Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

Call me cynical.

I believe people reside on a personal spectrum of being fucked up. Where you appear to reside depends on several factors:

  1.  Your self-awareness;
  2. Others’ awareness and acknowledgement;
  3. Your attitude toward being fucked up;
  4. The desperation level.

You can be aware that you’re fucked up, but then your attitude kicks in. You can decide:

  • You’re not fucked up; it’s the world that’s fucked up;
  • You’re fucked up, but who cares? Just make it work for you.

Of course, some people lie to themselves about anyone or anything being fucked up. They’re the scary ones.

This song reminds me of being fucked up. I’d just returned to America after a four year plus tour of Germany for the U.S. Air Force. The evil Soviet empire had ended its reign, so much of what my military career was about, launching nukes against the evil empire and spying on them, was no longer a factor. While others turned their attention to Southwest Asia and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, I wasn’t allowed to participate, being deemed as mission critical for the now defunct mission of spying on the Soviets. I couldn’t participate in local activities to help the ‘war effort’, either; while my company grade officers who were pilots and navigators and junior NCOs and airmen were busy helping to erect tent city in the mud of Rhein-Mein Air Base, or working in the post office or chow hall, it wasn’t acceptable for me as a senior NCO to do such menial tasks. My offers to help were denied, then I was rotated back to America.

This all left me feeling pretty isolated and frustrated. I remember listening to this song in nineteen ninety-one while sitting in traffic in Peninsula traffic on Highway 101 in the SF Bay Area during a rain storm and having a mini-breakdown. The song is an introspective ode to self-pity, loss, realization and acceptance, so it was perfect for that era of my life. Although outwardly, I was fine by all the normal social measurements, I was an internal mess, drinking too much and having marital problems.

All the factors and your attitude about being fucked up are usually fluctuating. I’m still pretty fucked up, but I know I can shift my attitude a few points in either direction with fluids such as beer, wine and coffee, and activities like writing and walking. I’ve never been so desperate, angry and frustrated about being fucked up that I’ve contemplated suicide or killing others to make everything better, nor have hard drugs or an outlaw life attracted me. That doesn’t change my basic issues of being an arrogant, cynical, egotistical asshole with emotional problems, but it does adjust my attitude toward myself and the world.

Yet, I love this song. Here’s Gary Moore with “Still Got the Blues (For Your),” from nineteen ninety. He was such a talented guy. R.I.P.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Remember the 1980s. Oh, fer sure. Like, totally, unless you were, like, spaced, or an airhead, you know.

Yes, the lingo, influenced by Valley Girls living in the San Fernando Valley, spread across the country until it kinda, like, gagged you with its syntax and mindless expressions. Frank Zappa captured the essence of valspeak in his nineteen eighty-two hit, “Valley Girl.” “Valley Girl” was a big departure to Zappa’s music for me. I’d grown up on dishes of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. His songs carried a hard satirical commentary about American values and commercialism. That’s why I dug him.

Here’s “Valley Girl,” featuring Frank’s daughter, Moon Unit.

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Today’s Theme Music

Crowds. Traffic. I dislike these things, and try avoiding them.

I’m also thin-skinned, dislike criticism, and try to avoid it. I also try to avoid attention of any sort, preferring to be on the sidelines, even as I attempt things that draw attention to me. Yes, I’m your standard, complicated human mess.

These predilections drive me to choice. I usually perceive the negatives – the negatives of trying and failing, or going to parties or festivals, and enduring crowds, or the negative of attempting something new and doing a poor job that will give others opportunities to mock me. But those choices, hemmed in by the possibility of being a negative experience, fence me in.

Aware of all of this, I’m trying. I try to be more positive and open. I try to armor myself against criticism, and go for it. I probably fail at both aspects more than than half the time.

This thinking brings me to today’s theme music. Fat Boy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” from the year two thousand, featured Christopher Walken dancing in a hotel. I’ve always thought it was a pretty cool video, which was directed by Spike Jonze. The words repeated throughout the song include, “You can go this way, you can go that way.”

That’s about it. We all make our choices and endure the results. We can go this way, or we can go that way.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

So many questions are circulating now about last year’s presidential election in the U.S., and Russia’s role in Trump’s surprising election. Information keeps leaking out about Trump insiders lying about when they met with Russians, or if. Donald keeps insisting that it’s all fake news being leaked and then contradicts himself and vows to find and prosecute the leakers.

What’s going on? We need to find out. We might need to follow Ozzy Osbourne’s advice:

“Who can we get on this case?
“We need Perry Mason.
“Someone to put you in place.
“Calling Perry Mason.”

I remember listening to this song after retiring from the U.S. Air Force in nineteen ninety-five. We’d just moved from military housing on Moffett to a little duplex in Mountain View. The web and Internet were penetrating homes and businesses as the online potential became exposed. We were in the middle of the dot com bubble. Start-ups were abounding, and the Bay Area housing market was heating up. “Seinfeld” was the hot television show.

I was unemployed but retired while my wife worked for an advertising agency on Castro Street in Mountain View. Every open house for rentals had dozens of applicants. We managed to find one that was going to be listed. The elderly couple who owned it were cleaning it. We talked to them. They told us to come back for the showing at the scheduled time. We drove away but returned, and offered them a higher rent and deposit. They were still cleaning; we told them we’d take it as is, and finish the cleaning. They agreed. We moved ourselves with assistance from Starving Students. A month later, I began working for a medical device start-up. We lived there for four years, until we bought a house in Half Moon Bay.

