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  • A review of Pat Benatar’s Between a Heart and a Rock Place

    A review of Pat Benatar’s Between a Heart and a Rock Place

    Between A Heart and a Rock Place
    Between A Heart and a Rock Place

    With a career spanning decades, Pat Benatar is one of rock’s leading ladies. Here’s a review of Pat Benatar’s Between A Heart and a Rock Place.

    I have enjoyed Pat Benatar’s powerhouse vocals ever since I was a young girl. I was introduced to her music by FM radio and my older sister, Sarah, who happened to own a copy of Benatar’s 1980 album, Crimes of Passion, on vinyl. That album has the distinction of being the very first one I ever purchased with my own money. I bought it at a local discount store, having walked there all by myself. I took the record home and played it over and over again. Pat Benatar’s music was a big part of the soundtrack of my youth. I was excited when I saw her 2010 memoir Between a Heart and a Rock Place for sale on Amazon.com. I managed to finish it within a couple of days.

    Benatar starts at the beginning, writing about her upbringing in Lindenhurst, Long Island in a close-knit Polish-Irish family. She took to music early and caught the attention of choir teachers in her local school district. Because she had an extraordinary voice from an early age, she took voice lessons. She set her sights on attending Juilliard and becoming an opera singer. Her voice was supposedly not unlike Julie Andrews’. But then Pat fell in love with her first husband, Dennis Benatar, and temporarily abandoned her music dreams in favor of a brief stint in college. She decided she’d teach sex ed.

    Dennis Benatar was a draftee in the Army and when Pat married him, she became an Army wife. She was moved to South Carolina and Virginia and she eventually took jobs working in banks. She was good at the work, but still wanted to sing. After seeing Liza Minnelli perform at the Richmond Coliseum, Pat’s desire to be a singer was rekindled. She took a job as a singing waitress in Richmond. Later, when Dennis got out of the Army, they moved back to New York and Pat started singing regularly at a club called Catch A Rising Star.

    It wasn’t long before Pat Benatar’s star began to rise. She found a manager and assembled a band. She recorded some songs and soon met the man who would become her star guitarist and husband, Neil Giraldo. Pat Benatar refers to him as “Spyder”. Though their relationship was initially professional, Pat eventually divorced Dennis Benatar and married Spyder. They have two daughters, Haley and Hana, and have been married since 1982.

    One thing I like to do before and after I read a book is check out what other people have to say about them. Many folks on Amazon.com seemed to think Pat Benatar’s life story is dull and boring. I didn’t feel that way at all. It’s true that as rock stars go, Pat Benatar has led a pretty straight-laced lifestyle. She doesn’t smoke, drink, do drugs, or have random sex with other celebrities. She doesn’t have a lot of juicy gossip to share with readers. What she does have is a story about her time pioneering rock music as a woman. Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, there weren’t a whole lot of female rock stars. Benatar was expected to be sexy and sultry, even though she wasn’t really like that. She had to deal with a lot of sexism.

    Benatar writes a lot about her dealings with her first label, Chrysalis, which was co-founded by Briton Terry Ellis. I was interested in reading about Ellis because I read Ray Coleman’s 1994 book The Carpenters: The Untold Story, which revealed that Ellis had dated Karen Carpenter. Coleman wrote a lot about their relationship and why it eventually failed. I got the impression that Terry Ellis was “fun” and liked to go out on the town. Pat Benatar’s comments about Ellis were far from complimentary. They had a strictly business relationship and Ellis apparently overworked her and treated her like a sex object. He even told her that people don’t go to a Pat Benatar concert to hear her sing! What?!!

    Aside from the business aspect of her music career, Benatar also writes about working with her husband, who is quite the musical genius. She comes across as very down-to-earth and family oriented. I got the sense that I would like Pat Benatar as a person. Benatar also includes color photos, which were fun to look at. I particularly enjoyed the photo of her daughters, born nine years apart. They look like they could be twins! Benatar was a very devoted mother to them and writes of getting them tickets to see Miley Cyrus, N-Sync, and other teen oriented acts. She’s charming as she explains that just like every other mom, she’s been to her share of teeny bopper concerts!

    Benatar also has a special love for a place in Hawaii. She writes lovingly of Hana, a small town in Maui, where she and Spyder got married and eventually built a home. Her description of the place makes me want to visit. It sounds heavenly.

    I really enjoyed Between a Heart and a Rock Place and would recommend it to anyone who likes to read memoirs about rock stars. Don’t read it expecting to read juicy gossip, though. Read it to learn about an extraordinary and dynamic woman’s rise to the top in a male oriented business. Pat Benatar is a great role model for young women. I’m proud to endorse her book.


    Pat Benatar sings “Heartbreaker” in 2001.

  • The X Factor USA Recap: Season 3 – And Then There Were 4

    X Factor usa recap

    If someone told you that Carlito was in someway related to the producers of this show, you wouldn’t be THAT surprised right?

    I wasn’t even sure that he was good enough to be part of the top 16 and here he is in the top four. Carlito’s ascension to the final four (and really, Restless Road too) shows a fatal flaw with these singing shows. It’s a man’s world thanks to the voting demographics. Out of the four acts left, one woman is left and she’s part of a duo. Now, I think we all agree that Sierra is the greatest thing since sliced Wonder bread, but I thought two of the best singers in the competition were Ellona Santiago and Lillie McCloud. And one of the best stories in the history of this genre was Rion Page, who can also sing. And yet they’re all gone.

