“That’s why you can’t hold me down. You can’t tie me down. I gotta gotta gotta get away.”
I awoke with Jimi Hendix 1967 song, “Stone Free” in my stream. (I think I was missing up choruses, though.) I think it came about from judgement calls on people like Greta Thunberg about everything except what’s she say. People were throwing superficial criticisms at her; some even suggested that she was mentally ill. Most also mocked her as a child because she’s still a teenager.
Never mind that she’s making intelligent points about the environment. Never mind that elsewhere people are quite willing to use teenagers as soldiers or proclaim them able to carry and give birth to a child, or to be married.
Thankfully, Greta is above being shamed for who she is and is proud of what she does. I only wish I had her balls.
I’m sorta maudlin in my reflections today, and the stream reflects that. As friends and stars pass with greater frequency, I found “Shooting Star” by Bad Company (1975) streaming in me. So many folks and fur friends seem like shooting stars, blazing a fast trail through the night, gone before you can fully appreciate what you see. But sometimes that trail lights up the sky and leaves an impression that keeps you looking and longing for more.
Johnny told his mama, hey, ‘Mama, I’m goin’ away. I’m gonna hit the big
time, gonna be a big star someday’, Yeah.
Mama came to the door with a teardrop in her eye.
Johnny said, ‘Don’t cry, mama, smile and wave good-bye’.
Don’t you know, yeah yeah, Don’t you know that you are a shooting star,
Don’t you know, don’t you know. Don’t you know that you are
a shooting star, And all the world will love you just as long,
As long as you are.
Johnny made a record, Went straight up to number one,
Suddenly everyone loved to hear him sing the song.
Watching the world go by, surprising it goes so fast.
Johnny looked around him and said, ‘Well, I made the big time at last’.
Don’t you know, don’t you know, Don’t you know that you are
a shooting star,
Don’t you know, oh, yeah, Don’t you know that you are
a shooting star, yeah,
And all the world will love you just as long,
As long as you are, a shooting star.
Don’t you know that you are a shooting star, Don’t you know, yeah,
Don’t you know that you are a shooting star, now,
And all the world will love you just as long, As long you are you.
Johnny died one night, died in his bed, Bottle of whiskey,
sleeping tablets by his head. Johnny’s life passed him by like a
warm summer day, If you listen to the wind you can still hear him play.
Planning a trip home, to see Mom in PA. I guess as part of that, Harry Chapin’s 1974 song, “Cat’s in the Cradle” started playing. Perhaps it’s because I’m not planning to see Dad, and I feel guilty. Mom and Dad each have birthdays in October’s last week. Mom lives in PA, Dad lives in TX, and I live in Oregon. Arranging to see them is a challenge with flight schedules.
The song came out the week that I entered the Air Force, as my Dad had done decades before. During basic, we heard little music and saw little of the outside world until basic was finished. Naturally, hearing this song after my basic was completed struck me as completely, and sadly, true.
Anyone, “Cat’s in the Cradle” is in my stream, so I’m presenting it to you.
I read that The Beatles’ album, Abbey Road, was released fifty years ago. It’s not a surprise; it came out when I was thirteen, and I’m sixty-three. The math was straightforward. It’s more astonishing not for time’s passing — hey, that happens every day — but for the shifts that it signaled in pop music, the world’s ever-changing politics and alliances, and the monstrous technological surge recorded during that fifty years.
I won’t say it was all peace and love in 1969 because it sure as hell wasn’t. Older people were lamenting the youth, and the youth was out to change the establishment. Major civil rights advances had been achieved. Bottled water existed but wasn’t the ubiquitous commodity that it is today. Corporations were gaining power but we hadn’t yet witnessed the emergence of the super-CEOs of now, compensated and treated like they’re dictators of small countries. The U.S.S.R. and Warsaw Pact countries, and Communist China – the P.R.C. – dominated movies and novels as the U.S.A.’s greatest threat. Computers were still big machines and novelties. VCRs, DVD players, cell phones were all creeping over the future’s horizon.
History update completed, when I contemplated the release of Abbey Road, the song that popped into my stream was “Oh! Darling”. I like its bluesy sensibilities and active bass so I thought I’d push it on you.
A beautiful sun warms a clear blue sky here in Ashland, southern Oregon, this morning. All is calm and serene. Into this streams a song by America, “Lonely People” (1974).
