Category: childhood

Saturday’s Theme Music

Soft rock isn’t my bag. I always enjoy that expression, ‘my bag’. When I was a child and heard it, I asked, “What’s that mean?” When adults explained it, I asked, “But why a bag?” Because we carry baggage, they explained. Took me a while to understand until a sixth grade English teacher clarified the whole metaphor.

Today’s soft rock is by Orleans. “Dance with Me” features a melodica solo. When I first heard the song, I thought, “Is that Stevie Wonder?” It’s one of those riddles that stayed with me through the years until I finally hunted down an answer. No, it’s not Stevie Wonder, it’s Larry Hoppen, Orleans’ lead vocalist, who committed suicide half a decade ago. He was sixty-one. I don’t know why he committed suicide. It seemed to be depression.

Of other Orleans’ hits, I much prefer “Still the One” (which Larry also sang) but this is the song that was streaming through me. Sometimes, I just take what I’m given.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

This song, “Song Sung Blue” by Neil Diamond, slipped into my mindstream this morning. Don’t know why. Not really the rock that I generally listen to, the words and melody are easy to learn. It’s a casual choice for a casual day.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I awoke streaming an old song, which led to another and another. My brain was like a golden oldies station, if you can respect that golden and oldie are subjective terms. How you relate to them depends upon where you reside on the age spectrum.

Among the songs streamed today:

Sly and the Family Stone, “I Want to Take You Higher” (on the Mike Douglas Show – remember it?)

The Turtles, “Happy Together”

Dobie Grey, “Drift Away”

Sly and the Family Stone, “Dance to the Music” – such a lively and imaginative song

After posting this partial list, I can see how my mind pivoted through common words, themes, and times. I finally settled on this song because its signal strength had more bars. Here is “Life Is A Rock” by Reunion from 1974. It’s a novelty song, but it’s fun to listen to the lyric’s references. Enjoy.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

I’ve been head-streaming this off and on for the last few days. Fragile by Yes was an album we frequently listened to in art class. I always enjoyed the silent communion among students as we listened to rock music and worked on art projects. This song, “Long Distance Runaround,” grew on my consciousness, first because of the unique sounds they employed in the song, but then the lyrics drew me in. It’s progressive seventies rock at its finest.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme song, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” began streaming into me as felines catgregated around me wherever I went. The lyrics are repetitive – “I want you, I want you so bad” (perfect lyrics for the cats as they follow, waiting for me to sit so they can sit on my feet or jump on my lap) – but I enjoy the song’s tempo changes and the variations on how “I want you” is sung.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I heard this one on Santa Clarita Diet last night. It’s been so long since I last heard it. The song, as performed by the Animals, came out in 1965. “It’s My Life” checks all the marks for that era’s emerging rock for me, giving me an enjoyable nostalgia rush today. I liked the lyrics and Burdon’s rusty, defiant, angry delivery – “It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want.” That’s a perfect anthem for a nine-year-old, right? Hah, yeah.

 

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Toy Appliances

I was vacuuming yesterday, utilizing the central vacuum system and its fifty feet of hose.

What a snake it would have been.

See, as a child, I used Mom’s appliances to augment my reality. She had a little home salon hair dryer. Contained in a small brown suitcase, it opened up, displaying controls and a lit mirror. You’d attach a hose which attached to a plastic bonnet that she wore on her head. An intake fan was in the middle. Several push buttons orchestrated fan speed and temperature.

The hair dryer was perfect as my spaceship’s controls. The short hose was my communication device to communicate with star base, or, if necessary, Earth Command.

Besides it, we had an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, a canister type with a hose attached. The hose became a snake, serpent, or dragon for me to fight, sometimes utilizing a discarded paper towel tube as a sword, but often something I’d need to battle with my bare hands. 

The Electrolux’s canister was my rocket sled. It also worked as a time-machine, enabling a quick escape from now to the future or past. Pillows, chairs, and blankets were employed as forts while boxes were ships and rockets. Mom and Dad’s transistor radios were also communication devices. Sunglasses were useful as protective devices but also enabled me to see into other dimensions. They could also be employed to see over the horizon to far-away places, like China, Europe, South America, and Antarctica.

Things changed. Television developed. I acquired modeling clay and shaped rockets and space ships. By now I was twelve, and drawing these vessels, reading books, and watching television. While those were great vehicles for my imagination, it wasn’t quite as good as opening up the hair dryer and blasting off.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

This song streamed into my head while I was shaving this morning. There’s no evidence for why this song emerged from my mind’s general morning chaos. The song came out when I was eight years old, but it’s a ubiquitous melody with an easy, harmonic hook. The Beach Boys were known for those harmonies.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

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.

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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.

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