Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
This is a good rainy Wednesday song. It starts slow, and builds.
“Give Me One Reason” by Tracy Chapman came out while we were stationed in Germany in nineteen eighty-eight. Her style and voice struck me as astonishing. The lyrics are poetic and insightful. I find this song boils down the complexities of a relationship, and how currents and energies swim around words and hope. When all is said and done, just give me a reason to stay. I want you, and you want me, but I need a reason to stay.
Once again, I’m streaming music in via the Wayback Machine. This time, the rotary dial has spun around and landed on an Allman Brothers Band offering.
I spent hours listening to the ABA when I was in my teens, first on thirty-three R.P.M. vinyl, and then on cassette and open reels. I’d get prone on the shag-rug carpeting, lights off and the volume up, and let the music pummel me. I’d moved through those mediums seeking faithful fidelity, free of wow and flutter, and buzz and hum. Yes, I was insane.
“Ramblin Man,” written by band-member Dickey Betts, came out in seventy-three, when I was entering my senior year at high school. The song is off the album, “Brothers and Sisters.” A popular song, it’s probably one of ABA’s best known releases.
I offer it for your Tuesday pleasure, but it’s acceptable to enjoy it on other days.
We saw George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers in concert last night, so I thought I’d play him today. Fabulous concert. He’s a helluva showman and an entertainer. The concert began with Barry McGuire’s recording of “Eve of Destruction” with the stage dark except for some blue lights. It ended with the star-spangled banner. Of course, all of their hits were played.
I didn’t know of Thorogood and the Destroyers (Delaware was later dropped) until the mid seventies, when he broke out and started garnering national attention. “Bad to the Bone” is hugely known and popular, and the band’s covers of old blues tunes became popular. I love their coverage of “Who Do You Love,” and that’s what I’m going with.
One of our personal favorites, Dirty Cello didn’t make it to the OSF Green Show this year. Dirty Cello is Rebecca Roudman. She is now a they, as her husband accompanies her on guitar. As we didn’t see her live this year, I sought a Dirty Cello fix on line.
I posted about her in twenty sixteen with a video of her performing “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” I went with her rendition of Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” for today.
Enjoy.
An old fave. From an excellent album and nineteen eighty-five, here’s Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics with, “Would I Lie to You?”
I’d come back from Okinawa the year this was released, and was assigned to a mobility unit. We traveled a lot, mostly to Florida, but also Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, and Europe. I’d bought a new Mazda RX-7, and put over fifty thousand miles on it driving to temporary duty locations. The net result of that traveling, I’ve never seen this video until today. It’s, ah, interesting, with the story it told.
Side note: nineteen eighty-five was the year of my first computer. It used CP/M 86, had a tiny green screen, dual floppies, and ran at 4.77 MHz, but it was something. Using WordStar, I’d put it to learn how to write fiction, but mostly, I gamed on it.
Here’s a song everyone can get behind. No matter if you’re for or against something, you can sing right along.
Here’s Twisted Sister with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” ironically, perhaps only to me, from nineteen eighty-four. Video is a bit cheesy. Just sayin’.
Today’s song is “Runnin’ With the Devil,” by Van Halen.
Why? I was writing a scene in my head as I walked through the town’s growing smoke. New wildfires was generating the smoke, and the winds had shifted…and you know how all that goes.
So, with walking, breathing smoke, and writing in my head, my mind started streaming “Runnin’ With the Devil.” VH-1 named this the ninth greatest rock song in history in two thousand nine. I know that after its release in nineteen seventy-eight, it became a jukebox staple in Airman and NCO Clubs and open messes around the world, and stayed there until at least my retirement, in nineteen ninety-five. Why not? The song has that Van Halen hard rock beat, terrific licks for air-guitars, and lyrics easy to understand and sing, in a style that was most could imitate. You know that when it came on in the clubs, many males immediately shifted their attention to singing along.
Feel free to sing along, too.
Sentimentality creeps up on me again.
As I was walking, reflecting on my dreams, and writing in my head, a voice slipped past the disparate, disorganized words. Drizzle stole in past trees and fresh, cool air invited me out of myself. Looking around, I thought, “What a wonderful world this can be.”
