Today’s song is a natural for the times. I started to add, IMO – in my opinion – but isn’t that redundant? This is my post, so it should be my opinion. Yet, I took the time to writesplain that to you.
Ten Years After released “I’d Love to Change the World” in 1971 as a response to the violence, protests, emerging counter-culture, resistant establishment, and war. Gosh, does any of that have any echos in today’s world? Naw, probably just me.
Like most of TYA’s offerings, the song features some powerful Alvin Lee guitar work, which is always good to hear. Beyond the rock essence of guitar and dream, these lyrics, and how they’re presented in the song, plaintive, accepting, and reflective, spoke to me as a fifteen-year-old when the song came out, but still talks to me as a sixty-three-year-old.
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do.
So I’ll leave it up to you.
I think most of us want to change the world. We also know what to do, but it’s an embattled, relentless, and exhausting process. It seems more so in the Internet era, where lies and bullshit gains instant traction and never seems to die, like the Terminator rising again and again.
I was reading a news article about SoCal high school students – the boy’s water polo team – singing a NAZI song while saluting. That brought to mind the Santayana comments and quotes about history and the past and repeating it because the lessons aren’t learned. We see it as a trend around the world through decreases in environmental protections, compassion, and social injustice while nationalism, isolationism, and white supremacy movements increase. The social actions that took us to the development and use of the first atomic bomb is alive and thriving again. Meanwhile, the environmental protections developed to clean our air and water are being stripped away. It sucks.
Of course, flipping all those over to look at it from other angles. Corporations’ loyalty are usually with shareholders, increasing profits, and improving executive compensation – because they want the best. Many decry regulations because they stand in the way of profits or burden efforts with time and expense. Whole swaths of population struggle with changes and mourn for a different time, beguiled by rosy stories of how it use to be, or are hateful, selfish, and greedy people whose primary concern is for themselves.
Naturally, Steely Dan’s song, “Do It Again” (1972) arose to the occasion. Their song is about personal miscues and problems but the lesson remains the same as for a nation, society, or civilization: if you don’t learn, you’re going to do it again. As they sing in the song, “Wheel turning round and around.”
Then, I think, where do I sit on the spectrum of history, lamenting the swing back while listening to fifty-year-old music? Naturally, I must laugh at the aging fool on his computer…
Two songs competed for the stream this morning. First was Billy Joel’s 1980 song, “You May Be Right”. That came straight out of my reflection in the mirror as I shaved this morning, inspired by the lyrics, “You may be right, I may be crazy.” It went on from there. Quite frankly, with my hair all wild at that point, I looked a bit loony.
But dressed, in the other room, heading out the door, into the stream came Procol Harum with “Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967). I went with the latter for my theme music today because it was one year ago tomorrow that I selected it for my theme music. That coincidence just couldn’t be ignored.
I love the enigmatic words, and the story that they hint about in the song, from the catchphrase, “Her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale,” to “the room was humming harder as the ceiling flew away,” and the reference to Chaucer’s, “the Miller’s Tale.”
Happy day, wherever you be, whatever you’re doing. Cheers.
You ever been asked, “You have too much time on your hands?”
When I worked, the answer was sometimes, “Yep.” Work was so segregated and encapsulated into specific roles and tasks that if I did mine fast, which I frequently did, I’d end up waiting for others with nothing to do. Exasperating. I often spent that time by reading company or government periodicals. Whether that was the military or corporate side, that helped me broaden my outlook, which was always a benefit.
Since I quit working to write full time, I never feel like I have too much time on my hands. My response is more likely to be an incredulous spewing of coffee, beer, or wine, followed by, “Are you kidding me?”
Someone asked yesterday. I didn’t spew – that was just in there for comic effect – but I did laugh and reply, “No.” Thinking about his question later brought up the 1981 Styx song, “Too Much Time on My Hands”. It’d been released just before my wife and I arrived for a four-year military assignment at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. We quite enjoyed that assignment. Thanks to the interesting culture, wonderful friends, educational opportunities, and the ocean, we never felt like we had too much time on our hands.
Today’s was a direct and simple connection between walking, thinking, and my theme music.
Thinking about time, I was walking through some low humidity, ninety degree sunshine. Across the valley was clear from my vantage. It was its typical summer brown, the green baked away, a striking but depressing tableau under a crystal blue sky. With that vision of heat and dryness dancing with memories of wildfires from the last five years, I hoped for rain.
The opening words that Sting sings from “Desert Rose”, a duet with Cheb Mami (2000), rose in voice in my mind.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
It’s a sad situation; a neighbor ran over their cat while parking, the fifth time in my life that a friend or neighbor ran over their cat.
