Category: memories

Thursday’s Theme Music

I’d planned a two-mile walk yesterday evening. Starting I’d end up at the pizza place where my friends and I meet for beers and conversation once a week. Then I’d walk home, giving me a nice, round three-mile walk, a pleasant cap to the day.

A brief thunderstorm had passed through right before I started out. The temperature remained about eighty-five, but thunderstorms still haunted the mountains around our valley, and the humidity had climbed. I heard thunder as I went up the hills, planning to climb high and then descend. As I walked, the temperature dropped about twelve degrees. Rain ratcheted down on me and then stopped. Thunder boomed. Calling an audible, I descended and set on a path to meet with my friends.

Somewhere in all of this, I’d been thinking about plans and priorities. From that, I started streaming Metallica, “Nothing Else Matters”. Now it’s stuck on a loop so I’m putting it out there to release myself.

Enjoy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I was thinking about transitions that I’ve gone through. Like, I left the military, bought a restaurant, started going to college, got sick, lost the business, and went back into the military.

It was a hell of a year.

So, back in the military in 1980. It was a time of terrific music. I was stationed at Randolph AFB in Texas. I worked in the Command Post in the building that was called the Taj Mahal.

My uncle and his family were there, along with an aunt and her children, so we had a lot of family support there, and lots of good times. The time we were stationed at W-P AFB in Ohio and that time at Randolph were the only times we were near family.

We were only at Randolph for about twenty months before heading to Okinawa. But it was a good assignment, and there was some great music to enjoy.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s music comes from a confrontation with a spider.

We captured and identified the master bath spider, verifying that it wasn’t a black widow. We relocated it anyway, because it was large, and it bothered me to stick my toes into its web in the mornings.

This morning, I addressed the big black widow web out back. Just off the patio, she used a bush and the hose cart as her anchors. I took it down with a broom with a promise to return with some peppermint spray. Spiders, it seems, don’t like peppermint spray. As we don’t kill spiders, we periodically spray peppermint to drive the numbers down and clear some areas.

As I went back in thinking about it, I imagined the black widow already planning to rebuild. I believe when she heard about the peppermint spray, she said, “Hit me with your best shot.”

Cue Pat Benatar. It’s stunning to think of this song as almost forty years old. Just imagine when our rock classics reach the century mark.

Fire away.

 

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

It seems like I’m staunchly streaming 1971. I’d heard “Every Picture Tells A Story” on the radio the other day and awoke with Rod Stewart singing “Maggie May” in my head.

With that, I thought about that year. Wasn’t watching much television that comes to mind. I listened to music, wrote, and drew. Infatuated with cars, I bought sketch pads and designed cars. I thought I might go into car designing, but things changed.

1976 found me in U.S.A.F. and stationed at Clark AB in the Philippines with the 3rd TFW. I was nineteen, and one of the guys I worked with was thirty-four. We were having a San Miguel beer at an office-sponsored BBQ when “Maggie May” came on the radio. He said, “Oh, I love this song.”

That surprised me. Before his confession, I’d only heard him listen to country and western music, so I started talking to him about music. We had a wonderful conversation, one that was eye-opening for me about judgments and the slide of time.

 

 

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Remembering A Dad Moment

1971

Besides being a rock fan and fifteen years old, I was an auto racing fan. My father was in the U.S.A.F. He’d just returned from being stationed in Germany and was now stationed at DESC near Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio when I moved in with him. He surprised me with tickets to the premiere of LeMans with Steve McQueen.

Whenever I hear the movie’s opening minutes, I’m back in that packed movie theater, one of the few children in the place, remembering the movie’s beginning, and Dad. The start is just the sounds and images of racing cars of the era screaming around the French race track. To non-fans, it’s probably noise. But to racing fans, the sounds of Porsches and Ferraris of different-sized engines, Alfas, Corvettes, and Matras can all be heard as individual howls.

Dad had no interest in seeing the movie, but he knew I wanted to. So, thanks, Dad.

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Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song, “Join Together,” by the Who on the radio yesterday. It’s a song that came out the year I turned sixteen, 1972.

Naturally, my mind started looping it. I find the beginning, with the Jew’s harps and mouth organs a fascinating start, and enjoy how other instruments pile in. I admire the lyrics’ sentiments, too – join together. During this era of increasingly divisive politics, it’s a refreshing break to think about joining together and going on.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Journey was well established when they came out with “Don’t Stop Believin'” in 1981. Many didn’t like this era of Journey, considering their album Escape was a commercial sell-out. “Don’t Stop Believin'” has made the pop-culture and political rounds, being featured in movies, television shows, presidential campaigns, and advertising.

I posted it here as the theme music almost one year ago. I didn’t mention then how Family Guy affects my memory of the song. For your enjoyment, I’ve included the Family Guy offering along with the real song.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Get your motor runnin’.
Head out on the highway.
Lookin’ for adventure.
And whatever comes our way.

Some songs and performers are permanently linked in memory for me. The performers have other hits, but one song first comes to mind when I hear their name. Say Pink Floyd, and I think, “Money”. AC/DC, “Highway to Hell”. The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Black Sabbath: “Paranoid”.

For Steppenwolf, it’s a ditty called “Born to be Wild”. I was enamored of Steppenwolf when I was thirteen. That would have been 1969. My friends weren’t as impressed. Mom knew I liked them, though. She showed me a newspaper article about John Kay’s escape from Russia. Then Easy Rider came out, featuring the song. Yes, I had a poster of Hopper and Fonda on their choppers on my wall.

“Born to be Wild”, from 1968.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Well, this was a weird stream. I was reading about the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election campaign for president when I came across the term crossfire hurricane. The FBI used it as a code name for the investigation. The Wayback Machine immediately fired up a stream from a 1969 Rolling Stones hit called “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. The first line that I remembered went, “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.”

I think the song’s beginning is terrific. One, two.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Blame this one on my wife.

Which had me thinking of how couples and families related and socialized through different eras. Thinking back, imagine them gathered around a fire in a cave or a camp. Imagine them in chairs on a porch, or around a radio, and later, gathered in the living room, watching television. Now we’re gathered in the office, on separate computers.

I was playing Sudoku when she played “Seasons of Love” from Rent. Naturally, the song’s lyrics entered my stream and started looping. All through yesterday’s walking and yard-working, I’m singing, “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?”

I also added/slashed modified the verses. After coffee, I added, “In words? In pages? In kibble? In phases?”

It became a little goofy after that. But, I must pass this on to you to rid myself of it.

Sorry about that.

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