Simple song for today, an old one. Aren’t all the good ones now old? Yeah, some new stuff is good. Depends on my mood.
Today my mood found me thinking about friends and some shit they’ve endured. It seems like Albert King’s melody, “Born Under A Bad Sign”, was written just for them. I won’t go into their details. You probably know some people who just can’t seem to catch that break, or maybe it’s you who can relate.
Great song, made even better when Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughn, two greats, perform it together in Canada in 1983. Sit back, enjoy some blues, and let your energy fly.
Why not, right? He’s on many people’s mind. Eddie Van Halen, an amazing musician who focused on guitars, passed away this week. He was sixty-five, one year older than me.
He’s a contemporary, then. But he’s that contemporary who took the dreams and applied hard work and persistence, added to a huge well of talent, and made the big time.
Van Halen the group broke onto the radio music world where I resided in 1977. By then, I was twenty-one. Eddie was twenty-two. His songs — because, let’s face it, Eddie Van Halen was the primary force in that group, the largest defining difference with what he did with a guitar — spread across the AM and FM bandwidths, into MTV and movies, and across our world and lives.
It’s not a great reveal that Van Halen has provided the theme music for many days. Technology will keep Van Halen fresh and available to us, even if Eddie has passed away. Of all the songs available, I chose “Right Now” from 1992.
Candlebox’s 1993 tune, “Far Away”, is with me today. I’m in a reflective mood, so the song fits. It’s all about the growing distance between friends.
The song came out in 1993. I was in the military then, stationed at Onizuka Air Base, Sunnyvale, California, right off of highway 101. I worked in a building called the Blue Cube. I’ve been thinking about all the people I worked with there. I’m friends with some on Facebook, and we keep up with one another. Others have veered far right politically, so we’ve distanced ourselves from each other. A few have died. Others have fallen off the map. None, that I know, live in the same place, i.e., Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, etc. All have left that area.
Life is poignant with change, isn’t it? Let me sip my coffee, look out the window (the smoke is back; air quality has been hazardous for the last three days), and speculate.
This song seemed everywhere for a while, but it’s one of those that’s been put on the bottom of the pile. It doesn’t seem to get much air play these days. Did its mix of acoustic and electric guitars not age well?
“Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” by Styx rose through my mind’s layers as I read political news from the right about how great Trump is. Absolutely everything, from this young man’s point of view, was brilliant. Trump, to him, is powerful and intelligent, returning the United States to a position of international prestige and influence.
COVID-19? Why, that’s overhyped, as Trump just proved, in the young (his claim – I don’t know how old he is, just his claims) right-winger’s mind. No worse than the flu and already going away. No, the greatest threat to America comes from “libtards” and their willingness to give everything away (he believes “Obama destroyed America and the economy”). Further, Trump’s recent sickness was really just a cover for him to rise up and finally vanquish the Dems and “libtards”.
Okay.
So, yes, reading him, I thought, “You are really fooling yourself.” I can’t say that he’s under a rock; no, he’s fooling himself with his conviction that everything on the “lamestream media” is fake news. I don’t understand how they — these right-wingers who insist everything is fake news — receives the real news. That’s an opaque process. So, I reiterate, he’s fooling himself.
Which brings me back to Styx’s 1978 song, “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” from theiralbum, The Grand Illusion. For my part, I think Trump’s claims about what he’s done is just grand illusion. Maybe it’s just me fooling myself.
Three songs have been jumping in and out of my attention stream during the preceding twelve hours. You may have heard of them: “Purple Rain” by Prince, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart, and “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summers. All were pop hits in their respective years, 1984, 1978, and 1979.
Each had a different reason for being in my head. “Purple Rain” was kicked into mind by a photo of Jacaranda trees in South Africa on Facebook. Purple dominated in beautiful fashion, stirring thoughts of Prince’s song. It’s a glorious, hopeful song from my perspective.
“Hot Stuff” came about from my spicy dinner burrito. I bit into something and my taste buds squeaked, “Hot stuff.” The song then gained traction from its use in the 1997 movie, The Fully Monty”. Four of the main characters are in line in the unemployment office during a low point in the movie. The song comes as background music, and they grudgingly start moving and dancing to it.
