{"id":20834,"date":"2012-08-25T00:09:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T07:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=20834"},"modified":"2012-08-25T00:09:09","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T07:09:09","slug":"make-it-easymusic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/20834","title":{"rendered":"Rocking Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<span style=\"color: #339966;\">Wondering who I am? I\u2019m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/10477\">former life<\/a> \u2026<\/p>\n<p>My first thought: now this is an unusual badge.<\/p>\n<p>My second thought: this is a badge I can rock!<\/p>\n<p>My third thought: I got rhythm \u2026 I got music \u2026 who could ask for anything more? Well, a girl <em>could <\/em>ask for Gene Kelly, but I\u2019m realistic.<\/p>\n<p>A whole <a href=\"http:\/\/www.farmgirlsisterhood.org\/badges-mie-music.asp\">merit badge on music<\/a>; I am sooo ready for this.<\/p>\n<p>I was sooo over confident.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image wp-image-34633\" alt=\"gladsome_sisters-out_there_women-intermediate\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/gladsome_sisters-out_there_women-intermediate.jpg\" width=\"360\" height=\"474\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Turns out I\u2019m not as melodiously gifted as I once thought. I mean, yeah, I can peg the winner of American Idol three weeks in, sure, and I can\u00a0nail a few childhood\u00a0campfire songs. And you can bet\u00a0I\u2019m a good go-to karaoke partner, but REALLY knowing the ins and outs of crooning? Well, surprisingly enough, there\u2019s more to it than I originally thought.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Like, first off, rhythm. Let\u2019s face it; I have about as much rhythm in my soul as Steve Martin. Which is to say\u2026umm, not much. But that doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t (attempt to) rock out with a little B.B. King now and then!<\/p>\n<p>In order to really stretch my imagination and hear different types of melodies and harmonies and such, I loaned my Ipod to the most eclectic young musician I know: a real cool cat named Treble Clef Cliff, who plays sax at my local coffee shop. He loaded me up with all sorts of strange and wonderful tunes \u2013 things I never would have picked out or knew existed on my own.<\/p>\n<p>There were blues, R and B, bluegrass fiddle, polka, country, gospel, soul, pop, rock and roll, hair bands, classical, Broadway, even some rap. Who knew I could learn to appreciate all these styles? I was blown away, harmoniously speaking.<\/p>\n<p>I was addicted to the sweet strains of Bach \u2026 Mel Torme, the Velvet Fog \u2026 the snappin\u2019 sound of The Beatles \u2026 the fiddle behind the angelic tones of Alison Krause and Union Station \u2026 the story of Les Miserables \u2026 I just couldn\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n<p>Before I knew it, I was belting out Carrie Underwood while vacuuming, and singing The Pirates of Penzance while dusting. I cooked to the delightful beat of the Los Lonely Boys, and washed the dinner dishes to a little Taj Mahal.\u00a0 At church on Sunday I knew every last stanza to How Great Thou Art and left my pastor wide-eyed and overcome with emotion. \u2018Course, I was probably a little off key and the high notes kinda got me, but I think he was suitably impressed. And I\u2019m <em>positive <\/em>the Lord was.<\/p>\n<p>I am so enjoying my new musical knowledge that I deleted some of my Top Twenty mumbo jumbo in order to make room for Elvis and some more Frank Sinatra. I&#8217;m even thinking of making it my life\u2019s work to \u201cborrow\u201d young teenager\u2019s Ipods and do for them what Treble Clef Cliff did for me.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wondering who I am? I\u2019m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life \u2026 My first thought: now this is an unusual badge. My second thought: this is a badge I can rock! My third thought: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/20834\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/20834\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[363,548,566],"class_list":["post-20834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gladsome_sisters","tag-gladsome-sisters","tag-maryjanesfarm-farmgirl-sisterhood","tag-mba-jane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}