As I’ve thought about what was happening and where I’ve decided to go, Peter Gabriel’s song, “Solsbury Hill” (1977) came to me. The song is about making decisions, taking risks, and changing, coming about when he left Genesis, the group he’d helped begin almost a decade before, to begin a solo career.
Many of the versus reflected his uncertainty about the decision.
This song played four times, different venues, during the last two days, so I thought, WTH, I think the Fates are demanding that it be the theme music.
Here’s Gnarls Barkley (CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse) with “Crazy” (2006).
A simple song today, streaming an old favorite. This came out in ’72, when I was just getting my driver’s license, still in high school, and living with dad. Don’t know what kicked it into the stream this morning, but I’ve always liked its sound and energy.
Let’s enjoy some Led Zeppelin with “Rock and Roll”. Rock out 2018, rock in 2019.
I read about a Yemeni mother and her son. The Trump administration had separated the two-year old boy from his mother. The boy was dying. After months of separation, the mother was allowed into the country to see her son. He died shortly afterward.
Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” (1972) played in my stream after reading the news.
Oh, little darling of mine
I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say “let it be”
But it just don’t work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again
I’ve been hearing “Girls Like You” (Maroon 5, 2018) often in the coffee shop, enough that my mind has absorbed it. I’ve begun using it (with modifications) when I feed my cats in the A.M.
“Cats like you need a guy like me to feed them. Yeah, yeah.”
Other verses follow, depending on my mood. It’s a fun video.
A friend was once singing today’s song, “Timothy”, by the Buoys, shortly after it was high on the pop charts. I asked him if he knew what this song was about, because listening closely, it seemed like it was about two guys eating the third one with them, Timothy.
I probably haven’t thought about the song since ’bout the time of that conversation in 1971. Recalling the song last night, I looked it up. Yep, it was about a cave in, and the two survivors eating the other, with the singer claiming that he must have blacked out, but he awoke with a full stomach.
Strangest to me, I learned that Rupert Holmes, who wrote and sang, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” (1979), wrote “Timothy”.
That’s the net’s fun aspect, looking things up to answer, what the hell?
Today’s theme music is Live’s “Lightning Crashes” (1993).
I have several Live albums, but I find I must be in just the right mood to play them. It’s a very narrow space.
“Lightning Crashes”, though, came to me this week because one of my nieces gave birth to her third child. All this was shared on Facebook. Everyone is doting on the sweet newborn, including my mother, and there’s rich photographic evidence. The newborn is Mom’s seventh great-grandchild. That juxtaposition of Mom holding this young new life invited “Lightning Crashes” into my stream and the circle of transference of life and existing. One dies, and one is born, and so it goes. There’s a lot of overlap as it happens.
I’m agnostic in my religious approach, with some new age and pagan shavings. Our house is lightly decorated for the holidays with a few Douglas Fir swags over the fireplace and front door, and a large wreath on one of the living room’s high walls. Each is lit by strands of small white lights at night. I like sitting in there and thinking of the centuries past, when darkness and cold descended, and people wondered what was to come. Gee, just like as it happens now, innit? I also sip a little mulled wine or wine with wassail, just to put me in the right mood, when I sit in there.
Perhaps it’s cheesy by some standards, but I like this rendition of Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth”. I was stationed in the Philippines when it came out in November, 1977, and didn’t see it for years. My assignment was due to end on December 28, 1977, and I’d go home then, and on to my next assignment, but the Flying Tigers, which was the servicing airline the military contracted, had an extra 747 available. They announced that seats were available for anyone who could get leave or process through to end their assignment, if their assignment was due to end in December.
I ended up on that flight, along with maybe a dozen other people. Landing in L.A., I found flights to Cincinnati to Charleston, WV, and took a bus for the final miles, arriving home just after a snowstorm, but still on Christmas Eve. I’d called my wife from Charleston to meet me at the bus station. That was the first she knew of my early homecoming. I think I was the only person who got off the bus.
Time for another visit with the Alan Parsons Project. This song, “I Wouldn’t Want to be Like You”, came out in 1977. I awoke with it bouncing around my stream, along with songs about rain. I went with Alan Parsons.