Here it is, from nineteen ninety-five, Ozzy with “Perry Mason.”

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This is the only song I’m familiar with by this artist.

His name is Tom Cochrane. The song is “Life Is A Highway.” The song came out during the last century, in nineteen ninety. I like writing, saying and thinking expressions like, “the last century.” Of course, for some, this has been their only century, so far. We don’t know how far they’ll get. They might be looking back on these times while thinking, “Remember two hundred years ago? Wow, I was only seventeen but I thought I knew it all.”

Or, maybe not. Oregon’s oldest woman on record died recently. One hundred ten years old, Birdie Johnson still only knew two centuries, yet consider the significant changes she witnessed in her lifetime.

On the other hand, advances don’t always progress as expected. The SF Chronicle recently addressed predictions they’d published back in nineteen ninety-nine. Flying cars again made the list. We keep expecting flying cars. Those cars still rolling on the ground were expected be getting seventy to eighty miles per gallon by now, so that was a strike. It was predicted that the wealthy would be living to one hundred fifty years old by now. That was considered a miss.

Too many cars and not enough houses for the SF Bay area was predicted back in ninety ninety-nine. That was considered on target, so they weren’t all misses. Yet, for all the predictions made that missed, humans still surged ahead in many areas that we didn’t expect. Yes, life is a highway. We start with birth and end with death, but the stuff in between might not be as predictable as we think.

Let’s just ride it.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Hey, it’s a holiday here in America, the one called Memorial Day. It’s a Federal holiday and pretty well accepted, so most will be celebrating it without protests or demonstrations and there will be plenty of Memorial Day sales going on, along with war movies. Although some consider it a very solemn day, and folks will be visiting graves and decorating them with flags and flowers, I think a celebration is required. What better way than with a song with Kool & the Gang called “Celebration?” After all, we’re celebrating their gift of the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our rights and freedoms.

From nineteen eighty.

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Today’s Theme Music

Never been to Kathmandu, but thanks to Bob Seger, it’s a place I want to visit.

Seger was one of those hard-working people who became an “almost overnight sensation.” Starting in Detroit, he had a large regional following and a few hits, but didn’t make it nationally until after almost a decade of trying. I knew”Ramblin’, Gamblin’ Man,” but it didn’t make a great impression on me. The song that really touched me was “Night Moves.” That song was released when I was two years removed from high school and two years with the military. With it, I was hooked on Seger and sought his music. His “Live Bullet” album with “Turn the Page” remains one of my favorite live albums. As that song said:

Out there in the spotlight
You’re a million miles away
Every ounce of energy
You try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body
Like the music that you play

h/t to metrolyrics.com

I felt like Seger and the band poured it all out in that album.

But “Katmandu”, the song, has lyrics that appeal to me, too, that encourage me to chuck it all, and get the hell out of here, go to somewhere simple and quiet. Seger seemed to think that was Kathmandu.

The song was released in nineteen seventy-five, but I’ve included the “Live Bullet” version. Enjoy as you walk around this fine Sunday.

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Today’s Theme Music

This protest song, from the nineteen eighties, counters what’s normal for rock, at least as it’s experienced in America. Sure, we have some invasion hits from the Brits, Germans, Dutch, etc., and more than a few from Australia, too.

This one came from Australia with a strong rhetoric against taking the Earth from the people who already inhabited it, along with choice rails against global warm and environmental destruction. Featuring a heavy base line, it also has a fat horn section, pretty unexpected in a rock hit in nineteen eighty-seven. But the lead vocalist’s voice and enunciation will never challenge anyone for smooth delivery.

Know the song? It made news again during the opening of the Olympics in Sidney in two thousand. Sure, it’s “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, perfect for a walkabout on an unusually hot spring day – in North America.

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Today’s Theme Music

Here’s a Friday two-fer.

I’d planned for a celebratory song today but this one dominated one of my dreams last night. “When the Levee Breaks” is an old blues song. I became familiar with it through Led Zeppelin’s cover of it in nineteen seventy-one.

In my dream, it was my wake-up song, playing every day on my radio at seven in the morning. I know this because I was explaining that to other people. I told them, I’d begun doing that in June, so I’d been doing it for a year. During that time, I’d found a new shortcut, I explained. While explaining that, I pointed out a window at a new white concrete highway that was alongside a shoreline. The sky was so blue and the sun was so bright, it awed you into silence. Vehicles were on the road. It looked like typical commuter traffic.

We joked a while about hearing that song everyday. I know it was “When the Levee Breaks” because one other asked, “What is that song?” Then he answered himself as I answered him, “”When the Levee Breaks,” by Led Zeppelin.” He nodded, laughing along as we spoke. He said, “It’s a good song. I don’t know if I’d want to hear it all the time.” I answered, “I only hear it in the morning.” He replied, “Well, even that might be too much, if it’s every day.”

I awoke from that and the other two remembered dreams feeling like a dark cloud had been lifted. You decide, though: will hearing this song every morning be too much?

 

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Today’s Theme Music

…and some days, you get up, and you’re in this mood, you’re like…possessed by this restlessness, and you think, “All I want to do is have some fun. Is that too much to ask?”

Here’s Sheryl Crow singing about it. Really, it’s like an essay on a day at the bar, the car wash, and the people who are there. From nineteen ninety-four, “All I Wanna Do.”

 

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