Scott and Becca's Wedding - The Complete Soundtrack

(last updated 24 Feb 2005)

Becca and I are to be wed in the holiest of matrimonies on June 25 of this year. The reception will be outside in the backyard of the ever-generous Keith and Deanna Cuomo's house. We will not be having a DJ, per se, but are instead loading Joel's mp3 player with several million of our favourite songs (listed below).

Consider this an open invitation to suggest songs that we might have overlooked in compiling this soundtrack. We are looking for dancing songs, dinner songs, or any other appropriate tune. As you can see, our list is anything but your run-of-the-mill "Electric Slide," "Time of My Life," and "Cotton-Eyed Joe."

Feel free to go obscure, go mainstream, old or new. I can tell you right now that there will be no Celine Dion, so don't even bother.


The List (as of 24 Feb 2005)

Aerosmith - "Sweet Emotion"
Allman Brothers Band - "Melissa"
Allman Brothers Band - "Jessica"
Allman Brothers Band - "Blue Sky"
Aretha Franklin - "RESPECT"
Aretha Franklin - "Son of a Preacher Man"
AWK - "She Is Beautiful"
B52s - "Love Shack"
Bad Company - "Feel Like Makin Love"
Barry White - Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe (thanks! Daryl)
Barry White - "You're the First"
Beastie Boys - "Sure Shot"
Beegees - "Stayin Alive"
Ben Folds - "The Luckiest" (thanks JoelandLizzz)
Billy Idol - "Mony Mony"
Billy Joel - "She's Got a Way"
Boston - "Rock 'N' Roll Band"
Boston - "Peace of Mind"
Brian Adams - "Heaven"
Bruce Springsteen - "Dancing in the Dark"
Cars - "Good Times Roll"
Cars - "Bye Bye Love"
Cars - "Shake it Up"
Cindi Lauper - "Girls Wanna Have Fun"
Coldplay - "Sparks"
Coldplay - "Green Eyes"
David Bowie - "Suffer Jet City"
David Bowie - "Golden Years"
DC Talk - "That Kinda Girl"
Dire Straits - "Romeo and Juliet"
Doobies - "Rockin Down the Highway"
Eddie Money - "Two Tickets to Paradise"
Ella Fitzgerald - "I Could Write a Book"
Eric Clapton - "Wonderful Tonight"
Flaming Lips - "Do You Realize"
Fleetwood Mac - "Say You Love Me"
Foo Fighters - "Everlong"
Foundations - "(Why Do You) Build Me Up Buttercup"
Four Seasons - "Oh What a Night"
Frank Sinatra - "Dancing Cheek to Cheek"
Frank Sinatra - "Fly Me to the Moon"
Frank Sinatra - "The Way You Look Tonight"
Frank Sinatra - "I Won't Dance"
Frank Sinatra - "Let's Fall in Love"
Frank Sinatra - "I Get a Kick Out of You"
Frank Sinatra - "The Last Dance"
Frank Sinatra - "The Best is Yet to Come"
George Thoroughgood (sp?) - "Who Do You Love"
Grand Funk Railroad - "Some Kind of Wonderful"
Incubus - "Echo"
James Taylor - "Something in the Way She Moves"
James Taylor - "How Sweet It Is"
James Taylor & Carly Simon - "Devoted to You"
Jay and the Americans - "This Magic Moment"
Jim Croce - "Time in a Bottle"
Jimi Hendrix - "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire"
Jimmy Eat World - "Jukebox" (thanks, Greg)
Jimmy Eat World - "Sweetness" (thanks, Greg)
Jimmy Eat World - "Praise Chorus" (thanks, Greg)
Joe Cocker - "Feelin' Alright"
The Kinks - "All Day and All of the Night"
The Knack - "My Sheronah"
Kool & the Gang - "Jungle Boogie" (thanks, Daryl)
Led Zeppelin - "Houses of the Holy"
Led Zeppelin - "The Ocean"
Led Zeppelin - "Trampled Underfoot"
Louis Armstrong - "Sugar"
Maroon 5 - "Sunday Morning"
Marshall Tucker Band - "Can't You See"
Natalie Cole - This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)
Norah Jones - "Come Away With Me"
Norah Jones - "Nearness of You"
Outkast - "Hey Ya" (thanks, Daryl)
Queen - "Best Friend"
Righteous Brothers - "Unchained Melody"
Rolling Stones - "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)"
Rolling Stones - "Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud"
Romantics - "What I Like About You"
Roy Orbison - "Pretty Woman"
Sara Groves - "Fly"
Sara Groves - "Cannot Lose My Love"
Sarah McLachlan - "Ice Cream"
Sixpence None the Richer - "Kiss Me"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Take Me Down" (thanks, Dan Sack)
Spiral Staircase - "More Today Than Yesterday" (thanks, Nanx and Dan Sack)
Steely Dan - "Reeling in the Years"
Steppenwolf - "Magic Carpet Ride"
Stevie Ray Vaughn - "The House Is Rockin"
Stevie Wonder - "Signed, Sealed, Delivered"
Styx - "Renegade"
Thin Lizzy - "The Boys Are Back in Town"
Tim McGraw & Faith Hill - "It's Your Love"
Temptations - "My Girl" (thanks, Daryl)
Temptations - "The Way You Do the Things You Do" (thanks, Daryl)
Turtles - "Happy Together"
Van Halen - "Dance the Night Away"
Van Halen - "Panama"
Van Halen - "Right Now"
Van Halen - "Jump"
Van Morrison - "Have I Told You Lately"
Van Morrison - "Moondance"
Van Morrison - "Crazy Love"
Van Morrison - "Gloria"
ZZ Top - "Cheap Sunglasses"
ZZ Top - "Legs"
ZZ Top - "Gimme All Your Lovin"
ZZ Top - "Sharp Dressed Man"