Not always, mind you. Yeah, we know. We’ve seen the images and we’re still reading the stories.
Of course, the voice I was hearing was Louis Armstrong singing “What A Wonderful World.” Armstrong recorded and released it in nineteen sixty-seven. I first heard it before I was a teenager, but it leaped back into public awareness with the movie, “Good Morning, Vietnam,” in nineteen eighty-seven. Serving in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, I saw it in a theater at Rhein-Main Air Base. “What A Wonderful World” was a sobering moment in the film, as the music was juxtaposed against the young military and the weapons of war. Of course, this is a flawed moment; “Good Morning, Vietnam” was set in nineteen sixty-five. “What A Wonderful World” came out two years later. It works, despite that flaw.
Life moves on. Rhein-Main Air Base closed. My unit and its mission, spying against the Soviet Union, is gone, as are the Soviets. We’ve lost Louis Armstrong and Robin Williams, but I’m part of an era where technology saves us from depending on memories alone, allowing us to more sharply and accurately revisit our past. So, here it is again, “What A Wonderful World.”
A memory stays with me.
The lights are low and the music is loud. I’m with friends at one of their houses, in my late teens, in the military, essentially, an adult now tasting the spectrum of responsibility by doing whatever I wanted because I was now an adult, and adults can do whatever they want, aslongaswedon’thurtanyonebreakanylawsrulesorregulationsandshowupforworkontime.
I was a responsible rebel.
So this song, “Fox On the Run,” is playing. Someone asks, “Who is this?” I answer, “Sweet.” We shout to be heard.
He looks at me and says, “Sweet what?”
“Sweet,” I answer.
“Sweet what?” he asks.
Catching that he doesn’t understand as others laugh, I say, “The group is called Sweet.”
“Oh,” he says. “I thought you were saying sweet.”
“I was.” That fired a neuron onto a axon. From it, I proclaim, “We’re all always seeking the sweet spot.”
That gains laughter. “You’re crazy,” others agree.
“Probably,” I agree.
Here is “Fox on the Run,” from nineteen seventy-four. It’s by Sweet.
Today’s theme song comes from last night’s activities. We attended the Rock the Resistance last night, an Indivisible fund raiser for Oregon District Two. Local talent performed. We have terrific local talent, like the Rogue Suspects, LEFT, and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. One of the songs performed was “Higher Ground.”
Written and recorded by Stevie Wonder in nineteen seventy-three, when I was still getting my eyes opened in high school, it’s an uplifting song, perfect for a fund-raiser supporting the “Resist!” movement. While dancing, singing along, and sipping a beer, I thought of the rest of the world. War in Myanmar. Flooding in Asia. Evacuations for Hurricane Irma. Eyes on Hurricane Jose. Texas and Louisiana recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Mexico recovering from an earthquake. Wars on going on everywhere, driving people from their lands into a search for safety, and wild fires burning in Canada, America’s Pacific Northwest, and California. It’s a mess, ain’t it?
It ain’t new. All these things have always been going on. War, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes have always been with us.
One hundred years ago, in nineteen seventeen, learning about other’s catastrophe and trying to help them out would have taken some time. Now, updates come by the second via digital channels, satellites, and social media, and connect us to one another.
Watching disasters and wars on my monitors and televisions while sipping coffee at home demonstrates how fast technology has outraced our thinking, culture, and politics. We’re together but isolated. We don’t need to be. Dare I say that we need a significant paradigm shift?
Yes. Technology is going to keep racing by. And look how much of it is conceived and designed in one locale, manufactured in another location, and sold and used in other places. We need each other. Meanwhile, countries are starting to man the borders to shut others out. It’s backward behavior. Fear drives many of these actions. Hatred contributes, and ignorance amplifies and sustains this backward behavior.
We’re one world. We’re one tribe. We keep spiting others, and end up spiting ourselves. Come on, people, we need to get our shit together. Time to start trying, and keep on trying, until we reach a higher ground. That’s the paradigm shift needed: we need to stop thinking in terms of nations, and think in terms of people, without regard for anything except that we’re all people.
