Category: memories

Sunday’s Theme Music

First, I like the band’s name: Panic! At the Disco. Cracks me up.

I’m enjoying their song, “Say Amen (Saturday Night)”. Featuring a rousing, partying chorus, the song temporarily restores my youth. I can imagine being young and singing, “I pray for the wicked on the weekend, mama, can I get another amen? Oh, oh, it’s Saturday night, yeah.”

Although, for the sake of honesty, my primary party night used to be Thursday night when I was a young, working adult. A study came out later that confirmed my impression that Thursday night was the party night of the period. But really, I don’t think it sounds so well to be singing, “Can I get another amen? Oh, oh, it’s Thursday night.” Be like singing that the house cleaning is finished.

I also like the song’s remaining lyrics. So, although it’s Sunday morning in the continental U.S., let’s give it up for Saturday night.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

While driving today, I heard the end of a song, “Don’t You Want Me”, by The Human League. When the song ended, Casey Kasem came on and told us that was the number song in America, according to Billboard, for the week of July 10, 1982.

The station went on to mention that it had been a digitally remastered recording of the recording that was made in 1982. All this fired multiple memories: July, 1982. Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. American Top 40 was played every Saturday. Broken neck with my head immobilized in a halo device. Hot and humid summer. A wonderful cat named Jade we inherited from another family, and another, a sweet little Bombay Black named Crystal, also a gift from another family.

I’d broken my neck on the previous Memorial Day weekend. I was freed from the halo after three months. Crystal died in 1995, taken by cancer. Jade passed away when we lived in California twenty years after she started living with us. She earned the nickname Pokey because she liked to dawdle, but she was a damn smart feline, definitely the smartest cat we have ever known. She was infinitely smarter than the four who live with us now. Casey Kasem died in 2014. The Human League still rocks on.

It’s all life.

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Each Day

Each day, I realize that I don’t know much. I can’t even say that I know much about a particular subject. I tend to know a very little bit about very few things.

Each day, I re-discover things that I’d learned and forgotten. I discover things that I learned when we thought we knew better, but have to learn again because more has been learned. Really, I’m just learning to keep up.

Each day, I learn how much things change between each day and person. I’ve learned that we’re very inconsistent about what we think we know. We like to have what we think we learned validated to verify that we learned what we think we learned.

Each day, I realize how much there is to learn, not just about complicated or esoteric subjects or unfolding scandals, but about myself and the small area of existence that is my world.

Each day, I realize how much I enjoy learning. Sometimes — hell, many times — it wears me out. But with each day, I realize how fragile learning and knowledge really are, and how knowledge can be tortured and twisted.

Each day, I set out, one more time, with a cup of coffee and try to learn just a little bit more.

And some days, I remember it.

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Friday’s Theme Music

“Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol is a good walking song. Released in 1983, it’s another one of those songs that, between volume and enunciation, I distrusted what I was hearing and kept wondering, what’s he singing in that part? Well, eventually, the answers came and I share them with you.

He lives in his own heaven
Collects it to go from the seven eleven
Well, he’s out all night to collect a fare
Just as long, just as long it don’t mess up his hair

h/t to Lyricsfreak.com

Well, that makes a lot more sense than the silly phrases I imagined. Still, it remains a damn fine song to stream in my head when I take a walk.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I once read an interview with one of the pop members behind this hit. In the interview, he said (paraphrasing) the song was a hit because it had an odd novelty beat.

I’d always wondered why and how the song managed to become so popular and ubiquitous. That odd beat might explain it.

Here’s Devo with “Whip It” from 1980.

 

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Wednesday Theme Music

Thinking about music from 1974, the year that I celebrated my eighteenth birthday, I recalled “Smokin’ In the Boys’ Room”.

I like the song’s rocking simplicity of being in school, breakin’ rules, and our permanent records. Brownsville Station did it in 1974; Mötley Crüe covered it almost a dozen years later. Not bucking the normal status quo, the younger folks often prefer the Mötley Crüe version. That’s how it is, right? Newer equals better, or preferred. I, tsk, tsk, prefer the original. Not surprising, either; I’ve heard that from older people about things that my generation later re-interpreted.

(I like that cycle. Didn’t use to, but I’ve come to enjoy, admire, and respect it.)

But 1974 was the year I heard the song, my formative era, if you will, and all that I associate with it. That’s the year I graduated high school, became an adult, moved away from home, and joined the military, so I’m loyal to Brownsville Station’s version.

Let’s celebrate.

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Our Twinkling Star

We’ve lost our twinkling star. It came (at last, we thought with some relief even as we mourned, because the last few years were so difficult for her and her family), but it came at last, a few weeks short of her hundred and first birthday.

We think and talk about the amazing person we knew, and all the things she did in the thirteen years that we’ve known her. She’d wanted to be a comedian when she was in her teens — that would have been around 1935 — and loved hamming it up for us, and we loved her for that humor.

She also loved ice cream, and family. If you wanted to fire up that twinkle in her eyes, just ask her if she’d like to have some ice cream.

She marched in parades for social justice and equality. She put her name on petitions for change. We thought about all the change and upheaval she saw in her hundred years, the wars that she witnessed, and the others that she lost through death, and wondered if upheaval isn’t our natural state.

She was such a cool, friendly, and happy person, but this is life. You meet people, and eventually one of you goes away, leaving the other to remember and wonder.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

This one came from a cat incident last night.

I’d settled in to read and watch television. I wanted to read, but I was tired, so I had the television on. The book, Lincoln in the Bardo, is an interesting and easy read.

Naturally two cats were staking me out, awaiting me to settle so they could leap up onto my lap and read with me. After they established territory and settled, one announced they were going to refund some cat food (and probably fur) with ominous upchucking sounds. Responding with swift panic, I shooed the little feline off my lap and sought something to put under him to catch his discharge. Once all the drama was over, I told him, “You almost dropped a bomb on me, buddy.”

That triggered memories of The Gap Band and their 1982 technofunk offering, “You Dropped A Bomb On Me”.

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Monday’s Theme Music

This song, “Heatwave”, performed by Martha and the Vandellas, came out in July, 1963. I’d just turned seven, so I’ve known this song almost all of my life. It’s a terrific song, full of energy, pop, and harmonies, with some fat sax thrown in. Many other excellent covers have since been offered, but I’ll stay with the original, thanks.

Clap along, clap along.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Warm temperatures keep reminding me of songs about heat and the hot air. The late Glenn Frey performed this one as part of his solo act after the Eagles disbanded, and it was included in Beverly Hills Cop starring Eddie Murphy .

Here is “The Heat Is On” from 1984.

 

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