Category: childhood

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I was singing today’s song because it’s Tuesday, and I was ruminating over my dreams. Had to look up the date of when the song was released. It’s one of those songs that’ve been around for almost all of my life.

Turns out that “Ruby Tuesday” was released in 1967. I turned eleven years in ’67. Good years for cars. I enjoyed the ’67 Ford Mustang’s looks, along with the ’67 Chevy Camaro and the ’67 Mercury Cougar. I also like the ’67 E Jag, but it was little changed in its looks from previous years.

The lyrics (besides the main chorus) that came up with the sun today were toward the song’s end:

There’s no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Ain’t life unkind?

h/t to AZlyrics.com

Somehow, Mick and the Stones make this work. One of the things that go through my head while watching this video is the thinking, okay, what am I going to wear today, that must have progressed. Yet, being a boy from the sixties, I often dressed like this.

Fun times.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Preparing to depart the coffee shop yesterday, I bused my table. Looking into the roasting room, I saw one of the Noble employees back there. My jaw dropped.

He’s a spitting image of Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night back in the late 1960s.

640px-Three_Dog_Night_1969

Negron, Wells and Hutton of Three Dog Night in 1969

Thinking about that as I walked the town, I went through a few TDN songs – “Eli’s Coming”, “One”, “Joy to the World”, “Mama Told Me Not To come”, and “Liar”. The song that arrived to stay in the stream was one where Negron was the featured lead vocalist. That would be TDG’s cover of “Easy to Be Hard” from Hair.

Not only was it fittin’ to have Negron, the secret coffee roaster (maybe he cloned himself) singin’ a song, but the song whose lyrics fit these times of rollbacks in how we treat one another to the point of open hostility and cruelty.

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needy friend
I need a friend

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Cheers

Love the bumper stickers in the video.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

“This Diamond Ring” (cover by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, 1965) began playing in my head as I reconstructed and evaluated my dream, which was about theater, wine, food, and clothes. Why that song, I wondered, going over the lyrics. It’s all about broken promises and lost dreams, and gathered, that must be what the dreams were about, a depressing thought at its face.

Anyway, now the song is lodged in the stream. Sharing it will release it, so here you are. Watch the video, as their performance is interesting. (So is the setting.) (Such a simpler time.) Several of those musicians look like, “Where am I, where am I,” is caught in their thinking streams.

Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Clear night last night, after a quasi-balmy day. That’s a day when warmth and cold — spring and winter — have repeated rounds, looking for victory. Walk in sunshine and it’s so warm, and yeah, baby, spring is almost here. Then, stepping into the shadows, wintry winds slash your cheeks and hands and you’re, like, geez, that’s friggin’ cold. Even the smell between these experiences is different, with one offering a definite winter scent to the air.

Back to last night, it was clear, feeling like winter settling in for the night, but I was out, looking for stars and the moon. No moon was found, which made me cycle through what I remembered from seeing the moon (oh, yeah, we had that big full moon weekend earlier this month) (was that this month?) (how many weeks ago?). Then I spotted her, a waning crescent, by my guess, just peeking past trees, houses, and mountains, shy, like she’s uncertain of her role here.

All that released song lyrics into the stream. I had to strike a pose to remember. (Something about the moon and crossing…who was that?) I vaguely heard the guitars and vocalist…the voice seemed familiar.

More lyrics were found, and then I remembered, that’s REO Speedwagon. With a little more coaxing, other lyrics came, and finally, the name, “Ridin’ the Storm Out”.

Here’s the initial verse that I was trying to recall regarding the moon (thanks, Metrolyrics.com)

And I’m not missing a thing
Just watchin’ the full moon crossing the range
Ridin’ the storm out, ridin’ the storm out

Wikipedia.org says it’s from 1973. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Tell me, again, how does this mind thing work? How do memories, dreams, events, and thinking interplay to bring other things up? I don’t have a grasp. I know I’m young, just in my sixties, but I do want to know.

Take this morning. Up and busy with cat attentions (this is where the cats gather to ensure that I’m going to feed them, and the head floofherder guides me to the write location by tapping my legs with a helpful paw, or darting across my path when I turn the wrong way). Not thinking of much, to be honest. Hadn’t had coffee, was drinking hot water.

I guess, if anything, I was thinking, “Oh, sunlight! And it’s not even eight! Yea!” And I was thinking, “Spring ahead with the clock soon, yea.” (And then doing the comparisons; so if it’s seven now, this will be what it’s like at eight, right?”

Into all of this came a song. As the sound entered my stream, I thought, hey, I know that song. That’s “Tubular Bells”. Theme music for the The Exorcist.

Song and movie came out in 1973. The movie was Oscar nominated and much talked about. It terrified people, and they wanted to talk about it. They were talking about it in restaurants and parties, cars and houses, on the radio and television. It was non-stop Exorcist.

“Tubular Bells”, by Mike Oldfield, was everywhere, too. The real question is, why did it make the jump from early 1970s memories to active placement in the stream today.

Guess it’s a haunting melody (heh, heh).

Any of you out there in netland familiar with this movie and song?

Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I was working at the community table yesterday in the coffee shop. Another couple joined me. Plenty of space, no prob.

The community table is usually used by people powering up ‘puters. This company were only sitting and chatting. They were to my left. She was closer. He was keeping his voice low and demonstrating a pensive, almost furtive air, as if afraid of being overheard.

