I like the time changes of this song. It begins with an older rockabilly tone to it before it segues into 1970s rock. It’s all about music and the generation gap (remember that expression?). Anyway, I thought it appropriate for the U.S., where we just jumped through the daylight savings time hoop. Here’s Loggins & Messina with “Your Mama Don’t Dance” from 1972.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Today’s music came out in 1965, when I was nine. I lived in Wilkinsburg, PA, around that time. A group of us liked going into one girl’s basement and pretending we were musicians, singers, and daughters. The Outsiders, Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Rivers, the Turtles, and Paul Revere and the Raiders provided us with our music via forty-five RPM records. We’d take turns performing. It was a way to spend time. I don’t know who provided us with that record collection.
Anyway, “Time Won’t Let Me” by The Outsiders, was one of those songs. Later, after reading the book, and then much later, when I saw the movie, I wondered if the Outsiders had taken their name from the novel. Then I found that the band existed before the novel. Oh, well.
As an aside, the movie was interesting. Francis Ford Coppola directed it. The cast was an amazing ensemble of young stars. Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, and Matt Dillon all come readily to mind.
One final aside, I read the novel around 1970, when a teacher recommended it to me. The novel is controversial and remains one of the most frequently challenged books in America.
Thursday’s Theme Music
As I endured the cold and its migrations, interactions, and pain during the last few days and nights, I began assigning musical instruments and notes to my experience, thinking, how would my cold sound musically? Just something to while away the sleepless, mucus filled hours.
Doing so reminded me of “Love Reign O’er Me,” by the Who. The song begins with a thunderstorm and rain. The song is the final cut of the Who rock-opera, Quadraphenia, and marks the final act and possibly redemption of the main character after chaotic struggles with love, drugs, family, violence, and identity.
Mom bought the album for me for Christmas 1973, based on my older sister’s recommendation. Thanks, Mom and sis!
Tuesday’s Theme Music
I’d only recently learned that Dave Mason wrote this song. I knew that Traffic had performed it, but in my heart, this song always belonged to Joe Cocker. Whichever group or performer does it, the song always lifts me up. I loved it when he sang it in concert.
Hope it lifts you today, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Here’s Joe Cocker with “Feeling Alright” from 1969.
Monday’s Theme Music
Staying with Argent, I enjoy one of the early songs he wrote for The Zombies, “She’s Not There.” Although it’s been covered by many others, including Santana, I like the original.
It came out in 1964, when I was eight years old. I obviously learned it through repetitive play, mostly on the radio. Its melody seems reflective about the subject, while the words are bitter and wondering. I like the yin and yang feel to the combination.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Streaming from my childhood once again. I enjoy this song for its organ solo. Because of that, I prefer the long version. Thinking about the words, there aren’t many verses in the song. Most of us know the title lines: “Hold your head up.”
Here’s Argent, with Rod Argent (formerly of The Zombies, which must count for something) on keyboards.
Saturday’s Theme Music
I’ve always enjoyed this song’s beginning. A chorus, a softly strumming acoustic guitar, and then a gentle French horn, each remarkable by themselves but coming together to set you up in an introspective mood.
When I first heard it, I thought, “Is that a French horn? Who is playing it?” Because a French horn isn’t part of the Rolling Stones’ typical composition. Later, there’s organ and piano, and wondered, “Who is on those?” I learned it was Al Kooper on them, along with the French horn. Pretty cool.
The song is, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a well-known Rolling Stones song from that terrific album, Let It Bleed. I like the song’s story-telling style, how it touches on different political and social elements of that period, rising rises from a reflection on a female addict into a rousing anthem for rebellion and struggle.
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need
It’s a stirring rallying cry: try, and you might find that you get what you need, and it may not be what you thought it was.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
So much is written about money, right? About needing it, hating it, not having it, and wanting it. It’s the root of all evil, yet churches are on net, television, and radio, begging for it. It’s not the money, though, right? As Marie (Bernadette Peters) said in The Jerk, “I don’t care about losing the money. It’s losing all the stuff.”
Today’s song is one of my all-time favorites. Why? I like the clashing drums, screaming guitars, and scathing lyrics. “Money. Get back. Keep your hands off my stack.”
Here’s Pink Floyd with “Money” from waaayyy back when I was young.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Getting old
Getting gray
Getting ripped off
underpaid
Getting sold
Second hand
AC/DC rocked us through the lessons of being in a rock band in their song, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll).” For most of us, short of being some amazingly talented person or born to wealth, it’s a long way to the top no matter what we’re trying to do.
Gotta love the bagpipes.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Today’s music is feline inspired. I swear I could hear my cat singing this when I went through my morning rituals. As I went from room to room and activity to activity, he tagged along. Sometimes he would lean against my leg when I stopped, but he also sat on my foot, or stopped and peeked around the corner. When I moved, he moved, following me around.
Here it is, courtesy of Tucker’s inspiration, Little Peggy March (which I had to look up) with “I Will Follow Him” from 1963.
Michael Seidel, writer 