Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
This Tunnel of Silly Walks in the Netherlands (posted on Atlas Obscura) reminded me of Monty Python’s Argument Clinic.
The Argument Clinic is more than such, and features the standard MP goofiness but none of the usual cross-dressing. It’s a laugh, innit?
Today’s song, “Nowhere Man,” by the Beatles, came out in 1965. I vividly remember carrying a small transistor radio (with a nine volt battery) and listening to this song early one summer afternoon, singing along with it as I walked along Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg, Pa. The lyrics were simple but seemed powerful to me.
It must have been in 1966, and I was ten when I was doing that. Fifty-two years later, I’m walking along A Street in Ashland, Or., singing it to myself in an early late summer morning. It still seems like simple but powerful song.
I received an email from Acorn online today. They were touting a hot new show, something called “Mannix”.
After a double-take and then a reread, I pondered, is this a joke? No, so maybe “Mannix” had been rebooted, the latest marketing term for when an old show is made new again.
To duckduckgo I went. I couldn’t find anything on a “Mannix” reboot (although I did think about who could replace Mike Connors, and since we’re re-booting it, wouldn’t it be fun to have a middle-aged black woman as the tough, smart P.I., and then thought, I would love to see Simone Missick in that role) so I went back to the email for more information.
I learned it was the original “Mannix” that’s the hot new show. All of this was a bit depressing because the old is being made new again. Even if you’re basing it on an old series, why not come up with something new and call it something new?
I know, these are sour old man thoughts. The masses who haven’t seen “Mannix”, can’t remember it, or are comfortable with remakes and reboots are shrugging at me and urging me to return to under the rock or get back on my meds. This is our life and how we live, baby, by taking old things and making them new and pretending that we have progress.
4:30 A.M.
A cat’s activities brought me awake. As I tended him and then used the restroom, this song was streaming through my thoughts:
“Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we’d hear it from the people of the town, they’d call us, gypsies, tramps, and thieves, but every night, the men would come around, and lay their money down.”
I don’t know why I was streaming Cher’s 1971 hit, “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves”. I was dreaming, and I remember the dreams. There wasn’t a sound track, just conversations.
Was it something that the cat did? Don’t know. It sure doesn’t seem like dream music.
This song’s release and popularity in 1975 began changing my thinking. While I’d always tried to see others’ point of view, I often failed, and slipped easily into the comfort of being me, sure of what was going on, and surer about how others live. I had some inklings that all was not as I thought from newscasts about riots, war, politics, and social upheaval, and I knew from friends, movies, and reading that lives often appear to be fine on the outside but it was rank darkness behind the scenes.
Then came this Janis Ian song, “At Seventeen”. As a boy, I thought the girls had all of the breaks. They controlled it all. We boys were the ones struggling with social graces and talking to girls. I didn’t know what it meant to a girl to meet a boy who seemed to like who and said he would call her, and then didn’t. I didn’t know what it meant for her to watch others being chosen, or how difficult it was, coping with body changes, and struggling with social perceptions and self-perception.
Life is usually more nuanced, layered, and complicated than many realize. We think everyone is the same, that all words mean the same, that every action carries the same weight. That these things aren’t true are lessons I keep learning and forgetting.
It’s September. What are you doing, surfing the net? Aren’t you a writer? Then shouldn’t you be writing something, editing, or some other activity associated with your writing dream?
Come on, get busy. “No Excuses”. 1994. Alice In Chains.
Aretha Franklin’s death and the service held to honor her reminded me that I grew up in a privileged time and place. Pop, rock, soul, R&B, punk, psychedelic, rockabilly…these were just a few of the emerging sub-genres of music developing. Reaching audiences like me were aided by advances in the recording, duplicating, and broadcasting media. As people, we were forced in earlier eras to travel to bars, clubs, and other venues to enjoy performers’ offerings. Radio and television changed that, and the Internet has expanded that ability.
I was lucky. I had radios and television, food, a roof, decent schools, and relatively stable home life. I was lucky, too, because great producers, musicians, and entrepreneurs were bringing us the sounds. And I was lucky because there were people and groups like the Stones, the Who, the Supremes, CCR, Led, Santana, Aretha, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, the Jacksons and Osmonds, Eric Clapton, John Mayall…what a list could be made. But that’s what wikipedia is about.
I have my favorites. Guitar heroes and keyboard masters remain my weakness, but great voices and song-writers always turn my head, too. Or, give me a beat…yeah, you know.
Thinking of all that, and the riotous eternal summer that was my youth, I remembered Diana Ross & The Supremes. The catalog of their songs is stupendous, and their hits are cherished as classics of an era and the Motown Sound. Was it the end of the innocence, the beginning of the awakening, or the age of Aquarius?
Here is “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, written by Ashford and Simpson, and recorded by many, but the cover streaming to me today is the one by “Diana Ross and the Supremes”. It’s powerful stuff to stream.
I associate many things with my childhood, especially matters of pop culture. TV was just breaking big in the 1960s in America, as was pop and rock music, and all their variations, on AM radio. As an child who was four when the sixties began, I was swept along. I didn’t choose much of the music I heard. It was everywhere from transistor radios that people carried to car radios to television. Some of the music isn’t to my adult tastes, but they’re part of my cultural DNA.
Today’s song, “Never My Love” by the Association from 1967, is one of those songs.
I’m familiar with Atlanta Rhythm Section (ARS) but they never grabbed me. They were too mellow for my taste. I heard a lot of their music, though, first through the radio, and then, through a friend. ARS was one of his favorite bands. I believed that was because he was from Alabama, with stops in Georgia. Although he was a Crimson Tide fan, he rooted for the Atlanta Falcons and Braves. What was odd (to me) is that his other two favorite bands were Boston and Van Halen. Van Halen ruled as number one, with Boston slotted in as his number two favorite. He never specified whether he was a David Lee or Sammy fan, but I think he leaned toward the latter because he was a Red Rocker fan when Sammy was a solo artist, but not much of a Montrose fan. Still, with those two as his top two choices, it always seemed a little odd that he enjoyed ARS, and also The Little River band.
Whatever. Today, for some reason, I’m streaming “Imaginary Lover” by ARS, from 1978.
It’s warm here today (but with clear, smoke-free skies!), so how ’bout a little Coldplay.
“Trouble” has been streaming in me over the last several days. Thinking about the song, I think that it came out while I lived in Half Moon Bay, California. I’m surprised to realize that makes it eighteen years old. The suspicion that I’m wrong drives me to wikipedia.org where I find confirmation, yes, it came out in 2000. Holy guacamole, Batman! That time sure passed by fast.
Here it is, in case you need a reminder.
Michael Seidel, writer 