Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

The stream flowed into nineteen eighty-four, and the prophetic song, “Round and Round,” by Ratt. “What goes around, comes around. Dig.”

I was young when I encountered this. Working as the NCOIC of the 9AF Reports Section, I daily briefed the 9AF Commander and his senior staff on the preceding day’s operational activities. We were part of the now defunct Tactical Air Command, supervising fighter wings. 9AF included the area east of the Mississippi in the U.S., and Southwest Asia, often referred to outside military circles as the Middle East. This was during the Iran-Iraq War. They were all about reciprocity. Reciprocity is the essence of round and round. “You attack my shipping, I’ll attack your shipping.” So it went.

Sure. History repeats, doesn’t it? Especially in politics and war.

It also repeats on personal levels. Every year, I feel more like everything goes round and round. I get desperately tired of it. I frequently encounter people who seem to think what’s going around is being experienced for the first time. Others did not learn.

Yet, as I age, I understand, we can learn, but sometimes it’s beyond us to apply the lessons learned. We become too hard-wired into expectations and behavior developing from routines and rituals, fears and reactions, and failures and shortcomings. We’re looking for the end of the rainbow, and it stays elusively distant. Our bodies betray us, our minds betray us, and our memories betray us. Dreams fade, and goals collapse.

I’ve seen this in older generations, too. The latest craze becomes yesterday’s fad. Today’s star is tomorrow’s memory, and the next generation(s) are generally bemused by our quaint opinions about hip, cool, technology, and politics.

Round and round.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

The Alan Parsons Project was a progressive rock band. I enjoyed them, but honestly, lots of my friends didn’t care for them. Apparently the music the Alan Parson Project released was too mellow for that lot. The heyday of their music was in the late seventies, when groups like Kiss and other glam rockers were deafening stadiums of people.

So, I seemed mostly alone in my Alan Parsons Project admiration. One particular song was “Eye In The Sky.” Using this song as inspiration, I wrote a short story about the eye in the sky watching humans. No, it was never sold. It’s probably in a drawer, somewhere, though. I don’t throw writing out. I leave that to others.

Take a listen and see what you think of the song. It came out a little later, in nineteen eighty-two. Let me knows if it moves you to sleep, as it moved my friends. Cheers

 

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Today’s Theme Music

A friend asked, “Have you tried asking Siri, “I see a little silhouetto of a man?””

I’ve tried it, and it’s a hoot.

The line is from the well-known song, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen. It came out in nineteen seventy-five, a year after I graduated from high school, and remains an eminently powerful and enjoyable means to rock out. Queen also created one of the earliest and most memorable music videos, years before MTV was launched.

That makes it today’s theme music. Listen along, and do the fandango.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Life is but a roller coaster, you know? One hour you’re up, the next hour finds you on the ground. We flutter from ecstasy to frustration, coping with drugs, alcohol and other escapes.

Love, wow, love can be the wildest roller coaster. The Ohio Players covered it in song, “Love Rollercoaster,” in nineteen seventy-five. I enjoyed the song when it came out, along with a few other million people. It became one of those ubiquitous songs, played in clubs and on the radio twenty-four/seven.

Besides being one of the anthems of nineteen seventies America, “Love Rollercoaster” is burdened with an urban myth. Not too long into the song is a scream. I never thought much about the scream, considering it part of their presentation, but others assigned serious reasons behind the scream, like people or animals being killed or injured. After explaining what caused the scream (one of the singers – surprise!), the Ohio Players embraced a vow of silence about the song, refusing to talk about the scream.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers later covered it. I enjoy their version, but, being a traditionalist, I stayed with the Ohio Players.

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Today’s Theme Music

This is one of those songs from my second spring.

The song came out in nineteen seventy-three, which was the spring of my adulthood. Seventeen, I was living in West Virginia with my father. He was newly retired from the U.S. Air Force. Then entering my senior year of high school, I was finding love and thinking about the future beyond classes. Nothing was working out as planned, so I was winging it, the process by which I’d end up living my life: just wing that mutha.