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No-Shave-Off-Season

Pale-skinned hockey fans of Scandenavia and Canadia grow 'playoff beards' during the Stanley Cup playoffs to show their devotion to their team. The prescense of whiskers on a fan's face also serves as a means of unspoken bragging rights, being that the team that eventually hoists the Cup will be the only team with bearded fans by the end of the playoffs. It is at worst an amusing tradition of the Great White North and is something of which I have spun off in an attempt to bring more order and even more regularity to my life.

I have grown a winter beard each of the past two winters. Both beards were spurred by JP$ and his dorm's "No Shave November" bonding scam (of which I was secretly jealous). Beard 1 was the first time I had ever grown more than just chin hair and eventually phased into an Amish-looking growth that I am not fond of recalling. Beard 2 lasted most of this winter past and, I feel, gave me some subliminal higher-standing with Becca's [bearded] father. Beard 3, this year's latest and greatest, started in late October and has only recently fallen into the bathroom sink, victim of the guillotine that is the Mach3.

[For inclusion into the Scott Pearce biography: "It was after a few weeks of struggling with trying to decide when to return to the ranks of naked-faced (which coincidentally coincided with a few weeks of Rebecca Rose hinting that it would be nice to kiss a naked top lip again) that Scott Pearce made an official decision..."]

I have officially decided to grow a beard annually during the exact length of the baseball offseason. I will shave for the last time the morning after the last World Series game (regardless of which team wins the game) and will resume shaving again on the first day that the Yankees' pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

The press conference will be tomorrow at 3pm. Stupid questions will be rejected with Bill Parcellsian bluntness.

Licence to be Royally Pissed

So the other day I saw a Hummer H2 in local parking lot with a car-top carrier strapped to the roof.

I'll re-type that sentence for effect: The other day I saw a Hummer H2 with a car-top carrier strapped to the roof.

I have never so sincerely cursed out someone under my breath. How can this guy justify adding more cargo space atop what is arguably the largest four-wheeled beast on the roads today? Is it possible that he really couldn't contrive a means of packing into his hugeass tank-on-wheels whatever of his worldly possessions needed transport?

