Category: music

Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “Sister Christian,” by Night Ranger, is an example of how music brings us together.

The song came was a hit in nineteen eighty-four. I lived on Okinawa at the time. I bought the album but I’m not a big Night Rangers fan. The album, though, entered the Sony CD turntable. A few years later, now stationed in Germany, I have a party going on at my house. Guests include a number of young airmen. This song comes on. Suddenly, two of them were yelling, “Oh my God, Night Ranger. I love Night Ranger. I love this song.”

So we cranked up the song, and the Bose 901s boomed it out. The lyrics are simple, and well-enunciated, and the song had received a lot of air play. Everyone present either knew the song, or proficiently faked it. Soon all present were performing in their best karoaka manner, minus microphones. It probably helped that we were drinking some fine German beer, doing shots of chilled Jagermeister, and we were several hours into the party.

I still smile in memory.

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Today’s Theme Music

You’re heading into the weekend, or you’re already in it, depending upon your region, you know what you gotta do? That’s right, turn it up. Things go better with rock. Here’s Autograph, from nineteen eighty-four, with “Turn Up the Radio.” Ah, the video, the clothes, hair, attitude, and general corniness. It’s a trip-treat.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This one is dedicated to all those dreamers out there, all those writers, singers, poets, actors and artists who have a hope and won’t stop believing.

Here is Journey – with Steve Perry on vocals (instead of, say, Peter Griffin) – with “Don’t Stop Believing” from nineteen eighty-one.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This song came out in two thousand three. I was working for ISS, managing BlackICE consumer sales and support. We were located in the Bay Bank building on the eleventh floor in San Mateo.

I often played music in my office, but my team couldn’t do the same. They worked in a pit, our reference to the square of cubicles they shared. Each cubicle’s back was open to the middle, so the leads could walk around, talk and help. I didn’t like the arrangement, but the team had come up with it, so *shrug*, I lived with their choice.

But their choice meant no music for them, unless they were on headphones while troubleshooting an issue. So my music often drifted to them. When I first began hearing this song, “Bring Me To Life,” by Evanescence, I was taken by it. It was different than most rock on the air in two thousand three. I wanted to hear more of it to understand who it was, and what they were singing.

The Level Three Lead heard it playing and came in to talk about it. Blue-haired with a green beard and multiple piercings, he was border-goth. He loved this song, but as we talked, the rest of the team drifted over to express their disenchantment of it. Of the twelve people there, only he and I liked it.

Well, I hope you like it. I admit, again, this is another video that I’d never seen until today. I never got into the habit of watching music videos; I just listened to the tunes.

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Today’s Theme Song

 

This is a song about relationships, but those who write, work, or do other things can relate these words: “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care.”

The song, “Self-Esteem,” by the Offspring, came out about year before my retirement from the Air Force. I used to quote that lyric to peers complaining about the military. They didn’t find it as amusing as I did.

I enjoyed all of the lyrics to the song. The song begins, “I wrote her off for the tenth time today, and practiced all the things I would say. But she came over. I lost my nerve. I took her back, and made her dessert.”

I enjoy how lyrics like that capture the angst of being in a relationship, resolving to change dynamics, and then lacking the will to make the desired change.

I see that in writing, too, people making plans and resolutions to write and publish more, to work harder, and then…losing their nerve, or in my case, succumbing to doubt.

Here it is, from nineteen ninety-four, the Offspring with “Self-Esteem.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Politics, television, advancement, publishing – I can’t get no satisfaction.

Yeah, baby. The Rolling Stones sing it best. The guitar riff, thumping, unrelenting beat and the Mick’s vocalizing of the frustration with the commercial world all come together fantastic in that nineteen sixty-five rock classic, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Jesus, I was just nine but something about that combination spoke to me. While Mick is singing about being pissed over the world’s increasing commercialization and the things he’s being sold, I get that same sense from the news of the world and my efforts to move myself forward. It’s like one stride forward and a long fall backward.

Seeing it on the old “Ed Sullivan Show” is fun. Simpler times, friends, but isn’t that what each generation notices about how life changes?

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Today’s Theme Music

To continue with the theme of dancing through the first week of the season change, I’ll continue with Don Henley. “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” is one of my favorite Henley offerings. Coming out in nineteen eighty-four, the song was written by Danny Kortchmar.

I enjoyed its tech sound and cynical lyrics. The song is like a war story being told in a bar about a serviceman’s experience fighting in another country. The impression is, the heavy-handed government is locking everyone up and bugging everywhere, battling “wild-eyed pistol wavers” in a long-going engagement. The rebels are using the weapon of revolutionaries before I.E.D.s, Molotov cocktails, mixed up in their kitchen sink. Meanwhile, the serviceman is coping with a local young women. All she wants to do is dance, make romance, and party. She seems oblivious to everything going on. It becomes clear by song’s end, who was oblivious.

I thought it was an apropos song for the time. It came before the Gulf Wars and after Vietnam, during the cold war era when the United States and U.S.S.R. were trying to align other countries, no matter who led them, with “their side,” propping up governments with money and weapons, enriching the countries’ power elite at the expanse of the poor. The Soviets were battling in Afghanistan against Osama Bin Laden as the U.S. armed and trained the revolutionary. Meanwhile, the U.S. buddied up to Saddam Hussein, arming him.

With its heavy beat, this is an excellent song for streaming and tramping around. It’s a bitter reminder, too, about how weapons and places have changed, but we’re still arming and aiding governments to fight rebels.

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Today’s Theme Music

“Dance Hall Days,” by Wang Chung, was supposed to be new wave.

Coming out in nineteen eighty-four, when I lived on Okinawa, I didn’t get it. What was so special about new wave? This song didn’t sound any different from other music heard on juke boxes and FM radio stations.

The lyrics were definitely weird. “Take your baby by the hair. Pull her close and say, there, there, there.” “Take your baby by the wrist. And in her mouth put amethyst.”

Yeah, strange, if you listen to them. I think they just junked out some rhyming words to a beat. It works as a stream to help dance your way through the first few days of the season’s change.

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Today’s Theme Music

Drop it all, whatever troubles you and weighs down your body, just let it go. Close your eyes and let yourself feel light and alive. It’s summer in the north, and winter’s coming south of the equator, but we can all come together and do a little dance.

Marvin Gaye, Mickey Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter wrote it. It first found popularity in the U.S. with Martha and the Vandellas in nineteen sixty-four. David Bowie covered it with Mick Jaggar, Van Halen covered it with David Lee Roth singing the lead vocals, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Grateful Dead covered it, among others. Those are the ones that I remember. You probably know it from somebody else’s cover. If not, the words are easy and the beat is contagious. As they say, “Summer’s here, and the time is right, for dancing in the streets.”

Get up and sing and dance with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas with the first popular version of “Dancing in the Streets.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This is a more recent, mellow song. Its simple, repetitive chorus makes it easy to stream to myself as I walk along: “We don’t talk about it. Shouldn’t talk about it.”

I also enjoy his flat delivery of several stanzas, such as the first: “I want you by my side, so that I never feel alone again.” That delivery imparts a sense that he’s talking to himself while making a confession to another, a secret, internal conversation. The other parts strike me as an effort to bring the other around to his thinking.

After hearing the song a few times, mostly while driving around, I looked up the words. Getting the words to songs right is one of the big technological advantages of this century. We used to need jacket sleeves, which weren’t always included. Don McLean’s “American Pie” caused arguments about what he was singing, and then, what it meant.

Here’s Milky Chance from Germany and two thousand thirteen with, “Stolen Dance.”

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