Journey was well established when they came out with “Don’t Stop Believin'” in 1981. Many didn’t like this era of Journey, considering their album Escape was a commercial sell-out. “Don’t Stop Believin'” has made the pop-culture and political rounds, being featured in movies, television shows, presidential campaigns, and advertising.
I posted it here as the theme music almost one year ago. I didn’t mention then how Family Guy affects my memory of the song. For your enjoyment, I’ve included the Family Guy offering along with the real song.
Get your motor runnin’.
Head out on the highway.
Lookin’ for adventure.
And whatever comes our way.
Some songs and performers are permanently linked in memory for me. The performers have other hits, but one song first comes to mind when I hear their name. Say Pink Floyd, and I think, “Money”. AC/DC, “Highway to Hell”. The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Black Sabbath: “Paranoid”.
For Steppenwolf, it’s a ditty called “Born to be Wild”. I was enamored of Steppenwolf when I was thirteen. That would have been 1969. My friends weren’t as impressed. Mom knew I liked them, though. She showed me a newspaper article about John Kay’s escape from Russia. Then Easy Rider came out, featuring the song. Yes, I had a poster of Hopper and Fonda on their choppers on my wall.
Well, this was a weird stream. I was reading about the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election campaign for president when I came across the term crossfire hurricane. The FBI used it as a code name for the investigation. The Wayback Machine immediately fired up a stream from a 1969 Rolling Stones hit called “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. The first line that I remembered went, “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.”
I think the song’s beginning is terrific. One, two.
Which had me thinking of how couples and families related and socialized through different eras. Thinking back, imagine them gathered around a fire in a cave or a camp. Imagine them in chairs on a porch, or around a radio, and later, gathered in the living room, watching television. Now we’re gathered in the office, on separate computers.
I was playing Sudoku when she played “Seasons of Love” from Rent. Naturally, the song’s lyrics entered my stream and started looping. All through yesterday’s walking and yard-working, I’m singing, “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?”
I also added/slashed modified the verses. After coffee, I added, “In words? In pages? In kibble? In phases?”
It became a little goofy after that. But, I must pass this on to you to rid myself of it.
I always thought this song, “Long Cool Woman in A Black Dress” by the Hollies, is memorable for the era because it was a simple rock and roll song. It reminds me of CCR’s music for that reason. They, too, used a simple, distinctive approach. All of this song’s elements, from its guitar, drum, and bass use, to the vocals employed to tell the story, to the story itself, are basic. “With just one look, I was a bad mess. Cause that long cool woman had it all.”
How many of us didn’t meet someone who made us a bad mess with just one look?
A day like this requires a voice like this, singing a song like this.
“Momma’s gonna worry, I been a bad, bad boy. No use saying sorry, it’s something that I enjoy.
“Cause you can’t see what my eyes see. And you can’t be inside of me. Flying high again.”
I feel compelled to note that I thought Ozzy was singing, “Crying time again,” for the first few months after hearing this song.
I’d been reassigned from Brooks AFB, in Universal City, just outside of San Antonio, Texas, to the 603rd MASS, Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan, when this song came out. We’d arrived in May, lived in the base hotel for a month while finding arrangements, which was normal, and had moved to an apartment just outside of Gate 1. Living on the economy, the government provided our furniture. We didn’t need much for the tiny place. It would fit into our current living room.
The furniture was hideous stuff. Cheap, with orange polyester covered cushions, the sofa and chair had all the design elan of 1950s lower-class America. So did the dining room table and chest of drawers.
We had fun at that location, living there for a few years until we were authorized base housing. Thirteen apartments were in the building. American service personnel and their families lived in all of them. We experienced some memorable parties there.
From 1981, Ozzy Osbourne with “Flying High Again”.
I don’t know why this song streamed into my mind this morning. I guess my neurons were bored with the chicken and avocado kibble dream.
“Road Rage” by Catatonia came out in 1998. I don’t recall hearing it, though. I encountered it in Paris a few years later when I was doing a trade show. It was always interesting to discover what other countries were listening to, and how different some of the music sounded in comparison to America’s radio blarings.
I liked the lyrics of “Road Rage” but didn’t understand them all. I was singing some of it to myself at our booth. Eventually, one of the people from the U.K. who was attached to the exposition organizers told me the song’s name.
The Internet was getting strong and healthy by then, so I hunted down the song, eventually learning about the murder it was based upon, and finally reading an interview with the singer, Cerys Matthews, about the song and her telephone conversation with the victim’s mother. It’s not a new premise, how technology drives us crazy sometimes, and sporadically ends with murder.
I stumbled across an article about the rise of arena rock. The article mentioned that Cream, on its farewell tour, headlined the first rock concert at Madison Square Gardens. That’s all it took for me to start streaming some Cream. As a big Cream fan, I enjoy a number of Cream songs. I started with “Strange Brew”, shifted to “Brave Ulysses”, followed with “Sunshine of your Love”, but then went to an old blues standby, “Crossroads”.
There I stayed, caught on the rock rhythm, but thinking about the lyrics, fixated on the final line. “And I’m standing at the crossroads, believe I’m sinking down.”
Every day brings a crossroads. You make choices. Some blindly follow the same road, and some willfully follow that road. Both refuse to consider the crossroads that they’ve reached, pressing on.
As writers, we’re often at crossroads about what a character will say or do, and how the story will change to advance the plot. Every day brings the opportunity to feel like you’re sinking down, or the belief that’s what’s happening. It’s easy to get caught there, especially when you thought you’d be making more progress, or that things would become easier. Each novel and chapter, though — each crossroad — is unique. You can learn some hints about how to navigate these places, but they often require a fresh approach.
This isn’t the usual rock stuff that I listen to, but “Rubberband Man” by the Spinners is a secret favorite song. I enjoy the lyrics, beat, bass, vocals, and lyrics. Upbeat, but mellow, it’s a song that makes me move as I re-stream it in my mind while walking.
“You’re bound to lose control when the rubberband man starts to jam.”
I began streaming it in my mind yesterday when I was walking and saw a yellow cab. Song fragments took turns with the connection for a bit before I settled into Harry Chapin’s “Taxi”. A bit maudlin, the reflective song addresses our aspirations and shortcomings, and what we become instead of the people we want — or expected — to be in the rush of youth.
It also encompasses a bit of Sylvia Plath poetry in the middle. What the hell is he saying there, I used to ask myself, listening. Eventually, the intertubes revealed the Sylvia Plath connection, once again providing proof of the web’s usefulness.
I don’t think “Taxi” was ever as popular or well-known as “Cat’s in the Cradle”. From way, way back in 1972, here’s the late Harry Chapin and “Taxi”.