I don’t pay them — or anyone at the table — much attention; I’m there to do my thang. But I do often hear on some level. It’s part of the background blend of the coffee house business environment. He was complaining about another woman, and what she said and did. (Wife? Sister? Friend?) Whatever she did (his voice dropped into the bowels of softness when he addressed this) had him very upside. (Mother? But he looked in his fifties..) (Co-worker?)

Then the woman said, “You and I know what she will do, and does do. Others won’t know until they experience.”

“I still need to warn them.”

“I know, I understand, I understand.”

Drinks were consumed in silence for a little time. (Ah, secrets. Insights. The things that we know that others don’t.)

I left soon after (nothing to do with them, just finished for the day). Walking along, thinking about my writing, etc., (clouds were moving in, and the sun’s heat was missed), I slipped back onto her comment, “You and I know.” That planted the seed of an old Dave Mason song, “Only You and I know”.

I had to think a while as I walked about what year that song must’ve come out. Fitting it into my personal history, I struggled – ’69, ’70, 71? Had to wiki it upon my return: 1970.

That prompted a death check to confirm Dave Mason is still kicking (he is, seventy-three years old). I enjoy the song (along with the Bonnie and Delaney version) but haven’t heard it in a looonnng time. So I fixed that last night, and share it with you today.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Once again, I get up, begin the day, and develop an earworm. My morning earworms are frequently related to my dreams or my thoughts. A third category consists of songs that leap in. I suspect that I heard reference to them or part of them in passing and they snuggled into the folds of my mind until a quiet moment arrives when they can burst through into my stream.

(It’s odd how word association will cause a flash-in of another song; in this case, I had been about to write, ‘break through’, which triggered “Break on through to the other side”.) (Remember that one? Jim and The Doors? The 1960s?).

This morning’s streaming song is out of 1968. I didn’t know who performed it; Google and Wikipedia revealed it was The Foundations (I only remember them slightly). So, here’s this morning’s flow, “Build Me Up, Buttercup”.

From my head, to yours.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This one came into the stream out of nowhere. I call it nowhere, but it’s connections in my brain, innit? Sometimes, the how and why of deliveries to the stream is self-evident; other times, the connections are deep or nebulous, or too esoteric for the conscious mind to easily hunt down.

Either way, I like to go with the flow. So, today, from 1970, we have John Fogerty with “Long As I Can See The Light”. It’s post CCR, but an interesting cover, from 2010.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

This song is arrives from memories that my dream about Mom’s house stirred.

After thinking about the dream and remembering the period, I recalled a return visit. I’d brought some tapes to listen to. One was Uriah Heep, which had the song, “Sweet Lorraine” on it. I enjoyed the album and song, but the Moog synthesizer Uriah Heep used took Mom aback.

I claim to so vividly remember her listening and asking, “What is that?”

I answered, “It’s music,” because I knew she was referring to the synthesizer. It wasn’t the first time she’d questioned my music, always with a mild scowl, but never a demand to turn it off. (Turning it down was often requested, though.)

She, as expected, answered, “That’s not music,” which made me laugh. Her subsequent eye roll (she’s a master at it) increased my laughter.

So, for Mom and old times, Uriah Heep with “Sweet Lorraine” from 1972, when I was sixteen. Side note: David Byron, the lead singer, was another who died too young, 37.

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The Clothes & Garage Dream

I had a large new home which made me proud and happy. Then, dream switch, I was visiting with Mom.

Mom wasn’t home. She and the girls were out. I was about my current age. Mom’s home was the small brick ranch style house where I lived from 1965 to 1972 in Pittsburgh before departing.

In the dream, she had coats hanging up outside, like on a clothes line that stretched from the house to a pole by the street. It was a temporary thing, but she’d had this going on for several days, and it bothered me. When it lightly rained and the rain then turned to ice, I decided that I needed to move them into the garage. However, the garage still needed to house Mom’s car. It was a one-car garage, so that would be a challenge.

Going through the garage, considering angles and materials, I began thinking about how I could do it. My little sisters (who had been out with Mom) arrived and commented on my plans, expressing doubts that it could be done. (They were their current ages and appearances, and in the dream, I wondered if they as little girls were with Mom while their adult selves were present in the garage.) I was gaining confidence that it could, then, and passed off their objections with jokes. They left.

As progress was being made, TC arrived. He and I had been stationed at Onizuka together. The same rank, he retired a few years after I did and moved away.

In the dream, he was coming for a visit. I was expecting him. He showed up in an exoctic burnt orange car, not the kind of vehicle that he would ever drive. He had young twin children with him. I played with them as we exchanged greetings. The car then went off and I realized that he’d been dropped off.

I returned to working on hanging the coats in the garage. I could show progress. TC asked what beers I had. I’d been planning that moment and replied as a joke with the names of a number of cheap American beers such as PBR, Schlitz, and Old Milwaukee. He always drank Miller Lite, and I knew that’s what he wanted.

Then, in a move that surprised me, he said he was going to the neighbor’s house. He said he and the neighbor were friends. As we discussed this, I stepped outside. The light rain had ceased. A car drove by on the street. Dusk was falling. My Mom’s neighbor was at a table in his yard, waiting for TC, who walked toward him.

The dream ended.

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