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” just popped into my head, though. A spoof on the disco scene, the song was ubiquitous that year, heard on television and radio, a staple in humor from people on the streets to late night comedians.
While three strong choices are there as amusement for my head and theme song for the day, “Purple Rain” wins.
Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changin’ It’s time we all reach out for something new That means you too You say you want a leader but you can’t seem to make up your mind And I think you better close it and let me guide you to the purple rain
I owe cats – natch – for this. The little beasts were unrelenting in requests for individual attention this morning. Pets and scratches were issued, food was given, words were whispered, and appeasement achieved. But at one point, as impatience was thinning — wanted to get on with writing, you know? — I told one floof, you’re running me ragged today.
That cracked open the song door. In sprang Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble’s 1992 rockified cover of Sonny James’ blues song, “Empty Arms”.
I’d been writing and reading yesterday. Returning to this world was like being a ball and having all my air slowly released. I felt disconnected and out of sync, and wanted to return to the book worlds.
There were things to do. Eating, errands, housework. When I drift off into the writing/reading world like this, my wife seems to grow annoyed. I suspect she wants me to do more around the house, be more social, talk more. This is how she defines humans and husbands, so I end up being short on both scales. I’m happy but she’s resentful. Or so it feels.
A song from my youth answered my thoughts. “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds came out in 1966. I was ten. Its psychedelic sound appealed to me back then. So did the lyrics, which come into play with my feelings.
I sat down at my computer without any idea of what today’s music was to be. A Scorpions’ song, “Winds of Change” drifted through my dreams but I just did it a few weeks (or months) ago and didn’t want a repeat. Well, not so soon.
When I put hand to computer to enter password, The Tubes 1983 song, “She’s A Beauty” began. I believe I used it as a theme song several years ago. Couldn’t confirm that in a casual search, so here it is, a past blast about talking to a naked girl in a booth.
Have a great day, and please wear your mask and distance. Cheers
I was riding a good cycle yesterday — write, read, exercise, check news, do other net things, play games, do chores, repeat. I’m reading Red Rising, an entertaining science fiction book while I navigate writing my own novel. With both hands functioning, I’ll write and edit six to seven pages a day, but the recovering left hand tires easily.
As always, reading — especially fiction — stimulates my writing. Also, my to-read list is piling up. After this is finished, I have Sansom’s Tombland awaiting on loan from the library, and Who Fears Death, and a stack of others.
Chores are always there, kitchen cleaning, vacuuming. We have three cats, males, who seem to be amazingly dirty, dragging bits of the outside in and gifting us a hairball.
Then news. Elections. Debates. COVID-19. Wildfires. Weather. Local issues. We’re mulling a move from the area, so we check places on line and think about the challenge of moving. A constant flow of information to absorb is flowing through the day.
In the middle of this, my brain decided to stream, “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox Twenty from 2000. Not unusual; my brain often likes to distract me with remembered news, music, or historic facts. Sometimes the roots to the why can be traced, or they’re readily apparent.
Not so, this time. Worse, it graduated from being a casual inner streaming distraction to a full-blown earworm. After burrowing in, it quieted for the night and then resumed this morning.
Urgent action required, I’m sharing “If You’re Gone” about Rob Thomas meeting his future wife with you to compel it to leave my head. It’s worked in the past.
Fresh out of 1998 and through my mental stream (it’s almost like I’m still there — and maybe I am, given how reality might work) came the New Radicals and “You Get What You Give”.
All of it was triggered by thought. They had an interesting line at the beginning, “Wake up, kids, we’ve got the dreamers’ disease.” Hey, I was trying to wake up (and a cat was putting paw to face to help). I feel like most writers have the dreamers disease (it depends on your definition, doesn’t it?). No, I’m not defining it. Define it yourselves, you lazy sods.
Many people remember the song for later lines. As an anti-corporate, anti-conforming song, the last lines are delivered in a different manner from the previous, calls out some celebrities as fakes, and threatens them. Kind of funny, but about as bogus as the stuff that they’re protesting, innit?
I also remember the song for other parts, like, “First we run, then we laugh ’til we cry.” I’ve had those kind of times, when silliness sweeps you up and carry you off on a sea of endorphins.
Michael Seidel, writer 