Category: childhood

Monday’s Theme Music

This is another from the latter days of my childhood. I guess David Cassidy’s passing juxtaposed with the holiday season has opened the memory stream onto that era of my existence.

I learned of Shel Silverstein through Playboy magazine. People would throw them out for recycle pickup; we’d ferret them out of the piles while we were waiting for the school bus. I didn’t know he was a song writer. I enjoyed several of his songs without being aware that he’d written them, not learning about his part in the musical portion of my childhood until Shel died in nineteen ninety-nine.

Streaming today is a Shel classic. Written by him and performed by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” was ubiquitously played and referenced in every sort of social media available in nineteen seventy-two and seventy-three. Why not? The satirical lyrics about the meaning of success substantially differed from other songs out there during that era, and the band played it way over the top. Fabulous.

Listen for yourself and decide.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

In the wake of remembering David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, and Bread, another song slipped into my musical memory stream. Running on infinite loop since yesterday afternoon, I need to share it to dislodge it.

Here are the cartoon/comic strip band, The Archies, with “Sugar, Sugar,” from nineteen sixty-nine.

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Saturday’s Theme Song

Today’s theme song choice is a little…odd…for me. David Cassidy’s death triggered the choice.

When I was growing up and noticing girls, I began going to their houses. I wasn’t stalking them; they invited me.

This was around the same time that music was more interesting to me, say sixth grade. When going to their houses, though, I found their music preferences were different from mine. Whereas I leaned toward Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, the Stones, the Who, etc., they had the Monkees, Herman and the Hermits, David Cassidy, the Jackson 5, Osmonds, and other music that I disdained as bubble gum pap. Yeah, I was a snob.

One of those albums that I often encountered was David Gates and Bread, and their albums. The one I most remember was “Baby I’m-a Want You,” with the hit single by the same name. I was almost sixteen when this album came out. I’ve nothing against it (or the group), but that it seemed too mellow and sappy for me. Please forgive my judgement; I was a young rebel.

Those are all remembered generalities. Melissa was very into the Who. Of course, the irony that I didn’t realize until later was that my music preferences developed because I was listening to my older sister’s music.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

Yesterday was America’s Thanksgiving holiday, so I was thinking about the first one spent away from home. That would be nineteen seventy-four. Eighteen, I’d joined the Air Force and was at basic training at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. My uncle was in the military and lived in the area, so he and his wife, Pat, invited me to Thanksgiving at their house.

It was a terrific time. We watched the Cowboys defeat the Redskins as Clint Longley, a rookie, came in the game and threw a hail Mary that was caught and gave them the victory.

Other than that, and another day off, we were sequestered most of the time during our training, and without television or radio. But once we finished, we returned to our musical roots. For me, it was rock. Here’s Golden Earring with “Radar Love”, a song that had been released the previous year. Love that psychedelic special effects they put on the video. Sooo cheesy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I associate this song with Thanksgiving, and as it’s the day before Thanksgiving in America, I thought I’d proffer this humorous, mellow gem from nineteen sixty-seven.

Peace out.

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Monday’s Theme Song

Today’s song comes from yesterday’s movie.

We watched “Thor: Ragnorok” at the cinema yesterday. The movie features Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” twice. Led Zep III was one of those albums that I listened to repetitively when I was fourteen in nineteen seventy, and I came to know the album by heart. Once I heard “Immigrant Song,” I streamed the subsequent tracks into my head. Eventually, “Celebration Day” dominated more than the rest. Always like that beginning sound, and then the words, “Her face is cracked from smiling, all the fears that she’s been hiding, and it seems that pretty soon, everybody’s gonna know.”

Here, let me play it for you, and get it out of my head.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I don’t surf. Okay, big deal, right? I’m probably not alone in that declaration. But sometime in my youth, I adopted a private attitude that I’m riding the waves of the day. I think this song, “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day” by Jethro Tull, directly contributed to my approach.

Skate away on the day’s thin ice, ride the waves and surf through the day. Do what needs to be done to get through.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Neurons fired, streams opened, and this song came to me today. Although I’m a Blood, Sweat and Tears fan, I don’t own any of their albums. Still, I know a number of their songs, like “Spinning Wheel”, “When I Die”, and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”, the song that passed into my slipstream of memory was “Lucretia MacEvil”. Sit back and enjoy Clayton-Thomas’ throaty vocals and that soulful fat brass sound.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Ah, The Band. Oddly, I was reminded of them when I was attending a Veteran’s Day Concert presented by the Southern Oregon Concert Band. Besides the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful, a medley of Irving Berlin, World War I music, Aaron Copeland songs, and John Philip Sousa were presented, along with each of the U.S. military services’ march songs.

But I walked away thinking about The Band, and this song, “The Weight.” Perhaps it was because the concert program reminded me of my youth. Mired in the middle of my early growth was a little event folks call Woodstock. Part of it was “The Weight.” The song has a folksy sense that reminds me of a Faulkner album and makes me smile. I always thought of it as good road music, with questions without answers, answers without explanations, and anecdotes with gravity that give shape to our lives and change our hopes.

Hope you find something in it, too.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

My wife and I were picking up fur last night. The cats leave it like Hansel and Gretel left crumbs to find their way back. I guess the cats, worried about losing their way from the litter box to their food bowl to their sleeping locations, leave the fur clumps to help them find their way. “I’ll just leave this fur and follow it back.”

Doing this task last night, I streamed, “I’m a fur picker. I’m a fur picker. Picking up fur. Fur, fur, fur.” The song was to the head music, “I’m A Girl Watcher,” a song from nineteen sixty-seven. I thought, that’ll be my Tuesday theme music.

Then, I began thinking about the song and the times. The song objectifies women. The attitude incubated at that point can lead to some of the rapes, molesting, and harassing now revealed across America.

Or I am overthinking it? I’m prone to such things. I can hear other argue, the song is about a boy who is growing up and developing an interest in sex, in this case, in girls. It’s completely innocent. To which I hear others say, it’s not completely innocent. It’s mostly innocent, but it’s part of larger cultural and social trends about women’s roles and men’s attitude toward women in America.

It was a lot to think about before my morning coffee. I decided not to do that song. Instead, I give you song from a year later, The Moody Blues with “Tuesday Afternoon.” I believe the song’s line, “The gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh,” perfectly exemplifies my thinking conundrum about being a girl-watcher.

It’s a complicated world. My thinking probably makes it appear more complicated than it is.

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