Category: memories

Thursday’s Theme Music

I was watching an episode of The Americans last night. I enjoy how clothing, cars, news, and pop-culture, like music, is used to convey the year.

They used “We Do What We’re Told” by Peter Gabriel (So, 1986) in the episode I watched. I thought the music was effectively employed, with the lyrics fitting the situation and the characters’ thinking and decisions.

The song’s words are simple and repetitive

we do what we’re told
we do what we’re told
we do what we’re told
told to do

one doubt
one voice
one war
one truth
one dream

h/t azlyrics.com

I thought the song’s appropriate for now, when so many people seemingly respond to news by saying, “Hey, I believe him,” without applying any critical thinking to it. I imagine them telling others in a few years, “Hey, I was just doing what I was told,” or, “I was just following orders.”

 

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Dipping into Wang Chung today. I featured “Dance Hall Days” once. This time I’m going with a favorite walking song, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” (1986), which I often call, “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” because of that line in the song. It’s an excellent walking song when I’m feeling optimistic or jubilant.

As an aside, a co-worker at the time hated this song. A major fan of Ratt, Judas Priest, and Rush, he felt music by groups like Wang Chung used too much techno to be true music.

0

Monday’s Theme Music

This song started streaming into my head this morning. Part of my Bay Area experience, when I lived at Moffett, Mountain View, or Half Moon Bay, this song was on repeat for a while for my daily commute.

I enjoy its soft beginning:

Drivin’ faster in my car
Falling farther, from just what we are
Smoke a cigarette, and lie some more, these conversations kill
Falling faster in my car
Time to take her home, her dizzy head is conscience laden

Read more: Stone Temple Pilots – Big Empty Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Yes, “Big Empty”, STP, 19whatever.

0

Sunday’s Theme Music

I was chuckling to myself as I read about the Le’Veon Bell debacle with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I read a comment that said, “Don’t let him go,” which opened me up to streaming “Don’t Let Him Go” by REO Speedwagon, 1981. I like the song’s hammering insistence of guitars and dreams, and the impassioned pleas, “Don’t let him go.” I later learned the song was supposedly about asking girlfriends to be patient with their boyfriends.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Continuing a newly established trend of using my walking to inspire my theme music instead of my dreams and pets, this song popped into my head today.

I’m not an amazing walker, but I usually manage to walk seven to ten miles a day, typically in three or four segments. I like walking as part of my writing rituals. But once I’m done writing in my head, my thoughts wander. Sometimes, inspired by the writing or editing process, a song pops in.

So it was today. Finishing with my phantom writing/editing and feeling happy, I told my muses and myself, “That’s it. We got it.” That prompted the drumming intro to the popular hit by The Go-Go’s (a spelling which maddens me, as I think that it should be The Go-Gos, but whatever), “We Got the Beat” (1982).

0

All You

“All you men,” she said,

“All you women,” he said,

“All you Republicans,” she said,

“All you Libertarians,” he said,

“All you Democrats,” she said,

“All you Greens,” he said,

“All you people who don’t vote,” she said,

“All you people voting illegally,” he said,

“All you reactionaries,” she said,

“All you slaves,” he said,

“All you gays,” she said,

“All you lesbians,” he said,

“All you blacks,” she said,

“All you whites,” he said,

“All you elites,” she said,

“All you apathetic people,” he said

“All you cops,” she said,

“All you military,” he said,

“All you illegal aliens,” she said,

“All you people on welfare,” he said,

“All you rich people,” she said,

“All you poor people,” he said,

“All you thieves,” she said,

“All you drug-dealers,” he said,

“All you addicts,” she said,

“All you criminals,” he said,

“All you killers,” she said,

“All you corrupted government workers,” he said,

“All you CEOs,” she said,

“All you teachers,” he said,

“All you parents,” she said,

“All you working women,” he said,

“All you Mexicans,” she said,

“All you communists,” he said,

“All you ignorant, uneducated people,” she said,

“All you snobs,” he said,

“All you people clinging to old ideas,” she said,

“All you fascists,” he said,

“All you NAZIs,” she said,

“All you Japs,” he said,

“All you Southerners,” she said,

“All you Northerners,” he said,

“All you people in rural areas,” she said,

“All you people in the cities,” he said,

“All you idiots,” she said,

“All you foreigners,” he said,

“All you Chinese,” she said,

“All you refugees,” he said,

“All you old people,” she said,

“All you young people,” he said,

“All you conservatives,” she said,

“All you libruls,” he said,

“All you white Supremacists,” she said,

“All you feminazis,” he said,

“All you atheists,” she said,

“All you Evangelicals,” he said,

“All you hateful assholes,” she said,

“All you whiners,” he said,

“You’re the reason we’re in this mess,” they said.

4

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Just yesterday, I was walking along, thinking, here I go again, naturally downloading the White Snake song, “Here I Go Again” (1982).

Although I respected Coverdale’s skills and talents, except for Deep I never became a great fan of him. I tried. I had White Snake albums and Coverdale-Page (where I thought Coverdale often sounded like Plant, with the overall result that C-P sounded like Led Zeppelin), but I thought there was too much glam-rock to Coverdale after DP. I thought the glam-rock sub-genre was often derivative, simplistic, and repetitive.

That doesn’t stop me from thinking of this song when I take a deep breath and tell myself, here I go again.

1

Monday’s Theme Music

Today, after awakening, rising, and feeding the cats, I began streaming a Bee Gees song called “Lonely Days” (1970). Don’t know what prompted my neurotransmitters to order this song today. I think it might have to do with rain. It was raining as I awoke, and stayed in bed, listening to it for a short period before thinking, “Must have coffee,” which prompted me to get up.

“Lonely Days” always strikes me as a rainy-day song. Something about its timbre reflects a gray, rain-swept landscape to me, a feeling that intensified as I walked on damp pavement and light drizzle.

Here you go. Have an excellent day.

 

0

The ’84 Table

We pulled out the 1984 card table today. Bought in 1984 for less than twenty dollars, this is one of the oldest things we own. Black, we bought it to use as a work space for our first computer and printer. We stuck the table in a corner in the bedroom – we had only one – and loaded the computer up. That computer was a Kaypro IV which, with a dot-matrix printer that used fan-folded paper, cost eighteen hundred dollars.

We’d just returned from a four year assignment to Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan. Now stationed at Shaw AFB in SC, the computer revolution was pulling us in. The Kaypro was the answer. Running at 4.87 MHz and running dual five and quarter inch floppies, the Kaypro had a nine-inch green screen. We used it for games and wordprocessing. It ran on CPM and used the Perfect series of software. I also used it to learn Basic and a few Basic variations.

The Kaypro was abandoned when we reached Germany in 1985. We bought a Zenith 150 with a color monitor. Still running 4.87, MS-DOS was the operating system. We had 128 KB of RAM and still had two five and a quarter-inch floppies, but I expanded the system, adding CPUs, hard drives, fans, RAM, and eventually a three and a half-inch floppy.

That puppy is gone as well, replaced since by multiple laptops, notebooks, and towers.

We still have that table, though. Pulled it out of its storage in the garage for a picnic. It’s a little worn but that thing hasn’t needed an upgrade yet. It’s been augmented, but never replaced.

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