I awoke with a Pearl Jam/Foreigner/Yes medley bubbling through my stream, with “Alive”, “Long, Long Way from Home”, and “Roundabout” dominating. With a mental throw of some imaginary dice, “Roundabout”, Yes’ 1972 hit, was selected.
Many fond memories are associated with “Roundabout” for me, and they’re mostly related to art. I loved painting and drawing when I was young, something that I continued to do into my late twenties, playing with paints and styles. I typically put music on, and then went to town. Regular favorites cropped up. In the early days, my music was on vinyl. I had an open reel system, so I recorded a painting tape. Multiple Yes songs made it to the tape. Looking back, I realize that progressive-rock and blues dominated it.
The late David Bowie, one of my favorite performers (but there’s so many out there, really) and a person who brought a lot of music and entertainment into my life through lo’ these many years (but again, there are many many out there, and thanks to you all), occupies the stream today. I posted once before about having Bowie on shuffle in my head in the morning. Today, I’m going with “Suffragette City” (1972). I like it’s simple rock and roll stylings. Feel free to sing along, if you know the words. I won’t mind.
It’s gonna be a hot one out there today, with warnings from the weather services to expect high temps between one hundred and one hundred ten degrees. Yet, the music in my stream is Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble doing “Texas Flood”. Then the oh moment arrived: he died in a plane crash on August 27, 1990.
Guess I remain in an introspective mood. Childhood rock spills into my stream, coloring reflections and expectations, although today’s choice came out during my childhood’s end.
Today’s theme music, by Lou Reed, was another vinyl record that was played and worn down until it was too distorted to appreciate. It’d be hard to explain to people who only experience digital music how the vinyl could become warp, or the static that you sometimes heard through songs.
This album, Rock n Roll Animal, was one of my favorites in 1974, lasting through my high school senior year. I stopped listening when I joined the military and went away. Like many, my favorite song off that album was “Sweet Jane”. The guitar work on the extended entry, and then the stinging, fast high note work later, epitomized the emerging rock sound for me as much as Eric Clapton’s work with Cream. Lou Reed’s vocals often reminded me of Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger later, as he often delivered this broad, inflected flatness that seemed like a vocal shrug.
We went to a spotlight performance the other night. As an elderly community of retired professionals in their sixties to nineties thrive around here, performances are often geared toward their preferences and memories. The spotlight performances are among those, featuring music from 1960s era “girl-bands”, the Motown sound, the Eagles, and the current offering focusing on the Mamas and Papas. They’re a lot of fun but they fire up neurons from that era, as more of that period’s music flooded my stream this morning.
“Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire was playing as irritation with our current government sent me into new spasms of frustration. Then along came a song by a group called Thunderclap Newman has been on loop. I always liked the name, Thunderclap Newman. Goes right up there with Moby Grape, Psychedelic Furs and Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Thunderclap Newman’s song, “Something in the Air” is streaming in my head. Word association started it. First, “Eve of Destruction” lyrics bobbed along the stream:
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
Ah, the rhyming. But the song’s sentiment plays as true for 2019 as it did for 1965 regarding governments’ ineptitude, human respect, frustration at the pace of change, and constant war. We stay on the eve of destruction, don’t we?
I always enjoyed Newman’s piano solo in this song. I have a vivid memory of smoking hash and listening to this song again and again when I was sixteen and my Dad was away.
So, that’s my Sunday theme music, Thunderclap’s 1969 song, “Something in the Air”.
Ever get up and feel like your day already feels like a genre of music? Perhaps you have swing or a big band sound reverberating through your soul. Maybe disco is moving your hips, or soul is talking to your lips.
It’s a hard rock morning for me. My poor spouse’s right shoulder gave her sudden issues last night, a problem continuing today. I had a first impulse to say, “She did something to her shoulder,” but as you age, you realize that you often don’t do something to your body; genetics or a developing weakness or something just says, “Time to pull the cord,” and goes out.
That was gestating in my mind’s background noise as its forecourt punted reminders and prioritized errands and activities. Some actions were rejected as too late; they’d need to wait another day.
That provided a niche in the mindstream for Def Leppard to begin their hard-rock ballad, “Too Late for Love” (1983). 1983 was part of my Okinawa years. We arrived there in 1981 and stayed until the end of 1984. Two years were spent in the United States, and then it was off to Europe. We came back from there in 1991.
Thinking of symbiotic relationships and current politics lured the 1986 AC/DC song into my stream this morning, “Who Made Who”. That’s always the question, innit, as relationships and people morph under the pressures and stresses of who they are and who they want to be versus how they respond and re-balance. Add to it the ever-shifting windows of what we see in ourselves and others, and what others see in us, and it becomes a real pickle, to use some fancy phrasing.
Sit back, crank it up, bang your head, and relax. You’ve survived another week…so far…
It seems like a surprising twist, but it probably isn’t. It’s probably one of those oft-experienced, universally known, but rarely mentioned phenomena of life. I will mention it in passing because it strikes me now.
Every night brings something different that I miss from the past. Tonight brings memories of sitting around, listening to music with my friends. I’m listening to some old live Clapton and remembering times and places, but it’s such a solo act.
Yet…this is how it is for most of us. We slip from childhood to our teenage years, to first loves and first jobs, to relationships and marriage, and then find ourselves looking back, remembering, think, and wondering.
I guess it’s not that surprising, or a twist, after all.
Today’s song popped into my stream as I was walking and remembering my dreams. It’s a fitting rebellion song for teenagers, husbands, wives, dejected voters…whatever.
Dredged up from 1984, here’s Twisted Sister with “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. Sing out, dance out, flex, break out.
Michael Seidel, writer 