My spouse was busy making Christmas crockpot candy, which involves melting a lot of almond bark and chocolate together with some nuts, and then spooning it out into balls and letting it cool.
Christmas music was on, but this was a Christmas blues album. We have it on a CD that we picked up for a dollar about twenty years ago. The album was probably recorded in the sixties. It hasn’t been remastered.
Anyway, that CD ended, and a Motown Christmas album was launched. A CD of Motown hits from 1971 followed. A twelve minute version of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” by the the Temptations stayed in my stream overnight.
What can I say? It’s great music, cool music, telling a story through voice, lyrics, and instruments.
Don’t know why I’m streaming today’s music. Are you surprised? Shocked, I am, totally shocked.
Anyway, today’s theme music was a pop hit that came to be part of my life music stream via my sister. I was nine when this song was a hit. Two years older, my sister was a popster and a big fan of the forty-fives. The Dave Clark Five were a Brit invasion pop group. Sis loved them. No surprise, then, that their 1965 hit “Over and Over”, has escaped my brain’s shields and entered my stream.
What’s perhaps more surprising is how little I hear this song on the radio. After remembering it, I looked the group up on that Internet. There, through Wikipedia, I discovered the Dave Clark Five had a run of hits, disbanded in 1970, and were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
Love the video’s dancing display. Ah, those were the days, hey?
With another throwback via the wayback stream, I found myself listening to the Elvis Presley’s biggest-selling single, “It’s Now or Never”.
The song was released in 1960, according to Wikipedia. I would have been four, according to the math. It being Elvis, I know the song well through pop saturation, where the mantra is, if a little bit is good, massive amounts are fantastic.
Why is it streaming today? Sometimes there’s a direct causal stream identified, but that’s not today. I was going about, making plans for eating, dressing, and rushing out to walk and write. I think I may have thought, I gotta get going, it’s now or never, and there you have it, a wayback stream opened.
I discovered myself humming “An Old Fashioned Love Song” (1971) performed by Three Dog Night this morning. The song came out in 1971. Cannae tell ya’ where it came from or what provoked the stream to pick it up and deliver it to my brain. Didn’t relate to anything that I dreamed last night.
The song didn’t stay with me long today, fading as I walked, but I enjoyed the visit and thought I’d share it with thee. Paul Williams wrote it. It was from a time when he wrote several romantic songs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that others, like Helen Reddy and The Carpenters, had as hit records.
More weather dictated theme music. I’m planning to dress, looking out the window, checking the temperature and forecast. Hey, fifty-one, windy as hell, but sunny. So, I’ll be walking in sunshine.
It was an easy jump in the stream to Katrina and the Waves and “Walking On Sunshine” (1985).
I was humming this song to myself today. Actions are connected to thoughts and thoughts are connected to memories, and memories yield songs. I was quoting Popeye, “I yam what I yam”, which introduced thoughts about changing, providing the opportunity for a song to stream in:
But I’m here in my mould, I am here in my mould
And I’m a million different people from one day to the next
I can’t change my mould, no, no, no, no, no
I was living in Mountain View and working for PAS in Palo Alto when the song came out in 1997. Two years later, another company acquired PAS. My new boss, the director of marketing, came out on a meet and greet. I drove him to a restaurant. This song was playing in the car, and he said, “I love this song.” Music became our bond.
He was a good guy to work for, a person I wouldn’t hesitate to work for again.
I can’t trace the roots of why I’m streaming this song today. Didn’t have the record, or any of this group’s albums. I knew the song came out sometime in the mid to late 1970s, but had to look it up to find it.
The airways often shaped the musical landscape then, with television giving musical groups and their hits a step up via Soul Train, American Bandstand, and a few other shows like that. FM stereo was growing in popularity, with multiple stations dedicated to rock, soul, R&B, and country genres going on air. Once songs began getting air time, they would move up the charts, gain more air time. Suddenly they were in your ears.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. When I first started driving in 1974, our area had three FM stations. You’d punch the buttons and move around between them. I don’t punch buttons now, but gently tap them to move ‘tween stations, or use my thumb on a rocker button my steering wheel to advance to the next setting. I have five FM stations that I prefer in my area, but I also play satellite FM. The satellite capability offers about a zillion stations, but I listen to eight primary music stations when I’m drivin’ ’round town.
This song, “Baby Come Back” (1977) by Player, came to me by radio saturation. The song reminds me of Hall & Oates. I was stationed in the Philippines when it was released. We only had one station, the Armed Forces Network Philippines (AFN-P). It’s an okay song, doesn’t stir me in any particular direction, but it’s part of my memoryscape.
With an icy wind slicing up my cheeks, I thought about living by the ocean. The ocean is always warm in my mind, even though I have experience with being at the ocean and running from arctic blasts. I guess it’s my reality that it’s not cold when you’re living by the ocean. Naw, just looking for a change from the mountains around me where icy wintry fingers are slowly clenching around it, and thought, beach! Sun! Warmth!
Which prompted the stream to deliver Everclear. You know, “We can live beside the ocean.” Except then, it being Everclear, “Santa Monica” (1995) becomes a bit dark with sparks of hope and longing for havens where we live unencumbered by all the shit wrapping its tentacles around us.
Today’s song came via the weather. Our forecast for today said it will be sunny but a drizzle was falling, so, you know, I was a mite skeptical. When sunshine finally broke through, so did a Donovan song, “Sunshine Superman” (1966).
I enjoy this video. Television, music, and entertainment all seemed simpler, didn’t it?
Piddling through the morning and ruminating about what to do today and this week, I drifted into channels that went, “Life. It’s just a game we play.”
That naturally activated certain cells. Next thing that I know, I’m streaming Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” (1973) because of that one set of lines go, “Show and tell. Just a game I play when I want to say, I love you.”
It’s another song from that era whose every note is familiar. Reflecting on it as I walked to write, I realize that the song makes me nostalgic for that period in a way that other songs don’t. Perhaps it’s the words and their sentiments, and the way that Al Wilson delivers them. It could be the chilly and windy weather stirring up memory flashes of being in Penn Hills, PA, when the song was popular. The sky’s color out here today harkens back to memories of snow warnings.
We don’t have snow warnings here today, but some rain is forecast. As usual, untangling the threads of memories and impressions are too much. I’ll just live with the song and nostalgia.
Michael Seidel, writer 