Category: childhood

Sunday’s Theme Music

Six thirty in the AM. Post winter solstice and not too cloudy so there’s a little daylight, but still, overhead lights are required for this important task, feeding the cat.

I used to regularly be up at this hour, often at work by now. Since retiring from the USAF and leaving IBM, I’ve chosen not to be up at this hour. I’d rather be sleeping.

But the cat – Pepper, the neighbor’s old cat – has come in through the pet door and is begging for a meal, so I get up to indulge her. Won’t be but a minute. Another cat, Boo, comes in asking for some food as well, so I set him up.

Boo alternatively stares at me and the bowl of food like, “What’s this? What’s going on?”

“It’s your food, Boo. You were just asking for it.”

“Food? Food? What is food?”

I don’t know what game he’s playing and I want to return to bed. Maybe he’s thinking, “This isn’t what I ordered.” Don’t know. So I tell him, “If you want it, here it is, come and get it.” But I know Pepper. She’s gobbling her food down and will head to this bowl afterward. She’s already giving it a side glance as she’s eating. “You better hurry cause it may not last.”

Which was all that my brain required to introduce the 1969 Badfinger song  “Come and Get It” from my childhood memories to my conscious stream.

Lyrics:

If you want it, here it is come and get it
Mmmm, make your mind up fast
If you want it, anytime I can give it
But you better hurry cause it may not last

h/t to Genius.com cuz’ cut and paste is easier.

It’s weird to think of this as a Badfinger song. I think of them as rock poppers. Yeah, I know its history about Paul McCartney, The Magic Christian, etc. And that’s it, I guess, it has the Beatles sound (or the McCartney sound), but not the Badfinger sound.

The food was eaten when I got up an hour later, and also regurgitated on the foyer rug, highlighted in its own little patch of sunshine.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I watched Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Tarentino always makes it interesting and watching it for memories of that era was a delight for us Boomers.

Circling around an actor and his stunt double and friend (Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt) and Charlie Manson’s family, the movie offered some fond side trips down pop culture lane. Our American television diet was prominent, because this film’s story was about TV and movie stars.

But pop music was in there, too. And in the background of one scene was an old Vanilla Fudge favorite from 1967, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”. Loved the song by the Supremes, but the VF’s more psychedelic version spoke to this eleven-year-old lad. My older sister had an older guy interested in her. To win her over, he tried winning me over by loaning me his Vanilla Fudge album, so I played it enough that the notes and I were familiars.

The movie entertained me with its what-if premise. I always enjoy what-if, but the attention to details really impressed. Even period piece can openers were used.

Our favorite character? Brandy.

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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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