Category: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

My dreams of late are circling a depressing track of not being seen, not being heard, confused identity, missed opportunities… I suspect it’s a lack of proper external stimulation, beyond vicariously encountered through the net and television. Although I often live like a hermit — it’s a function of who I am — I do enjoy and need some social stimulation. I’m otherwise trapped in my own woods, and the trees close in.

The first song slipping into my conscious stream today was “I Wanna Be Around”. This sixties pop music staple inundated television and radio throughout my early youth. Versions by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Aretha Franklin, and others drifted through. Most of my fixation was on the lines, “I wanna be around to see how he does it, when he breaks your heart to bits. Let’s see if the puzzle fits so fine.”

After playing that loop out, M

Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” (1985) entered the stream. I thought it a better theme song for today.

Take these broken wings
And learn to fly again, learn to live so free
When we hear the voices sing
The book of love will open up and let us in

h/t to Genius.com

Yes, it’s a repeat — I may have done it twice before — but it suits my rutty mood. Hope your days and world is going better. Please wear a mask. Survive. Endure. Thrive.

Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I use the phrase “Check it out,” often. Used it all of my life. We used it in the military, along with variations like, “Check this out.”

‘Check it out’ always meant, “Hey, look at this,” or “Notice this,” because it’s something special. In our house most recently, it’s been, “Check it out,” regarding something stupid Trump said/did, but also wildlife wandering through the yard — bucks in the day, skunks at night. Check it out.

My friend, a retired doctor, has more varied wildlife at his place. Although just a mile away, it seems further. He sends video of wildlife caught via a trail cam. Check it out, says his email subject line, and it’s a video two cubs nursing on mama bear a yard away from the camera. Or it’s a big bear scratching his back on a pine, another bear taking shelter from a rainstorm. Once in a while, it’s a cougar or fox taking a stroll.

John Cougar, who became John Cougar Mellencamp, who became John Mellencamp (the name he was given at birth), made a song of it in 1987. I saw him perform it in a soccer stadium in Germany the next year, a good show.

So, check it out.

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Secretly

The sun is beating on my head through my hat. I’m just the help. It’s a role that I enjoy.

Some.

“Boss me around, baby,” I do NOT say. I stay mute, gloves on hands, left arm in its removable brace, hoe nearby, spade in hand.

My wife is the master, planting her garlic for winter. She’s serious about her garden. Fresh bulbs had been procured, along with the right soil and fertilizer. Potatoes occupy the usual garlic winter home. A new one is required. “Somewhere in the sun,” she proclaims with steely vigor, looking around.

A song spurts into my head. Oh, hey. Did you happen to —

“We need to move the compost bins,” my wife declares.

We’re in the side yard, where most of the gardening is done. Boo, the backyard panther with a white star on his chest (like he’s sheriff) (guess, that would be a floofriff) moseys along toward us, talking as he comes. One compost bin (previously emptied) is moved to a new location. With this happening, Boo retreats to the backyard He wants nothing to do with work.

I shovel the compost from the full one to the empty one’s new location. The song resumes it secret playing in my head. Oh, hey. Did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world. And if you did, was she crying?

Yes, Charlie Rich is serenading my brain with “The Most Beautiful Girl” as I do as I’m told. (We’re now on breaking up the soil where the garlic is to reside.) I blame my mother for this song. While Charlie Rich’s voice and the accompanying music is coming off vinyl courtesy of Mom’s mohogany Magnavox console stereo, it’s Mom singing along along with Rich who is actually singing in my head. She used to frustrate me by singing this song when I was trying to talk to her about it. It was apparently funny to her. The song came out in 1973. I would turn seventeen that year. I’d left home a year or two before to live with Dad, but would return to Mom for major holidays. Dad, single guy that he was, didn’t do holidays.

Why did Mom sing that song to me? Why was I singing today? These the mind’s mysteries. At least, they’re my mind’s mysteries. I don’t know what goes on in others’ minds. I barely comprehend what’s happening in my own.

“Now I just need to water them.” My wife was finished. I was dismissed.

It was a good day. Time to go wash my wife’s car. Wonder what song will be playing?

Oh, wait, Rose Royce begins their 1976 hot song, “Car Wash”. I was stationed in the Republic of the Philippines when it was out. My good buddy Bopie introduced it to me.

At least this one is task appropriate.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today, we remember the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. While it happened around 5 PM in the SF Bay area, I was over in Japan. Stationed over in Germany just outside of Frankfurt, we were waiting for the World Series to start. That year’s series featured the Oakland A’s and its neighbors across the bay, the SF Giants. That led to nicknames like the Bay Series, the Bridge Series, etc. We were pretty excited in Germany because we were going to be able to watch it live via satellite. That sort of thing was just becoming more common for us in the military. Now, it’s pretty much taken for granted.

The film and report from that earthquake were another mind-blowing reminder of nature’s strength and human fragility. We build these things thinking they’ll be ‘forever’. Nature comes along and knocks them over with a hefty shrug. Watching on television, we saw the baseball stadium shake and said almost as one, “Holy shit.” It’s a military expression commonly used back then.

I ended up stationed in the SF Bay area, arriving in Feb, 1991. We visited Santa Cruz the next year. Its streets and businesses were still recovering from the earthquake. A drizzly day, seeing all the destruction which still remained stilled our spirits. Businesses and people were coping and regrouping.

As I remember that earthquake and those times, I remember songs, too. One of them is “Stand” by R.E.M., a catchy song with silly lyrics. “Stand in the place where you work, think about directions, wonder why you haven’t before.”

It was like, whaaat?

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Friday’s Theme Music

Haunted this morning by the Killers’ 2004 song, “Somebody Told Me”.

Basically, talking ’bout/thinking ’bout the current political environment in the U.S., I concluded with sour cynicism, anything goes in a place like this. And that led to The Killers’ song.

I especially always enjoyed the lines, “Somebody told me, you had a boyfriend, who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year.” It never fails to amuse me.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Cat number two was the first encountered. He began the dance.

Number two is number one in his eyes. We don’t know what he calls himself. We call him Boo. Sometimes he answers to that.

Seeing me slack-jawed with fading dreams moving zombie-esque from bedroom through hall, Boo said, “Mrr.” Mrr, I think, means, “About time,” “Feed me,” “Good morning,” or “Hello.”

He was in a sitting position. Standing, he began singing, “You can go this way, you can go that way.” Thinking he knew which way, he shifted his body that direction to inhibit my passage and bend my will to his.

Feigning left, I slipped right. One cat passed. Not liking it, Boo sang out.

Cat number two, referred to as Tucker (but as adept at ignoring his name as Boo) was sitting just beyond Boo. Responding to Boo’s talking, Tucker said, “I got him.” Standing, he said, “You can go this way, you can go that way,” and moved to cut me off.

A deftly executed double feint was executed by me, an impressive move by a sleep-lusting, coffee-hungering moving catatonic human, though not easily. Tucker is a wily veteran and countered each movement, singing on as he did, “You can go this way, you can go that way, you can go this way, you can go that way.”

This is why Fatboy Slim’s 2001 song, “Weapon of Choice”, is today’s theme music. Naturally, I’ve spooled up the Christopher Walken dance version. It’s a little fun, a repeat, but worthwhile.

Here’s the music. Wear your masks, please.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

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.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Van Halen is on my mind today.

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.

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Friday’s Theme Music

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.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

1978.

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 their album, 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.

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