I’m fortunate to have family, but more, a writing process and endeavors which I enjoy, and a couple cats. Thanks to all this, I rarely have moments of feeling alone or isolated. But there are too many out there who are lonely people, even when they’re with friends and family, and more who are lonely, and alone, in isolation.
It’s them I think of this morning.
This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky
This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try
I awoke with a Pearl Jam/Foreigner/Yes medley bubbling through my stream, with “Alive”, “Long, Long Way from Home”, and “Roundabout” dominating. With a mental throw of some imaginary dice, “Roundabout”, Yes’ 1972 hit, was selected.
Many fond memories are associated with “Roundabout” for me, and they’re mostly related to art. I loved painting and drawing when I was young, something that I continued to do into my late twenties, playing with paints and styles. I typically put music on, and then went to town. Regular favorites cropped up. In the early days, my music was on vinyl. I had an open reel system, so I recorded a painting tape. Multiple Yes songs made it to the tape. Looking back, I realize that progressive-rock and blues dominated it.
The late David Bowie, one of my favorite performers (but there’s so many out there, really) and a person who brought a lot of music and entertainment into my life through lo’ these many years (but again, there are many many out there, and thanks to you all), occupies the stream today. I posted once before about having Bowie on shuffle in my head in the morning. Today, I’m going with “Suffragette City” (1972). I like it’s simple rock and roll stylings. Feel free to sing along, if you know the words. I won’t mind.
Guess I remain in an introspective mood. Childhood rock spills into my stream, coloring reflections and expectations, although today’s choice came out during my childhood’s end.
Today’s theme music, by Lou Reed, was another vinyl record that was played and worn down until it was too distorted to appreciate. It’d be hard to explain to people who only experience digital music how the vinyl could become warp, or the static that you sometimes heard through songs.
This album, Rock n Roll Animal, was one of my favorites in 1974, lasting through my high school senior year. I stopped listening when I joined the military and went away. Like many, my favorite song off that album was “Sweet Jane”. The guitar work on the extended entry, and then the stinging, fast high note work later, epitomized the emerging rock sound for me as much as Eric Clapton’s work with Cream. Lou Reed’s vocals often reminded me of Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger later, as he often delivered this broad, inflected flatness that seemed like a vocal shrug.
We went to a spotlight performance the other night. As an elderly community of retired professionals in their sixties to nineties thrive around here, performances are often geared toward their preferences and memories. The spotlight performances are among those, featuring music from 1960s era “girl-bands”, the Motown sound, the Eagles, and the current offering focusing on the Mamas and Papas. They’re a lot of fun but they fire up neurons from that era, as more of that period’s music flooded my stream this morning.
“Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire was playing as irritation with our current government sent me into new spasms of frustration. Then along came a song by a group called Thunderclap Newman has been on loop. I always liked the name, Thunderclap Newman. Goes right up there with Moby Grape, Psychedelic Furs and Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Thunderclap Newman’s song, “Something in the Air” is streaming in my head. Word association started it. First, “Eve of Destruction” lyrics bobbed along the stream:
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
Ah, the rhyming. But the song’s sentiment plays as true for 2019 as it did for 1965 regarding governments’ ineptitude, human respect, frustration at the pace of change, and constant war. We stay on the eve of destruction, don’t we?
I always enjoyed Newman’s piano solo in this song. I have a vivid memory of smoking hash and listening to this song again and again when I was sixteen and my Dad was away.
So, that’s my Sunday theme music, Thunderclap’s 1969 song, “Something in the Air”.
Today’s song is a natural for the times. I started to add, IMO – in my opinion – but isn’t that redundant? This is my post, so it should be my opinion. Yet, I took the time to writesplain that to you.
Ten Years After released “I’d Love to Change the World” in 1971 as a response to the violence, protests, emerging counter-culture, resistant establishment, and war. Gosh, does any of that have any echos in today’s world? Naw, probably just me.
Like most of TYA’s offerings, the song features some powerful Alvin Lee guitar work, which is always good to hear. Beyond the rock essence of guitar and dream, these lyrics, and how they’re presented in the song, plaintive, accepting, and reflective, spoke to me as a fifteen-year-old when the song came out, but still talks to me as a sixty-three-year-old.
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do.
So I’ll leave it up to you.
I think most of us want to change the world. We also know what to do, but it’s an embattled, relentless, and exhausting process. It seems more so in the Internet era, where lies and bullshit gains instant traction and never seems to die, like the Terminator rising again and again.
Michael Seidel, writer 