I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that maybe his lot was such that he had recently realized the gross lapse in judgement under which he was subject when he penned the lease for his Frigate of the Freeway and had adopted the policy of merely living out of his H2 as a make-shift RV. Maybe his monthly budget session brought him to the ultimatum of paying rent or paying for gas at 3 miles a gallon, after which he rationalized that an apartment does a far inferior job of announcing to the world, "Hey, look at me and deduce that my genitalia must be as grand in scale as my vehicle is excessive and wasteful!"


In related thoughts, I had an idea for a documentary. I would pay the Friday nite admission fee to the local cinema to watch even a half hour film of the following content. I would like to see a camera crew and a moderately-polite interview man/woman track the drivers of Hummers on the road and try to interview them when they get out of their H2s. I would like these drivers to be asked--objectively and without an air of pretense or bias--things like what made them buy their H2, if they are happy with their purchase, what their monthly gas expenses are, and how their H2 meets their particular transportation needs. I would like the interviewer to be equipped with facts informing the driver how much the gas expenses of the average economy-car-commuter match up with the typical H2 commuter, and do a quick calculation to let the H2 driver know how many children he or she could feed, clothe, and educate through Compassion International with the difference in monthly gas money alone.

I wouldn't care if this crew tracked down solo drivers of the other giant SUVs. I have nothing unique against Hummers except the added "status symbol" tag they supposedly carry. I would pay to watch a documentary like the one described above because I want to hear the H2 owner voice. I want this misinterpreted people group to be able to rationalize their very large decisions to the world; I want them to be able to plead their case to the average cynic like Scott Pearce who does nothing but assume the worst and secretly curse them out as they hum by. Really, I want to be able to secondarily look these people in the eye and hear them say that they can justify the money and gas and lifestyle they expend for the sake of [fill in the blank].

I obviously don't believe that I would hear one convincing argument/justification and would really only be looking for my own sense of justification for cursing at people I have never met.

"Imagine"--more like "Imagination," as in, Fairy Tale

While I'm on the topic of musicians and their warped views of reality, let me say a few words about how much I hate John Lennon's song, "Imagine." To clarify, it's more that I hate the high esteem in which the majority of the members of the music industry hold it. "Imagine" is practically Scripture to the editors of Spin or any of the wanna-be intellects posing as lyricists and singer-songwriters.

I bring this up because APerfectCircle does an original cover (if that sounds like an oxymoron, I can explain) of "Imagine" on it's new "politically-charged" album, out yesterday. The song was released a few weeks ago and has received typical APC airplay. I heard an interview with Maynard and Billy from APC on the radio Sunday nite and to hear them talk about the song selection, themes, and motives behind the album got a little under my skin.

Let me preface the following with the clarification that I am not trying to critique the song as a piece of music. The music behind the song is simple, introspective, and beautiful. It is the song as it stands as a worldview that needs to be challenged.

For those of you not familiar with the song, I will not waste time finding the lyrics and copying them here. You should take this as a sign that you need to diversify your music collection. (Plus, I said this was only going to be a few words. I'm approaching seven thousand with this sentence.)

I will skip over the obvious lines, "Imagine there's no heaven...No hell below us" and the line that reads contrary to what I know about the Beatles well-chronicled trip to the Far East: "No religion, too." Most of you, my readers, know me and my faith so I need not explain what about these lines, these "hopes" and "dreams" puts wrinkles in my forehead that is a little larger every day.

The frustration I have with "Imagine" is that so many people buy into it. I admit that it isn't hard for the undiscerning listener to be drawn in by the sweet ebb and flow of the subdued piano and especially a song seemingly calling for world peace and brotherhood in our time. These are good things, right? Isn't this just Lennon's own retread of the "Can't we all get along" themes of the 60's?

It would be fine to dismiss "Imagine" as harmless if it were just a song calling for the end of wars or civil unrest. But it's more than that. Lennon and his disciples are subscribers to a radical and harmful way of thinking by holding out for something that will never happen. They were the last of a few burnouts who believed something completely against the truth of the Bible (and what many might call rational, common sense), that is, that man is essentially good. And not only is man essentially good, says Lennonism, but we as a people can be perfected if merely placed in the right environment and rid of all causes of sin like religion, possessions, and political systems.

