Category: music

Sunday’s Theme Music

I first heard this song when I was thirteen.

My family had moved away from Wilkinsburg, PA, to a housing plan in Penn Hills, a few miles away. My friends were in Wilkinsburg and I kept going back to see them. In one of those early trips, the only friend I found on my old street, McNary Boulevard, was Richard O’Leary. A bluff and big good-natured child, Richard was a few years older than me, but had failed a few grades, becoming my classmate.

Richard lived in a small, narrow house on the brick-paved Wesley Street. It was a classic, hugely steep Pittsburgh hill. Richard’s family was large, with one older sister still living at home with her own little sister. They were a poor family, too, a point that pained Richard.

Having all those older brothers and sisters kept Richard knowledgeable about pop music. That early Sunday morning, he was raving about the Fifth Dimension and a song called “The Wedding Bell Blues”. Richard kept singing the opening lines, “Bill. I love you so, I always will.” I suspect that his older sister’s boyfriend, the father of her child, was named Bill, so the song was being played often in the home.

It’s a fond memory of an early sunny, cool, Sunday morning.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

As many people who I’ve met that loooove the Grateful Dead, I’ve met an equal amount who said, “I just don’t get them.”

It’s like food, movies, sex, and literature, innit? One person’s favorite does nothing for someone else.

I’m a fan of them, and saw them twice in concert before Jerry Garcia passed away. Both concerts featured long jam sessions, and one concert featured a couple having sex on the floor in the back of the hall.

This song, “Touch of Grey”, was released in 1987, and was part of the concert I saw in Germany. The song was okay to me back then, but as grown in my appreciation as I’ve aged and acquired a touch of grey. I will get by, I will survive is a good refrain to sing to yourself when shit happens.

I enjoy this video. I thought it a perfect Grateful Dead vehicle.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Slipstreaming through the streaming flow that sometimes seem to be my thoughts (and other times seem to belong to others), I come across a cache of STP, shorthand for Stone Temple Pilots (and not Scientifically Tested Petroleum or something else).

There are several jewels in the cache. Demonstrating its own affinity, my mind goes with “Interstate Love Song”. Released in the music-rich environment of the SF Bay Area, the song quickly became a favorite commuting tune. Coming out in 1994, it saw through retirement from the Air Force into the transition to being a civilian and finding a job in 1995.

Enjoy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “Going Down/Love In An Elevator,” came out in 1989. I was stationed in Germany with the USAF when it was released. It immediately became a unit favorite.

The album, Pump, was a damn good Aerosmith album, equal to the task for rocking old rockers and stimulating some new ones to join the ranks.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Jeff Healey was another performer who died too young. Forty-one when he passed away from cancer, he started playing guitar when he was very young, and achieved fame, recognition, and commercial success for his skills.

I came across two of his albums in my CD collection the other day. From that, I started streaming Healey’s cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as I walked through the smoky heat. The original song, as recorded by the Beatles (with Eric Clapton) is a favorite song of mine. Prince’s performance of the solo at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies still mesmerizes me.

So, pick any of those, or any of the many other covers of the song, as today’s theme music. I’m staying with Healey for today.

 

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s music is “In My Blood” by Shawn Mendes. It was released this year, 2018.

I’d been thinking about the work left in my series, Incomplete States, just to finish the beta edition, and then the revisions and editing left to take it to publication. I was also thinking that it has a strong chance of being read by few to no people. With all that to do, and other writing projects and life opportunities in limbo while I’m working on it, I thought, why not give up? Give up writing this series, and write something simpler and smaller. Why, in fact, write at all, with the odds so heavy against me?

Then the lyrics from “In My Blood” streamed in.

Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in
Sometimes I feel like giving up
No medicine is strong enough
Someone help me
I’m crawling in my skin
Sometimes I feel like giving up
But I just can’t

It isn’t in my blood
It isn’t in my blood

h/t to genius.com

Researching the song, I discovered that Mendes had written it in response to his struggles with anxiety disorder. Once again, as often happens, I became revitalized by reading of others who struggled and succeeded. If they made it, so can I.

So, thank you, Shawn Mendes.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I worked with an officer while stationed at Shaw AFB, SC. He was a navigator who graduated college with a degree in Literature, and he wrote poetry on the side.

Music of the era set him off. He thought the lyrics were shallow and the liberties taken with grammar annoyed him. People used to sing in full, coherent sentences, telling a story, he would say, and the songs were often very poetic. He was my age, and it amused me that this upset him, because that’s not what popular music is about. It’s a reflection of the times and how language is used. It’s dynamic. Those were exactly some of the things that he mourned as going wrong.

I remember once we were getting ready to deploy to Egypt. Killing time as we had to do in those situations, we talked music, and he singled out this song, which had been released a few years before, as one that he particularly disliked – his exact words. His diatribe made me laugh.

Here is Eddy Grant with “Electric Avenue” from 1982.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s music selection became streaming in my head the other day.

“Man On the Corner” by Genesis was released in 1981. I started thinking about it this week because of the purple guy.

That’s the name I’ve given him. He’s short, about five three would be my guess, and balding, with a large dark brown mustache. Wearing blue jeans in this ninety degree (F) heat every day, he wears a purple shirt, purple fanny pack, and purple shoes, and carries a purple bag.

You might have an idea of why I call him the purple man.

I usually encounter him several times a week. When I do, I say hello, and he replies…nothing. He doesn’t smile, but looks down.

When I saw him this week, he was standing on a corner by the town Safeway, and the song began streaming.

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Floofography

Floofography (catfinition) – An account of a pet’s life, often a cat, written or produced by another (usually a human).

In use: “A floofography about the famous floof star, Mew Collins, was released last week. Mew Collins, a domestic shorthair rocker , had several songs that charted well during his career, including “You’re In the Bathroom (And I Need to Get In)”, “Ashley”, “Catnip”, and that cat anthem, “Touch My Tummy (If You Dare)”.”

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Once again, it’s time for Dirty Cello to perform at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show.

Once again, it’s in danger of being canceled due to unhealthy air from wildfire smoke. If it’s cancelled, this will be year three.

I’ve previously posted Dirty Cello playing “Rock You Like A Hurricane” and “Sweet Child of Mine”. Needing a fix, I dialed up a few songs and selected “Purple Haze” to share on this Thursday.

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