Today’s song, “Tin Man,” was released in nineteen seventy-four. Among the trillion events happening that year, I graduated high school and joined the U.S. Air Force.
The next year found me married, and the year after that, I was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Our news sources were mostly the Pacific Stars & Stripes newspaper and the Armed Forces Radio and Television Services. Our local affiliate was the Armed Forces Network (AFN) Philippines. The big thing that always stood out about AFN is that they were constantly warning us about habus and finding unexploded ordinance.
I enjoyed “Tin Man” and America’s other offerings a great deal. I learned more about them because the group met because their fathers were serving in the Air Force. Thus, The Stars & Stripes and AFN carried quite a bit about them.
Here’s “Tin Man.” It’s a mellow song. Hope you’re having a mellow day, and not deeply into the many messes going on in the world.
I was already a Humble Pie fan when this song came out in nineteen seventy, having seen them in concert. I ate this album up, but the first song from side two – there’s some vinyl lingo for you – was my favorite. Two things about this song and group; I rarely encounter people who know either one. Bummer. Nineteen seventy-two was a fun year, and this song fit it perfectly.
This is one of those songs that I know from my youth, but I don’t know who sang it.
The song is “Black Is Black,” and the group who performed it was Los Bravos. I’m streaming it today for reasons that my mind won’t reveal. It came out in nineteen sixty-six. I was ten, then, but was probably exposed to it when driving around, because pop music was always playing on the AM radio stations in that era.
Give a listen, and see if any bells chime when you hear it.
Bob Mustin commented on yesterday’s theme music. He wrote, “The song favored by my class at the Naval Academy was The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.””
I hear that. His comment summoned a memory. We were in Egypt in nineteen eighty-five as part of Exercise Bright Star. It was July, or maybe August. Living in a tent city in the desert, the ops portion was done. We were awaiting redeployment. There was a lot of down time. While enduring the Sahara heat in our tent’s shade, one of the guys played “Green, Green Grass of Home” on a small cassette player.
One of the other guys said, “Man, turn that off. It’s depressing.”
The player said, “I think it’s nice.”
“It’s about a guy in prison,” one person said.
“Nice,” someone said. “It’s not nice. Makes me remember my wife is suing me for divorce.”
“Yeah, and it makes me remember my home when I was growing up,” the first speaker said. “There wasn’t any green, green grass at our house. It was all cement and asphalt, even the playground. The ball field wasn’t paved, but it didn’t have no grass, either.”
“Yeah, and my folks are dead,” said another guy. “There’s no one going to be there to meet me when I get home.”
An argument arose about the song and its meanings.
Ah, sweet memories. We heard the Tom Jones cover in Egypt, so that’s what I’m playing for you.
Been thinking about time today, and I think it’s time to post a song that is about time. This one streamed into my thoughts.
Honestly, I couldn’t remember what year it came out, or the performer. I know the lyrics, though, and that was enough to find the song in this Internet age.
Turns out, it’s performed by the Chamber Brothers. It came out in nineteen sixty-eight, when I was twelve. It’s called, “Time Has Come Today”.
Hey, writers north of the Equator. Guess what? It’s December, and it’s winter. That puts me into a winter state of mind. Some of that crystalline white precipitation tops the mountains, hills, and forests surrounding our valley, while we endure fog, low gray cloud cover, and meek sunshine.
Looking out on this world as the furnace says good-morning, “A Hazy Shade of Winter” leaked into the stream. I thought about the Simon & Garfunkel original, and admired again, their talent and genius. But wanting something upbeat and edgier, I took to the Bangles.
Don’t you love those opening lyrics? “Time, time, time, look what’s become of me.”
The temp has hung around thirty degrees F. for hours, locked into that position by an inversion layer that invited freezing fog in. The freezing fog accepted the invitation – have you ever known fog to turn down an invitation? – so here we sit, freezing and foggy. These energy leeching conditions must be countered. With what can I counter it? Pancakes for breakfast and French roast coffee failed. Let’s drag in some music to shift my ass out of my chair.
I’m sure each of you have a favorite that does it for you. I have a catalog of them, myself, but today, it’s the Allman Brothers Band doing that old Blind Willy McTell song, “Statesboro Blues,” as captured live at the Fillmore East, in all their glory. I wore out this album listening to it in nineteen seventy-one and -two.
The playing and lyrics mesmerized a twelve-year old growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. Equal confusion and interest reigned over, “How does he play like that?” and, “What’s he singing?”
He was Jimi Hendrix, and the song was “Voodoo Child,” sometimes spelled “Chile.” That just flavored the interest.
Still streaming from way back in the last century.
I like the light and peppy feel of today’s theme music. It tells a story, and the story-telling invokes a sense of place and life that I identify with whenever I hear it. But the story isn’t completely told. Gaps remain. That’s how I like my story-telling, with gaps that cause you to wonder even after hearing the story.
Here is Paul Simon with “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” nineteen seventy-two.
Remember the television series called “Get Smart”? It was on in the mid-sixties. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks came up with the idea. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon were the primary stars.
A crazy spy-spoof, “Get Smart” featured an organization called CONTROL, shoe phones, the cone of silence, and other unique devices that made fun of the spy gadgets populating more serious spy ventures. Don Adams was a bumbling spy known as Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. Agent 86. Smart always doing things by the book, even though doing so was counter-productive. Feldon was Agent 99. She seemed more competent and intelligent, but 86 often ended up saving 99, mostly by accident, it seemed. The two of them, along with Chief, and other agents of CONTROL, fought the forces of KAOS.
The opening sequence showed Adams as Smart marching through corridors toward walls while the theme music played. As he reached each wall, a door would open, let Smart through, and close behind him. Once he’d gone through a number of doors in this manner, he reached a telephone booth. There, he’d put in a coin and dial a number, and then wait until he was lowered from the booth.
I was reminded of this sequence often during my military career. Working in S.C.I.F.s, underground command posts, vaults, and buildings without windows, that television show’s theme music would stream into my head as we went around corners, up halls, and through doors, often without seeing other people. The biggest differences from the television show were that we all wore badges, security cameras abounded in our halls, signs warning about unauthorized access and the use of deadly force were frequent, and getting past the doors usually required us to punch numbers into a cypher-lock.
There were also red-tiled zones where only one person was authorized to stand or be at a time, to help keep the entrance secure. In later years, we also encountered retinal scans in little booths that weighed you as you looked into a scanner and entered the numbers to pass through. Your weight was on record and accessed via your badge. A five-pound leeway was permitted. This was done under the watchful eyes of security people and cameras.
That was over twenty years ago. I wonder if they still do all those things? They’ve probably moved on to comparing DNA by now.
Michael Seidel, writer 