Category: childhood

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!

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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

h/t AZLyrics.com

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.

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music comes by way of yesterday’s choir performance. The Rogue Valley Peace Choir performed as part of an afternoon called one voice. Participating with RVPC were four peace choirs from Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and California.  It was an enjoyable afternoon. One of the songs presented is the well-known “La Bamba.”

An old Mexican folk song, I learned of it from Ritchie Valens release. It came out two years after I was born. He was dead by then, so part of my maturing process was hearing about this song (and his other music), learning about why Richie Valens didn’t perform any more, and learning about the plane crash in which Valens, Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, and the pilot, Roger Peterson, were killed.

Though Valens died two years into my life, a movie of his life, “La Bamba,” starring Lou Diamond Philips, was released in 1987. Los Lobos performed “La Bamba” for the movie, sparking a new appreciation for the song and Richie Valens.

Turn it up and sing along. Happy Monday.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Many of you know this song because it’s one of those ubiquitous tunes that started during one era, and gets pulled out and employed to make a point.

The song is “The Beat Goes On,” originally by Sonny and Cher. Sung in a flat, almost monotonous style, it features words and stanzas that reflect superficial changes even as certain defining trends of an era continue. “Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain.” “Cars keep going faster all the time. Bums keep asking, hey, buddy, do you have a dime?”

Yes, cars are getting faster. We don’t call them bums, hobos, or panhandlers any longer, but there are still people out there asking for money, usually more than a dime, because a dime just doesn’t buy much in these times.

Here it is, from 1967.

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