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.
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.
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’.
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’.
The area was home to me for three years, culminating in my high school graduation and subsequent military enlistment. That was childhood’s end. But this is where my wife’s mother resides, so here we are.
Its patchwork roads connect patchwork towns. Old schools have been re-purposed as hopeful enterprises but they already look enervated. As I drive around, noting changes and the lack of change, I’m reminded of cancer. So much of the area strikes me as blighted. Fast food businesses and gas stations dominate with their neon, plastic and bright colors, as the businesses of the last century lay barren beside them, empty and crumbling. It’s sad art, expressing the truth of the area, and America in general.
Remembering ex-classmates, I peer at each face about my age and wonder if I know them. I doubt few of them planned to live a patchwork life, and mock myself for thinking, that because I moved away, I’m living more than a patchwork life.
Out of that cesspool of reflection comes some Green Day. From 2004, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’.
Ah, today, we have a classic. Ray Davis took his music seriously. I’ve done one of the Kinks’ songs before, but it’s time to bring on ‘Lola’. I vividly remember talking about this song with my sister and my neighbor, John. Sis was two years older. It was a warm summer day in 1970, and we were in our backyard in Penn Hills, PA.
I later saw the Kinks in concert in Germany. We were in a pink marbled concert hall. It was so damn elegant, it was amazing, washing the Kinks concert experience with a surreal veneer.
Today’s song is right out of the American pop-rock scene of the nineteen seventies. It’s by a Canadian group who had a handful of hits and multiple excellent albums.
That’s the Guess Who. Love those rock band names. Today’s song is ‘American Woman’. People have argued about the lyric’s intentions since it came out. I once read one of the song-writers quoting John Lennon to the effect that a song’s meanings emerge after they’re recorded and that someone else needs to interpret them. I was writing a paper comparing the writing styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Mario Puzo at the time. I’d read some comments by them about how readers find meanings that the writers never intended. That doesn’t make those meanings wrong or illegitimate.
I was beginning to see and understand that in literature, art and music. People find their own meanings. It’s always fascinating then to hear people argue about these things as though they’re absolutes, and not shaped by own lives and dreams.
And it reminds me of eating food. People are always insisting to others, “Try this, it’s great, you’ll love it!” But tastes buds are also tastes, aren’t they? Sure. Try convincing others of that. They take your disagreement as a personal insult.
That’s what many Americans did with ‘American Woman’. They disagreed with what they saw as the song’s meaning and rejected it. I’ve had people tell me that they hate this song, because it was about hating America to them.
I was a racing fanatic when I was young. I followed NASCAR, Formula 1, Indy, Can-Am, Trans-Am, SCCA amateur racing, and sports cars racing, such as LeMans.
Nineteen seventy-three was a disaster for the Indy 500. Rain delayed the race. Several fatalities happened in practice and in the race. Among them, Swede Savage was killed. ABC Sports was showing the race. They put a montage of images together about the race and used James Taylor’s song, ‘Fire and Rain’, as the soundtrack. Gordon Johncock, in a Patrick Racing Eagle-Offy, was eventually declared the winner.
At the same time, I’d moved out from Mom’s house, and in with Dad. He’d been in the USAF. We lived in Ohio, at Wright-Pat, but he retired, and he and I moved south, to West Virginia. We lived with someone else for a bit until we got a place. It burned down within a month of moving in. All our possessions were gone. Among the items burned was the check to the insurance company. Nothing was insured. It wasn’t a good start.
I’d had a crush on a girl, Susie, and she liked me, but moving away ended all of that. The song ‘Fire and Rain’ had a line, “Susanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” I took that personally when I heard that song during that tragic race. I knew Susie and I had changed. Never very socially engaged, in a new school with a curriculum that was a few years behind what I knew, I became more withdrawn.
I knew the song from its nineteen seventy release. That’s when Susie and I started hanging out together sometimes. Its connection to the tragic and disastrous nineteen seventy-three Indy 500 and my life changes shifted the way I think about that era, and that song. Yet, the song is a comfort. Although I emerged more withdrawn, I think I emerged more thoughtful, mature and independent. But, now, from the vantage that times’ passing can give, I see, too, that I became more emotionally detached, and I remain like that.
This is not what I thought I’d share today. I guess it just comes from where I’m at in the moment.
This song was originally performed by a small, little known group called the Beatles. The song itself was written by an obscure songwriter named Paul McCartney. I think he may have written one or two other songs that also charted as a hit somewhere. None come to mind.
I preferred the cover of this song by a guy name Joe Cocker. Not many people are familiar with his work but he had a minor hit with his cover of this song, ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’, in nineteen seventy. I find it a soothing song to stream while tramping about. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 