That's what "Imagine" is about--the utopian worldview. "Utopia" sounds like such a nice word when used in hyperbole to describe what the world would be like "if everyone just did [this]" or "if everyone just stopped [that]." But a utopian worldview is dangerous and ridiculous almost to the point of being comical.

Seekers of utopia come in all degrees of devotion, like most any organized religion. There are those, like Lennon seems to be, who dream of a globe where there is an absolutely free, unhindered exchange of cultures and goods and ideas (uninhibited sex probably makes the list, too, but that's just speculation). There are those who merely hope for the lofty goal of an end to wars and believe that we are only a few timely treaties or summits away. These are the types of people who believe that we can reason with radical Islam and terrorists hell-bent on our destruction. Utopians are most dangerous when posing as Presidential candidates with all the answers ("I have a plan...").

Yes, there is validity to the desire to have an end to all life-taking conflicts, especially wars. Yes, there is validity to the desire for free exchange of ideas and goods and ideas across cultural borders. But it is wrong and foolish to assume that we are merely to love and embrace peoples and thoughts from all over the world based on the premise that we are all moving toward perfection. It is only a matter of time, you say, until we have chased out the last remaining demons of materialism and intolerance and can begin a world of perfection. Well, I hope I'm not around to see it.

Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try
No hell below us/Above us only sky
Imagine all the people/Living for today

Imagine there's no country/It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too
Imagine all the people/living life in peace

Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world

You may say I'm a dreamer/But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us/And the world will live as one

Rock 'N' Roll is from the Devil

It's widely known that people involved in the arts--the thespians, the artists, the musicians, the poets of the world--and even those involved in Hollyweird are a breed slightly to the left of center. The vegans, the tree-huggers, the left-over hippies all have an artsy flavour to them and find themselves leaning liberal on most any political issue. Whether it truly is the majority of these left-brained artists and lyricists and musicians that tend to be liberal or it only just seems to be so is something that I have no way to qualify; for now let's procede with the common assumption that practically all artsy-types are liberals, even radically so, at times.

I admit that it has only been a recent revelation on my part to the fact that the vast majority of the musician sect of the art cult is included in this group. Until only recently, I was under the assumption that all politically-charged bands were obscure Naderites or just voiced an anti-everything-government/authority voice. With almost no exception, I had no idea that rockers actually had rational political views and chose to voice them.

When I heard the news that several noteworthy bands (including Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, REM and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few) were touring the country this election season to promote the cause of all that is anti-Bush, it actually came as a bit of a shock to me. Of the extensive and diversified lineup of bands on the Vote for Change Tour, the inclusion of Pearl Jam and REM and the Dixie Chicks made sense to me, but that any of the other bands would join in on a Tour to raise support for the Democratic party came as a surprise to me, even my dear Bruce.

I guess Bruce shouldn't have come as a surprise--in retrospect, it was more of a disappointment than a surprise. I've always taken a degree of pride in what Bruce represents. To me, the Boss is EveryMan, the hard-working, high school graduate, middle-class average Joe Tea--and from Jerseyland, no less. Such a strong affiliation with the plight of the regular guy, in my mind, makes Bruce a conservative Republican, not someone who would be introducing Kerry before 80,000 people in Wisconsin on the campaign trail. Just when you think you know a guy.

The more press these liberal rockers have been getting, playing shows in "battleground states," supporting the Dems with a portion of the proceeds, casting stones at the President between songs...is there anything a rock-loving conservative Bush-supporter to do? I have kept my eyes and ears open for news of a counter-tour supporting the GOP and the President, but it doesn't exist as far as I know. Are there conservative, Republican rockers? Do they express their views in the public forum or does the mainstream press just not give them the same coverage? If not--if the liberals are the only group that has the endorsement of the highly-informed, highly-educated, all-wise Rock Star party--then this only goes to confirm what has made it all so appealing in the first place: Rock 'N' Roll is from the Devil.