I painted my way through college so my current house painting job brings back memories. Since this is my home I’m not drinking beer while painting, but I am listening to tunes. Tunes and painting go together like painting, tunes, beer, and other people’s homes. Which begs the question — what does Floyd listen to while he paints? Well — I love my 120G iPod so I can play everything. Here is a sampling of today’s music to paint by. I highly recommend all of these:
There were others, but these seemed to be in heavier rotation. Sinatra, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones conducting… Frank at the height of his powers. Unedited Johnny Cash with “sonuvabitch” in “Boy Named Sue” plus June, Carl Perkins, and The Statler Brothers
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Live at the Sands is one of my favorite Sinatras, as well as the other two he did with the Count. The one he did with Jobim is incredible too.
My mom was a huge Johnny cash fan when I was a kid, so I grew up listening to him. To me, A Boy Named Sue just had that beeeeeeep in it. It was part of the song. I knew what he said, eventually, but it was still really really weird the first time I heard him say “it.”
When we built our house, I painted the whole inside before we moved in. I had help staining trim though. I got good marks for playing a CD of Strauss waltzes. Kept everyone flowing, they said (in laws). But when I was painting all by my lonesome, Brian Setzer’s “Knife Feels Like Justice” and lots of Nick Lowe were on the CD player. Alas, this was 2000 — pre I-Pod.
I’ve also done a lot of painting, (and like Floyd, some of it put me through College) interior and exterior, and I’d never think of picking up a brush without a radio or, these days, mp3 player. I still have a radio flecked with myriad colors of dried paint that’s been my faithful companion for decades.
It was painting indoors for money, with the radio set to my favorite rock station, that I first realized how certain songs can really change your mood without you realizing it. Scorpions would be blaring, I would be nodding along just slopping along (I’m a terrible painter, but still managed to get paid)rockin’ like a hurricane and happy as can be.
Then something like Eurythmics would come on (and I hate the Eurythmics) and all of a sudden I would be pissed off as hell and paint would end up on everything. Then my pants were ruined, and the carpet, and my day. Then I’d get an angry drunk on and blame it all on the government…loudly…in public places, when really it was all Annie Lennox’s fault.
It is all Annie Lennox’ fault.
I was a decent painter, slow, but meticulous. I didn’t spill much but I always wore the same pair of white painter’s pants and I always made sure to brush or drip paint on from every job I did. In short order my pants looked like something Donny Osmond would wear in “Joseph.”
Back at University in the Fall I would wear those same pants to class. Yes, I was very, very cool.
Lifes Rich Pageant, back when REM being political didn’t bother me. Sigh…
So why then is it so hard to find painters? If this is what y’all did all that time? Or did you make it thru college in 2 years?
This summer when I was taking my Spanish class — oh, sorry, I mean, having the upstairs painted, it cost — well, I was going to say a fortune, but for me I thought it was quite a bit of money.
So you could still be doing it and making A LOT.