Category: memories

Sunday’s Theme Music

My mind seems like it’s always writing or thinking about writing. Yesterday, while yardwork was being done, I drifted into writing land to contemplate the great question, “What comes next?” Activities like yardwork, once engaged, usually requires little thinking, so it frees up a lot of brain energy. Boosted by yesterday’s entertaining session and success, I dove into the what’s next game and wrote in my head for a while, building a foundation for today’s progress. As I finished that, song lyrics popped up:

Well sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water
And I think of all the things, what you’re doing and in my head I make a picture

h/t to AZLyrics.com

That line right there feels like a writing song, right? Of course, it’s from a well-established song. My neurotransmitters were soon streaming “Valerie” by Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse, circa 2007. As I sang the song to myself, I remembered the video and went back and watched it again. I so enjoyed it that I thought it was ideal for Sunday’s theme music.

Pretty cool video. Hope you enjoy it. Hope you have an excellent day, no matter the day.

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke. Snatches of dream sequences cascaded through me. I was amused that I couldn’t remember more of the dreams. Enough came together that I knew I was remembering parts of different dreams and it was all out of sequence. Exasperated, I gave my mind a talking to, telling it, “Can’t you join the dreams together in proper order.” It was irksome to remember a few seconds, stop, and recall a different segment of another dream.

I guessed I pissed my mind off. It retaliated. “You want to join together? Who are you?”

Knowing what was coming, I tried apologizing, but it was too late. “Join Together” by the Who (1972) was already streaming. Not a bad song to stream, if you must. I like the song’s sentiments.

You don’t have to play,
You can follow or lead the way,
I want you to join together with the band,
We don’t know where we’re going,
But the season’s right for knowing,
I want you to join together with the band.

It’s the singer not the song,
That makes the music move along,
I want you to join together with the band,
This is the biggest band you’ll find,
It’s as deep as it is wide,
Come on and join together with the band,
Hey hey hey hey hey hey, well everybody come on.

h/t to LyricsFreak.com

Memories abound with this song, like cranking up the stereo and grinning like a madman as the sound crashed over me. I can taste my childhood just listening to this song. I always enjoyed that sentiment the song incorporates, that it’s the singer, not the song, that moves the music along. And, hey, it’s the Who, and it’s part of that classic rock sound, you know, the sound that my generation grew to love.

Yeah, I’m talkin’ ’bout my generation, baby.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

This one dipped into the stream out of nowhere, but reminded me of a friend. A sweet, petite person, I was surprised when I discovered her favorite music came from Danzig and Samhein. She wasn’t as fond of Black Sabbath because she didn’t think they were really head-banging, but she liked Def Leppard and Scorpion.

So, thinking of her, hope she’s having a good day after enduring trying years.

Here’s Danzig’s “Mother”.

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’ve apparently upset my mind. I don’t know if I hurt its feelings or it’s angry at me, but it’s definitely upset. To get even, it’s playing games with me, looping a song in my stream. I have nothing against the song except that it’s not my cuppa. Harkening from 1971, it’s just a little too pop and saccharine for me.

So I have to put it out there, foist it onto the ROW, where it’ll find somebody else’s stream and vacate mine.

Please enjoy “Go Away, Little Girl” by Donny Osmond. Please. You’ll be doing me a yuuuge favor.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The song, “The Year of the Cat” (Al Stewart) was released in 1976. A mellow pop-rock song, I was stationed on an unaccompanied tour with the USAF when it came out. The song appealed to me, and I sometimes played it while sitting in my barracks room burning candles in a straw basket to create shapes.

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She’ll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

I was a little bored. I’d usually sip wine or cognac while I was doing this.

Another’s post had reminded me of the song. As it streamed through my mind, I thought that cats measured time differently than we do. We establish a calendar and a clock based on what we observe. Cats declare, “This is my year,” and ignore the calendar. The year of the cat when we had Jade lasted twenty years. Pogo had a year that went for four, his year cut short by a car, while cancer ended Quinn’s year of the cat after twelve years. So it goes.

