Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Had to hunt this song down.
I was reading the news today (oh, boy), and parts of this song came back to me. After trying and failing to remember more of it as I walked, I finally sat down and googled some remembered lyrics.
Success!
In honor of the POTUS and his administration, here is TMBG with “Doctor Evil,” from “Austin Powers.”
The things I expected to do and see,
were not the things I saw and did,
so what’ll become of the things I expect to see and do now?
I can play the what-if? game with any subject. Not hard. A reflective exercise, it can be fun, and it’s helpful when writing fiction. Mostly, the game is about wondering how things would have changed if this or that hadn’t happened.
Janis Joplin died in 1970 of a heroin overdose. She was twenty-seven. She would have turned seventy-five this week. She achieved much in a short life. Playing what-if?, you can imagine how much more she might have done.
On the positive side, she was a person who’s celebrated and remembered. Too many people die and have no one playing the what-if? game with their life. Too many die too young for vain causes or absurd reasons. Of course, it’s death, and we all die. The reasons for our death is a lot of feed for what-if?
“I’ve Seen Better Days,” by Citizen King. Ignore the video. It’s Citizen King, 1999. If you watched “Malcom in the Middle,” you might know it.
Nuff said.
Another Who offering has hooked into my streaming memories.
This one, “Join Together,” was released in 1972, while I was in high school. I remember hearing it and thinking, that’s the Who, because they always had a distinctive sound, especially with Daltry’s voice. Like a lot of Who songs, interesting sounds, instruments, and arrangements lend Who songs thickly textured melodies. I like that. I prefer complications in books, movies, and music. At the same time, I’ve always been invested in guitar sounds. That’s why the guitar draws me to a lot of southern urban rock, and blues, or blues-rock, and classic rock. But even with Townsend’s synthesizers, the Who prevail and maintain a hold as one of my favorite rock groups.
Here’s “Join Together.”
Confession: I didn’t know who sang this song. Nor do I remember the first time I heard it. After looking up the artist, I still didn’t know who he was, but I knew the song from AM radio.
“Down in the Boondocks” apparently came out in 1965. I was nine. The performer with the hit was Billy Joe Royal. After googling him, I found I knew several of his songs, like “Cherry Hill Park.”
“Down in the Boondocks” started streaming in my head while I was talking to Tucker (one of my cats) and emptying the dishwasher. Yeah, I don’t see the connection either.
Tom Petty did some good rock and roll, with and without the Heartbreakers, keeping the beat alive. This particular song is one that streams into me once in a while without any connection to anything else. It was released in 1981, just before we left America for an extended tour on Okinawa, but I don’t remember it making an impression on me at the time. Honestly, REO Speedwagon’s album, High Infidelity, which came out the year before, was still the hot album for people like me.
This song is one of my defacto songs that I start streaming when I’m walking. Several walking songs are plugged into my streaming library. There’s a Nancy Sinatra offering, where she sings “These boots are made for walking,” and a song less about walking but about getting there from Grand Funk, “I’m getting closer to my home,” and some song by some guy named Miller who sings, “King of the Road.” Which one pops into my stream seems dependent on my mood.
Today’s classic is offered by Edwin Starr. Here is “Twenty-five Miles,” from 1969.
Ta
This song popped into a dream last night. It wasn’t streaming when I awoke, but as I was in the kitchen making coffee and considering breakfast options, the song began streaming.
Won’t you take me back to school
I need to learn the golden rule
Won’t you lay it on the line
I need to hear it just one more time
Portions of the dream drifted in with the smell of coffee brewing. The dream had been about school. Not many fragments endured the transition to consciousness. The gist of what was recalled was that I was a distinguished person teaching people. I don’t know what the hell I was teaching them, nor where. I do recall it was more of a Socratic method, and that the dream ended, and the song began, like it was part of the closing credits. I felt joyous, liberated, and satisfied at that point. As I think about it, I could characterize my reaction as triumphant, as I felt like I’d achieved something that I’d worked on for a long period.
And how many words have I got to say
And how many times will it be this way
With your arms around the future
And your back up against the past
You’re already falling it’s calling you
On to face the music
And the song that is coming through
You’re already falling
The one it’s calling is you
h/t to lyricsfreak.com
The song’s title, “The Voice,” is apropos to the dream, as it seemed like an ethereal voice was instructing me on how to teach the others. Not enough survived to do more than ponder the shards like a forensics team seeking clues. It’s odd how many times I seem to dream of others instructing me, or of me, passing on instructions. I also dream frequently of receiving and passing on warnings. Nothing ever comes of them, at least in this dimension.
Here are the Moody Blues, from 1981. Cheers
They – the omnipotent, omniscient, slightly mysterious and ill-defined ‘they’ – say that the best way to rid yourself of an earworm is to pass it on. That’s what I plan to do today.
On the other hand, I said to myself, perhaps I’m part of a chain. I’m streaming an old song – hell, I was six years old when it became a hit – but the fates put the song there knowing that I’d post about it to rid myself of it. There’s no earthly reason for streaming this song. It just popped into my head. It’s not my sort of music, and I don’t own, and never have, owned an album by these performers.
But maybe someone out there needs to hear this song. I don’t know. How this whole thing called life works is almost as complex as “A Game of Thrones”, or the definition of a catch in the N.F.L.
Here we go, with the Lettermen, from 1962, with “Turn Around, Look At Me.” Others have done it and had hits with it, but this version is the one looping in my stream.
Michael Seidel, writer 