Category: memories

Thursday’s Theme Music

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.

Here’s “Why Can’t This Be Love”.

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

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.”

We were both doubtful.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

“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?

h/t AZLyrics.com

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.

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Monday’s Theme Music

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

And we can dance

h/t to AZlyrics.com

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.”

So, here, enjoy “Men Without Hats”.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

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.

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke streaming this song, “Is It in My Head?”, in my head this morning (ha, ha).

I often wonder about the truths of perceptions, impressions, and memories. I don’t wonder about just mine, but how others came to their beliefs, and how difficult it can be to dislodge an idea after it’s burrowed into you. We’ve been exposed to evidence that the winners write history. History is often propaganda to justify and moralize decisions and sustain political or popular support. We all love heroes and myths.

So I wonder with myself about whether I remember something correctly, whether I’m too deeply embedded in silos and bubbles to perceive the truth and grasp it, and often, if I’m conning myself into hoping and believing that my writing efforts amount to anything. It’s a perpetual cycle of challenging, searching, and thinking.

Today’s song selection, made by my mind (and probably invited in by the latest rounds of dreams), “Is It in My Head” is from Quadrophenia by the Who. The album was released in 1973, when I became seventeen years old. I’d been searching and wondering well before I heard this song.

I continue searching and wondering today, almost fifty years later.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I awoke with Outkast’s “Hey Ya” streaming in my mind, but another song replaced it. The lyrics, sung by a woman went, “He’s the last of the secret agents, and he’s my man.”

I thought, was that Nancy Sinatra? Sure sounded like it to my brain. Thinking about Nancy granted permissions to stream “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”, followed by a duet with Frank Sinatra, “Something Stupid”. Hearing Frank made the stream believe it was okay for him to join in, so I heard “Winchester Cathedral” and “Fly Me to the Moon”.

I’d decided I was becoming a basket case, which opened the ports for “Basketcase” by Green Day, followed by “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. Thinking, enough, I went through a little of “Enough is Enough” by April Wine, followed by “No More Tears” (Streisand/Summers).

By then, I knew that it had been Nancy Sinatra streaming “Last of the Secret Agents” (1966). I never saw the movie, btw. Anyone know if it was any good?

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today, I awoke with an actual theme song streaming in my head, to wit, the Hart to Hart music. Since the whole damn opening, including the expository introduction and the music, is stuck in my head, I need to share it to disperse it from me. Sort of like a musical exorcism.

For those of you who don’t know it, Hart to Hart was one of the last century’s American television offerings around the seventies or eighties. Starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, along with Lionel Stander and a dog who was Freeway on the show, it was part of the fun, slick television genres populating our television fare. I wasn’t a fan, for no particular reason. It didn’t draw me (mostly because I was outside of America during those years, and American television was still mostly contained to North America), but I knew about the show through friends and family who were faithful viewers.

Although familiar with the show’s theme music, I had to research the composer. Turned out to be Mark Snow, who has done many television theme songs.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

This song, “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s (1978), is a fun party song. It provides an excellent opportunity to play dead buy when Fred Schneider sings, “Down, down, down, down,” as the music winds down behind his urging. There’s also the goofy fun of trying to make the animal noises with Kate Pierson.

So relax, kick up and enjoy some humorous, upbeat rock.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Apropos of nada, I awoke to the song “City of New Orleans” (1971) streaming through me. Written by Steve Goodman, made famous by Arlo Guthrie, it’s about how people pass time while riding across America on a train, what they pass, and how the train trip is a metaphor for change in America.

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