Fixing the cats and mumbling to the coffee this morning, I streamed remembered dreams and pondered forgotten songs. The morass cleared after I ate some kibble and gave the cats some coffee. Losing its turbidity (a word of which I’m quite fond), the stream drew down into Joe Walsh with “All Night Long”, from Urban Cowboy, 1980.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Reading the news yesterday and today, I was shaking my head, partially laughing while crying. You know, it was the same old story.
That led to me streaming Aerosmith.
It’s the same old story
Same old song and dance, my friend
It’s the same old story
Same old story
Same old song and dance
It was an easy song to identify with when I was a teenager and the song was released. When you asked questions, you often heard, “That’s just how it is. That’s how it goes.” It was always the same old song and dance, no matter what you were asked.
It’s a song and dance I’m getting tired of now with politics. It’s always one thing or another. Back in the military world, you tired of hearing you must do more with less — same old song and dance. Hurry up and wait — same old song and dance. In the corporate world, it became doing more with less, and then cut expenses and increase profits, or we can’t give you a bonus or pay raise, little boy, while they spread some B.S. about us being a family, or a team, and how much they care. Same old song and dance.
“Same Old Song and Dance”. Only the voices change.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
I started streaming this song today, and then started flipping between various versions that I knew.
“Route 66” by Bobby Troup seems to capture or convey something elemental that people like to sing. He wrote the song while driving cross-country with his wife. His lyrics are the foundations for multiple interpretations, from Nat King Cole to John Mayer, with a chunk of people in between. I happened to start with the Depeche Mode cover today, and then popped into the Mayer version before jumping back to Nat King Cole and then then the Stones. It’s intriguing how each performer adjusts it to their style and era of music. As fascinating as all of that, Route 66 features powerfully in the Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Enjoy them all, a celebration of a classic road and a classic song, “Route 66”, about a road that barely still exists.
Nat King Cole
Bobby Troup – the composer.
Chuck Berry
The Stones
Depeche Mode
John Mayer
Tuesday’s Theme Music
As I piddled about this morning, I compiled a mental list of stuff that I wanted slash comma needed or should do. “It’s been a while,” I kept thinking, responding to these things, and then, was like, oh, yeah. “It’s Been Awhile”. Staind. What year?
That required a neuron convention to decide. I was certain that it was 2001, based on how and where I remembered hearing the song, but it seemed like last week, pushing me to question my results, forcing me onto the innertubes to confirm, yep, 2001.
Although I was pleased to recall the correct year, I was then left baffled with, what was I about to do? Too bad I couldn’t hit the innertubes to remember that.
Monday’s Theme Music
Today’s theme music comes via my cat, Boo. Boo is a large black cat with a minute white triangle on his chest and two long, white whiskers. Tailless, he came to us as a stray few years ago. We tried to find his people but failed, so he became part of the household. Although big and smart, Boo has issues, and it’s clear that someone mistreated him.
So, I was singing to him last night as I stroked his head and back, “Say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud.” That brought to mind the James Brown song from 1968, of course. Hell, it’s the title.
James Brown’s song is a powerful and affirmative statement of identity and clarity. I used to get goosebumps when I heard a large group of blacks singing it and clapping to the beat. It was amazing to witness.
Look a’here, some people say we got a lot of malice
Some say it’s a lotta nerve
I say we won’t quit moving
Til we get what we deserve
We’ve been buked and we’ve been scourned
We’ve been treated bad, talked about
As just as sure as you’re born
But just as sure as it take
Two eyes to make a pair, huh
Brother, we can’t quit until we get our share
h/t to A-ZLyrics.com
Here’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)”.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Today’s theme music is “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right”. Humming along with it as it flowed through my stream this morning during the routines, I thought about the song’s complex, grown-up nature.
I was sixteen when the song was released in 1972 and going through the standard processes involving discovering love and sex. Little did I know how complicated it could all be. The big lie still held about finding someone and falling in love, marrying for laugh, and growing old together. Big cracks were appearing in the big lie. Love and sex, as well as gender identity and sexual orientation are all more complicated than the big lie’s straightforward depiction. Then religion society gets involved – a black man and a white woman? Social norms add new pressures and dimensions.
That’s behind the song. He’s in love with another woman, having an affair and cheating on his wife. And the woman is having an affair with a married man. Both of those are taboo. The man understands that he has commitments. Needs change.
I’m not trying to defend him so much as think about how complicated love, sex, society, marriage and life can be. It’s not as clean and simple as the big lie leads us to believe.
Am I wrong to fall so deeply in love with you
Knowing I got a wife and two little children
Depending on me too
And am I wrong to hunger
for the gentleness of your touch
knowing I got somebody else at home
who needs me just as much
And are you wrong to fall in love
With a married man
And am I wrong trying to hold on
To the best thing I ever had
h/t to songfacts.com
Of course, the other part of this is what it would do to his wife if she discovered his betrayal, and what could result from that, nor what the guilt can do to him and his thinking and psyche.
Many performers and groups have covered this R&B classic, but that original voice and music is seared into my brain. Luther Ingram didn’t write it, but he delivered the sound.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Today’s song blasted out of my dreams and into my thinking stream. The dreams were wild, all good things that made me laugh or stand tall as a conquering hero. Nothing undermining, and no anxiety. Great stuff.
So why did this 1985 ballad emerge from that dreamland? I think “Broken Wings” fits it well. Like the dream ended and this was the song that played for me as the credits rolled. It was cool.
BTW, I’d never seen the video until I checked it out today. I was in Egypt, living in a tent when the song was released, part of whirlwind year that had me in stationed in South Carolina, but visiting Jordan, Guam, Korea, New Jersey, Spain, and Egypt. Interesting year.
Here’s Mr. Mister.
Friday’s Theme Music
Freddies dead
That’s what I said
Let the man rap a plan said he’d see him home
But his hope was a rope and he should’ve known
It’s hard to understand
There was love in this man
I’m sure all would agree
That his misery was his woman and things
Now Freddie’s dead
That’s what I said
Read more: Curtis Mayfield – Freddie’s Dead Lyrics | MetroLyrics
I was reading about another unarmed black man killed by another white man with a gun. In this case, the black man was killed by a Walgreen’s security officer as he was walking away, shot in the back, after the two exchanged words several times.
Reading about the man’s death as the holidays are fading and the decorations are taken down and put away inspired weariness about change’s creeping nature and questions of why so many others seem eager to kill someone because they’re a different color, or the things they said. Growing up in 1960s America, race riots and violence were a nightly news staple. I keep hoping for peace, equality, and justice.
From all that, I began streaming Curtis Mayfield, “Freddie’s Dead” (1972).
Thursday’s Theme Music
As I’ve thought about what was happening and where I’ve decided to go, Peter Gabriel’s song, “Solsbury Hill” (1977) came to me. The song is about making decisions, taking risks, and changing, coming about when he left Genesis, the group he’d helped begin almost a decade before, to begin a solo career.
Many of the versus reflected his uncertainty about the decision.
To keep in silence I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut
Turning water into wine
Open doors would soon be shut
So I went from day to day
Though my life was in a rut
‘Til I thought of what I’d say
Which connection I should cut
Enjoy.
Monday’s Theme Music
A simple song today, streaming an old favorite. This came out in ’72, when I was just getting my driver’s license, still in high school, and living with dad. Don’t know what kicked it into the stream this morning, but I’ve always liked its sound and energy.
Let’s enjoy some Led Zeppelin with “Rock and Roll”. Rock out 2018, rock in 2019.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 