Category: music

Today’s Theme Music

I woke up in a Foghat state of mind.

I’d had an exciting and interesting dream about a recent dream. Without disclosing more, it was tremendously uplifting, bolstering my self-confidence to scary levels. I will note that I dreamed about the number eight again, which makes, unofficially, but what I can remember and enumerate, seven times. I’m waiting to see if I’ll dream of eight an eight time to end the series.

Back to Foghat. Those of you of certain ages and inclination will remember this song. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” is a blues staple that’s been well-covered by some great artists. But I encountered Foghat’s version first. It was nineteen seventy-two, and I was sixteen, a wonderful combination. By then, I was enamored with rock and guitars. Foghat’s cover of this song opens with rocking guitars, and doesn’t let up. What else needs said?

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Beginning Again

Cut those strings, he told himself. Release the ballast. Unfurl your sails. Anchors aweigh.

He wasn’t certain about that last expression. “Anchors aweigh.” Sounded like he should be readying a scale. He was pretty sure that’s how the song went, “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.” He owned a computer, and could easily look it all up, but he thought it a dated reference, anyhow.

Searching for something more appropriate for the digital age, he came up with “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t use that; the slash folks have trademarked it, and zealously guard their carefully cultivated expression.

Sliding back into the rocket age, he counted down, “Three, two, one…we have liftoff.” But those words failed to lift him, and he became a little depressed, because Major Tom entered his head. The Air Force song came up, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” but yonder construed a vague distance and direction.

“Where are we going?”

“Over yonder.”

“There?”

“Yes, yonder. There.”

Umm.

“Once more into the breach, lads,” he thought, but it would not do. Various people and rock performers sang about being back in the saddle again. Where was his creativity today?

What the hell. He needed an ending so he could start. “Lit ’em up,” he said, wincing. Time to reboot, he decided, pressing start, but it was such a dejecting way to begin. “On the road again,” he hummed.

Curse Willy Nelson.

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Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song in the car while running our usual weekend errands, and turned it up and listened. It employs an honesty and simplicity in the lyrics and melody. Later, I learned one of my favorite recent guys, CeeLo Green, was one of the people behind it. The song was inspired by a conversation between CeeLo and Danger Mouse about artists not being taken seriously unless the artists were insane. Yet, watching the news since then, I get the impression, in this era of personality, that being taken seriously when acting insane extends way beyond artists and into politics and business. We’re inundated with the mundane and tedium, so the insane draws our attention. Then, we start listening more carefully to what the insane are saying, and wonder, “Hmmm…can they be right?”

Here’s Gnarls Barkley with “Crazy,” from two thousand five.

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Today’s Theme Music

Woke up feeling like some Squirrel Nut Zippers.

I began listening to them in nineteen ninety-seven. I was working for a medical defice startup called P.A.S. in Palo Alto. A young co-worker introduced me to the S.N.Z. sound with the second album, “Hot.”

I became particularly fond of “Hell.” It was a good song to sing along to while seat dancing  when I was stuck in the SF Bay Area traffic. I still smile when I hear this song.

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Today’s Theme Music

Going to the NCO Club and Open Mess in the middle of the nineteen eighties, I heard a lot of music I would never otherwise encountered. “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” by Dead Or Alive is one of those songs. Now, whenever I hear it, I think, do young people know what’s meant to spin round like a record? It reminds me of expressions like, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” When I was young, I wondered, who’s going to give me a horse, and why shouldn’t I look at it in the mouth? Do horses do something to you if you look them in the mouth?

From nineteen eighty-five, let’s spin this thing. Gotta love the electronic sound. So eighties.

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Today’s Theme Music

We heard this on the blues station last night on our way home. We love Koko Taylor, and I like beer, so this works. I don’t know what year it’s from, or anything like that. It’s the blues, and it makes me feel good.

Here’s the fabulous Koko Taylor with “Beer Bottle Boogie.”

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Today’s Theme Music

Modern technology hasn’t solved all our of ancient ills, but it’s facilitated widespread, easy entertainment. For me, in the sixties – that’s the last century, for those of you keeping score at home – that meant a transistor radio. Made in Japan, it was deplored as a cheap import, but it worked quite well in the hands of a nine or ten year old boy, until he took it apart to see what a transistor was.

Before I encountered the British invasion, before I discovered rock, I heard the Motown sound. A huge part were groups like the Four Tops, Temptations, and Supremes. I hadn’t appreciated what a large part they played until I looked up music for those groups last night. I was looking them up to refresh myself with their music, because we’re going to go watch the Four Tops and Temptations perform tonight. Should be fun.

As a reminder, here are the Four Tops with “Reach Out (I’ll Be There),” from nineteen sixty-six. It’s a sweet sound.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Summer brings to mind the parties orchestrated during my military years. We had good parties every where, legendary parties. Part of that was being with good people.

Doug was one of those good people. I was stationed with him at Kadena AB on Okinawa. Our parties at his house began modestly and then mushroomed into block parties. Parties could be declared for anything from the end of an exercise or operational readiness inspection, to holidays and promotions, to “just because.”

Ad hoc teams were established for music, libation, food, set-up, and games. At the height of the parties, we had four or five sets of Bose 901s set up. The music was cranked up. One of the songs that had to be played was “I Want You to Want Me,” from “Cheap Trick Live at Budokan.”

Doug loved that song. It was one played later in the evening, after the most sensible and sober people had departed. Then, up went the volume, and out came the air guitars.

I think of Doug often, especially when hearing this song. I’ve only seen him once since leaving Okinawa, when we encountered one another during exercises in the Middle East, but the memory of him burns bright.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music, from two thousand eight, is by Lady Gaga. When I hear a song, I try understanding what’s being sung and the words’ meanings. “Poker Face” seemed ambiguous, at once about sex and gambling. I liked the combination because sex and love is a gamble taken, a roll of the dice, and relationships often become efforts in reading others’ expressions to discern agenda, meanings, and truth.

I later read that Lady Gaga wrote the song about her rock and roll boyfriends. That knowledge didn’t answer all my questions about the lyrics. Still, it’s a good song to stream as you beat the street in the heat.

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Today’s Theme Music

For some reason, “Panama,” recorded by Van Halen in nineteen eighty-four, is streaming through my head today. This came out while I was on Okinawa; the next year, I was living in South Carolina, and the year after that, I was living in Germany. But the song is most associated with a friend who came along in nineteen ninety-one, when I was living in California. He was my age, and passed away a few years ago from cancer.

(And no, for those who are curious, Randy wasn’t Case A nor Case B from my other post. He’s just another person the big C victimized.)

For you, Randy. He enjoyed listening to Van Halen almost as much as he enjoyed rooting for the Atlanta Braves. In retrospect, he was a boy of summer.

 

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