Today’s theme song, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” began streaming into me as felines catgregated around me wherever I went. The lyrics are repetitive – “I want you, I want you so bad” (perfect lyrics for the cats as they follow, waiting for me to sit so they can sit on my feet or jump on my lap) – but I enjoy the song’s tempo changes and the variations on how “I want you” is sung.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
I heard this one on Santa Clarita Diet last night. It’s been so long since I last heard it. The song, as performed by the Animals, came out in 1965. “It’s My Life” checks all the marks for that era’s emerging rock for me, giving me an enjoyable nostalgia rush today. I liked the lyrics and Burdon’s rusty, defiant, angry delivery – “It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want.” That’s a perfect anthem for a nine-year-old, right? Hah, yeah.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
In 1985, I was reassigned from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, to Shaw AFB in South Carolina. Part of a mobility unit, my primary mission was to deploy to southwest Asia and exercise command and control of deployed Air Force units. Since we didn’t do that often (other than field exercises), my secondary mission of training Air Force reservists in southwest Asia command and control took center stage. I was on the road a lot. My commander let us drive our cars to many locations. That meant I listened to a lot of music in my car.
One of my favorite albums of that time was No Jacket Required by another Genesis member, Phil Collins. That was a terrific album. While I favored several songs on it, “Sussudio” edges out “Take Me Home” and is the song I’m streaming through my head today.
Toy Appliances
I was vacuuming yesterday, utilizing the central vacuum system and its fifty feet of hose.
What a snake it would have been.
See, as a child, I used Mom’s appliances to augment my reality. She had a little home salon hair dryer. Contained in a small brown suitcase, it opened up, displaying controls and a lit mirror. You’d attach a hose which attached to a plastic bonnet that she wore on her head. An intake fan was in the middle. Several push buttons orchestrated fan speed and temperature.
The hair dryer was perfect as my spaceship’s controls. The short hose was my communication device to communicate with star base, or, if necessary, Earth Command.
Besides it, we had an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, a canister type with a hose attached. The hose became a snake, serpent, or dragon for me to fight, sometimes utilizing a discarded paper towel tube as a sword, but often something I’d need to battle with my bare hands.
The Electrolux’s canister was my rocket sled. It also worked as a time-machine, enabling a quick escape from now to the future or past. Pillows, chairs, and blankets were employed as forts while boxes were ships and rockets. Mom and Dad’s transistor radios were also communication devices. Sunglasses were useful as protective devices but also enabled me to see into other dimensions. They could also be employed to see over the horizon to far-away places, like China, Europe, South America, and Antarctica.
Things changed. Television developed. I acquired modeling clay and shaped rockets and space ships. By now I was twelve, and drawing these vessels, reading books, and watching television. While those were great vehicles for my imagination, it wasn’t quite as good as opening up the hair dryer and blasting off.
Monday’s Theme Music
I heard “Abacab” by Genesis on the radio yesterday. It’s unusual to hear it on the radio.
The song is sort of hypnotic in its sounds and words, but not very deep. Because it’s hypnotic and I’m simple prey for these things, it hung around in my head’s stream for the rest of the day and was still there this morning. But thinking about “Abacab” and Genesis, I started thinking about Mike +The Mechanics, and their music. Mike is Mike Rutherford of Genesis, and their albums and performances were side projects to his Genesis existence.
Mike +the Mechanics’ music isn’t very deep, either, but fit well on the radio stations of the time. “Silent Running,” with its chorus of “Can you hear me?”, was their first hit, so I thought I’d go with that.
Sunday’s Theme Music
This song streamed into my head while I was shaving this morning. There’s no evidence for why this song emerged from my mind’s general morning chaos. The song came out when I was eight years old, but it’s a ubiquitous melody with an easy, harmonic hook. The Beach Boys were known for those harmonies.
Friday’s Theme Music
So, confession, again. I enjoy the original Mad Max trilogy. The first is the least of them, but I will watch The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome again and again without too much thought.
Which is what I did this week. Thunderdome ends with Tina Turner singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Which makes sense in that context; they’ve already lost it all. Civilization has been wiped out, and they’re trying to rebuild something out of the wreckage, something more humane than Bartertown and the Thunderdome.
But I wake up and read the news, and think, we need a hero. Seems like any fucking day, someone is going to decide, “Today is a nice day to nuke! Let’s find someone and make a radioactive statement.” Then a shit storm of retaliation will fire up. Anarchy and chaos get stirred in as civilization’s plastic veneer melts, and norms, morals, and ethics get tossed.
(As an ironic aside, I first saw The Road Warrior on VHS while I was on temporary duty with the Air Force in South Korea.)
Yeah, gloomy fucking Friday, right? Not really. A hero can stop all that. I don’t see anyone riding in at the moment, but I’m always an optimistic person that eventually sanity prevails.
So listen to Tina singing in 1985, and think about it. Focus on the song’s words, “Looking for something we can rely on, there’s got to be something better out there.”
Yes, there’s got to be.
Thursday’s Theme Music
I like this song for the call and response, and weird title, but this line always bugged me:
You like a four letter words when you’re ready to
But then you won’t ’cause you know that you can
Really? “You like a four letter words…?”
Yes, of all the things out in the world that’s wrong in music, this is the piece wedged in my grammar craw. I always believe the title part, “Armageddon It,” was a piece of misheard words, like “D’yer Mak’er.”
Are you getting it? Armageddon it.
Stabbing
You ever have an annoying epiphany that just keeps stabbing into your thoughts, like that shower scene from the movie, Psycho, complete with the music, despite all the effort you make to shut it out?
Yeah. More coffee?
Wednesday’s Theme Music
U2 is hot and cold for me. I really enjoy The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum albums, but I was less enthused about others. This song, “Mysterious Ways” from Achtung, Baby, is my favorite track from that album. I like the mystic romantic aspects the lyrics present, and the sharp guitar hook juxtaposed against the beat and bass line. It’s a song that I crank up, and one that I sing to my cats. I sing it to myself, too, as I contemplate the world and my writing. Talk about mysterious ways.
Michael Seidel, writer 