We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwells ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
Procol Harum released “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in 1967. When I heard it, I thought, WTF? What are they singing about? What’s it all mean? Later, in my early twenty-somethings, out tasting libations with friends, the song made complete sense. It became then a song about feeling isolated and lost, not drunk or stoned, but confused and searching. I like that in music, art, and literature, I can find one meaning to what I perceive during one stage of life, and discover something vastly different at another point.
The other thing that I like is how some of these things pull me back to a very sharp point of a moment and feel it all again.
This song came to mind yesterday. I was thinking about lunch. What to do, what to do, what to do? Wanted something small, light, and easy. Just a little food, just a little food. Soon I was singing, “A little bit of food, yeah, a little bit of food.” With a little thought, I realized it was the tune to “Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve last heard this song, but I’ll share it with you.
Little Feat was one of my favorite groups when I was a young teenager but none of my friends had heard of them. When I played their music on the eight track, they’d ask, “What’s that?” with that look on their face like they’d taken a bite and discovered a funky and unexpected taste that worries them because maybe they they’d bitten into a bug or some rodent part.
Years later, I was surprised to hear Little Feat were playing again because, hello? Didn’t they break up and the guy that started them die? Yes, but they’d been reformed by surviving members.
Well, they’d become a little more mainstream but I still enjoyed them. “Hate to Lose Your Lovin'” is probably the song most people know them for, so why not?
This is a classic of my childhood era. Although I was a rocker, who could resist the Temptations? Their blend of R&B and soul helped me look at life, love, and relationships with new perspectives as I evolved through my teens.
This particular song comes out of the nostalgia stream because of our dry, dire situation out here in the Pacific Northwest. You may not know it, but we have many fires happening out here. Our air is unhealthy to hazardous due to wildfire smoke on most days. Hot in the nineties to low hundreds doesn’t help, nor does the drought much of the region is enduring. Events are regularly canceled as we hunker down.
Naturally, I thought, “I wish it would rain,” more than once in the past few days. That triggered the Temptations’ beautiful and melancholy song streaming into my mind. And then it rained.
Here it is, as we heard it back in 1967, “I Wish It Would Rain.”
Still slipstreaming on a nostalgia stream, I sang along to this 1969 hit. Released by Tommy James and the Shondells (I always wondered what a Shondell was), “Crystal Blue Persuasion” triggered some controversy during its time on the charts. Some believed that it was promoting or popularizing using crystal meth or a blue LSD that was popular at the time. I later read that it was inspired by the Bible!
A nostalgia stream is flooding me today. First it pushed me to consider old television shows, then I began googling places where I used to live, using the street view to remember those childhood places.
Music then came up. While I was discovering rock, pop and its bubblegum variations were very active, with a presence from groups such as the Osmonds and the Jackson 5. When “ABC” and “One Bad Apple” were big on the radio airwaves, I read a newspaper article in the Pittsburgh Press about whether Michael Jackson or Jimmy Osmond would have a successful singing career after their voices changed.
So, in memory, here’s “ABC” from 1970 on ABC’s American Bandstand with Dick Clark.
My family had moved away from Wilkinsburg, PA, to a housing plan in Penn Hills, a few miles away. My friends were in Wilkinsburg and I kept going back to see them. In one of those early trips, the only friend I found on my old street, McNary Boulevard, was Richard O’Leary. A bluff and big good-natured child, Richard was a few years older than me, but had failed a few grades, becoming my classmate.
Richard lived in a small, narrow house on the brick-paved Wesley Street. It was a classic, hugely steep Pittsburgh hill. Richard’s family was large, with one older sister still living at home with her own little sister. They were a poor family, too, a point that pained Richard.
Having all those older brothers and sisters kept Richard knowledgeable about pop music. That early Sunday morning, he was raving about the Fifth Dimension and a song called “The Wedding Bell Blues”. Richard kept singing the opening lines, “Bill. I love you so, I always will.” I suspect that his older sister’s boyfriend, the father of her child, was named Bill, so the song was being played often in the home.
It’s a fond memory of an early sunny, cool, Sunday morning.
I remember telling other neighborhood children stories that I made up, often citing them as my dreams. Sometimes they started as a dream, but I often just began telling an incident. I remember that once a dozen children a year or two younger stood in my cousin’s garage, listening to me tell them a story that I was making up as I stood there.
I’m streaming the “Logical Song” by Supertramp today. This little ditty was released in 1979. It remains a relevant song to me. As I grew, I thought I understood logic, but learned that logic is rooted in different areas for people. Where their logic has its roots defines how their logic will be applied and the results. This bastardized version of logic often twists compassion, reality, and common sense.
I later read an interview with the songwriter, Roger Hogdson. Some of his comments about what we’re taught as children stayed with me. I found the interview today after thinking about the song, and post some of it here.
This song was born from the questions that haunted me about what is the deeper meaning of life. Throughout childhood, we are told and taught so many things, and yet we are rarely told anything about the purpose of life. We are taught how to function outwardly, but are rarely guided to explore and find out who we are inwardly. From the innocence and wonder of childhood to the confusion of adolescence that often ends in the cynicism and disillusionment of adulthood, so many end their lives having no idea of who they truly are and what they came here to learn. In “The Logical Song,” I ask the fundamental question that is so present in the psyche of today’s modern world but rarely spoken out loud—who are we and what is our true purpose of being here? And that is why I believe it continues to strike a chord in people around the world. I’m continually told how the lyric is often used and discussed in schools, which tells you something.
I think about what and how we’re taught as children. Many of the words thrown at us by adults are tossed from anger, irritation, and frustration. The adults issuing the words rarely realized their comments’ impact on young minds because they were dealing with their life and world issues, and speaking from their frustrations, resentments, and irritations. (I prefer to think that the adults didn’t realize it, and weren’t being callous or deliberate in what they said, knowing what it would do to a young mind.)
But sometimes, there were adults who understood. They were the ones building us up, giving us confidence, and pressing us to read, learn, and think.
Michael Seidel, writer 