Today’s music, from two thousand eight, is by Lady Gaga. When I hear a song, I try understanding what’s being sung and the words’ meanings. “Poker Face” seemed ambiguous, at once about sex and gambling. I liked the combination because sex and love is a gamble taken, a roll of the dice, and relationships often become efforts in reading others’ expressions to discern agenda, meanings, and truth.
I later read that Lady Gaga wrote the song about her rock and roll boyfriends. That knowledge didn’t answer all my questions about the lyrics. Still, it’s a good song to stream as you beat the street in the heat.
For some reason, “Panama,” recorded by Van Halen in nineteen eighty-four, is streaming through my head today. This came out while I was on Okinawa; the next year, I was living in South Carolina, and the year after that, I was living in Germany. But the song is most associated with a friend who came along in nineteen ninety-one, when I was living in California. He was my age, and passed away a few years ago from cancer.
(And no, for those who are curious, Randy wasn’t Case A nor Case B from my other post. He’s just another person the big C victimized.)
For you, Randy. He enjoyed listening to Van Halen almost as much as he enjoyed rooting for the Atlanta Braves. In retrospect, he was a boy of summer.
Remember that year, with portends of George Orwell’s prescient novel hanging over us, fueling worries about privacy and government spying? “There are laws against that,” people say, smirking. “It could never happen to us. We’re America. We’re a democracy. It’s the Soviet Union and those totalitarian states like it that should worry.” The U.S.S.R.’s collapse a few years later seemed to vindicate our innate American superiority. We’d won; the communists had lost. Yes, we were so silly to be worried.
Into this era came a German group with a hard-rocking message: “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.” I didn’t know much about the Scorpions before “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” I knew of them, but little more.
I thought of them today because of my stormy dream. The dream rocked me like a hurricane with its unceasing gloominess and desperation until its climax. I didn’t awaken afraid, but thoughtful. Thinking of the dream, I remembered this song, and its use in Dave Eggers’ novel. Odd, how the mind works, with everything connected and nothing terminated, but spreading and sprawling into new connections.
But with that, I think about the weather again. One difficulty in modeling weather is the planet’s complexity and dynamics. Everything is connected, but tracing the source back to the wings that began the storm can be tricky.
Before there was Starship, there was Jefferson Starship. Before that group, there was Jefferson Airplane. They made some great songs.
This is not one of them.
This song came out in nineteen eighty-five. I didn’t like the song, but it frequently streamed into my head and found an infinite play loop. I didn’t know anyone who claimed to like this song, but it found a lot of airplay, and was proclaimed the number one hit for a period. Since then, it reached number one on several lists of worst songs. I felt better that I was not alone in not liking it.
The song, by Starship, is “We Built This City.” The rest of that line goes, “We built this city on rock and roll.” I used to sing, “We built this city while we were stoned.” I have nothing against Jefferson Airplane and the groups that came after them, nor against people being stoned, in general, or San Francisco. I enjoy San Francisco.
I just dislike this song.
Why, then, is it today’s theme music? Well, I awoke from a weird dream, and there it was, playing in my head. Damn, I gotta get it out.
By the way, today was the first time that I’ve seen the video. Consider it my gift to you.
“Driving that train, high on cocaine. Casey Jones, you’d better watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind.”
Those were the words I was singing one day while passing through Mom’d living room. She was busy cleaning. Mom did – and does – have a spotless house. I was fourteen or fifteen, with long hair that irritated Mom and Dad, and a faint mustache and goatee that annoyed my school and coaches. Mom said, “What are you singing?”
I stopped and grew still, as children often do when suddenly challenged by an adult about something that seems obvious. “Singing “Casey Jones.””
“But what were you singing?”
“I don’t know.”
Yes, claim amnesia whenever possible. Mom didn’t look happy but, after waiting for follow-up questions, I discreetly scurried away. Later, I concluded, it must have been the cocaine part, right? I chuckled about that.
Mom and Dad were divorced, and still later, while at Dad’s place, I was walking through his living room, singing…you know it.
“What are you singing?” he asked.
Having been through this questioning and being older, I skipped ahead to the lyrics instead of providing the title. After hearing them, he shook his head. Smiling, I moved on.
Here it is, as performed by the Grateful Dead, “Casey Jones,” from nineteen seventy.
Feeling a little tired, a little numb, unthinking and unresponsive. Just a little N.E.S.*
To suit my condition, I offer Dolores Riordan and the Cranberries with our composition, “Zombie,” from nineteen ninety-four. The song was written in memory of two children killed in the nineteen ninety-three IRA bombing in Warrington.
The song hit the waves as I contemplated my military career faced some choices. Stationed at Onizuka Air Station, home of the infamous blue cube in Sunnyvale, California, I was part of the Air Force Space Command. After I’d been there a few years, I was invited to join Space Command’s Inspector General Team. My wife didn’t like the situation’s dynamics. First, it would require a move from the SF Bay Area to Colorado. Second, I would be on the road about ninety percent of the time. Those conditions stirred her ire. Not being zombies, we said, “No.”
Disliking that answer, the Air Force informed me they would move me to Whiteman AFB, Missouri. Deciding I didn’t want to go there, I submitted my paperwork. Onizuka became my final duty location, and I became a civilian and Air Force retiree.
Ah, something of this century spun through my head last night. I couldn’t get rid of it, so I’m posting it here and passing it on to others. It’s that riff that runs through the song that keeps hooking me. Once again, as with many songs I hear, I wonder, what the hell are they singing? More importantly, what does it mean?
Here’s The White Stripes with “Seven Nation Army” from two thousand three.
Had beers (Caldera Pilot Rock Porter for me, thanks) with my friends last night. A staid group, they’re retired materials and sound engineers, doctors, university professors, and physicists. A small group, just eight last night, I’m the youngest by eight years. None of those present last night knew this song. Hope you do.
Here’s ZZ Top performing “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers” on their nineteen seventy-three album, “Tres Hombres.” I listened to this album a great deal during my junior and senior high school years, especially in art class.
It’s a basic rock and roll, guitar-hero, hot as hell day. I employ hyperbole, of course. It’s not as hell today, but will be a toasty, sweat inducing, hyperbole-inspiring ninety-seven degrees on the beloved Fahrenheit scale.
Love this song. Stationed in Germany with the U.S. Air Force and watching the Soviets when the song hit the waves and created a stream source in my head, I always considered it a direct, mocking response to President George H.W. Bush’s inauguration. Here’s my reference:
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.
Yes, values, priorities, and directions can get a little skewed in the free world. Here’s Neil Young from nineteen eighty-nine with “Rockin’ In the Free World.”
It’s July 4 in America. Probably that date in many other parts of the world, too. For Americans, though, it’s associated with Independence Day, a holiday commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So, what the hell. With that in mind, I started streaming this song from nineteen eighty-one:
“America”
Far,
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star
Free,
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream
On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again,
They’re coming to America
Michael Seidel, writer 