We have three  cats. Each has declared their own year. Tucker’s year began four years ago, while Boo and Papi are each into about twenty-four months of their year. I hope each has a long year of the cat.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I’m once again streaming 1974, another year in which things happened, other things changed, and everything kept going almost as though nothing had happened. For me, I graduated high school, turned eighteen, joined the military and left home, in that order.

Today’s theme music, “Only Solitaire”, arrives via a miasma polluting the thinking stream. Jethro Tull’s Warchild album was being streamed, but thinking about a particular individual, the stream’s thread narrowed to “Only Solitaire”. It’s a short and simple song.

Brain-storming habit-forming battle-warning weary
winsome actor spewing spineless chilling lines —
the critics falling over to tell themselves he’s boring
and really not an awful lot of fun.
Well who the hell can he be when he’s never had V.D.,
and he doesn’t even sit on toilet seats?
Court-jesting, never-resting
he must be very cunning
to assume an air of dignity
and bless us all with his oratory prowess,
his lame-brained antics and his jumping in the air.
And every night his act’s the same
and so it must be all a game of chess he’s playing
“But you’re wrong, Steve: you see, it’s only solitaire.”

h/t to Collecting-tull.com

It’s a short song, a few ticks more than a minute and a half.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came out in 1955, a year before I was born. Mom played it a lot, so I learned it.

The carries the sound of that era, with a heartfelt delivery of the song’s sentiments. The lyrics are timeless. It’s a song that I think everyone should think is about them.

Only you, can make this world seem right
Only you, can make the darkness bright
Only you, and you alone, can thrill me like you do
And fill my heart with love for only you

O-only you, can make this change in me
For it’s true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand, I understand the magic that you do
You’re my dream come true, my one and only you

Read more: The Platters – Only You (And You Alone) Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I guess some nostalgia has slipped into my stream. Here’s the Platters with “Only You (and You Alone)”.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s choice came right out my morning. Cats were hungry and wanted fed but my urine collection bag was full. So I was apologizing to the cats (of course), telling them, “Sorry, you need to wait. My bag is full.”

That invited ZZ Top’s “Just Got Paid” (1972) into my stream. There’s a line that riffs off a classic nursery room, “Black sheep, black sheep, have you got some wool? Yes, I do, man, my bag is full.” See how it all works?

Sorry if I’m sharing too much about the whole urine, bladder, catheter, pecker thing. My wife thinks I need to think about my boundaries.

I just shrug.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I greatly admire the late Prince (Rogers). Talented and creative, the world is better for his music.

I’d been reading about the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. I didn’t watch anything but I recalled Prince’s performance one year. After watching the video of that again, I reminisced about his music. From that, this morning, I found myself streaming “Raspberry Beret” (1985). A song about teenage sex and a chance encounter that changed a boy, the imagery is evocative throughout the lyrics. It’s a story to music.

Its jaunty beat makes it an ideal walking song on a warming spring day.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A bizarre string of songs flowed through this morning’s stream. A brief sampling is “Snoopy and the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen (1966), the Bee Gees with “Massachusetts” (1967), John Denver singing “Annie’s Song” (1974 ), and “Cumbersome” (Seven Mary Three, 1996). The rest included a song by ELO called “Telephone Line” (1977) and that’s what I went with. It won because of the lines, “Okay, so no one’s answering. Well, can’t your just let it ring a little longer? I’ll just sit tight, through shadows of the night, let it ring for evermore.”

I always think, wow, that’s persistence. I probably wouldn’t stay on that long. I mean, I don’t have Phoebe’s stamina for waiting to be served. Nor am I living in twilight like the guy in “Telephone Line”. I’m just streaming songs forevermore.

To clarify a little, each song was actually triggered by something that happened in the morning. For example, I was marching the cats to their feeding area (sure), saying, “Hup, two, three, four.” That’s used in the Red Baron song. A glance out the window at the sun and light rain introduced “Annie’s Song”. (“You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,
like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.) A reflection on people being too rich invited “Cumbersome” in (“Too rich or too poor, she’s wanting me less, I’m wanting her more”). “Telephone Line” came by way of being on hold.

All that in an hour.

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