Hey, writers north of the Equator. Guess what? It’s December, and it’s winter. That puts me into a winter state of mind. Some of that crystalline white precipitation tops the mountains, hills, and forests surrounding our valley, while we endure fog, low gray cloud cover, and meek sunshine.
Looking out on this world as the furnace says good-morning, “A Hazy Shade of Winter” leaked into the stream. I thought about the Simon & Garfunkel original, and admired again, their talent and genius. But wanting something upbeat and edgier, I took to the Bangles.
Don’t you love those opening lyrics? “Time, time, time, look what’s become of me.”
The temp has hung around thirty degrees F. for hours, locked into that position by an inversion layer that invited freezing fog in. The freezing fog accepted the invitation – have you ever known fog to turn down an invitation? – so here we sit, freezing and foggy. These energy leeching conditions must be countered. With what can I counter it? Pancakes for breakfast and French roast coffee failed. Let’s drag in some music to shift my ass out of my chair.
I’m sure each of you have a favorite that does it for you. I have a catalog of them, myself, but today, it’s the Allman Brothers Band doing that old Blind Willy McTell song, “Statesboro Blues,” as captured live at the Fillmore East, in all their glory. I wore out this album listening to it in nineteen seventy-one and -two.
The playing and lyrics mesmerized a twelve-year old growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. Equal confusion and interest reigned over, “How does he play like that?” and, “What’s he singing?”
He was Jimi Hendrix, and the song was “Voodoo Child,” sometimes spelled “Chile.” That just flavored the interest.
Still streaming from way back in the last century.
I like the light and peppy feel of today’s theme music. It tells a story, and the story-telling invokes a sense of place and life that I identify with whenever I hear it. But the story isn’t completely told. Gaps remain. That’s how I like my story-telling, with gaps that cause you to wonder even after hearing the story.
Here is Paul Simon with “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” nineteen seventy-two.
Remember the television series called “Get Smart”? It was on in the mid-sixties. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks came up with the idea. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon were the primary stars.
A crazy spy-spoof, “Get Smart” featured an organization called CONTROL, shoe phones, the cone of silence, and other unique devices that made fun of the spy gadgets populating more serious spy ventures. Don Adams was a bumbling spy known as Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. Agent 86. Smart always doing things by the book, even though doing so was counter-productive. Feldon was Agent 99. She seemed more competent and intelligent, but 86 often ended up saving 99, mostly by accident, it seemed. The two of them, along with Chief, and other agents of CONTROL, fought the forces of KAOS.
The opening sequence showed Adams as Smart marching through corridors toward walls while the theme music played. As he reached each wall, a door would open, let Smart through, and close behind him. Once he’d gone through a number of doors in this manner, he reached a telephone booth. There, he’d put in a coin and dial a number, and then wait until he was lowered from the booth.
I was reminded of this sequence often during my military career. Working in S.C.I.F.s, underground command posts, vaults, and buildings without windows, that television show’s theme music would stream into my head as we went around corners, up halls, and through doors, often without seeing other people. The biggest differences from the television show were that we all wore badges, security cameras abounded in our halls, signs warning about unauthorized access and the use of deadly force were frequent, and getting past the doors usually required us to punch numbers into a cypher-lock.
There were also red-tiled zones where only one person was authorized to stand or be at a time, to help keep the entrance secure. In later years, we also encountered retinal scans in little booths that weighed you as you looked into a scanner and entered the numbers to pass through. Your weight was on record and accessed via your badge. A five-pound leeway was permitted. This was done under the watchful eyes of security people and cameras.
That was over twenty years ago. I wonder if they still do all those things? They’ve probably moved on to comparing DNA by now.
This is another from the latter days of my childhood. I guess David Cassidy’s passing juxtaposed with the holiday season has opened the memory stream onto that era of my existence.
I learned of Shel Silverstein through Playboy magazine. People would throw them out for recycle pickup; we’d ferret them out of the piles while we were waiting for the school bus. I didn’t know he was a song writer. I enjoyed several of his songs without being aware that he’d written them, not learning about his part in the musical portion of my childhood until Shel died in nineteen ninety-nine.
Streaming today is a Shel classic. Written by him and performed by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” was ubiquitously played and referenced in every sort of social media available in nineteen seventy-two and seventy-three. Why not? The satirical lyrics about the meaning of success substantially differed from other songs out there during that era, and the band played it way over the top. Fabulous.
In the wake of remembering David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, and Bread, another song slipped into my musical memory stream. Running on infinite loop since yesterday afternoon, I need to share it to dislodge it.
Here are the cartoon/comic strip band, The Archies, with “Sugar, Sugar,” from nineteen sixty-nine.
Today’s theme song choice is a little…odd…for me. David Cassidy’s death triggered the choice.
When I was growing up and noticing girls, I began going to their houses. I wasn’t stalking them; they invited me.
This was around the same time that music was more interesting to me, say sixth grade. When going to their houses, though, I found their music preferences were different from mine. Whereas I leaned toward Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, the Stones, the Who, etc., they had the Monkees, Herman and the Hermits, David Cassidy, the Jackson 5, Osmonds, and other music that I disdained as bubble gum pap. Yeah, I was a snob.
One of those albums that I often encountered was David Gates and Bread, and their albums. The one I most remember was “Baby I’m-a Want You,” with the hit single by the same name. I was almost sixteen when this album came out. I’ve nothing against it (or the group), but that it seemed too mellow and sappy for me. Please forgive my judgement; I was a young rebel.
Those are all remembered generalities. Melissa was very into the Who. Of course, the irony that I didn’t realize until later was that my music preferences developed because I was listening to my older sister’s music.
Yesterday was America’s Thanksgiving holiday, so I was thinking about the first one spent away from home. That would be nineteen seventy-four. Eighteen, I’d joined the Air Force and was at basic training at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. My uncle was in the military and lived in the area, so he and his wife, Pat, invited me to Thanksgiving at their house.
It was a terrific time. We watched the Cowboys defeat the Redskins as Clint Longley, a rookie, came in the game and threw a hail Mary that was caught and gave them the victory.
Other than that, and another day off, we were sequestered most of the time during our training, and without television or radio. But once we finished, we returned to our musical roots. For me, it was rock. Here’s Golden Earring with “Radar Love”, a song that had been released the previous year. Love that psychedelic special effects they put on the video. Sooo cheesy.
My mind works in a stream of connections that’s difficult to corrall. Sometimes they hit and fire neurons into expected directions.
Like today. Out of the fire streams “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads. Interesting song. Anything to do with Thursday? No. Thanksgiving? Not that I recall. Dreams, or writing? Nope, and no.
It just pops in. Maybe I heard a fragment of sound or glimpsed a word or image that fired the song back to life in my head. Yeah, it’s a Frankenstein existence up there.
Cool song, though. fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better than many others.
Michael Seidel, writer 