Category: music

Friday’s Theme Music

Warm with dreams and cozy under blankets, I cracked my mind open to a cat’s demands. “No,” my body said. “I want to stay in bed.”

The sentiment tempted me. Rain was falling and daylight had slipped down the spectrum into a ghostly gray. The cat persisted, as cats will do. My brain transitioned to song lyrics.

“I spent the day in bed. You can please yourself. But, I spent the day in bed.”

I’d only heard the Morrissey song a few times since its release. Not much of the words stuck to me, but I remembered, “Stop watching the news, because the news contrives to frighten you, to make you feel small and alone, to make you feel that your mind isn’t your own.”

That’s how I felt as I rose and hastened to serve my feline masters. If I couldn’t stay in bed, I wanted to go to a pub and sip a pint, but no, I must write.

Here’s the rest of “Spent the Day in Bed” for your enjoyment. How’s your day? Want to stay in bed?

 

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Someone posted these children playing Ozzie’s “Crazy Train” on xylophones on Facebook the other. The children are from the Louisville Leopard Percussionists. I’ve seen them do Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, and enjoyed those performances, so I’m plugging their cover of “Crazy Train” as today’s theme music. I hope you enjoy them.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m back-upped with music, dreams, and writing today. I took my monthly swim in the dark waters for a few days. Now, breaking surface, a survivor one more time, my creative and artistic energies are lit up.

For the musical theme portion, so many songs streamed through me last night and today. I finally went with an odd choice. My love of music comes from Mom. I’m sure. I once asked Dad what music he liked to listen to; he shrugged. Mom, though, put albums on whenever she cleaned, and Mom was, and is, passionate about keeping her house clean. Music was always playing. One guy she really enjoyed was Frank Sinatra.

I can understand why. Sinatra had a big voice and style. This song, “That’s Life,” has been covered by some great talents. I especially enjoy Shirley Bassey’s cover, because I like Shirley Bassey. But I stayed with Frank’s cover, because that’s the one streaming through my head today. I thought about doing David Lee Roth’s version, just for the hell of it, but that was rejected.

Got to love these words, right?

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

When I heard this song in twenty-eleven, I wanted to know more about it. Each time I heard it played, I listened to hear the performer’s name and the song title. That’s not something easily learned in the modern listening era. Many stations like to end one song and start one or two more before giving a song’s details, if they do at all. But thanks to the computer age, I looked up lonely boy. Knowing there were many songs featuring those words, I settled in for a detailed search.

But, ta-da. I found it immediately and checked out the video. I enjoy this video. So here we go, Tuesday’s theme music, “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Ah, they’re always pestering me, calling from phone numbers that I don’t recognize, and sending me emails with sensational deals, deals that will make me wealthy, or is such an amazing travel bargain, that I’d be a fool to take it up. Never mind that the travel bargains are going to places that I don’t want to visit. It’s such a good deal.

Although this song, “Who Can It Be Now?”, by Men At Work, came out while I was stationed on Okinawa, I always think of Mom and my family. In the days before caller identification, Mom established the number of rings as a primitive IFF – Identification, Friend or Foe – for when friends and relatives call. “Ring twice, hang up, and call again. I’ll know it’s you, and answer.” Or maybe she won’t. But when the phone rang more than twice, “Who can that be? Should I answer it?”

The same was true with someone knocking on the door or ringing the bell, or  stopping in the driveway or in front of the house. “Who is that? What do they want? Who can it be now?” Mom passed it on to the rest of us. “Who can it be now?”

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Sometimes it just sledgehammers into me: I don’t care anymore.

The hammer swings into me out of weariness, bitterness, and lethargy. I think it’s always swinging into me, but most days, or some part of the day, I can raise my shields and ward off the blows. But then I reach that point where the drums begin from Phil Collins’ song, and I’m singing with it, “I don’t care anymore.” Singing that song releases my negative energy and girds me to begin again.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

It’s a blustery but pretty Saturday, which somehow inspired me to start streaming an old Albert King number. Maybe it’s the frequency of news about California, due to the fiery destruction of NorCal wine country, that brought the song to mind. Here’s “Travelin’ to California.” It’s from nineteen sixty-one, but I encountered it looonng after that.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Volcanos erupting in Japan and Indonesia, threats of missiles being exchanged between the U.S. and North Korea, Black Lives Matter, voter right suppression, Russia-gate, white supremacists, gun control arguments, protests, the Weinstein scandal, war refugees, Pacific Northwest and California wildfires and destruction, the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico, hurricane and earthquake disasters in Mexico, hurricane destruction in several other American states, plans to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, the President threatening freedom of the press, the Vegas mass killer….

Contemplating it all over coffee brought to mind Billy Joel’s nineteen eighty-nine song from “Storm Front,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He covered the headlines from nineteen forty-nine, when he was born, until the year the album was released, but the fire goes on.

At least, it feels like it on this cool, autumn morning in twenty seventeen.

 

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I heard today’s song yesterday and started laughing in memory.

The song is “Animal,” by Def Leopard. One line is, “I got this feeling in my blood.” A friend told me years ago, “For the longest time, I thought they were singing, “I got this feeling in my butt.” I couldn’t figure out why they had a feeling in their butt, or why they were singing about it.”

Ah, a classic mondegreen, but if you casually listen, you might hear it, too.

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Awoke with these words nibbling my ears. “Well, I just got into town about an hour ago.
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow.”

Ah, yes, that’s a song from my youth. “L.A. Woman,” nineteen seventy-one, The Doors. I was unfettered by fears and worries in those days, except rioting, the Vietnam War, air and water pollution, nuclear or chemical attack, equal rights, and civil rights.

Ah, the good old days. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

 

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