This song came to mind yesterday. I was thinking about lunch. What to do, what to do, what to do? Wanted something small, light, and easy. Just a little food, just a little food. Soon I was singing, “A little bit of food, yeah, a little bit of food.” With a little thought, I realized it was the tune to “Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve last heard this song, but I’ll share it with you.
Friday’s Theme Music
Little Feat was one of my favorite groups when I was a young teenager but none of my friends had heard of them. When I played their music on the eight track, they’d ask, “What’s that?” with that look on their face like they’d taken a bite and discovered a funky and unexpected taste that worries them because maybe they they’d bitten into a bug or some rodent part.
Years later, I was surprised to hear Little Feat were playing again because, hello? Didn’t they break up and the guy that started them die? Yes, but they’d been reformed by surviving members.
Well, they’d become a little more mainstream but I still enjoyed them. “Hate to Lose Your Lovin'” is probably the song most people know them for, so why not?
From 1988.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
This is a classic of my childhood era. Although I was a rocker, who could resist the Temptations? Their blend of R&B and soul helped me look at life, love, and relationships with new perspectives as I evolved through my teens.
This particular song comes out of the nostalgia stream because of our dry, dire situation out here in the Pacific Northwest. You may not know it, but we have many fires happening out here. Our air is unhealthy to hazardous due to wildfire smoke on most days. Hot in the nineties to low hundreds doesn’t help, nor does the drought much of the region is enduring. Events are regularly canceled as we hunker down.
Naturally, I thought, “I wish it would rain,” more than once in the past few days. That triggered the Temptations’ beautiful and melancholy song streaming into my mind. And then it rained.
Here it is, as we heard it back in 1967, “I Wish It Would Rain.”
Sunday’s Theme Music
Yesterday’s late afternoon was spent at Lake-of-the-Woods Resort. We’d been planning to go to LOW for a couple weeks. A favorite local band, Colonel Mustard, was playing, and friends have a cabin and boat there. We’d do a boat ride, have dinner, listen to music and dance. As a bonus, the air was much clearer in that area, so we’d give our respiratory systems a break, too.
We had a fun time. Colonel Mustard closed with Chumpawamba’s song, “Tubthumbing.” Most people know the part of the song that goes, “I get knocked down, but I get up again, ain’t never gonna keep me down.”
That’s how life goes for most of us. We’re hit with something that floors us. Getting up, we stagger forward, only to get hit again. Each time we’re hit, it’s a little harder to get up, but we usually grit out teeth and declare, “I’m not staying down.”
Suits my mood, so WTF? Here we are, from 1997.
Saturday’s Theme Music
I’m streaming Captain & Tennille as part of my hello to the past week. Their music wasn’t my style, but it was ubiquitous, par for American pop-culture, where the love is big until it’s not. There was much made of their backstory and his nickname, and songs like “Muskrat Love” and “Shop Around”. A television show followed, and then society moved on to other performers. It is the American Way.
Here they are with their cover of Neil Sedaka’s offering, “Love Will Keep Us Together,” which came out during our era of relative bliss (if you discount the wars, air and water pollution, the energy crises, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and Tricky Dick) that we index as 1973 A.D.
Killers
Emphysema, they told him. Eyes twinkling, he chuckled with charming nonchalance (gasping for air when he did), because that was his style, and because he already knew. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said after the chuckle, although the panic in his gut said, “This is no joke.”
They put him on all that shit, and gave him oxygen to suck on, and advised him of the things that he must give up. He gave up the shit and kept the rest. Yeah, there was unbearable pain every day and hour, but it was the loneliness and regrets who were the killers.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Still slipstreaming on a nostalgia stream, I sang along to this 1969 hit. Released by Tommy James and the Shondells (I always wondered what a Shondell was), “Crystal Blue Persuasion” triggered some controversy during its time on the charts. Some believed that it was promoting or popularizing using crystal meth or a blue LSD that was popular at the time. I later read that it was inspired by the Bible!
Hah! Go figure.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
A nostalgia stream is flooding me today. First it pushed me to consider old television shows, then I began googling places where I used to live, using the street view to remember those childhood places.
Music then came up. While I was discovering rock, pop and its bubblegum variations were very active, with a presence from groups such as the Osmonds and the Jackson 5. When “ABC” and “One Bad Apple” were big on the radio airwaves, I read a newspaper article in the Pittsburgh Press about whether Michael Jackson or Jimmy Osmond would have a successful singing career after their voices changed.
So, in memory, here’s “ABC” from 1970 on ABC’s American Bandstand with Dick Clark.
Monday’s Theme Music
Redlegagenda posted this song this morning, so I credit them with reminding me of this Weezer classic. I enjoy Weezer, catching their remake of the Toto classic, “Africa”, and I’ve posted several of their songs as my choice of theme music before. This is a first for “Hash Pipe”.
But since Weezer covered “Africa”, I went with Toto’s live cover of “Hash Pipe”. Got to admit, I like Weezer’s “Hash Pipe” better (because of the more rocking guitars and Cuomo’s high-voiced singing), but this is still fun.
Sunday’s Theme Music
I first heard this song when I was thirteen.
My family had moved away from Wilkinsburg, PA, to a housing plan in Penn Hills, a few miles away. My friends were in Wilkinsburg and I kept going back to see them. In one of those early trips, the only friend I found on my old street, McNary Boulevard, was Richard O’Leary. A bluff and big good-natured child, Richard was a few years older than me, but had failed a few grades, becoming my classmate.
Richard lived in a small, narrow house on the brick-paved Wesley Street. It was a classic, hugely steep Pittsburgh hill. Richard’s family was large, with one older sister still living at home with her own little sister. They were a poor family, too, a point that pained Richard.
Having all those older brothers and sisters kept Richard knowledgeable about pop music. That early Sunday morning, he was raving about the Fifth Dimension and a song called “The Wedding Bell Blues”. Richard kept singing the opening lines, “Bill. I love you so, I always will.” I suspect that his older sister’s boyfriend, the father of her child, was named Bill, so the song was being played often in the home.
It’s a fond memory of an early sunny, cool, Sunday morning.
Michael Seidel, writer 