Category: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

It seems like I’m staunchly streaming 1971. I’d heard “Every Picture Tells A Story” on the radio the other day and awoke with Rod Stewart singing “Maggie May” in my head.

With that, I thought about that year. Wasn’t watching much television that comes to mind. I listened to music, wrote, and drew. Infatuated with cars, I bought sketch pads and designed cars. I thought I might go into car designing, but things changed.

1976 found me in U.S.A.F. and stationed at Clark AB in the Philippines with the 3rd TFW. I was nineteen, and one of the guys I worked with was thirty-four. We were having a San Miguel beer at an office-sponsored BBQ when “Maggie May” came on the radio. He said, “Oh, I love this song.”

That surprised me. Before his confession, I’d only heard him listen to country and western music, so I started talking to him about music. We had a wonderful conversation, one that was eye-opening for me about judgments and the slide of time.

 

 

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Remembering A Dad Moment

1971

Besides being a rock fan and fifteen years old, I was an auto racing fan. My father was in the U.S.A.F. He’d just returned from being stationed in Germany and was now stationed at DESC near Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio when I moved in with him. He surprised me with tickets to the premiere of LeMans with Steve McQueen.

Whenever I hear the movie’s opening minutes, I’m back in that packed movie theater, one of the few children in the place, remembering the movie’s beginning, and Dad. The start is just the sounds and images of racing cars of the era screaming around the French race track. To non-fans, it’s probably noise. But to racing fans, the sounds of Porsches and Ferraris of different-sized engines, Alfas, Corvettes, and Matras can all be heard as individual howls.

Dad had no interest in seeing the movie, but he knew I wanted to. So, thanks, Dad.

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Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song, “Join Together,” by the Who on the radio yesterday. It’s a song that came out the year I turned sixteen, 1972.

Naturally, my mind started looping it. I find the beginning, with the Jew’s harps and mouth organs a fascinating start, and enjoy how other instruments pile in. I admire the lyrics’ sentiments, too – join together. During this era of increasingly divisive politics, it’s a refreshing break to think about joining together and going on.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Journey was well established when they came out with “Don’t Stop Believin'” in 1981. Many didn’t like this era of Journey, considering their album Escape was a commercial sell-out. “Don’t Stop Believin'” has made the pop-culture and political rounds, being featured in movies, television shows, presidential campaigns, and advertising.

I posted it here as the theme music almost one year ago. I didn’t mention then how Family Guy affects my memory of the song. For your enjoyment, I’ve included the Family Guy offering along with the real song.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Get your motor runnin’.
Head out on the highway.
Lookin’ for adventure.
And whatever comes our way.

Some songs and performers are permanently linked in memory for me. The performers have other hits, but one song first comes to mind when I hear their name. Say Pink Floyd, and I think, “Money”. AC/DC, “Highway to Hell”. The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Black Sabbath: “Paranoid”.

For Steppenwolf, it’s a ditty called “Born to be Wild”. I was enamored of Steppenwolf when I was thirteen. That would have been 1969. My friends weren’t as impressed. Mom knew I liked them, though. She showed me a newspaper article about John Kay’s escape from Russia. Then Easy Rider came out, featuring the song. Yes, I had a poster of Hopper and Fonda on their choppers on my wall.

“Born to be Wild”, from 1968.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Well, this was a weird stream. I was reading about the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election campaign for president when I came across the term crossfire hurricane. The FBI used it as a code name for the investigation. The Wayback Machine immediately fired up a stream from a 1969 Rolling Stones hit called “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. The first line that I remembered went, “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.”

I think the song’s beginning is terrific. One, two.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Blame this one on my wife.

Which had me thinking of how couples and families related and socialized through different eras. Thinking back, imagine them gathered around a fire in a cave or a camp. Imagine them in chairs on a porch, or around a radio, and later, gathered in the living room, watching television. Now we’re gathered in the office, on separate computers.

I was playing Sudoku when she played “Seasons of Love” from Rent. Naturally, the song’s lyrics entered my stream and started looping. All through yesterday’s walking and yard-working, I’m singing, “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?”

I also added/slashed modified the verses. After coffee, I added, “In words? In pages? In kibble? In phases?”

It became a little goofy after that. But, I must pass this on to you to rid myself of it.

Sorry about that.

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That Nightmare

I was in conversation with the barista today when I flashed back to an early nightmare.

I lived on McNary Blvd in Wilkinsburg, PA. I think I was around eight or nine years old. I’d stayed up watching “Chiller Theater” with Bill Cardille on which I was able to see the original version of the movie, The Fly, which came out in 1958 (yeah, I looked it up). A horror film, I thought it was pretty damn entertaining.

Naturally, though, it played with my mind, resulting in a nightmare. In the nightmare, I stuck my toe into an outlet by my bed, shocking myself. Upon walking, I discovered it was storming outside. The lightning flashes did an excellent job of twisting the bedroom furniture into other beings. I was positive that the chest of drawers was a robot walking toward me.

I remember, too, Mom telling me to keep it down, or I’ll wake the baby. Ah, good times!

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I always thought this song, “Long Cool Woman in A Black Dress” by the Hollies, is memorable for the era because it was a simple rock and roll song. It reminds me of CCR’s music for that reason. They, too, used a simple, distinctive approach. All of this song’s elements, from its guitar, drum, and bass use, to the vocals employed to tell the story, to the story itself, are basic. “With just one look, I was a bad mess. Cause that long cool woman had it all.”

How many of us didn’t meet someone who made us a bad mess with just one look?

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

A day like this requires a voice like this, singing a song like this.

“Momma’s gonna worry, I been a bad, bad boy. No use saying sorry, it’s something that I enjoy.

“Cause you can’t see what my eyes see. And you can’t be inside of me. Flying high again.”

I feel compelled to note that I thought Ozzy was singing, “Crying time again,” for the first few months after hearing this song.

I’d been reassigned from Brooks AFB, in Universal City, just outside of San Antonio, Texas, to the 603rd MASS, Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan, when this song came out. We’d arrived in May, lived in the base hotel for a month while finding arrangements, which was normal, and had moved to an apartment just outside of Gate 1. Living on the economy, the government provided our furniture. We didn’t need much for the tiny place. It would fit into our current living room.

The furniture was hideous stuff. Cheap, with orange polyester covered cushions, the sofa and chair had all the design elan of 1950s lower-class America. So did the dining room table and chest of drawers.

We had fun at that location, living there for a few years until we were authorized base housing. Thirteen apartments were in the building. American service personnel and their families lived in all of them. We experienced some memorable parties there.

From 1981, Ozzy Osbourne with “Flying High Again”.

 

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