This victim was a cat, but it can happen with children, dogs, and other animals and people. The situation begins with a routine, complacency, and an assumption: “He/she is always there. I expected them to move. They always did.” That assumption is a killer.
His name was Buddy. He was a small, elderly black cat. Probably weighed seven pounds, but had the voice of a lion. He was sweet, trotting over to me for a treat and a scratch when I came out to do yard work or go check the mail.
I wasn’t present when Buddy met his demise. The woman’s three elementary school-age girls were.
The temp was in the nineties. Maybe Buddy was hot or ill, or deeply asleep. Like each of the other four situations, Buddy didn’t move as he usually does.
Such accidents and deaths can be avoided. Don’t assume. Get the visuals. Take the time to confirm the cat’s location. Confirm that he moved.
It’s already happened five times too many to my friends and neighbors during my lifetime. Please learn from Buddy.
Maybe, right. Hard to say. Depends on your age, education, and memory, and what I mean by the peace dividend. Well, I mean the supposed reduction in defense spending that would be seen after the collapse and break up of the U.S.S.R. With that major nuclear threat winding down, the thought was that less money should be spent military spending, allowing more money to be spent on social programs, while taxes were reduced. Thatcher and Bush 41 were said to be behind this progressive idea. They said they were being pragmatic.
Didn’t last long, and the dividend didn’t go far. The U.S continues to increase spending and go to war more and more frequently to address problems.
Conversations with friends last night reminded me of the U.S.S.R.’s fall and the subsequent peace dividend. Back in the early 1990s, in the post-Soviet world, it seems like we were on the cusp of making some significant advances. Some will disagree, but I thought increasing the social net, helping others, recognizing and confirming people’s rights regardless of their sexual preference, gender, skin color, or religion were all strides forward to a better world. Environmental consciousness was increasing. It seemed like America was were trying harder as a nation. Now, to me, it feels like we’re sliding back into the 1930s. Sigh.
I posted about this song, Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now” (1991) in 2017 but without the political realities behind its inspiration. Forgive me for sharing it again, but it seemed right.
A woman on the radio talked about revolution When it’s already passed her by Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about you You know it feels good to be alive
I was alive and I waited, waited I was alive and I waited for this Right here, right now There is no other place I want to be Right here, right now Watching the world wake up from history
I saw the decade in, when it seemed The world could change at the blink of an eye And if anything Then there’s your sign… Of the times
I was alive and I waited, waited I was alive and I waited for this Right here, right now
I was alive and I waited, waited I was alive and I waited for this Right here, right now There is no other place I want to be Right here, right now Watching the world wake up from history
Right here, right now There is no other place I want to be Right here, right now Watching the world wake up from history
Right here, right now There is no other place I want to be Right here, right now Watching the world wake up…
Today’s song entered my stream for unknown reasons and has remained on an endless. (I suspect the word ‘high’ may be the key that let the song in.) Anyway, I need to share it with you to dislodge it. Nothing personal.
Not my particular type of music, in general, there’s nothing wrong with this song. By Tal Bachman, “She’s So High (Above Me)” (and why do I think the record company wanted the ‘Above Me’ added to shift thinking away from drugs?) came out in 1999. I don’t have any Tal Bachman music in the house and known nothing about him except that he’s Randy Bachman’s son.
My head seems to be residing in the 1990s frequently this month. Another nineties staple, Alice in Chains’ song, “Man in the Box” (1991), has appeared in my mental stream.
It happened when I was walking yesterday afternoon. I suspect that it’s the recurrent thoughts/sensations that I often feel trapped in a box coupled with the opening strides of music that prompted the song to enter my stream. I was walking, and the music’s beat and my rhythm matched.
I always considered AIC underrated. After I bought their unplugged album, I told my buddy, “This is a really good album. You should give it a listen.”
He replied, “Dude, it’s Alice in Chains. I mean, no disrespect, but how good could it be?”
Here’s an explosion from the past. One thousand musicians assembled and played Rage Against the Machine’s song, “Killing in the Name” (1992) in Frankfurt. Pretty damn good time for such a song. Repeat after me, “Now do as they told ya. Now do as they told ya.”
Hah. Now the outre:
“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.”
Repeat.
Louder.
LOUDER.
Rage against what’s going on and how the world is twisting. Stop the killing in the name. Insert whatever conclusion you want for the name – hate, nationalism, religion, money… There’s quite a list of absurd reasons for why people kill for you to select from.
Michael Seidel, writer 