Category: memories

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music, “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum (1993), came from writing thoughts about the current novel in progress, April Showers 1921. As the story fleshes out more, becoming more substantial, I entertain different scenarios about what could happen, reactions and twists, and what could be said. One idea was that a person was thought to have runaway.

The novel’s protagonists are all teenagers. As I thought about their situation, my stream took a turn toward runaway children and their existence. That brought out today’s song.  Images and details about runaways are often featured in their videos and during Soul Asylum’s performances of this song.

Sadly, not all children were actually runaways. The missing aren’t always hiding. Sometimes, they’ve been hidden.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

It’s another feline inspired theme-music day. I petted Tucker and fed him, then fed the others, and then started my coffee and breakfast. Tucker, though, stayed with me, standing by me wherever I want. I finally asked him, “What’s up? Is this stand-by-you day?”

So, for Tucker, here’s the Pretenders with their 1994 song, “I’ll Stand by You”. Not that he was looking sad, or had any tears in his eyes. Quite the opposite, he was tail-up.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s song started streaming when I awoke and thought, “Ah, heart is still beating.” I was amusing myself, and not worried about health.

From that, though, came Huey Lewis and the News, and “The Heart of Rock & Roll” (1984). I’m not a fan of the band or the song, but one, I had friends who were (and presumably, still are) fans, and their songs proliferated on Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) FM stations when I was in Asia and Europe.

Now it’s stuck in my head. I’m passing it on to you. You can thank me when you see me. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Once again, a dream contributed the theme music’s selection. The dream is too scattered to remember. It had a lot of candles, blowing trees, thunder, dark clouds, running and shouting, reminding me of some drug-induced psychedelic adventure, sort of Alice in Wonderland is blended with Bladerunner. 

The dream was difficult to remember, reminding me in my efforts of web pages that won’t correctly load, incomplete and chaotic, but done at a frenetic pace. The pace brought “Welcome to the Jungle”, G N’ R, into my stream as I examined what was remembered.

I was stationed and living in Germany when “Welcome to the Jungle” (1987) was released. We worked in an old, brick, two-storied building right by the flightline. Photographs of the building with German zeppelins docked next to it were on the building’s walls. I found one of the photographs on line and posted it here. That’s the little building, under the zeppelin’s tail.

RM Zeppelin

I worked upstairs in a vault. My small ops center served as the control point for the vault. Beyond my ops center was the crew briefing room and our intelligence section. As there were no windows and things like radios weren’t permitted in the vault, we all went into the other three upstairs offices when there was down time. Several of us came together and bought a boom box so we could play music and hear the news. Guns N’ Roses was a hard rock staple of the time, getting boomed into the upstairs hallway while we pursued our mission.

I still have the boom box.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is from 1984, when Madonna was a new phenom.

I started streaming it because of a dream. In the dream, people were constantly chastising me for crossing the border, or crossing the lines, or crossing the borderlines. At first, I responded with confusion, telling them, I didn’t see, or, I didn’t know. Sometimes I apologized because they were upset. But as I grasped what they meant about borders and lines, I realized that they were the offensive ones with their false conformity-based or racially/sexually biased borders. As I encountered more people, I discovered more ridiculous borders and demands to recognize and accept the borders. That all pissed me off because their borders were predicated on childish fears and outlandish ideas. I was prompted to declare that I was against their borders, and I was going to cross them. That led to a huge, ugly, hostile confrontation.

So, awakening and thinking about the dream, I streamed a few things involving borders, like Taco Bell’s old commercial line, “Run for the border.” I then streamed a little CCR, “Better run through the jungle, and don’t look back to see.” But then, out of the morass came Madonna’s “Borderline”, which stayed and soothed.

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Smoke

I smell a pipe and remember Dad.

Cigars remind me of my smoking fad.

Mother dear arises with sights of Salems and Kools.

Pall Malls and Marlboros put me in the office with chain-smoking fools.

But marijuana rolls me back in time

to my youth, when a hazy high was sublime.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s choice was one of several songs in my morning stream (which kinda sounds like something I was peeing out, doesn’t it?). I owe it’s stream presence to a cat, specifically the Ginger Prince, a.k.a. Meep, alias Papi, but also sometimes called the Blade. The youngest of our cats, he still enjoys roaming at night. The house quickly bores him, so he wants out. Then, it’s cold and raining, so he wants in. But it’s boring in the house, so he wants out. But it’s cold and raining, so he wants in. And always, as he’s going in and out, he’s asking me, “What are you doing? Want to play?”

Either way, in or out, he spends the day sleeping, bathing, eating, with a little playing on the side, but he likes the night life better.

From 1979, here are The Cars with “Let’s Go”.

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Friday’s Theme Music

I always liked this band’s vocals and harmonies on this song, not so interested in the synthesizers. Not anything against synths; I enjoy them with Yes and Kansas, and other rock bands. Part of it is that I think the opening is just too long, becoming a little tedious.

Anyway, this morning found me streaming “Never Been Any Reason” by Head East from 1975. But remembering a time when I was young and the present sucked and the future looked depressing brought the song into my stream. Made it through that time, you know, obs, head down, plow through, just hold on and take one step at a time, just breathe, all that.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music comes from the “What the hell was that?” file. It’s a general file in my head. The major category is “What the hell?” Besides the mystified “What the hell was that?” sub-category, there’s “What the hell did he/she just say?”, “What the hell did he/she just do?”, and the ever-popular, “What the hell was I going to do/get/say?”.

The song’s wild musical break began streaming in my mind this morning but I can’t identify a trigger. The song was released in 1966, but I began aware of it later, hearing it on my AM/FM alarm clock a few years later. So different, it immediately went into the “What the hell was that file?” It then took a few years to determine what it was, and hear it fully. Hearing if fully, the Yardbirds and Beach Boys inspirations become clear.

Judge for yourself. Here’s “Psychotic Reaction” by Count Five, in black and white.

 

 

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