Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Footcat (Catfinition): A feline who likes to sit on people’s feet as a strategy for getting attention or rewards.
In Use: “Rocky, a handsome European blotched tabby, was a true footcat. Whenever Michael stopped, the hefty footcat would rest on Michael’s foot, as if he was an anchor to keep Michael from walking away from him until he was petted or given a treat.”
This is a “recent” song for me. It came out in two thousand one, so that give us a sense of reference about how much I follow music these days.
That’s true with multiple areas. Matters about baseball, football, pop-culture, music, television, and auto-racing are less followed today. Instead, I follow housing starts, unemployment rates, consumer confidence, politics, and news. I think I’m beginning to mature.
This song, “Blurry,” came out in the aftermath of 9/11, but it’s appropriate for today, because this is Father’s Day in America. This song is about a young man trying to be a good father to his son after separating from the child’s mother. It’s a common theme in today’s America.
Here’s Puddle of Mudd.
I had a song selected for today. Then I saw episode eight of “The Handmaid’s Tale” last night.
The episode, ambiguous, powerful and emotional, full of shifting insights, was highlighted with a Nina Simone song. Man, I love her music. It was a perfect choice to mark the scene’s denouement.
The other choice, the original song, is “School’s Out,” by Alice Cooper.
There’s a striking dichotomy between the two songs, and the thinking behind them. The Simone song was about choices and the road being taken. The Alice Cooper song is a spiteful, joyous celebration of celebrate children’s ‘freedom from school’. I wanted to play “School’s Out” not because I go to school, but with school out, we don’t need to slow down for the school zone. Almost every major road in this small town goes through a school zone, forcing traffic into a tedious crawl. It’s a small, but annoying price, for safety, right? But hooray, speed! We can go five, sometimes ten miles per hour faster. Woo-hoo!
After some thought about it while brewing coffee this morning, I went with “School’s Out” because I didn’t want to debase the use of the Simone song in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” That powerful and shocking cautionary story shouldn’t be dragged down into the meanderings of a mindless blog like this.
Besides, Alice Cooper was part of my first concert I ever attended. The other two acts that day at Three Rivers Stadium were Uriah Heep and Humble Pie. Excellent concert. Memorable.
Here it is, from nineteen seventy-two, “School’s Out.” Crank it up and sing along, if you know the words. Just fake it, if you don’t. Nobody cares.
It’s a funky Friday, perfect for those funky musicians, Sly and the Family Stone.
This was a perfect song to sing along when I was thirteen in nineteen sixty-nine. It’s even better now as a joyful anthem for an adult. Still, there were always questions about what in the world was he actually singing. I spent time when that song came on, to pause and listen, trying to decode the lyrics. They still don’t make a sense to me, but I still love them:
Stiff all in the collar
Fluffy in the face
Chit chat chatter tryin’
Stuffy in the place
Thank you for the party
But I could never stay
Many thangs is on my mind
Words in the way
Other lyrics made perfect, beautiful poetic sense to me:
Flamin’ eyes of people fear
Burnin’ into you
Many men are missin’ much
Hatin’ what they do
Youth and truth are makin’ love
Dig it for a starter, now
Dyin’ young is hard to take
Sellin’ out is harder
h/t to MetroLyrics
Let’s get funky with “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again).” It was years before I learned the correct title and the reveal that it was a mondegreen. So sue me; I was a kid.
Although this song was released and charted in nineteen seventy-six, people probably know it, thanks to President Bill Clinton. He used it as the music for his campaign theme in nineteen ninety-two, and then at his inaugural ball after winning. Since then, it’s played whenever he shows up to speak at a Democratic National Convention.
And it’s good for that purpose. Before Bill Clinton used it, I used it, too, to keep myself moving forward, dreaming and hoping. It’s a rousing damn song. Here it is, Fleetwood Mac with, “Don’t Stop.”
You hear it said so often. I was pleased and impressed that someone finally put it to music.
When I was growing up, the expression, “That’s the highway to hell,” was commonly heard. When someone disagreed with a position, it wasn’t surprising to hear them say, “I think that’s the road to hell, if we do that,” or, “You know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
It took that Australian band, AC/DC, to turn the expression into a hard-rocking hit. Between its standing as a rock music staple, and use in video games, television shows, and movies, few in the western world have probably not heard the song, or at least its opening guitar riff, or chorus. It’s a good anthem to stream in your head as you tramp around. Singing with it is good for releasing some angst.
