I enjoyed Bowie and his music, and lament his passing. Fortunately, technology and memories serve well to keep the music playing.
Today found my mind shuffling and streaming old Bowie songs like “Diamond Dogs,” “Suffragette City,” and today’s offering, “Rebel, Rebel.” No particular reason for singing it today, except I like the song for its laid-back approach and the amused, disdainful sense of observation and discovery heard in the lyrics.
You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl
Hey babe, your hair’s alright
Hey babe, let’s go out tonight
You like me, and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine
You love bands when they’re playing hard
You want more and you want it fast
They put you down, they say I’m wrong
You tacky thing, you put them on
Of course, when I thought of this song, it was winter, and I was in a women’s march, organized by women to remind the POTUS and America that they’re here and displeased, and want to continue the agenda of change in America that’s been going on, an agenda that includes equality regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation or preference, religion, ethnicity, skin color, and many other things that America claims to be free and equal about.
It was ironic, and a little disappointing when thinking of protest songs, that “Street Fighting Man” came to mind. Where’s the street fighting women? I was surrounded by them.
Mick Jagger said that events in the United States and France inspired the song when he wrote it. It seems like an indictment of the pervasive male oriented society that only men were mentioned from that era of protests in the 1960s. Despite its inherent sexism, the song, with its driven rocking beat and discordant sitar and guitars, is a powerful protest anthem, powerful enough that Chicago radio stations didn’t play it in the summer of 1968, fearful that it would incite more rebellion and violence in a city that was already struggling with the violence emerging in the shadow of Democratic National Convention as anti-war protesters and police clashed.
Stream forward through time a few years, and the publication of the Pentagon Papers display the American Government’s hypocrisy and cynicism, a reminder that emerges through the recent film, “The Post.” Watching that film, the calls for change and to shake up business as usual sharpen with understanding, along with the bitter taste arising from the belief that our government, no matter which party dominants, is failing us. Those parties apply lip-service to our demands, but their actions often sustain the status quo and business as usual. Most Americans want change, but often split about the shape of change desired. It’s the struggle of democracy. The path seems clear, but it’s messy an slippery.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
~ Frederick Douglass
That’s why I joined those women and marched to demand change. I want change. I served in the American military to forward the ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality, with the simple truth that all people are created equal. I slowly learned how those words and sentiments are often more of a propaganda slogan and less of a governing ideal, and that many people, including our leaders, lack the principles and moral courage to fully embrace the ideals behind these words.
In the song, Mick asks, “What else can a poor boy do,” and adds, “There’s no place for a street fighting man,” a suggestion about the frustrations of limited options.
I became seventeen that year. I’d moved in with my father the year before, 1972. He retired from the Air Force, and we moved to West Virginia. We bought a place, and it burned down. Just about all the few possessions I had when I quit living with Mom were gone. We didn’t have insurance. The paperwork and payment were on the dining room table, and burned.
I was hoping for better with 1973. It went great for a while, but then I cut off the end of my big toe while cutting the grass with a gas-powered lawn mower. That took me out of sports and doing many things. Frequently a loner, I retreated into art, music, and reading, which were always my natural sanctuaries.
Fortunately, ’73 was a good year for music. This song, “Drift Away” performed and released by Dobie Gray, summed up the year for me.
Beginnin’ to think that I’m wastin’ time
I don’t understand the things I do
The world outside looks so unkind
Now I’m countin’ on you to carry me through
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll and drift away
Yeah, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll and drift away
And when my mind is free
You know a melody can move me
And when I’m feelin’ blue
The guitar’s comin’ through to soothe me
Don’t know about you, but Gospel music often talks to me. Aided by a dream, this song streamed into my consciousness from the year 1972. “I’ll Take You There” was a great song for the time because its slow beat allowed a close, swaying slow-dance with a girl, something that I sought when I was a sixteen year old boy. It’s like a feel-good song of hope, not for love alone, but for progress and civil rights.
This John Lennon song, “Whatever Get You Through the Night,” is energetic and peppy, and struck me as much different from his other offerings. I like the extensive, enthusiastic sax in it, which, with the piano, makes the song feel like it’s from a different era, and the twist on the lyrics that becomes “Whatever gets your through your life.” That’s how a lot of us live, somewhere between dreaming and striving, grabbing and holding on to what comes our way.
This is a long time favorite. I hope I’ve not shared it before. If I have, suffer.
Let’s listen to CCR, sometimes more formally known as Creedence Clearwater Revival, and their song, “Bad Moon Rising,” from 1969. I like this, too, for the mondegreen, where, “There’s a bad moon on the rise,” is sometimes heard as “There’s a bath room on the right.” I’ve been known to propagate the misheard lyric and assure people those are the corrects words.
I can play the what-if? game with any subject. Not hard. A reflective exercise, it can be fun, and it’s helpful when writing fiction. Mostly, the game is about wondering how things would have changed if this or that hadn’t happened.
Janis Joplin died in 1970 of a heroin overdose. She was twenty-seven. She would have turned seventy-five this week. She achieved much in a short life. Playing what-if?, you can imagine how much more she might have done.
On the positive side, she was a person who’s celebrated and remembered. Too many people die and have no one playing the what-if? game with their life. Too many die too young for vain causes or absurd reasons. Of course, it’s death, and we all die. The reasons for our death is a lot of feed for what-if?
Another Who offering has hooked into my streaming memories.
This one, “Join Together,” was released in 1972, while I was in high school. I remember hearing it and thinking, that’s the Who, because they always had a distinctive sound, especially with Daltry’s voice. Like a lot of Who songs, interesting sounds, instruments, and arrangements lend Who songs thickly textured melodies. I like that. I prefer complications in books, movies, and music. At the same time, I’ve always been invested in guitar sounds. That’s why the guitar draws me to a lot of southern urban rock, and blues, or blues-rock, and classic rock. But even with Townsend’s synthesizers, the Who prevail and maintain a hold as one of my favorite rock groups.
Confession: I didn’t know who sang this song. Nor do I remember the first time I heard it. After looking up the artist, I still didn’t know who he was, but I knew the song from AM radio.
“Down in the Boondocks” apparently came out in 1965. I was nine. The performer with the hit was Billy Joe Royal. After googling him, I found I knew several of his songs, like “Cherry Hill Park.”
“Down in the Boondocks” started streaming in my head while I was talking to Tucker (one of my cats) and emptying the dishwasher. Yeah, I don’t see the connection either.
This song is one of my defacto songs that I start streaming when I’m walking. Several walking songs are plugged into my streaming library. There’s a Nancy Sinatra offering, where she sings “These boots are made for walking,” and a song less about walking but about getting there from Grand Funk, “I’m getting closer to my home,” and some song by some guy named Miller who sings, “King of the Road.” Which one pops into my stream seems dependent on my mood.
Today’s classic is offered by Edwin Starr. Here is “Twenty-five Miles,” from 1969.
Michael Seidel, writer 