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George Benson had taken us with earlier albums and hits, but his take of “On Broadway” always enlivened the scene when it played. Released in nineteen seventy-eight, when it came on, everyone jumped up, dancing and singing along with it, and trying to scat with Benson.
Good song for a chilly Friday.
Today’s theme music is a courtesy of Don Henley and Mike Campbell. The song is, “The Boys of Summer.”
This song, with lyrics like, “I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac,” about looking back and change, and coping with it. I’m a person that looks back a great deal. I’m not obsessed with it, but looking back helps me re-imagine where I’m going. It’s one of those arrows of time. Looking back helps me keep straight.
A little voice inside my head said, “Don’t look back. You can never look back.”
I thought I knew what love was,
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever,
I should just let them go, but-
Today’s technology encourages looking back. I can watch movies that star actors that died, leading me to wonder, are they still alive? I can check a friend’s post, even though he died a few years ago, and replay movies, television shows, and interviews from the past, and pretend that past is today, or yesterday, although it was created decades ago.
It’s nostalgia, isn’t it? It is for me. Television, pop and rock music, and movies were part of my scenes as I grew up. Songs come on and take me back to a happier moment, as do smells, and touches. I like going back there; I like feeling happy.
There are fewer happier moments today. Experiences temper my expectations, and I’ve become jaded. It could be from looking back, or simply being cursed with too much ability to recall times and events. It’s part of who I am, so I don’t decry it.
Well, maybe I decry it a little, because that’s who I am, as well.
I was already a Humble Pie fan when this song came out in nineteen seventy, having seen them in concert. I ate this album up, but the first song from side two – there’s some vinyl lingo for you – was my favorite. Two things about this song and group; I rarely encounter people who know either one. Bummer. Nineteen seventy-two was a fun year, and this song fit it perfectly.
Here’s “Thirty Days In the Hole.”
“Eddie and The Cruisers” was a pretty strange movie. I enjoyed most of it, and watched it to the end. In fact, it was the end that I found the strangest aspect. But I liked the cast, and enjoyed the song, “On the Dark Side,” performed by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band. It has a lot of that Jersey sound, and I remember that’s what some parts of the movie was about. That’s what I’m streaming today. For fun, I have the actual band and their video, and the scene from the movie. Hope you listen and enjoy them.
This is one of those songs that I know from my youth, but I don’t know who sang it.
The song is “Black Is Black,” and the group who performed it was Los Bravos. I’m streaming it today for reasons that my mind won’t reveal. It came out in nineteen sixty-six. I was ten, then, but was probably exposed to it when driving around, because pop music was always playing on the AM radio stations in that era.
Give a listen, and see if any bells chime when you hear it.
A-O was a navigator I hung around with in Germany. He loved this song. I really never understood why, but it was on the jukebox in the base’s hotel bar. The juke box was loaded with CDs instead of vinyl by that point in life, nineteen eighty-eight. A-O always selected this song several times through the evening. I haven’t heard it in years, but sometimes, I stream it in my head, remember A-O, and smile.
Here is Edie Brickell & New Bohemians with “What I Am.”
Bob Mustin commented on yesterday’s theme music. He wrote, “The song favored by my class at the Naval Academy was The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.””
I hear that. His comment summoned a memory. We were in Egypt in nineteen eighty-five as part of Exercise Bright Star. It was July, or maybe August. Living in a tent city in the desert, the ops portion was done. We were awaiting redeployment. There was a lot of down time. While enduring the Sahara heat in our tent’s shade, one of the guys played “Green, Green Grass of Home” on a small cassette player.
One of the other guys said, “Man, turn that off. It’s depressing.”
The player said, “I think it’s nice.”
“It’s about a guy in prison,” one person said.
“Nice,” someone said. “It’s not nice. Makes me remember my wife is suing me for divorce.”
“Yeah, and it makes me remember my home when I was growing up,” the first speaker said. “There wasn’t any green, green grass at our house. It was all cement and asphalt, even the playground. The ball field wasn’t paved, but it didn’t have no grass, either.”
“Yeah, and my folks are dead,” said another guy. “There’s no one going to be there to meet me when I get home.”
An argument arose about the song and its meanings.
Ah, sweet memories. We heard the Tom Jones cover in Egypt, so that’s what I’m playing for you.
You ever look yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself, “Who are you?” Or think you know someone, and then they do something that disgusts you, so you end up asking the same question, “Who are you?”
Yeah, “Who Are You?” By The Who. Nineteen seventy-eight. Sadly, I associated this song with Keith Moon and his death, as the drummer died a month or two after this song was released. Watch him drumming in this video. What expressions, a one hundred-eighty degree difference from Entwhistle on bass, smoking cigarettes but not showing much on his face. Sometimes, it looks like Entwhistle is secretly amused.
This is also when I turned down a promotion in the Air Force, separated from it, and headed home, where I attempted to be a restaurant owner and a college student. The restaurant didn’t work out, and I went back into the military a year later. So, this is a good anthem for that era of my life, as I tried figuring out who I am.
Awoke this morning thinking of spectrums and roller-coasters. We live on a spectrum, hunting for the balance to ride the waves of the day. Those waves often acquire a roller-coaster feel as we rise up from the troughs, reach the peaks, and plummet down again, hanging on with white-knuckled glee or terror. They’re pretty closely related.
From that, my switches shifted. Cake streamed in. I particularly enjoyed their third album, “Prolonging the Magic”. Thinking about the lyrics from “Never There,” I saw the connection between my maundering about roller coaster, and Cake:
We’re always on,
This roller coaster,
If you want me,
Why can’t you get closer?
That’s it: we’re always on this roller-coaster. This era of corporate growth, reactionary politics, and fake news, seems to be worse than other periods. But, I remind myself, this is the only period I remember living through. I suspect other eras felt the same for people of my relative status. They, like me, hope, lament, curse, and pray, and sometimes, we just close our eyes and ears, and try to walk away. But that roller-coaster doesn’t stop.
Here it is, from nineteen ninety-eight, “Never There.” Hope you have a fun ride today.
This song is fantastic. Its lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh. I know covers by so many performers, but I like this version, by Peggy Lee. I figure I probably know it through Mom playing it. I have to admit, I do have a powerful fondness by the covers by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Diane Shuur.
It’s a good Monday song. Here is Peggy Lee with “The Best Is Yet to Come,” from nineteen sixty-two.
Michael Seidel, writer 