Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

I’m still streaming from my childhood years in the Pittsburgh area today. This one came out while I live in Penn Hills. Those days were filled with school and snow activities in the winter, and sports and friends just about every day. When the sun heated the days into the eighties and nineties in the summer, Penn Hills was a gorgeous backdrop to growing up. Baseball was our big thing. With Maz, Steve Blass, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Manny Sanguillen, Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, Manny Alou, and big Dave Parker, the Pirates under Danny Murtaugh had become a force. The Steelers’ emergence remained a few years away.

The era’s music seemed customized for our lives. This song, ‘Psychedelic Shack’, by the Temptations, is from nineteen seventy. The lyrics are easy to learn and the beat carries me like a wave.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s selection is streaming from nineteen seventy-one.

A year of personal change, this was the year I moved in with Dad. He’d just returned from Germany and was assigned to DESC in the Dayton, Ohio, area. We lived in Page Manor housing.

I was fifteen. It was the year I met my wife, although that didn’t become known to me for a few years. This song, ‘Signs’, by the Five Man Electrical Band, suited my milieu. Tesla later did a decent cover, but my stream is sentimental today, so I hung with the original.

I was a long-haired freaky person, so the words speak to me: “Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Blocking our scenery, breaking my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs?” I was rebelling against signs and the conformance they urged and demands they made. Signs still inundate our lives, and if there’s not a sign, there’s probably an app.

Here it is, ‘Signs’.

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Today’s Theme Music

This song was in my head when I awoke.

I first learned of Stevie Ray Vaughn rather late. A literature professor introduced me to SRV’s work. Stationed at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, in nineteen eighty-three, I was taking classes with the University of Maryland, and my wife and I became friends with the professor. He had several PhDs, acquired during his career as a professional student seeking to be a rock star by playing guitar with a local band.

He was incredulous that I didn’t know who SRV was and insisted on giving me a cassette tape of ‘Texas Flood’. I was hooked. Here is ‘Pride and Joy’, a good way to start a morning. Time for some pancakes.

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Today’s Theme Music

Back at it. Things usually don’t work out as expected or desired for me. I plan for a reasonable knock-off of the best and forge forward. Yeah.

I have this thing going on, this writing thing. Besides the arc of learning, there are the arcs of success, not just with a career, but with each novel, every effort and each writing day. Some days, I want to chuck it. Those days are infrequent and come about when I’m hunting for something I think is missing. I’ll not give up. In the immortal lyrics of Judas Priest, “You think I’ll let it go, you’re mad, you got another thing comin’.”

Here they are, singing all about it back in nineteen eighty-two. Hope it helps you crystallize your determination.

Now, nose down, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Today’s Theme Music

Visiting with Mom, my brain stream naturally turns toward the music I heard then. One of my favorites of nineteen seventy-one was ‘Brown Sugar’ by the Rolling Stones. I was fifteen then and thought, “This is rock and roll.”

Hope you have a good Sunday. Hope you enjoy the song.

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Today’s Theme Music

“Let’s dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.”

Yeah, I’m hearing it like it’s nineteen eighty-three. Good year for me. Exciting future ahead. Woo-hoo. The future was so bright, I had to wear shades. I never knew then that I’d be worrying about the sun going down on me. Never thought about walking the line, dancing in the dark, or learning to fly. Yet, here I am sixty going on a million, flapping my arms and trying to catch the wind beneath my wings.

It’s all a pot of words, a stew of ideas, a stream of visions and information, a stick, a stone, the end of the road.

Here’s some Saturday morning Bowie. He always knew more than us.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Hey writers, hope you’re having an exciting, productive Friday of writing, editing and revising. It’s rainy here, which seems conducive to sitting down with a writing utensil and notebook, or a typewriter or computer to pursue your stories and dreams. We have a little music to help keep your words and energy flowing. Back in nineteen eighty-nine, the Berlin Wall still existed, as did the U.S.S.R. Living in Germany, stationed with the 7405 Ops Squadron and writing short stories, this song was an instant hit with me.

Here’s Tom Petty with ‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’. 

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Today’s Theme Music

Marcus reminded me of an excellent song for pattering through the day.  A dance song, they provide instructions in the lyrics:

It’s just a jump to the

And then a step to the right.

With your hands on your hips.

You bring you knees in tight.

(h/t to Metrolyrics.com)

From nineteen seventy-five and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, ‘Let’s Do the Timewarp Again.’ It’s such a rousing, crazy song, part of a rousing, crazy movie, that it’s inspired cults. The cast was excellent, the plot was unpredictable, and the plotting was frenetic.  Beyond all of that, I could really use a timewarp today. Forward or back, left or right, I don’t know where I’d go.

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Today’s Theme Music

Visiting with family, tread carefully. Words and looks creak with nuances that you may not notice. As these matters are delivered to your attention – “What did you mean by that?” – you realize how gingerly you must move.

Liam Sternberg wrote a song about the awkward poses struck while trying to keep your balance and avoid trouble. The Bangles made it a hit in nineteen eighty-six. Here’s ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is a lighter, softer melody. Don’t know what year it came out. It’s one of those songs that’s part of an album, and is included on a compilation album, and then merges into your personal cloud. You don’t know when or how it got there, but it’s there.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive – BTO – emerged from Canada onto the early nineteen seventies rock scene with several hits. While I was very familiar with their hits, like ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, this song wasn’t a hit. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I confirm it’s BTO, from their nineteen seventy-five album, ‘Head On’. Here it is, from sometime in life, BTO, with ‘Looking Out for #1’.

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