Tuned In: Starship

When I think about my childhood—which I do with increasing frequency every year, as it gets further and further away—I don't think about the big stuff. I don't think about birthday parties or first days of school or piano recitals or even family vacations to Disney World. I think about bubble baths in my grandmother's pink tub on Easter. The Mary Engelbreit dress my mom made for my fourth-grade book parade, the calculator I broke on a trip to Fedco. MorningStar sausage links for breakfast. Grilled-cheese sandwiches served on a purple plastic tray for lunch. White bows with puffy-painted Disney characters. Construction paper and crayons in my grandfather's study. The Cabbage Patch Kid I "made over" with colored sharpies.

I think about putting on rollerblading shows in my backyard and making my family buy tickets to see me perform. About going to work with my mom at six o'clock in the morning, eating hot dogs and chocolate malts at Dodgers games with my dad, reading books by flashlight after they'd both tucked me into bed at night. Dressing up in old Halloween costumes and using my hallway as a runway. Pretending to be a spy and taking notes on my little brother's daily activities. (Sample entry: "Scott is playing swords by himself. He looks dumb. Hahahahaha.")

Anytime I feel too old for my 25 years, which, lately, is often, those are the things, the moments, the memories, that I always come back to in my mind. Those, and this: sitting in the backseat of my mom's Mazda minivan on a road trip to Tahoe, windows rolled down, stereo turned up, the whole family singing along—yelling, really—to "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now." We must have played it three or four times in a row, my dad and brother taking over Mickey Thomas' part and my mom and I standing in for Grace Slick, our voices growing louder and more off-key with each encore. As a teenager, I was typically averse to so blatant a display of bonding, but for those few minutes, my self-consciousness evaporated and I existed only to sing that song. Such is the undefinable, undeniable magic of Starship.

Three nights ago, while watching the CW's Life Unexpected, I was reminded of that magic in a scene almost straight out of my childhood.

For those who've never seen it (which, based on the ratings, is most of you), here's a little background about the show: Life Unexpected is about Lux, a 16-year-old foster kid who tracks down her birth parents so she can get emancipated and instead ends up in their temporary joint custody. Cate, the mother, is a radio talk-show host in Portland who got pregnant in high school after a one-night stand with Baze, now the owner of a local bar. She's engaged to her co-host, Ryan. Each week, the four of them struggle to define their new, über-dysfunctional family, with varying degrees of success.

This week's obstacle on the road to domestic bliss was a family trip to find Cate's estranged father to invite him to her fast-approaching nuptials. Ryan, ever the faithful and doting fiancé, stayed behind to take care of last-minute wedding preparations, so Lux and Baze went along with Cate for moral support. It was their first big trip as a threesome. And it was basically a disaster. Cate and Baze fought, Baze and Lux fought, Cate and her epic failure of a dad fought—the high point of the whole thing was a brief detour to get corn dogs, and corn dogs should not be the high point of anything, in my opinion.

Enter, Starship.

When Baze turned up "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" on the drive home, I knew everything was going to be OK. Cate resisted at first, but her bad mood proved no match for the vocal stylings of Thomas and Slick. Soon enough, she, Baze, and Lux were belting out the lyrics in pseudo-harmony and waving their arms around in faux dramatic fashion.

Just like a real family.


Artist: Starship
Heard on: Life Unexpected
Sounds like: the '80s, duh
Listen to: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," "We Built This City" (No. 1 on VH1's list of the 40 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever)

Tuned In: Sanders Bohlke

I, like many of you reading this right now, love music. A lot. To the nth degree and then some. I'm the kind of person who creates a soundtrack in her head to go along with all the big moments in her life; who wishes the world really were a stage, like Shakespeare said, but for a never-ending musical in which everyone sang their feelings at really inappropriate moments and occasionally danced down the street in cheesy, choreographed togetherness. I never go anywhere without my iPod, and if I'm at home and not watching TV, I'm almost certainly listening to one of my 8 million personalized playlists in iTunes. Or baking. Often both.

I'm pretty pleased with my music library, too. And when I say I like a little bit of everything, I really mean that I like a little bit of everything. My taste runs the gamut from Britney to Bright Eyes, Justice to Jay-Z, Dylan to Disney. (I actually have "Colors of the Wind" on my iPod, right between All-4-One's "Colors of Love" and Ani DiFranco's "Come Away From It," a remnant of my Barnard days.) Only about a third of my music is stuff I've found on my own, though. The other two-thirds came from friends' recommendations or—surprise, surprise—TV. I discovered The Avett Brothers, for example, after hearing "I and Love and You" on a recent episode of One Tree Hill. (Yes, I watch One Tree Hill. We'll revisit that topic in another post.) I opened my ears and heart to Ivy because of Veronica Mars. And I fell in love with Ryan Adams watching Seth and Summer fall in love to his cover of "Wonderwall" on The OC. Gossip Girl gave me The National, Grey's Anatomy gave me Ingrid Michaelson, and now Brothers and Sisters and Private Practice have given me Sanders Bohlke.

I first became aware of Bohlke a few weeks ago, when his song "You" played behind a conversation between Luc and Sarah on Brothers and Sisters. Only snippets of the melody were audible, but what I could hear, I loved. Then, a few nights ago, there he was again, singing "Misdirections" in the final moments of Private Practice. It was beautiful, haunting. I wanted more. So I tracked him down online.

According to his website, Bohlke is a singer/songwriter hailing from northern Mississippi. His first album had a bit of a folk slant, but it seems like his style since then has evolved and spilled into other genres, most notably acoustic rock and soul. If I had to compare him to someone, I'd say he sounds like a cross between Ray LaMontagne and James Morrison, but I think that probably does all three artists a disservice, since each has such an original and distinctive voice. Bohlke's is at once mellow and barely contained—his music is incredibly soothing, but there's a kind of energy and passion to it boiling just beneath the surface. Listening to him feels like walking but being always about to break into a sprint.

If you're interested, you can find a few of Bohlke's songs on his MySpace page. "You," unfortunately, is not available, but "Misdirections" is there, as is "The Weight of Us," which has apparently been featured on Grey's Anatomy, One Life to Live, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Clearly, someone at ABC is a fan. And now so am I.


Artist: Sanders Bohlke
Heard on: Brothers and Sisters, Private Practice
Sounds like: Ray LaMontagne, James Morrison
Listen to: "Misdirections," "The Weight of Us," "Somewhere"