From nineteen seventy-nine, here we go.
Since we’re coming up on Father’s Day, I’m thinking about the things that used to anger Mom that amuses me now. It’s a short list, but each of these earned a sharp word, snapped fingers, threats, or warnings, all delivered with “the evil eye.”
Mom’s threats were usually about giving us away, sending us to an orphanage, or putting her in the nut house. We weren’t a very P.C. household in the fifties and sixties.
Here’s the list:
A short list, and nothing too terrible. As children, we’d forget, and absently do these things until Mom voiced her irritation. As adults, we find it funny, and laugh about it. We’re also aware of these matters that irk Mom. If someone starts sneezing and goes more than three times — or loudly — in Mom’s presence, one of us is certain to say, “Here we go.”
What about you? Anything that your Mom did that amuses you in memory?
“Time Won’t Let Me” is a song by a group called The Outsiders.
In nineteen sixty-six, I was ten years old, part of a small group of neighborhood children on McNary Boulevard in Wilkinsburg that included Tracy and Carolann, and Mike and Richard. The group fluctuated as people moved, went on vacation, or attended Bible School. Technically, I’d moved away to Penn Hills, but I came back to visit friends.
I don’t know who, exactly, bought this record, or the rest. We listened to them on a little portable turntable. The record was part of a stack of forty-five R.P.M. singles. Setting up in someone’s basement during the summer months, we listened and danced to these records while pretending to sing the songs and play the instruments. The Monkees began dominating the stack, although Johnny Rivers had a strong presence. Others included Herman and the Hermits, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Nancy Sinatra. As the summer passed, our interests and musical tastes shifted. But for a while, we had our forty-fives.
Now, watching this video, I laugh.
Today’s music is provided by Eric Burdon and The Animals, so it’s an old song, yeah?
I remember that Mom was really excited about Eric Burdon and The Animals coming on to television. I’m not sure what show they were appearing on, as I was about eight years old. I think it may have been “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I lived in Wilkinsburg, PA, on Laketon Road, across from Turner Elementary School. That’s how vivid this memory is of that week. Mom was talking about it while ironing and dressing to go to work at her job as a telephone operator.
Eric Burdon and The Animals’ appearance hugely disappointed Mom. Somehow, in the course of the advertising, she thought it was to be singing animals! My older sister laughed and laughed over that.
This song is an old stand-by for me. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” was often selected as a theme song when I was down, depressed, frustrated, or bitter, which seems to be quite a bit. I would sing it to my self, my wife, my cats, my work teams, whatever. There’s something freeing and invigorating about singing, “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual, if there’s a place you gotta get out of, this song is ideal for fortifying your determination to do so.
Here they are, from nineteen sixty-five, Eric Burdon and The Animals, with all the glory of nineteen sixty-five technology.
We’re experiencing unseasonably strange cold, wet weather in Ashland, southern Oregon, this week. It feels like late November, an odd juxtaposition against the full green trees, lush grasses and arrays of colorful blooms. It feels like it might snow, your mind whispers to itself, setting you into a groove of wondering what this rain is doing to the seasonal snowpack. Perchance this colder, wetter weather will diminish the wildfire season. Maybe, this year, we won’t have drought and water rationing.
But on a Sunday morning, it also settles coziness. What better things are there for cold summer weather but leisurely breakfasts inside, reading books by a fire while sipping coffee and tea, and, for us, going to an afternoon movie?
All this kicks the mental streams into retro-mood. From that morass of signals emerges an album from nineteen seventy-six.
Married less than a year and separated from my wife, nineteen years old, and experiencing my first overseas assignment in the Philippines, this album helped me keep my focus and balance. “Year of the Cat” wasn’t Al Stewart’s first album, but the song by the same name was one of his highest charting songs. Its piano-heavy folk-rock sound with mystical lyrics spoke to me as I walked around Clark Air Base and the surroundings Filipino cities and towns.
It’s a good song for a cold, quiet morning. Here’s “Year of the Cat.”
Michael Seidel, writer 