Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

I put the mental stream on shuffle and then sorted through the tunes. Two ended up as potential for today’s theme music.

One was The Blues Brothers singing ‘Rawhide’ in their movie. I’m not certain how the stream came to that.

The other was ‘Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)’, released in 1991 by C+C Music  Factory. I’d just returned from a tour in Germany and was settling into the SF Bay Area when I first heard it. This song was ubiquitous. I found its sound intriguing but more, enjoyed going to a club and seeing everyone’s reaction when the song was played. The floor could be empty, with people milling around, chatting and sipping. Then, “Everybody dance now,” blared out. People reacted like they’d be ordered, moving and rushing the floor. Amazing.

Of course, I also adapted this song to my cats, ‘singing’ “Everybody eat now,” when I fed them. They reacted just like the dancers at the clubs, eating like they’d been given an order that must be obeyed.

It’s a good, energetic Friday song. You heard Martha. Everybody dance now.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music arrived with the sun. ‘When Doves Cry’ by Prince is pretty well known so I’ll eschewed any mention about what I was doing and where I was at when it came out. This is especially so with Prince’s sudden death last year. Instead, I’ll mention that it’s one of my cat songs.

Now for the embarrassing aspect. Ahem. A cat song is one I sing to my cats. I typically change the words to reflect that it’s for or about cats. In this instance, some of the words are revised to be, “This is what it sounds like, when a cat purrs.”

And the song arrived with the sun because that’s when a cat arrived with an introductory purr, pretending to be friendly, when he was really inquiring about breakfast.

Here it is, ‘When Doves Cry’, 1984, by the amazing, amazing Prince. Feel free to sing it to your animals.

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Today’s Theme Music

We listened to a lot of music while I was stationed on Okinawa in the early 1980s. Drank a lot of beer, too. Smoked a lot of cigars, played a lot of Risk and worked a lot. We also went to college.

Anyway, back to the music thing. The Internet wasn’t around. CD players and Compact Discs were just emerging. For reference, the hot new computer was the TRS 80.

So we played a lot of vinyl, recording it onto more portable, user friendly formats. One album that came out then was Foreigner 4, by Foreigner. Several hits were on that album, including this song, ‘Juke Box Hero’. Later generations and listeners might be familiar with the song through its commercial use.

Stream it in your head as you’re walking around dreaming of heroes and villians.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song, from the Cure, came out in the early nineteen nineties. I was fortunate to be stationed at Onizuka Air Station when it did. Originally called Sunnyvale Air Station, it was located on Lockheed acreage that was rented from them for one dollar a year. The Blue Cube dominated the site. I wrote about it in another post.

The location had been renamed in honor of Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut killed in the Challenger disaster. Dedicated to space operations, we were wedged between roads just off of Highway 101. The area was interesting for the Internet boom just underway at the time. Navigator, Yahoo, MapQuest and other new companies were part of our landscape. It was an energetic, prosperous time, and the music coming out seemed to reflect that.

Except for this song. I actually find it repetitious and inane. That’s true about many rock and pop songs, which is why I like Weird Al’s parodies of them. This song seems like audible sedatives. That’s my opinion; you may really enjoy it.

Either way, it’s been stuck in my head since last night. Basically, I realized that I’d passed anniversaries of several major life events. March, 1991, was the first year that I lived in the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley/Peninsula after returning from duty in Germany. Memories from that period have unearthed songs and invaded my dreams this week.

Here’s the Cure with ‘Friday I’m In Love, from 1992.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is one of many that suffered from mondegreens. ‘Alive and Kicking’ by Simple Minds came out in 1985. Stationed at Shaw AFB in SC after returning from Okinawa, I was assigned to the 1701 MOBSS.

I lived in Columbia, about twenty-nine miles away, and a straight shot down the highway. The MOB in our unit designation was short for mobility. We went on temporary duty to other locations regularly. Sometimes I drove to those locations, such as Eglin AFB in Florida. Between that and my daily commute between Columbia and Shaw, I listened to a bit of radio.

When the song came out, I swore they were sometimes singing, “I like the chicken.” Naturally, that’s what I walked around singing. Still do when I stream the song in my head.

Here they are. From 1985, Simple Minds with ‘Alive and Kicking’. 

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s blast from the past comes via The Americans’. The show is taking place in 1983 and features music, news and events from ’83. It included this song, ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’, in the episode I watched the other night on Amazon.

‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’ is a continuation of a theme begun with David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ of 1969 about an astronaut, Major Tom, victimized by a malfunction while in space. ‘Space Oddity’ was an early hit for Bowie and drew me into his fold of fans. One of the best concerts of my life was seeing him in Charleston, WV during his glam rock period.

Peter Schilling released his song, ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’ in 1983. Its techno-beat and clear, overly dramatic but positive lyrics work as background music streaming in my head while walking around Earth.

 

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The Truth About Beer

It’s been some time since I’ve written about the invention of beer and the truth about why it exists.

Michael Quirk provided me with this theory. Michael was the originator of our weekly beer gathering. The group is composed of retired scientists, engineers and doctors to discuss science and technology. Michael himself, now deceased, was a retired Army light colonel. He’d served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot, surviving two tours. After that, he’d become an artillery officer and ended up programming specific artillery systems that were being introduced. He eventually ended up as a globally sought subject expert on the matter. After retiring from the Army, he was hired as a consultant by DARPA so he could keep working on and advising about the artillery program. His daughter is an Air Force colonel who is now a deputy base commander.

I met Michael through an art museum fundraiser. His wife and my wife went to the same exercise class at the local Y. Several of these wives enjoyed each other’s company. It was contrived we should all go to this fundraiser and share a table. Naturally, the wives socialized, leaving the men alone.

