Category: childhood

Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music comes via my cat, Boo. Boo is a large black cat with a minute white triangle on his chest and two long, white whiskers. Tailless, he came to us as a stray few years ago. We tried to find his people but failed, so he became part of the household. Although big and smart, Boo has issues, and it’s clear that someone mistreated him.

So, I was singing to him last night as I stroked his head and back, “Say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud.” That brought to mind the James Brown song from 1968, of course. Hell, it’s the title.

James Brown’s song is a powerful and affirmative statement of identity and clarity. I used to get goosebumps when I heard a large group of blacks singing it and clapping to the beat. It was amazing to witness.

Look a’here, some people say we got a lot of malice
Some say it’s a lotta nerve
I say we won’t quit moving
Til we get what we deserve
We’ve been buked and we’ve been scourned
We’ve been treated bad, talked about
As just as sure as you’re born
But just as sure as it take
Two eyes to make a pair, huh
Brother, we can’t quit until we get our share

h/t to A-ZLyrics.com

Here’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)”.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right”. Humming along with it as it flowed through my stream this morning during the routines, I thought about the song’s complex, grown-up nature.

I was sixteen when the song was released in 1972 and going through the standard processes involving discovering love and sex. Little did I know how complicated it could all be. The big lie still held about finding someone and falling in love, marrying for laugh, and growing old together. Big cracks were appearing in the big lie. Love and sex, as well as gender identity and sexual orientation are all more complicated than the big lie’s straightforward depiction. Then religion society gets involved – a black man and a white woman? Social norms add new pressures and dimensions.

That’s behind the song. He’s in love with another woman, having an affair and cheating on his wife. And the woman is having an affair with a married man. Both of those are taboo. The man understands that he has commitments. Needs change.

I’m not trying to defend him so much as think about how complicated love, sex, society, marriage and life can be. It’s not as clean and simple as the big lie leads us to believe.

Am I wrong to fall so deeply in love with you
Knowing I got a wife and two little children
Depending on me too
And am I wrong to hunger
for the gentleness of your touch
knowing I got somebody else at home
who needs me just as much

And are you wrong to fall in love
With a married man
And am I wrong trying to hold on
To the best thing I ever had

h/t to songfacts.com

Of course, the other part of this is what it would do to his wife if she discovered his betrayal, and what could result from that, nor what the guilt can do to him and his thinking and psyche.

Many performers and groups have covered this R&B classic, but that original voice and music is seared into my brain. Luther Ingram didn’t write it, but he delivered the sound.

 

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

Freddies dead
That’s what I said
Let the man rap a plan said he’d see him home
But his hope was a rope and he should’ve known
It’s hard to understand
There was love in this man
I’m sure all would agree
That his misery was his woman and things
Now Freddie’s dead
That’s what I said

Read more: Curtis Mayfield – Freddie’s Dead Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I was reading about another unarmed black man killed by another white man with a gun. In this case, the black man was killed by a Walgreen’s security officer as he was walking away, shot in the back, after the two exchanged words several times.

Reading about the man’s death as the holidays are fading and the decorations are taken down and put away inspired weariness about change’s creeping nature and questions of why so many others seem eager to kill someone because they’re a different color, or the things they said. Growing up in 1960s America, race riots and violence were a nightly news staple. I keep hoping for peace, equality, and justice.

From all that, I began streaming Curtis Mayfield, “Freddie’s Dead” (1972).

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Monday’s Theme Music

A simple song today, streaming an old favorite. This came out in ’72, when I was just getting my driver’s license, still in high school, and living with dad. Don’t know what kicked it into the stream this morning, but I’ve always liked its sound and energy.

Let’s enjoy some Led Zeppelin with “Rock and Roll”. Rock out 2018, rock in 2019.

Cheers

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I read about a Yemeni mother and her son. The Trump administration had separated the two-year old boy from his mother. The boy was dying. After months of separation, the mother was allowed into the country to see her son. He died shortly afterward.

Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” (1972) played in my stream after reading the news.

Oh, little darling of mine
I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say “let it be”
But it just don’t work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again

Read more: Paul Simon – Mother And Child Reunion Lyrics | 

I heard the song again on the radio when I left the house today. I felt that gave it standing to be Sunday’s theme music.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

A friend was once singing today’s song, “Timothy”, by the Buoys, shortly after it was high on the pop charts. I asked him if he knew what this song was about, because listening closely, it seemed like it was about two guys eating the third one with them, Timothy.

I probably haven’t thought about the song since ’bout the time of that conversation in 1971. Recalling the song last night, I looked it up. Yep, it was about a cave in, and the two survivors eating the other, with the singer claiming that he must have blacked out, but he awoke with a full stomach.

Strangest to me, I learned that Rupert Holmes, who wrote and sang, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” (1979), wrote “Timothy”.

That’s the net’s fun aspect, looking things up to answer, what the hell?

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Greeting my bedroom panther this morning prompted this song to splash into my stream.

“Said the mongoose to the cobra,” “See the panther, up in that tree?””

Yes, it’s Elephant’s Memory with “Mongoose” (1971).

Enjoy Thursday’s theme music during your holiday lull. Cheers

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music came out when I was three years old. It’s so damn popular, though, I imagine anyone who follows American pop-culture even peripherally is familiar with it.

The Isley Brothers originated “Shout”. Mom was an Isley Brothers fan, so of course I grew up hearing it. The song made a huge comeback when Otis Day and the Knights performed it in Animal House (1978). It then became quite popular for dead bug dancing. Green Day and Robbie Williams both did the song. The song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Come on, you must know one version of it.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s song choice, “You Talk Too Much” by Joe Jones, was fluttering along my mindstream this morning when I awoke. It seems like I’ve known it my whole life. Small wonder there. Wikipedia states that it was released in 1960. I was four then, but Mom liked playing it and singing it. I remember her singing it to me whenever I was pestering her for something, apparently her counter-measure to my non-stop demand. It would infuriate me to the point of stamping my feet as I demanded that she stop singing.

That just made her smile as she continued singing.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

This is a twofer Thursday post, featuring a dream and a song, because this song started in my dreamstream.

It was a turbulent stream, with multiple vignettes and one-act plays. I think the music made this one memorable.

“Conquistador” began playing in the dream. Hearing it, I said, “Hey, I know this song. “Conquistador”. Procol Harum.” After remembering hearing the song’s live version in high school in the early seventies, and talking to my friend, Bob, about it (in the hall in front of the art classroom, by my locker, where he was talking overly loudly and enthusiastic, trying to catch some girl’s attention), I thought about other Procol Harum music I know and wondered where the music was coming from. I couldn’t identify its source.

All that was backdream. I was in my most recurring dreamscape, which is dark green, slightly rolling hills. I seem to know or I remember such hills most often out of dreams. Accompanied by several friends, we were admiring two exotic hyper cars, a Lamborghini and Ferrari, that belonged to others, and discussing their styling, price, and performance capabilities.

My friends were envious, but I said, “Yes, but my car is faster than either of them, and costs more.”

They were skeptical. So was I. I thought my ride would be there by now. As it wasn’t, I didn’t think my ride was going to arrive, and was becoming anxious.

“Conquistador” ended, and my ride arrived, a stunning silver Aston Martin. “Wow,” I said, along with my friends. “Wow.” I never believed it would arrive.

Then, it was just there.

 

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