Category: childhood

Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “It’s Only Rock n’ Roll (But I Like It)” came out in 1974. I consider this song part of the theme music for my eighteenth year of life. I graduated high school, turned eighteen years old, and joined the U.S. Air Force in 1974. I think the song celebrates my attitude toward rock and roll; it’s just music, but —

I use the song for references, to celebrate, and to time-travel through memories as surely as Marcel Proust’s madeleines. I know it’s only rock and roll, and not significant in many universal schemes (although there’s a potential story, there, isn’t there, about how rock and roll changes things?), but I like it.

The song’s opening, too, offers exasperated questioning about the past and new expectations.

If I could stick my pen in my heart
And spill it all over the stage
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya
Would you think the boy is strange? Ain’t he strange?

h/t to AZlyrics.com

I’ve found that opening question appropriate for my life. What will it take to satisfy the bosses, lovers, friends, family, and gods? Each employs a different measuring system. The tricks are to find what works, what annoys them and causes me enough pain to avoid doing it again, and then monitor it all for changes – ’cause change is, like, you know, probable. Beyond all that shit, it’s a great song to sing to my stream as I walk or drive on my lonesome.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes from encountering a friend as I was doing my post-writing walkabout. As we parted, he said, “Got to keep walking?” I replied, “Yes, I’m a roadrunner, baby, got to keep on moving on.”

That’s a line straight out of Humble Pie’s cover of “Road Runner” (1972). It’s a bluesy rock song that appealed to me when I was first heard it when I was fifteen. It still does, and I frequently stream it in my head when I’m on a long walk, especially when going up into the higher levels of the southern part of town. The walk up will strain your legs and lungs. There are houses up there (along with bears and cougars), but not many people are seen outside of infrequent motorists or dog-walkers. The air is clear and sharp, and the view across the valley is gorgeous in all seasons. It’ll clear your head.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Let’s take a little Journey this Monday morning, looking back at 1985 via “Only the Young”.

In the shadows of a golden age
A generation waits for dawn
Brave carry on
Bold and the strong

Only the young can say
They’re free to fly away
Sharing the same desires
Burnin’ like wildfire

They’re seein’ through the promises
And all the lies they dare to tell
Is it heaven or hell?
They know very well

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Sparked by the line, “Only the young can say,” the song was streaming through me this morning. Being old – well, technically advanced middle-aged (AMA) has some advantages, but I think that being young can offer some, too. Like, it’s easier to start over and look forward.

But then again, we can channel Frank Sinatra in our streams and stay young at heart. That must count for something so I added it. Released in 1953, “Young at Heart” is three years older than me. LOL

Stay young.

 

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

Reaching back today to ’67, when I was eleven. Feels like a hundred years ago and feels like yesterday evening. Cream was a short-lived supergroup. Eric Clapton was already one of my guitar idols. Here comes Cream with those quasi-psychedelic, hard-rock, deep bass song, “Sunshine of Your Love”. I heard it and thought it was the future’s edge swinging toward me.

Now I sing it as a walk the street, sunshine on my head, laptop in my backpack, heading to the coffee shop to write, and think of it more as an homage to sunshine. At least, that’s why I was singing it yesterday. I thought the sunshine would enjoy it.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

We saw Amazing Grace, the documentary about Aretha Franklin and the two sessions used to record the live gospel album, Amazing Grace (1968). Watching her sing up-close was a powerful experience. Her talent still moves us, and technology allows us to experience it again and again. Besides her, Rev. James Cleveland, and the Southern California Community Choir, with Alexander Hamilton directing, gave mesmerizing performances.

After seeing the documentary, many Aretha Franklin sangs joined my mental music stream this week. Eventually I became stuck on “Think” from The Blues Brothers (1980).

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s choice arrived in the stream because of a chance encounter with a friend.

I’m retired military, 1974 – 1995. He was in the Army for almost five years. Most of that time was in Vietnam. May, 1969, was his one year anniversary of being in country. It was a bloody year for him. He lost many friends. He was also nineteen.

We guessed that it was just a juxtaposition of insights that brought about the darkness dragging him down this weekend. This is twenty nineteen, which kicked off the memory of being nineteen, when he was in Vietnam fifty years ago. It’s probably because of Memorial Day, and the many men walking around with Vietnam Vet hats on their heads, and the television shows talking about different military campaigns. It could be his sense of mortality. He’s getting older, as he reminded me.

He never cried when he spoke but he did a lot of sniffing, some quick eye wipes, and sometimes coped with a trembling voice with some deep breaths. Vietnam offered some hairy days, and he was grateful to have survived without too much damage, get home, go to college under the GI Bill, marry, and have a family.

After we shook hands and went our separate ways, and I was walking under the lush green trees, past beautiful beds of colorful flowers as cars rolled by and people pursued their celebrations of Memorial Day, I started streaming an old favorite song.

Here, from nineteen seventy-four, is William DeVaughn with “Be Thankful for What You Got”.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

My dreams were were story dreams, basically telling of times when I seemed to live in other times and places. Some were futuristic, which were more interesting. I remember looking thinking in one dream, is this a dream, or knowledge of another life? It was fun and thrilling.

All that, on waking, took me on a walk through my characters’ happenings as I’m finishing April Showers 1921 (first draft). I’m tying final plot and action strings together. Some of it’s a little knotty.

From those musings popped the Neil Diamond 1966 song, “Solitary Man”. That song amused me because those characters don’t know that song and would never think of it, or apply it to their lives and situations.

Then, though, I sat down to drink my coffee and read the news. One story was about an alligator in Florida attacking a woman. Into my mental music stream jumped old song lyrics, “Gator got your granny. Chomp. Chomp, chomp.”

I had several things wrong with that song. I thought Jim Stafford performed it, but no, it was Tony Joe White. I thought the song’s title was “Folk Salad Annie” but it was “Polk Salad Annie”.

Geez. At least I had the year right, 1969. I decided that “Polk Salad Annie” was my choice for Sunday’s theme music.

Sorry, Neil.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came about as a choice between it and a Shawn Mendes. A young girl with me was listening to Shawn Mendes’ song, “Stitches”, in my dream, and there were reports that a strange man was lurking outside of our building. In my dream, I assumed that this clumsy device foreshadowed Shawn Mendes showing up. I wasn’t surprised when he did, although the rest of my dream people were all happy and surprised. I don’t know he showed up. It seemed like some sitcom playing in my head.

But the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” (1967) replaced the Mendes’ tune. I decided to go with it. I went with the Beatles because Walrus part of the “Magical Mystery Tour”, a very strange movie. I was eleven when this song and album came out, and it left its mark on me. After a night of strange dreams, I felt it apropos for my Saturday theme music.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

Reading about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s obstructions, and a then a murderer, I thought about monsters in the world. Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” (1972) jumped into my thinking stream, and here we are.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

My rocking stream was turbulent this morning. Portugal! the Man kicked it off. Then I bounced into Train and GnR to Springsteen. Run DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” came up, which led to Aerosmith’s cover of the Beatle’s “Come Together”. From there, I bounced into Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” and then the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”. Next, though, Marshall Tucker invaded, followed by CBD, which took me to Lynerd Skynerd.

A cat provoked the last. Tucker, the black and white feline enigma for which little outside his fur seems black and white, followed me around as I prepared to depart the fix. At one point, he got underfoot, and I chided him, “Won’t you give me three steps?”

That’s how I got her. Here’s “Gimme Three Steps” from 1973.

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