Category: childhood

Thursday’s Theme Music

I always have enjoyed convertibles. Named spyders and spiders, roadsters, rag tops, I include the targas and tee tops in this group. The top down lets the world in when you’re motoring along.

I was trying my best to emulate that yesterday. A gentle spring sun warmed the day into aspirations of summer. Our little town was an idyllic verdant green. Sunroof and windows open, I was cruising home like it was yesteryear. To help me on that journey, the radio station played C.C.R.’s eight plus minute version of “Suzy Q”. Turning it up, I felt like a teenager for the six minutes that I listened as I drove home.

Not too much to the lyrics. Very straightforward, but I enjoy the guitar work and the variations on the drums and cymbals that arise.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I know exactly why and when I started streaming today’s music selection.

I went into the MBR and stripped down in front of a ginger floof. He’d been sleeping but lifted his head and watched me with sleepy eyes, to confirm I didn’t have food and wasn’t a threat. I was speaking to him, telling him what I was doing. Taking off my shirt, I inhaled my armpit essence and told my cat, “Definitely stink this evening. Know what I mean?”

Like that, here comes Lee Michaels streaming through my head with his song, “Do You Know What I Mean”. I enjoyed Lee Michaels’ offerings. This song spoke to me. Its lyrics  seem real and autobiographical. The way he sings it delivers pain and bewilderment juxtaposed against a heavy beat with brass sounds that remind me of a circus environment. It’s is an excellent vehicle to capture relationship confusion.

Back when the song came out, my friends never took to the song. Many current friends know it vaguely or not at all. Hope I’m reacquainting you with a song that you enjoy. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The usual nut cluster of dreams swept me last night, providing a sea of material to think about. When the dreams ended, I began streaming an eclectic selection of songs. “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (G. Thorogood) “Gloria” (by Laura Brannigan), “Wild Horses” (the Rolling Stones), “Will It Go Round In Circles”, Billy Preston, and “Kyrie” by Mr. Mister. But the last song was Bryan Adams, “Summer of ’69”.

Summer of ’69 was a good year for me, a thirteen-year-old white boy living in a middle-class suburban housing plan in Penn Hills, outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. I had a good cotorie of friends, and was playing sports, enjoying school, and meeting girls. Likewise, when the song was released in 1985, I was with a unit I enjoyed. Although I was traveling a lot, the song fit my mood. Released in June, it was a big hit by the time I returned from the field to America a few months later.

The song becomes a unique bridge then, between my early teen years, my early thirties, and now, my early sixties. Let’s rock.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I’m streaming a favorite Led Zeppelin song from a favorite Led Zeppelin album. These lyrics always speak to me, and I enjoy their delivery:

“Walking through the park the other day baby, what d’ya think I saw?”

“I didn’t notice but it had got very dark and I was really, really out of my mind.”

“You really don’t care, if they’re coming. Whoa oh, I know that it’s all a state of mind.”

This was my generation’s music (oh, great, now I’ve started streaming a Who song).

Anyway, here’s a little “Misty Mountain Hop,” from almost half a century ago.

 

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Long hair and suits. That seemed to be part of the transition from blues to rock & pop.

“For Your Love” by the Yardbirds was part of that transition. I like watching this video for these pieces – the suits and hair, the somewhat bored or impassive expressions of the band members, the band’s setup, and what seems like a tiny, tiny drum set. Everything was simpler. This video was from 1965, and within a few years, changes would be visible in how pop/rock stars should dress and act. Fun to have YouTube and the associated technology to look back into the early years of the rock era.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

You ever get on the telephone, listen to ads, or generally engage with sales people, and get the feeling that they have music going through their head, and that music is some variation of “Money (That’s What I Want)”? Seems like a large proportion of the world’s population is has this theme song going.

It ended up streaming into my head this morning after reading the news (I read the news today, oh, boy). After a little thought, I went with the Beatle’s version because I’m most familiar with it.

Look back on a little Beatlemania in this clip, or, if you’re too young to know what I’m talking about, view it for the first time.

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Sunday’s Theme Song

I heard “I’m A Man” by the Spencer Davis Group, but the Chicago cover (when the band’s name was still Chicago Transit Authority) is my preferred version. I have a fond memory of being sixteen. I was at a friend’s place with several others. We had the lights low, and were smoking some grass, drinking beer, and listening to “I’m A Man” cranked up. That opening bass begins, and then drums rise and other instruments join and build tension.

Ah, fond memory.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

We attended a show called “Million Dollar Quartet” at the Oregon Cabaret Theater last night. Great show, very lively. I was familiar with the music played but it was all from before my time. Still, it put me in a rock and roll frame of mind while I was walking to my writing today. Lots of songs streamed in, but the one that grabbed me was David Bowie’s “Suffragette City”.

I enjoy how the song cranks up with raucous overtones right from the start. It seems like both a conversation between the singer and others about a woman he’d met but also an internal conversation about a person reflecting on who he is, his sexuality, and where he’s going and doing. There’s a sense of a decision being made at a fork in the road. Most of all, though, it’s a rocking song and easy to sing. Love that hook, “Ahhh, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.”

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Thursday’s Theme Music

A car passed by as I walked in the wind, drizzle, and sun yesterday. One of the car’s windows were down, and the Bee Gees streamed out:

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

Naturally, my mind completed the song and then put it on a loop and added it to the day’s shuffle. I haven’t heard “To Love Somebody” in a long time. I think the last time was in a movie. It was released in the late sixties, before the Bee Gees became embedded with disco. I liked a lot of Bee Gees music back then. They had some tight harmonies.

So, from my ear worm to yours. Please, enjoy this on your Thursday. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I learned this song from the AM radio when I was very young. I began thinking about “The Name Game” this morning, but remembering “The Clapping Song,” I switched to it. I loved its rhythms and clapping when I was a child. Come on, they’re fun lyrics and easy to learn:

Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine,
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke, the monkey got choked,
They all went to heaven in a little row-boat

Clap-Pat
Clap-Pat
Clap-Pat
Clap-Slap

Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, pat it on your partner’s hand (right hand)
Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, cross it with your left arm, pat your partner’s left palm
Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, pat your partner’s right palm with your right palm again
Clap-Slap: Clap your hands, slap your thighs, and sing a little song; go:

My mother told me
If I was good-ee
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly

My aunty told her
I kissed a soldier
Now she won’t buy me
A rubber dolly

h/t to lyricsfreak.com

I didn’t know that Shirley Ellis sang it. Honestly, when I learned this song, it all came from that magical place called the radio. It wasn’t for a few years that I realized that those voices and music represented individual people. Yeah, I was a little slow. After hearing the song when I was older, I wondered about the age of a person who was being promised a rubber dolly but wasn’t being given one because she kissed a soldier.

 

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