Category: childhood

Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s music was released in 1966. I was ten years old. Neighborhood kids had this song (and about ten zillion others) on a forty-five. We gathered in their basement in Wilkinsburg, PA, and had dance parties, with the records being played on a little portable record-player.

“Kicks” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, was about drug use, getting sucked into that world, and how it can happen without warning. That’s true about so many things; changes occur under our noses. Our bodies shift. Bad habits led to poor under-lying conditions but we’re oblivious to them until a medical emergency erupts. Same thing can happen to romantic and sexual relationships, friendships, finances, houses, and cars. Those little, sneaking changes are noticed but not noted until they combine into one big fucking change that explodes in your face.

Anyway, “Kicks” came into my musical stream this morning as I was reflecting on last night dreams. There’s one line in the song that says, “You’ll never run away from you, and if you keep on running, you’ll have to pay the price.”

Yeah, you can’t run away from you. It’s a distance too far.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Lock downs, quarantine, self-distancing, isolation, and every other way you can think of saying “We’re staying inside” is still in effect in many places. Restlessness is grabbing people. They’re suffering urges to hit the road, get their nails done, go bowling, or just stroll the streets and have a drink with friends. Some of them are thinking of escape.

Which brought to mind, “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd from 1973. Bet that’s more than a few out there, thinking, gimme three steps, and I’ll be out the door ‘fore you know it.

Here’s some music for your thoughts.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Just a simple song from my youth, sparked by random thoughts, “Gee, a road trip would be nice today. Maybe head to the coast, smell the air, listen and watch the waves, experience life as it was, when that was all taken for granted.”

Like a proper theme song, Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” (1969) began.

For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I’ve got one thing I got to do

Ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now
To sing my song, I’m going ’round the world, I gotta find my girl
On my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day
Ramble on, gotta find the queen of all my dreams

h/t to Genius.com

Think I’ll ramble on into the kitchen for a cuppa coffee.

 

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Special Edition Theme Song

Had a doughnut, thought about having another. The little devil on my shoulder started singing, “Go ahead and do it, do it, do it till you’re satisfied.” Now the 1974 B.T. Express song, “Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied”, is stuck in my mental stream, distracting me from my writing and pushing me toward eating a second doughnut.

The doughnut does complement the coffee, though…

 

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Wednesday Theme Music

I’ve done this song before, but it just fits so well to these times, when people are social-distancing and can’t go anywhere.

‘Cause I’m stuck in the middle with you
And I’m wondering what it is I should do.
It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face.
Losing control and running all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me!
Jokers to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

It can apply to being at home with your, ahem, loved ones (or their reaction to you), or the cat’s reaction to your continual presence. Or there you are in a store, trying to maintain safe distance while you re-supply, all masked, while an idiot behind you ignores it all.

It can even be political, if you think that these are special times which require special leadership, that sadly, you perceive we might be lacking…

Here’s Stealer Wheels with “Stuck in the Middle with You”, from 1973.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Reading the news today, Sonny and Cher’s big 1967 hit, “The Beat Goes On”, sprang into the mental music stream. I’m sure we all know why that song deserves to be today’s theme music.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

A friend related her tale of venturing out to a store. Her recounting triggered jungle songs. So here we are – “Welcome to the Jungle” (GNR, 1987), “Jungle Boogie” (Kool and the Gang, 1973, here on “Soul Train”), and “Run Through the Jungle” (CCR, 1970). I think each song speaks for its niche with its musical style, but each convey the jungle with slight variations. Behind them all, though, is the sense that the civilized human scene is a jungle of wild menace. Kind of like that out there, although I haven’t heard stories of violence. I guess it’s not as much of a jungle as it was on, say, black Friday.

Here they are, in chronological order.

Any jungle songs on your mind?

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Monday’s Theme Music

Gosh, for some reason, while reading blog posts, coronavirus news, and red state/blue state slants, a Pink Floyd song called “Us and Them” (1974) popped into my mental music.

Us (Us, us, us, us, us) and them (Them, them, them, them)
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me (Me, me, me, me, me) and you (You, you, you, you, you)
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do

h/t to Genius.com

It’s all about war and its senselessness, apt to me. It seems like it went urban/rural divide > culture divide > culture wars > political contests > red state/blue state > coronavirus front. What was it that Governor Kay Ivey (Alabama – R) said a few weeks ago? ““Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York State, we are not California. Right now is not the time to order people to shelter in place.”

Goodness knows what California and New York had to do with facts and information. At the time of Ivey’s speech, Alabama led California in per capita cases of coronavirus.

But anyway, the song… It starts out mellow but then cranks up the crescendo in time for you to hear, “Forward he cried, from the rear, and the front ranks died.”

And I won’t even go into expanding on that line.

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Thursday’s Theme Music Twofer

An old favorite Jethro Tull song came to mind this morning as I thought of self-isolation and the coronavirus social-distance shuffle. “Only Solitaire” is a short ‘un.

Brain-storming habit-forming battle-warning weary
winsome actor spewing spineless chilling lines —
the critics falling over to tell themselves he’s boring
and really not an awful lot of fun.
Well who the hell can he be when he’s never had V.D.,
and he doesn’t even sit on toilet seats?
Court-jesting, never-resting — he must be very cunning
to assume an air of dignity
and bless us all with his oratory prowess,
his lame-brained antics and his jumping in the air.
And every night his act’s the same
and so it must be all a game of chess he’s playing —
“But you’re wrong, Steve: you see, it’s only solitaire.”

h/t AZLyrics.com

As it’s so short, my mind jumped to a 1966 Neil Diamond song, “Solitary Man”. (BTW, Johnny Cash did an interesting cover of this song in 2000.)

The song has that pop sound of transition during those days (mid sixties). Featuring a horn section that was often used as pop went electric, becoming rock and more mainstream, the song has a sound that I associate more with adult contemporary. Interesting though, that this sound is being used by several groups now as a retro sound. Think, for example, of Portugal! the Man. WTH, I’ll include that, too. You don’t get a twofer, but a threefer.

That is all. Good day.

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