    We see the same thing happen on American Idol. If you’re a half-handsome Caucasian young man, you have a great shot at winning that show. If you’re a woman, you have to really wail hard to win the show.

    Tonight, each act performed three times including a competitive duet. And yes, with just four acts left, they still made us sit through two hours.

    Let’s get to the X Factor Usa Recap for season 3.

    Performances of the night

    Well, you could’ve picked any Alex & Sierra performance. But since they have their own section below, I’ll add the best performance from someone else.

    Even though we’ve heard this song on just about every season of every singing show, I still have to go with Jeff Gutt’s version of Hallelujah. It’s not the best cover you’ve heard. But it was an excellent one.

    Props as well to Carlito Olivero for his version of ‘NSYNC’s Girlfriend. It was a song chosen by the audience and it worked perfectly for him as it opened the show.

    Dud of the night

    There was only one performance that looked out of place on this show, which was yet another strong show. I think Restless Road has been riding on their own coattails of their first few weeks. They haven’t evolved and they’ve been passed by. Their version of Luke Bryan’s That’s My Kind of Night was simply boring in comparison to the rest of the performances on Wednesday.

    Rank

    If I were to rank the competitors at this point, here’s how I’d rank them (with their Twitter handles if anyone cares):

    4. Restless Road
    3. Carlito Olivero
    2. Jeff Gutt
    1. Alex & Sierra

    Alex and Sierra

    X Factor USA recapAs you can see, I moved Alex & Sierra to the front of my ranking. Initially, I thought they were a bit gimmicky, but in these past few weeks, they’ve proven to be legit. And, man Sierra.

    Either of their three performances could be the best performance of the evening. But I’ll choose their first performance. This was also a fan’s choice. They performed Little Talks by Monsters and Men. It wasn’t quite Say Something (which went number 1 on iTunes for a short time last week), but damn, these two are good.

    Have I mentioned that Sierra is fine?

    Who goes home?

    It would be near criminal to not have a Jeff Gutt vs. Alex & Sierra final two. Carlito is decent, but his time has come. You can’t have the guy who continually says he’s getting better every week win the show. Restless Road bores me. So it’s not just a creative name.

    I think Restless Road goes home tomorrow. And this time, the judges have nothing to do with it. It’s all based on the fan vote.

  • The X Factor USA Recap: Season 3 – And Then There Were 6

    X Factor usa recap

    Sometimes, I’m pretty good at this.

    At the end of last week’s show, I predicted that Josh Levi and Carlito Olivero (who I always pick) would be the two going home. But my sleeper pick was Lillie McCloud. If this were an actual singing contest instead of a popularity contest, McCloud is a shoe-in for the final three and possibly wins. But that’s not what this is. Early on, her story was strong. She’s a grandmother who looks twenty years younger than her age who had a music dream that was lost and this was her comeback.

    I felt that they started to lose interest in her. Much of the voting on shows like this is heavily influenced by the production. It seemed like there was less and less attention to Lillie’s story. Was it by design? Who knows. But I do think that they started paying less attention to her and thus, because of it, one of the best voices on the show can go home very early in the ball game.

    It’s time for this week’s X Factor USA recap. Each act performed two songs so they could make sure to keep us in front of the TV for two hours like always. The first song was a diva song, which seemed to be there so that guys would have to perform powerful songs by female artists. The second, and better song for most, was the unplugged performance.

    Performances of the night

    It was yet another strong night, but I’ll keep it at my favorite two.

    My favorite performance of the night was by Rion Paige, who has taken this show by storm. Her first song was a Carrie Underwood cover and she made a lot of ugly faces in the performance. But her second song was Glass by Thompson Square. It was the perfect touch of emotion and vocals I’ve seen so far on this season. Tremendous.

    What was my second favorite performance? Well, I’m biased toward Sierra (and really, this groups should be called Sierra & Alex rather than Alex & Sierra), but this time, I didn’t have to be. I enjoyed both of their performances. They did Destiny’s Child’s Say My Name which was fun, but their second performance was mean. It’s a song I hadn’t heard of until today called Say Something by A Great Big World. Sierra went behind the piano and you could tell she was nervous and her hands were shaking. But she delivered, Alex brought the chops, and it was magnificent.

    Have I mentioned that Sierra is fine?

    Duds of the night

    Duds have been hard to find these days. I’d say the worst song choice was Ellona Santiago’s If I Were A Boy. The irony of that song is that if Beyonce were a boy, she’d be about 1/10th as famous as she is.

    I don’t mean to pick on Carlito Olivero, but Let’s Get Loud was probably the worst performance of the night.

    Who are the front runners?

    If I were to rank the competitors at this point, here’s how I’d rank them (with their Twitter handles if anyone cares):

    6. Carlito Olivero
    5. Restless Road
    4. Alex & Sierra
    3. Ellona Santiago
    2. Jeff Gutt
    1. Rion Page

    Alex and Sierra

    For the second week in a row, I’ve given them their own section. You can watch their performance that I described above:

    Have I mentioned that Sierra is fine?

    Who goes home?

    Two go home again. One of them has to be Carlito right? If he doesn’t go, I think the show is worse off next week. There’s another act that’s set to go home next week and while I think it should be Restless Road, I think their fans will save them. (By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed Emblem3 last year and haven’t yet looked forward to watching Restless Road.) I think it could be between Jeff and Ellona. I’ll say that Ellona goes home as a surprise.