“Ballroom Blitz,” by Sweet, nicely captures and conveys the chaos and pathos of that period as hormones and emotions took over, and I impatiently pursued life.

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Today’s Theme Music

I woke up in a Foghat state of mind.

I’d had an exciting and interesting dream about a recent dream. Without disclosing more, it was tremendously uplifting, bolstering my self-confidence to scary levels. I will note that I dreamed about the number eight again, which makes, unofficially, but what I can remember and enumerate, seven times. I’m waiting to see if I’ll dream of eight an eight time to end the series.

Back to Foghat. Those of you of certain ages and inclination will remember this song. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” is a blues staple that’s been well-covered by some great artists. But I encountered Foghat’s version first. It was nineteen seventy-two, and I was sixteen, a wonderful combination. By then, I was enamored with rock and guitars. Foghat’s cover of this song opens with rocking guitars, and doesn’t let up. What else needs said?

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Today’s Theme Music

Ah, love songs. I love them, especially when one side is singing to the other, attempting to sway them to stay together.

Such is what I take from this song, “Buddy Holly,” by Weezer. It came out in during my second or third spring, in nineteen ninety-four. I always understood a few refrains:

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore
I don’t care what they say about us anyway
I don’t care bout that

~ h/t AZLyrics.com

It’s the rest of the song that always mystified me. Fortunately, we moved into the Internet age, where Google searches and various websites, like AZLyrics, are able to clarify the words.

Sing along if you know them. As a bonus, Spike Lee directed the video. Fun stuff.

 

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Can You Remember?

On this day, the moon landing took place.

I remember it. I was a newly-minted thirteen-year-old. I watched the historic event downstairs. Downstairs was the cellar, or basement, as we called it, in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. That’s where the family room, laundry room, garage, and my bedroom were located. It used to flood when it rained hard. Fortunately, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suburb only experienced rain about half of the year.

The lights were off in the family room, and cool air bathed the space. Sitting on the couch, the one that used to be upstairs before we bought new living room furniture, I watched Eagle land on the moon on a big Magnavox console color television. I always thought the television was stolen and purchased from a fence. Even when new, it had a small area in the upper right corner where the picture tube – televisions had picture tubes, back then – appeared cracked. At least, what it showed was a distorted bubble of rainbow colors.

It was good enough to watch the moon landing, though. There wasn’t even a need to rotate the outdoor antenna or adjust the rabbit ears. All three major networks were carrying the event. We only had the three, then. Cable news wasn’t carrying it, because cable hadn’t proliferated around the nation like a blackberry bramble gone wild, and there weren’t any national cable news channels. They were still in our future.

We were excited about the future, despite what was happening and had happened. Perhaps I was only excited because I was young. The Vietnam war still continued, and Nixon was in the White House. Watergate was still a few years away. So was our first gasoline crises since World War II. Microwaves were only emerging, and we mostly played music on forty-five and thirty-three R.P.M. vinyl records. We also listened to music on radios, especially in our cars, especially A.M. It was pretty impressive that our old Dodge had a push-button radio. Later on, after the first man walked on the moon and made his famous utterance, I went outside and gazed up at the stars, wondering what the future would bring.

All in all, it was a pretty cool night.

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A Drink of Fun

The young man walking toward him looked like a tall drink of fun. He wondered what the man was really like.

He’d once been a tall drink of fun, he rued. Well, not a tall drink, but a tumbler of fun. More like a shot, really.

He’d been a short shot of fun.

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Today’s Theme Music

Woke up feeling like some Squirrel Nut Zippers.

I began listening to them in nineteen ninety-seven. I was working for a medical defice startup called P.A.S. in Palo Alto. A young co-worker introduced me to the S.N.Z. sound with the second album, “Hot.”

I became particularly fond of “Hell.” It was a good song to sing along to while seat dancing  when I was stuck in the SF Bay Area traffic. I still smile when I hear this song.

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