Category: childhood

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music emerged from my dreamlands. As I stumbled around feeding the scamperbeasts and making coffee, I remembered the little I know about the song

It wasn’t much. An AM radio hit in the mid 1960s, I was troubled by the title. I thought it was “Hang On Snoopy”. When I discovered it was Sloopy, I thought, “Who’s Sloopy?” I knew who Snoopy was. I understood why they were urging Snoopy to hang on, seeing that he slept on his back on top of his dog house and battled the Red Baron, but who was Sloopy that they were telling them to hang on? It made no sense to me.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I discovered that the version of “Hang On Sloopy” by The McCoys came out in 1965, so I was nine. Sloopy is rumored to be Dorothy Sloop, a jazz singer.

All interesting stuff, but surprisingly, the McCoy’s vocalist on the recording is Rick Zehringer. The group performing the music was not his group from Rick and the Raiders, but another group called the Strangeloves. Rick and the Raiders’s name was changed to the McCoys for the release of “Hang On Sloopy”, and Rick Zehringer, who was eighteen when he sang “Hang On Sloopy”, changed his name to Rick Derringer, under which he continues to perform pop, rock, and blues and playing with people and groups from Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, Barbra Streisand, and Meat Loaf,  to television jingles for Budweiser beer commercials.

That’s a lot of pop history from one song. Anyway, hang on…whoever you are.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

My spouse was busy making Christmas crockpot candy, which involves melting a lot of almond bark and chocolate together with some nuts, and then spooning it out into balls and letting it cool.

Christmas music was on, but this was a Christmas blues album. We have it on a CD that we picked up for a dollar about twenty years ago. The album was probably recorded in the sixties. It hasn’t been remastered.

Anyway, that CD ended, and a Motown Christmas album was launched. A CD of Motown hits from 1971 followed. A twelve minute version of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” by the the Temptations stayed in my stream overnight.

What can I say? It’s great music, cool music, telling a story through voice, lyrics, and instruments.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Don’t know why I’m streaming today’s music. Are you surprised? Shocked, I am, totally shocked.

Anyway, today’s theme music was a pop hit that came to be part of my life music stream via my sister. I was nine when this song was a hit. Two years older, my sister was a popster and a big fan of the forty-fives. The Dave Clark Five were a Brit invasion pop group. Sis loved them. No surprise, then, that their 1965 hit “Over and Over”, has escaped my brain’s shields and entered my stream.

What’s perhaps more surprising is how little I hear this song on the radio. After remembering it, I looked the group up on that Internet. There, through Wikipedia, I discovered the Dave Clark Five had a run of hits, disbanded in 1970, and were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

Love the video’s dancing display. Ah, those were the days, hey?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

With another throwback via the wayback stream, I found myself listening to the Elvis Presley’s biggest-selling single, “It’s Now or Never”.

The song was released in 1960, according to Wikipedia. I would have been four, according to the math. It being Elvis, I know the song well through pop saturation, where the mantra is, if a little bit is good, massive amounts are fantastic. 

Why is it streaming today? Sometimes there’s a direct causal stream identified, but that’s not today. I was going about, making plans for eating, dressing, and rushing out to walk and write. I think I may have thought, I gotta get going, it’s now or never, and there you have it, a wayback stream opened.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I discovered myself humming “An Old Fashioned Love Song” (1971) performed by Three Dog Night this morning. The song came out in 1971. Cannae tell ya’ where it came from or what provoked the stream to pick it up and deliver it to my brain. Didn’t relate to anything that I dreamed last night.

The song didn’t stay with me long today, fading as I walked, but I enjoyed the visit and thought I’d share it with thee. Paul Williams wrote it. It was from a time when he wrote several romantic songs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that others, like Helen Reddy and The Carpenters, had as hit records.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came via the weather. Our forecast for today said it will be sunny but a drizzle was falling, so, you know, I was a mite skeptical. When sunshine finally broke through, so did a Donovan song, “Sunshine Superman” (1966).

I enjoy this video. Television, music, and entertainment all seemed simpler, didn’t it?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Piddling through the morning and ruminating about what to do today and this week, I drifted into channels that went, “Life. It’s just a game we play.”

That naturally activated certain cells. Next thing that I know, I’m streaming Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” (1973) because of that one set of lines go, “Show and tell. Just a game I play when I want to say, I love you.”

