... Anyway, the entire family sans the mom are sitting around the table eating these cookies and talking in Martian about them. (In other words, my mom had no idea what they were saying.)
• Then the mom came in and she tried one and my mom tried repeating what she said. She kept at it until I figured it out. That was when I realized that the kids and hubs are talking in modern day slang. I hated to break the news to mom that the family were not taken over by aliens.
• What was the giveaway phrase, you ask?
• Shut the back door!

photo found at www.weheartit.com