Michael and I both enjoyed science fiction, so we chatted about that. He then told me about the weekly beer group and invited me to join. Not having much education and not being a scientist, engineer or doctor, I declined, and told him that’s why. “But we drink beer,” he explained. “You drink beer, don’t you?”

“Yes, but — ”

Nothing else mattered to Michael. I drink beer, so I should join. I finally agreed just to shut him up.

I started going, and the time became something I looked forward to, largely because I was very fond of Michael. It was during one of those weekly beer gatherings that he told me about his theory regarding the invention of beer. Noting that beer had been invented about eleven thousand years ago, he claimed that women invented it.

Naturally, I was curious. “Women invented beer?”

“Yes, they invented beer to control men.”

“I see…. Why?”

“Because women are aliens who came to Earth eleven thousand years ago. They invented beer to control men.” Michael went on to cite the chromosome difference as evidence that women are not humans like men. Besides, they think so differently.

His theory had a lot of problems to me, beginning with, if they were aliens and so advanced they could travel to Earth and invent beer eleven thousand years ago, what the hell have they been doing since then? Also, what happened to the original human women? And, why….?

It was all very tongue-in-cheek. Michael passed away at the beginning of 2015. I still go to the beer group once in a while, just to have a beer. We always toast Q at the beginning.

Sometimes, I remind the others how beer was invented.

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Today’s Theme Music

This song – ‘Right Place Wrong Time’ by Doctor John – strikes me as the perfect theme music for today’s meanderings.

The song came out in 1973, the year before I graduated high school. The album, ‘In the Right Place’, quickly fell into part of the regular rotation of my listening habits as I drove about in my 1965 Mercury Comet sedan. I feel like I’ve been born in the wrong era although the more cynical slice of me comments, “You’d probably feel like that in whatever era you’re in.” True.

I always enjoy this particular song’s funkiness. The Meters back him up, with Art Neville on organ, Leo Nocentelli on guitar, bass performed by George Porter, Jr, and Ziggy Modelisti on drums. Dave Spinozza is that guitar solo in the middle. Doctor John’s lyrics and style convey the essence of just feeling like I’m out of sync and don’t really belong anywhere in this era.

I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong time
I’d have said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line
I been in the right trip but I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a bad place and I’m wondering what it’s good for
I been the right place but it must have been the wrong time
My head was in a bad place but I’m having such a good time

I been running trying to get hung up in my mind
Got to give myself a good talking-to this time
Just need a little brain salad surgery
Got to cure my insecurity

Perfect for today.

h/t to Lyrics Mode.

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Chow Down

Once again, it’s time to celebrate cereal. Yes, it’s National Cereal Day in America.

We’ve embraced cereal in America. The ready to eat stuff first originated in the 1800s. Pouring it into bowls and adding something to it is standard breakfast fare in many houses.

Back as a kid, my favorite was Wheaties. Yes, I was a Breakfast of Champions guy. The flavor was so-s0 but I believed in the advertising. My little sister was strictly a Cheerios person. It was Cheerios or nuttin’. This was back in the day when all that was available were those basic miniature oat inner tubes. She did like adding banana to it.  On Saturdays, the practice was done to the sounds of the Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny, cool friends to have.

Mom liked it because we could ‘make our own’ breakfast without involving electricity and sharp objects. I liked making a game out of it, racing around the kitchen while multi-tasking, grabbing the ingredients, bowl and utensils in the fewest possible steps and motions.

Unfortunately, the refrigerator wasn’t properly grounded. We were warned never to touch the refrigerator handle and the counter at the same time, but in my quest for speed, that’s what I did.

I can still feel that current coursing through me.

My reaction was apparently to scream and cry with pain. Mom came racing in. “What happened?” I told her I’d been shocked. “Well, keep it down,” she replied. “You’ll wake the baby.”

Blaming the Wheaties for my error while acknowledging that Wheaties essentially tasted like wet cardboard, I switched to Raisin Bran. It was my go-to for about a dozen years. Oh, I tried Kix, Trix, Coco Puffs and Life. I think Lucky Charms, Count Chocula and other disgusting, sugary cereals came out then. I tried them at friends’ houses during sleep-overs and found them repulsive.

I liked Puffed Rice and Shredded Wheat for a long time, but they gave way to my all-time favorite: Grape-Nuts. I put very little milk or sugar on them. It was, my wife noticed when I introduced them to her, like eating a mouthful of gravel. I found chewing rocks personally rewarding. Maybe it’s the Neanderthal in me.

They were once tried with beer, Miller Lite, I believe, just to see how that worked. It provoked a shrug sort of response, meaning, not good, not bad, just different.

But eventually, I drifted into eating oat meal regularly. Organic steel-cut instant oats (now GF and non-GMO) with a little brown sugar and cinnamon, berries, fruit and walnuts have been my breakfast preference for the past dozen years. And today, in honor of National Cereal Day, I had pancakes.

What’s life without whimsy?

Probably Cheerios.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This one has been downloaded from the memory cloud formed immediately after retiring from the USAF in 1995 and my new work commute to Progressive Angioplasty Systems.

I lived in Mountain View, in a little cul-de-sac not far from Moffett Boulevard and the Highway 101 ramps. PAS was located in Palo Alto off Univesity. Easy commute, right?

Sure, in the morning. It was eleven miles, if I remember it right. The morning commute required twenty minutes because I enjoyed working early and leaving early. I typically was the first or second to arrive, at 7:00 AM, and then would leave at 4:30 PM.

The 4:30 PM return trip was a completely different story. Those eleven miles consumed forty-five to fifty-five minutes on a good day. Rain and traffic accidents would mar that stellar time, creating a sixty to ninety minute commute. Bleah.

So I listened to music, news and audible books. This is a song from that commute era. Here is Jewel with ‘Who Will Save Your Soul’.

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