Category: childhood

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Well, time was up.

Past ‘up’.

I was supposed to have departed the fix about fifteen minutes before, so I was now behind my schedule. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop writing. Coffee was gone, butt was uncomfortable, and my sciatic nerve was causing pain issue from being perched on the coffee shop’s new hard chairs. All the signs were aligned, time to go, mo-fo.

But —

Yes. Closing up with a stern order, go now, I packed it all up, strapped on the backpack, and headed into the sunshine. It was doing little good against the wintry air, but it was in the low 40s, a better place to be than, say, single digits that some in Alaska are enduring, and it’s better than Australia’s fires and blazing heat. So, couldn’t complain.

Walking up the hill, the distinctive piano playing of the Moody Blues cover of “Go Now” (1964) arrived in my stream. It’s a wondrous juxtaposition when the thing you’ve been doing, memories of places and events, and what you’re now doing come together in a perfectly mellow mood. I usually need a beer, a glass of wine, cup of coffee, or the toke of a joint to arrive in such a state.

But here I was, just me and the small town, with myself and music in my head, cold in the air, and sunshine on the other side of the valley.

 

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

It seems like my mind is determined to turn back time in my dreams. It’s also making all these song connections. (Like, boom, Cher has begun singing, “If I could turn back time.”)

The dreams were crazy chaos, leaving images like flashes of sunlight off of windshields. The dreams’ theme was ‘anything goes’. That theme conjured up the show tune from the musical with the same name, “Anything Goes”, which, let’s see…came out twenty-two years before my birth, but the movie did come out the year I was born.

Out of this throwback, go-go sense came the song that’s haunting the morning’s stream (now I have this image of a musical urine stream…oh, boy. (“I heard the news today, oh boy.” Yeah, the Beatles.) It’s from a 1964 movie, so I was eight.

The song is “The Monkey’s Uncle”. Although the Beach Boys perform it with Annette Funicello singing it, it’s written by the Sherman Brothers. Yeah, I looked it up. I knew the first two pieces but not the third. The Sherman Brothers were prolific songwriters. You should check out their list. I can tell you that one of their other songs, “It’s A Small World”, has entered my stream.

Meanwhile, the monkey’s uncle idiom amuses me. In one of those flashes in the dream, someone else says it in what feels like a sitcom moment. I’m looking at the guy when he does. Canned laughter kicks in, and then the song begins.

I don’t hear people say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” that often any longer. I think it was dying out as a popular saying even when I was young, sputtering along in movies and television where caricatures of old folks say it.

That frenetic dream activity left me felt energized, like it was a storm blowing out my mind’s systems. Anyway, the long and short of it (had to throw that in, it was in dream), is “The Monkey’s Uncle” is today’s theme music.

Feel free to sing along, or if you’re like me, laugh along, with the video.

 

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Once again, my chosen theme music arrives via a dream, but is selected because it stays stuck in my mental stream. That forces me to sing it aloud and share it with others to remove it from my traps.

The dream was about neighbors, friends, and food. It was quite chaotic. At the end, almost like the music to the final scene, “With A Little Help From My Friends” plays. It’s the original 1967 Beatles version, sung by Ringo, a song version that’s both morose and jaunty in my ears. Not my favorite version (yes, that would be Joe Cocker) but it’s the one that was in my dream, so here we go.

As an aside, driven by my reflections on the dream and the song, the song came out when I was eleven, making the song fifty-two years old. Where does the time go?

Feel free to sing along. Cheers

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Yesterday was such a brooding day, darkly petulant clouds sulking on the horizons, unsure if they’d rain or snow, ruling as sunshine said, “Screw it, I’m outta here.” Temperatures were in the mid-forties but we all swore that snowfall was imminent.

Here are blue skies this morning, as if the weather’s dark mood has lifted. Here comes sunshine. Opening blinds, I told the cats, let the sunshine, a trigger phrase for the 5th Dimension’s 1969 song, “Let the Sunshine In”. Of course, that one must be accompanied by “Aquarius”.

You know ’bout the Age of Aquarius?

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the minds true liberation
Aquarius, Aquarius

h/t to Lyricsmode.com

Don’t think we’re there right now. Not in the United States, nor many places I read of in the news. But for now, let the sunshine in. You got to feel it.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

We invited friends to our house to celebrate solstice, an annual tradition. Besides eating, that involves writing wishes and hopes for the future on small scrips of paper, tying them to a Yule log, and burning them.

The food is always simple, bread and soup, along with a veggie and cheese plate, and crackers. This year was lentil soup and spinach tortellini soup, both satisfying and tasty. Spice Wassail, spiked with rum or brandy, and wine, was available.

During the log burning in the backyard, someone requested Jethro Tull, “Ring Out Solstice Bells”, so that was played. The iPad shuffled into a Greg Lake concert after that. Soon we were listening to “From the Beginning”.

It was Lake’s composition, originally done when he was part of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1972). I thought that would be a good song for the day after solstice, so here be Lake in concert, doing “From the Beginning”.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I was outside, watching light seep out of the day. Purples and grays stole in, and then darkness. Solstice – the longest night for us northern dwellers – was almost here. And as I watched, thinking about the fading daylight and growing night, I remembered a song.

Several groups made “(I know) I’m Losing You”, but it was the Rare Earth’s version from 1970 (when I became fourteen years old) that sprang to mind. “Your love is fading. I feel it fade.”

No, it wasn’t love fading; just the light, and it’s going to be coming back soon.

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Friday’s Theme Music

This song popped up from the memory banks into the active stream yesterday as I was hurrying along. I have to get this done so that I can get home and get that done, I thought. Better get running. (It’s a mode that I dislike – run and get things done – anathema to my general philosophy.) A second later, JoJo Gunn’s 1972 song, “Run, Run, Run” was there.

Not much to the song, really. Some pleasant slide work, a fast beat, lyrics about running.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I don’t know what’s going on with my subconscious these days (it’s like it’s keeping me in the dark) but it pulled out a couple more unusual songs for my streaming enjoyment this morning.

First was an old show staple, “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”, which I know from the movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (with Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, and a bunch of male actors), which came out three years before I was born (yeah, I know Carol Channing song it before that, and I think Mom might have had it on a record). I know the movie (and song) from the miracle of modern television and shows like “Sunday Afternoon at the Movies”. Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” (1984) then leaped into the stream. As I was processing those songs, the stream switched to Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” (1982).

That’s where it’s now stopped.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I had to look up who did this song. It had wormed into my stream and was totally fixed. A fine song, to be sure, but I don’t know why it’s in my head this morning.

From my head to yours, here are the Contours with a song that you may’ve heard before (if you be old enough), “Do You Love Me”, from 1962. Meanwhile, I’m gonna continue to ruminate on why I was singing this song to myself this morning when I got out of bed.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came out of yesterday’s apres writing session. Striding along, thinking about what had been written and what was to be, a conservation was struck up between a character and her aunt. Her aunt told the younger character, “Oh, honey, your mother won’t dance. No anymore.” Which implied to the young one, something had happened to her mother, or her had changed, because of how it was expressed (but the aunt wasn’t saying anything else).

From that, though, came a song from my childhood, Loggins and Messina with “Your Mama Don’t Dance), a lively 1972 song with a throwback sound. Most people probably know it because it’s been around close to fifty years.

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