Carole Expletive King! I stayed.
For the sake of brevity I'm not going to argue that Carol King rocks. I don't think I need to, and if I do, you might need to seek another blog (or stick around and find common ground another day!).
A few Christmases ago, Charlotte came home with two copies of Tapestry. One was for Winifred, for reasons still unknown to me, was unfamiliar with the Queen of Songwriting. I was knee-deep in love for King, having enrolled in a history of rock and roll class with a professor who had dropped out of college at 20 to become a singer/songwriter before finding success and quitting the industry at the height of her career to get a doctorate in music ethnology and teach young, hip, 19-year-olds about Joan Baez** and how much pop music owes Carole King. This was the same year I started to commit myself to watching Gilmore Girls on Tuesday nights, so I'd leave class just before the show started to walk back to my dorm room and watch Carole King after spending a few hours talking about her.
Charlotte had already tried this with me though, when King and her daughter were on a Christmas Gap commercial when I was in high school. I know, Gap! I haven't forgiven Dylan for his dive into commercialism, but my love for King runs so deep that I don't care. Her moments have always been deeply touching. Also, I want to believe that as proprietor Sophie Bloom on Gilmore Girls, King would really help Lane find her footing in music against Mrs. Kim's knowledge.
Thanks to Charlotte, my happiness was heightened when King was on Colbert. I don't know what I love most about this interview, but I think it's that King openly says the label just wants more money from her:
If you don't mind I'm going to go eat some cookies and defeat Slash on Guitar Hero III. If I don't beat medium all I'll have to show for these six days of Spring Break will be all of the real work I've accomplished and we can't have that.
*And now I'm mad at Joe Francis for new reasons.
**Interesting side note that will embarass my family: At the time I was also knee deep in love with a boy I'd known--and been In Like With, Like Oh My God--since I was 12 and we started a passionate debate about Joan Baez. It ended with us agreeing, if you can believe this, "I totally wish I was Bob Dylan, because I'd be doing the hottest babe in the history of rock." (You're hot too, Wendy O., but you died, and ten years later I'm still kind of upset.) Winifred doesn't like Joan Baez--or Bob!--and that always bothered me, because Winifred was a babe, and she's just as mad as Joan, and I like to think they could have met at a cafe and had a Coke while talking about politics before Winifred went back to base and Joan met with Bobby to share a spliff.
1 comment:
I expletive love Carole King. Fitzwilliam was flipping last night while I was on the computer and alerted me to the last minute or so of her appearance. Yay.
I thought that Winifred liked Joan Baez. Whose records are those if they're not hers? If Charlotte Gainsbourg hadn't been in I'm Not There, the coolest thing about that movie would have been Julianne Moore playing her. You know who's cooler than Joan, though? Joni. I can't imagine her sharing a spliff, though. You just know that she'd be a little mean to you if you were friends, but you wouldn't care because she'd always have something interesting to say.
~Charlotte
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