Category: memories

Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s music came out in 1965, when I was nine. I lived in Wilkinsburg, PA, around that time. A group of us liked going into one girl’s basement and pretending we were musicians, singers, and daughters. The Outsiders, Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Rivers, the Turtles, and Paul Revere and the Raiders provided us with our music via forty-five RPM records. We’d take turns performing. It was a way to spend time. I don’t know who provided us with that record collection.

Anyway, “Time Won’t Let Me” by The Outsiders, was one of those songs. Later, after reading the book, and then much later, when I saw the movie, I wondered if the Outsiders had taken their name from the novel. Then I found that the band existed before the novel. Oh, well.

As an aside, the movie was interesting. Francis Ford Coppola directed it. The cast was an amazing ensemble of young stars. Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, and Matt Dillon all come readily to mind.

One final aside, I read the novel around 1970, when a teacher recommended it to me. The novel is controversial and remains one of the most frequently challenged books in America.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s music is a little gross.

Supine in bed, I would feel the mucus shifting. It moved with a soft snapping and crinkling sound, like it’s trying to sneak around my head. From that, I began singing, “Mucus stream,” to the tune of Bush’s “Glycerine,” from Sixteen Stone.  I was making up whole verses for it by the time I stole into sleep.

That’s not to denigrate “Glycerine.” I like the song, and enjoyed the album. It still lives in the shuffle space dedicated to that era.

(My CD player holds two hundred discs. They’re divided into eight sections. Sections are assigned genres, eras or purpose. Like, one section is for the blues, and houses Buddy Guy, Albert King, B.B., SRV, etc. Another section is home to classic rock, with Cream, Blind Faith, Traffic, Led Zep, The Who, and so on. Bush lives in the section I call post disco rock, along with Def Leppard, the Scorpions, later Van Halen and ZZ Top, and STP. My wife has a section of her favorites, and I have a section of my favorites. Since my punk and alt offerings are small, I just mix them in with other sections. Anal, aren’t I?)

(And of course, the CDs are stored alphabetically by group or performer’s last name, and I’ve indexed them on an Excel spreadsheet. Yes, anal.)

Returning to the song, the lyrics fascinate me, and I thought the video reflects the song’s mood.

 

 

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

As I endured the cold and its migrations, interactions, and pain during the last few days and nights, I began assigning musical instruments and notes to my experience, thinking, how would my cold sound musically? Just something to while away the sleepless, mucus filled hours.

Doing so reminded me of “Love Reign O’er Me,” by the Who. The song begins with a thunderstorm and rain. The song is the final cut of the Who rock-opera, Quadraphenia, and marks the final act and possibly redemption of the main character after chaotic struggles with love, drugs, family, violence, and identity.

Mom bought the album for me for Christmas 1973, based on my older sister’s recommendation. Thanks, Mom and sis!

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Ah, from 10CC, in honor of my illness, “You Got A Cold,” from 1977.

Your nose is runnin’
And your eyes are red
Your head is achin’
You’d be better in bed
From the bottom of your fever
To the throbbing in your toes
You’ve got a cold

h/t AZlyrics.com

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I’d only recently learned that Dave Mason wrote this song. I knew that Traffic had performed it, but in my heart, this song always belonged to Joe Cocker. Whichever group or performer does it, the song always lifts me up. I loved it when he sang it in concert.

Hope it lifts you today, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Here’s Joe Cocker with “Feeling Alright” from 1969.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Staying with Argent, I enjoy one of the early songs he wrote for The Zombies, “She’s Not There.” Although it’s been covered by many others, including Santana, I like the original.

It came out in 1964, when I was eight years old. I obviously learned it through repetitive play, mostly on the radio. Its melody seems reflective about the subject, while the words are bitter and wondering. I like the yin and yang feel to the combination.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Streaming from my childhood once again. I enjoy this song for its organ solo. Because of that, I prefer the long version. Thinking about the words, there aren’t many verses in the song. Most of us know the title lines: “Hold your head up.”

Here’s Argent, with Rod Argent (formerly of The Zombies, which must count for something) on keyboards.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I’ve always enjoyed this song’s beginning. A chorus, a softly strumming acoustic guitar, and then a gentle French horn, each remarkable by themselves but coming together to set you up in an introspective mood.

When I first heard it, I thought, “Is that a French horn? Who is playing it?” Because a French horn isn’t part of the Rolling Stones’ typical composition. Later, there’s organ and piano, and wondered, “Who is on those?” I learned it was Al Kooper on them, along with the French horn. Pretty cool.

The song is, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a well-known Rolling Stones song from that terrific album, Let It Bleed. I like the song’s story-telling style, how it touches on different political and social elements of that period, rising rises from a reflection on a female addict into a rousing anthem for rebellion and struggle.

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

h/t AZLyrics.com

It’s a stirring rallying cry: try, and you might find that you get what you need, and it may not be what you thought it was.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Although this song is about a man’s relationship with a woman, I often thought of it in conjunction with my employers. “I have become cumbersome to this job.” Hah. Or, they’d become cumbersome to me. As the song says, walls were being built. And sometimes, I thought, despite the balance, this job experience has become cumbersome.

Here’s Seven Mary Three with “Cumbersome,” 1994.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

America on Coffee posted a piece about Sister Sledge and “We Are Family.”  Their post triggered a memory landslide.

The song came out in 1979. The Pittsburgh Pirates adopted it as their theme song. Led by Willie Stargell, they chased down a World Series championship.

Personally, I ended one life chapter and resumed another. I’d left the military to buy a restaurant and attend college in October, 1978. It didn’t work out well, so I headed back to the military. Preparing to leave for my assignment at Randolph-Brooks AFB in Texas, my car, a signal orange Porsche 914, burned up in the driveway. Terrific. I flew out alone to live in the barracks and save some money. My wife would fly out to join me in a few weeks.

I’d arrived at R-B AFB and was in transient quarters when Pittsburgh took on Baltimore in game seven of the World Series. It was a beautiful fall day in Texas. I listened on the room’s AM/FM clock radio as Pittsburgh won the game and the championship. The following Monday, I resumed my military career and kept going until I retired in 1995.

 

 

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