Today’s chosen song comes via an Australian TV show on Netflix called Sisters. I remember the song, “Born to Be Alive”, but couldn’t tell you anything about it. Researching it on the net, I found out it’s by Patrick Hernandez, it reached number one on the U.S. Disco Chart, and the song was released in 1978. I was assigned with the military in the Philippines then. The world wasn’t as wired as much as it now is.
It’s a memorable song, though, because the lyrics and choruses are simple, and he enunciates them well.
A week out from election day, 2018, I find myself streaming an old Stevie Wonder song from 1973.
His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty
He spends his life walking the streets of New York City
He’s almost dead from breathing in air pollution
He tried to vote but to him there’s no solution
Living just enough, just enough for the city…yeah, yeah, yeah!
We’re at a crossroads in America, where the divisions are strong and stark. We have white supremacists insisting that things need to change, and they’re willing to change it by lying, cheating, intimidating, and killing. Their hate knows few boundaries, becoming directed at liberals, minorities, women, science, education, and just about every other nation in the world.
At the head of this monster is a clueless POTUS consumed with self-adoration, an empty vessel that mouths calls for unity as he leads chants for violence and threatens everyone who doesn’t support his claims. Instead of seeking a brave new world of social justice and equality, he promotes greater divisions of wealth, opportunity, and hope. He builds more borders with words and threats, and builds walls with his mindless rhetoric. He places his optimism in a time that’s passed him by, but bolstered by people living in a hopeless fantasy existence, he remains empowered.
We end up, again, with people barely hanging on, coping, as Stevie Wonder wrote and sang, with just enough for the city.
I have mixed thoughts and emotions about today’s theme music, “Bad Motor Scooter”, by Montrose (1973). It’s an energetic song, but when I listen to the lyrics, I sometimes cringe. Then again, escaping on my bad motor scooter is really appealing on some days. Just race up through the gears and away from cares and civilization.
What the hell. It’s music. Love the rock attitude (rockitude?) on display in this video.
In this throwback, I started streaming this song sometime yesterday afternoon. “Show Me the Way” by Peter Frampton, from the Frampton Comes Alive! album was a monster hit from a monster album. Nothing against Frampton, but this isn’t one of my favorites as an album, song, or performer, but I heard it often as I traveled throughout 1976-77. I always preferred edgier stuff, but edgier stuff in rarely heard on commercial radio in those years.
I’m not certain of the genesis for streaming this song yesterday or continuing it this morning. Is it the weather triggering memories of youth, or the jetsam of a lost thought? Perhaps it’s just echoes of mortality or mourning for another time. It could be just a misfired neuron setting others off.
This is such a maudlin, sloppy song. It started streaming apropos of nothing that I can recall, but as I streamed it from memory, I thought about how meaningless the words might be for a younger listener.
“Sealed With A Kiss” came out in 1962, when I was six. It was a hit, so it was on the radios often, but I’m more familiar with the Bobbie Vinton version released when I was a teenager. This song is all about being morose because they’re missing their love, so they’ll send all their love, every day in a letter, sealed in a kiss.
I thought, well, these days, they probably wouldn’t be sending a letter. I imagined youth saying, why didn’t they just send them a text or a selfie? Why didn’t they just Skype?
I decided that, “I’ll send you all my love, every hour in a selfie, clicked with a kiss.”
Walking before writing, heading toward the coffee shop, almost there, I checked my steps and saw 5150. Oh, Van Halen, I thought, which was an immediate invitation for my mind to begin streaming in songs from 5150 (1986).
This was the first album with Sammy Hagar as the lead vocalist, replacing David Lee Roth. I remember that a friend hadn’t like either singer for the band. He thought Roth was too flamboyant and his skills didn’t impress him. However, Sammy Hagar wasn’t the answer in my buddy’s mind because, with Sammy, Van Halen performed softer rock. I recall trying to suggest other vocalists to him, like Ronnie James Dio. We didn’t come up with a new singer.
I never saw him again as our military tours completed and we went separate ways. I always wondered what he thought of Gary Cherone as the singer.
This is another one that I blame on the cats. Little Quinn is suffering from lymphoma. Picking him up and holding him last night, I sang this to him, but softly and slowly.
Here’s Jimmy Eat World with “The Middle” (2001). It’s amazing to think of this song coming out so long ago. It seems like yesterday. So much has changed since then, but that’s the nature of our existence, innit?
Singing it to Quinn – whispering it, really – I focused on the chorus part that goes, “It’ll take some time, but everything, everything will be all right, all right.”
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (1981) has me hooked today. I enjoy the middle part where the vocalist (Sting) laments,
I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
And ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?
I think that passage captures the angst that so many encounter when trying to move their relationship forward through the waves of love, hope, fear, and doubt.
I also think often of this song, and how the magic of a relationship changes through the years. The magic remains but often comes in different guises from the magic that we first experienced. Every now and then, though, that first magic is felt and remembered, one more time.
I have friends who love this song, “The Safety Dance” (1982). It is quite catchy, and troubling for me, once it’s in my ear, it’s hard to dislodge. Those lyrics —
We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance
Well, they’re no friends of mine
Say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
The words are easy to exploit to use for other purposes. For example, I have sung to my cats, “You can eat if you want to, or you can leave your food behind. But if you don’t eat, you won’t get a treat, and it’s your fault, not mine.”
Today’s song comes courtesy of an overheard conversation at the coffee shop. One person said, “Call me,” with the classic hang gesture to indicate a phone.
“Okay,” the other said, with a wave and a laugh. A rushed, “Bye,” followed, and then zipped across the cafe.
By then, my brain had started streaming Blondie’s “Call Me” from American Gigolo (1980). Sometimes soft, gentle, and persuasive, other times assertive, masculine, and urgent to the edge of being frenetic, with a slight sense of desperation, I thought the song was perfect for the movie.
Michael Seidel, writer 