It’s another song from that era whose every note is familiar. Reflecting on it as I walked to write, I realize that the song makes me nostalgic for that period in a way that other songs don’t. Perhaps it’s the words and their sentiments, and the way that Al Wilson delivers them. It could be the chilly and windy weather stirring up memory flashes of being in Penn Hills, PA, when the song was popular. The sky’s color out here today harkens back to memories of snow warnings.

We don’t have snow warnings here today, but some rain is forecast. As usual, untangling the threads of memories and impressions are too much. I’ll just live with the song and nostalgia.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I didn’t know who originally did this song. I don’t know why I was streaming it this morning. Somehow, between feeding the cats, opening the blinds, making breakfast and coffee, I started streaming “Gimme Little Sign” to myself. It’s one of those instances where the why is buried, but becoming aware that I was streaming it to myself, I looked the song up and learned Brenton Wood recorded and released it in 1967.

It feels like a ’67 song, mellow and relaxed, about love and relationships, and hopeful. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was talking to God(s), the Universal, the Fates, whatever, and saying to myself (or them), “Just give me some kind of sign,” about what to do or what’s to happen, and brought this song to mind. You know how humans are.

We’re all a little crazy. We’re all just looking for a little sign.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music will not be for everyone. I’ll be surprised if anyone likes it, because that’s King Crimson’s nature.

The song, “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969) was once said to be dedicated to Spiro T. Agnew.

I was biased against Agnew because my eighth grade civics teacher talked at great lengths about him, and didn’t like him at all. She particularly didn’t like how he attacked the press and its coverage of him. You might remember Agnew if you study twentieth century American politics or lived through the times. Agnew was Nixon’s first Veep until he was indicted and resigned after a criminal investigation into Maryland corruption. Whether the song is dedicated to Spiro T. “Ted” Agnew,  the song’s lyrics are few but memorable. Here’s a sample for you.

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man

h/t azlyrics.com

I’m thinking of this song today because I feel a little bit like a twenty-first century schzoid man on some days. Not today, particularly, but you know, some days.

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The Father and Me Dreams

My Dad was a special guest star in my dreams last night. I was a teenager in all of them, not really surprising, because that’s the era of my life that I saw the most of him, as I lived with him for three years after things became dark and unpleasant with Mom’s husband. Then I graduate from high school and left home.

In one memorable part of the dream, Dad and I were following a young tabby cat. The cat had gone down a sidewalk. I hurried after him, and discovered him rolling around on the cement walk in some freshly cut grass.

After that, the dream scenes fluttered and crackled. There was Dad and I driving in a car, and I’m looking out the window, checking out passing scenery. We throw a baseball back and forth in sunshine. I hear his laugh. Dad enjoys laughing.

The dreams grew darker and faster in nature. Then, suddenly, it became “This Is Your Life” from when I was in my mid-teens.

Life wasn’t going well. Most of my time was spent reading books, riding my bike, playing sports, drawing and painting, and listening to music. Although I enjoyed math, history, science, and literature, school was a bore. I was becoming a loner and acted out out a lot, and the dream managed to feature sharp memories of that era. In one sequence, a boy two years younger than me was riding a bike. A bunch of us children were in front of his house on a late summer afternoon. We weren’t doing much but hanging. I think I was fourteen. This kid, though, was riding around and bantering with others. Then I heard my sister say, “He spit on me.”

I don’t believe I’d ever reacted as fast to anything in my life, and I have always, from childhood on to even now, been known for amazingly fast reflexes.

He was riding his bike by me. My hand shot out, caught the rear of his bike and jerked it back, pulling it out from under him. As he fell free, I tossed the bike to one side, stepped forward, grabbed the kid, and hauled him to his feet. I told him he needed to apologize to my sister. I remember that other kids there were freaked out and afraid I was going to do something terrible to the kid. But he apologized to my sister. I released him. He took his bike and ran to his house.

His mother came out and confronted me. I was unapologetic. I told her nobody was going to spit on my sister while I was there. She didn’t know her son had spit on my sister. That changed things.

The scene was just a brief flash in my dream, the part where my sister said, “He spit on me,” and I grabbed his bike. I remembered the rest, along with other memories from that period, after awakening.

The whole dream and memory sequence left me emotionally shaken as I went about my morning routine. As I wondered why I’d dreamed so much about my father and childhood, I reached out to him to ensure he was okay.

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