Category: childhood

Friday’s Theme Music

Volcanos erupting in Japan and Indonesia, threats of missiles being exchanged between the U.S. and North Korea, Black Lives Matter, voter right suppression, Russia-gate, white supremacists, gun control arguments, protests, the Weinstein scandal, war refugees, Pacific Northwest and California wildfires and destruction, the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico, hurricane and earthquake disasters in Mexico, hurricane destruction in several other American states, plans to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, the President threatening freedom of the press, the Vegas mass killer….

Contemplating it all over coffee brought to mind Billy Joel’s nineteen eighty-nine song from “Storm Front,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He covered the headlines from nineteen forty-nine, when he was born, until the year the album was released, but the fire goes on.

At least, it feels like it on this cool, autumn morning in twenty seventeen.

 

 

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Fall Slipstream

It’s a gorgeous fall day, smoke-free, with a cloudless blue sky. Our sun is bright, but the wind presents a chilly edge as it toys with leaves, tearing them from trees and sprinkling them over the streets, sidewalks, and yards. News, worry, and politics are aside. Memories of days like these are pulled from my youth in Pittsburgh.

It’s the weekend. At last! Freed for a day from the teachers’ drones, studying, quizzes, and tests, we’re out in the streets, chatting about girls, music, sports and television, bullshitting each other, John mocking Rick, complaining about school, wandering around, hanging around, playing football in the street. 

Halloween is coming up. What are you going to wear?

Thanksgiving is next month. Thanksgiving, that amazing feast – stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy – and pies! Pumpkin! Apple! Or maybe cherry. With whipped cream. Family will be over. It will be warm, noisy, and crowded. But, wow, the food.

And then there’s Christmas. What do you want for Christmas?

The simplicity makes me sigh. That was our future. But we would tell each other –

I can’t wait until I’m older. 

I can’t wait until I have my license.

I can’t wait until I have my own money.

I can’t wait until I’m done with school.

I can’t wait until I’m out of here.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Wow, Thursday already. October, already. The fifth already. Come on, let’s back off the time accelerator. It’s all moving too fast.

Today’s music is “Spooky.” It was originally an instrumental. I once heard the instrumental and thought someone was playing it that way. I later learned that the words had been added after the instrumental was written and performed.

I heard the original version with words, by the Classics IV, in the late nineteen sixties, on my trusty AM/FM clock radio. But I awoke with the A.R.S. “Spooky” version looping in my head today, so that’s what I’m posting.

As a sidebar, I wonder what happens in my brain that I awake with songs streaming in my head? I’ve researched this earworm (ohrwurm) or brain itch, as different sources label it, and found that researchers believe ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of people endure earworms. A two thousand three news article cited a study found which songs afflict most people:

He found that some 98 percent of listeners were at one time or another bothered by a tune that wouldn’t leave their heads. The study also found some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle (“Gimme a break”), “Who Let the Dogs Out,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the theme to “Mission: Impossible,” “YMCA,” “Whoomp, There It Is,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “It’s a Small World After All.”

The study also showed that musicians and those with compulsive tendencies are the most afflicted. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though the act of repetition — in popular songs on the radio and on the rehearsal floor for musicians — plays a role.

The 559 students used in the study had lots of trouble with the Chili’s jingle for its baby-back ribs and with the Baha Men song “Who Let the Dogs Out. ” But Kellaris found that most often, each person tends to be haunted by their demon notes.

Compulsive tendencies? Moi? Perish the suggestion. I guess I’m fortunate that my ohrwurms rotate and offer a variety.

 

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Streaming to you live through memories of recorded music heard in my youth, here is Supertramp with “Bloody Well Right.” Seems appropriate as we wrestle with rights and bloodshed.

You got a bloody right to say.

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Friday’s Theme Music

“Across the Universe,” written by John Lennon, and performed by the Beatles.

When I hear the song lyrics, I often think of the writing process. For example:

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind
Inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Things flow and bounce into us, and we write to create order from that nonsense. Sometimes, we succeed.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

The Ginger Blade wanted out last night. He’s a cat; he’s young; they go out at night.

As I let him out the door, he paused and looked at me over his shoulder. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then, he trotted into the darkness.

From that streamed the music for today. Thinking of Papi’s words, my mind connected with a nineteen sixty-eight Simon and Garfunkel hit. “Mrs Robinson” was on the album “Bookends,” but is probably best known for its inclusion in the movie, “The Graduate.” When Papi told me, “I’ll be back,” I started singing, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.”

I wonder at what age people ask, “What movie? What song? Who is Simon and Garfunkel? Who is Joe DiMaggio? Who is Papi? Is he the Ginger Blade?”

Well, they can all just go google themselves.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I thought, “Tuesday,” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ballad, “Tuesday’s Gone,” streamed in from their first album, released in nineteen seventy-three.

It’s a relaxing, reflective song. I was in my last year of high school when I first heard it. It feels like a song that’s right for going into your final year. After a final year of anything, everything is changed, which is the sentiment I infer from “Tuesday’s Gone.”

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The Wayback Machine began streaming another relic of a song to me. This one blasted me from the early 70s. I’ve found that when my writing sessions are going strong, my song list shifts into that period. It wasn’t my happiest time, so I don’t know why I stream that era’s music.

Here’s those synthetic progressive rock masters, Emerson, Lake and Palmer – ELP – with, “Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends.”

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Friday’s Theme Music

Boy, do I remember first hearing this song.

Nineteen sixty-nine, thirteen years old. The Rolling Stones were one of the hottest, biggest rock groups around. And this song, “Gimme Shelter,” stopped me with its opening. Haunting, arresting, it gave me pause to hear what was going to come next, revealing intense, moody, and angry lyrics.

Just like nineteen sixty-nine.

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Thursday’s Theme Song

You know, when you keep your hopes alive, you keep believing, a change is going to come. Just today and tomorrow, and it’s the weekend, if that means anything to you. Fall is here in the Pacific Northwest, and winter is coming. Twenty-seventeen has built up its speed, and there’s every evidence it’s going to keep accelerating until it crashes into twenty-eighteen. Time flies; our lives fly. And we keep hoping for change.

I didn’t hear this song until long after its release. Someone covered it; I don’t know who. I didn’t know the song, and long after I first heard it, when the net finally come to be, I remembered it, bit by bit, and looked for it. Here it is, Sam Cooke, with “A Change Is Gonna Come, from nineteen-sixty-four. You gotta believe it, if you’re going to persevere.

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