Category: music

Today’s Theme Music

This was an intense song. My mind immediately began streaming it during my walks and it stayed lodged in my head for several months. Seeing the video reinforced its effect.

‘Too Close’, by Alex Clare, 2011, captures the essence of a long-term romantic relationship to me. The song sounds like a soliloquy, an emotional epiphany. It feels like you’re going separate ways; it feels like you’re just too close. Matters become combative and intense. Words are said, parry, thrust, circle,  en garde, but sometimes the fencing is done in silent expectation of what could have been said. Then there is always the pondering, what was meant, what was meant, what was meant?

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Dance, Dance, Dance

Succinct dreams remembered.

I was in the military once again, USAF, wearing my light blue shirt with its salad, dark blue pants, working in the command post. I’m in my mid-thirties.

I’ve acquired an additional duty. Every day at noon, someone comes in and relieves me so I can teach others to dance. I teach two to three people at a time.  don’t know them. They learn their steps and moves quickly. Once they learn, they disappear and others replace them. It’s important to the dream me that the students get in and out quickly, because I’m teaching them to dance to reduce tension and conflict.

The dream logic puzzles the dream me, who points out that I can’t dance in real life. Oddly, I’m not actually dancing in the dream, either; I just offered music and told them to dance. They would dance, laugh, and disappear. I was pleased with the assignment.

The song in the dream was Justin Timberlake’s ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling, from ‘Trolls’. 

The second dream was as succinct. Living on some land I’d fixed up, I was now feeding the cats. I measured out food into bowls and then go find the cats and give them the food.

Then I awoke and fed the cats.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This song, from 2011, is quirky. I enjoy the video, especially the female response. It’s a good song for streaming in my head as I’m conducting a catabout.

Here’s Gotye with ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes to me via my wife. I’d forgotten this song but she mentioned it as a great energetic walking song. Here, from 2003, is Outkast with ‘Hey Ya!’.  Whenever it plays on the radio and we’re driving, she orders, “Turn it up!” Which I do. This version, of the Peanuts gang dancing to the music, cracks me up.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Man, I’ll tell you what, the music emerging during the 1960s and 1970s was part of an amazing scene. Listening to those old songs give me a lift. This particular group, song and album were polarizing. When Mom heard me listening to this, she asked, “What is that you’re listening to?”

“Black Sabbath.”

Two words which probably did little to calm her. “Black Sabbath?”

“Yes. This is ‘Paranoid’.”

This woman who enjoyed Barbra Streisand, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, the Ink Spots, Platters, Nat King Cole, and on and on, studied me for seconds with mild distaste. Announcing, “It sounds paranoid,” she returned to her housekeeping routine and then called back, “Turn it down.”

Turn it down was something I’d hear a lot in those days.

Here we have it, a little gem called ‘Paranoid’, with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on lead guitar, Geezer on bass and Bill Ward playing the drums, from 1970.

Get out your air guitar and turn it up.

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Today’s Theme Music

I dreamed I was in 2025. I’ll tell you, I looked good for 2025.

With some friends, we were discussing something that had happened in 1985 involving them. Their news amused and astonished me while it depressed and frustrated them, as a clerical error from the beginning of their military career in 1985 had just been found in 2025 and needed to be fixed.

Meanwhile, we were getting ready to party. Guests were already arriving. I don’t recall hearing any particular music in the dream. Awakening, I remembered this old hit, from 1969, ‘In the Year 2525’. Although I remember all the words and the melody, I realized that I didn’t know who performed the song or anything else about it. For this, I trusted Wikipedia.org.

Zager and Evans are the performers. This was their only hit. Rick Evans wrote the lyrics. His words, about what’s going to happen to Humans, are fascinating to contemplate. At least they were for a thirteen-year-old reading science fiction in 1969. This was the number one song in the U.S. when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

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Today’s Theme Music

I put the mental music cloud on shuffle. ‘Fortunate Son’ by CCR was one of several songs that came up.

I know it from its initial release in 1969, when I was thirteen. CCR is an awesome band that gave us a hellabunch of memorable hits like ‘Suzie Q’, ‘Heard It Through the Grape Vine,’ Who’ll Stop the Rain,’ and ‘Run Through the Jungle’. Many of later generations know this ‘Fortunate Son’ because it’s been part of so many movies and video games about war or that era in America’s history, or from one of the many other performers who have covered the song. ‘Fortunate Son’ reflected the country’s mood as the Vietnam War raged and body bags came back. It also mirrors the trend that the world’s wealthy and powerful start and sustain war, but it’s the poor, minorities and those beguiled by their desire to do their patriotic duty that end up carrying the burden.

I was one of those last, joining in 1974, serving until 1995.

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Today’s Theme Music

“I like to dream….”

Yeah, I like to dream. Sometimes I’m bothered that I experience so many nocturnal dreams, often three to five per night that I remember. But many of the dreams are positive and uplifting.

Likewise, I like to dream and write in my head, spinning stories to myself that are written too fast and fluidly to ever find its place in reality for others to enjoy. I work at writing and publishing fiction but it is work. Besides wanting stories that keep their attention, people want correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. They want consistency and explanation. Many are also interested in ‘facts’.

Facts, bah. I’m a fiction writer.

No matter, they retort.

Bah. They’re such sticklers.

This spin of thoughts spun me back into one of my favorite early albums, Steppenwolf Live’. I wore the vinyl off that mutha. I have several favorite songs from it but went with one that resonates best with me as a dream: Magic Carpet Ride.

Ride with me as the ‘wolf performs it in Santa Monica back in 1970.

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Today’s Theme Music

Another from the past, and perhaps a repeat. This one springs from my days in San Antonio, Texas. I was stationed there for various needs three times. This song comes from my third iteration of military life there.

Assigned to Randolph-Brooks AFB and Air Training Command, working in the command post in the building called the Taj Mahal, we lived in base housing. We said it was San Antonio but in actuality, it was Universal City. San Antonio seemed like a much smaller, more relaxed town back then. When you drove the loops around the city, you rarely encountered a business and few other vehicles. Not like now, where all the land is filled in.

It was a pleasant assignment, not taxing at all, and quite boring. We were in base housing in a two bedroom/one bath place on the first floor. My cousins were regular visitors, a cool deal. It was Glen who brought the new Pink Floyd album, ‘The Wall’, to my attention. Besides Pink Floyd, Glen was a large fan of Steve Martin and ‘Star Wars’. He now lives just outside of Philly in PA.

So here it be, as heard in 1980, the year after the album was released, as we drove my brown Pontiac Firebird up to Stinky Falls to ride the cold river on inner tubes on a hot summer day, Pink Floyd and ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.

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Today’s Theme Music

She blew onto the scene in my mind in 1975. Four years later, she was gone.

Minnie Ripperton hit us with her five-octave prowess via ‘Lovin’ You’ in 1975. In 1976, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy . Cancer had already entered her lymphatic system and nothing could be done for her. It was a matter of waiting.

She didn’t shrink away from living or dying. Everything she experienced was shared with the press. We knew her progress as her health declined. Minnie Ripperton became an American Cancer Society spokesperson. More than all of that, she impressed everyone with courage that matched her prodigious talent.

She passed away in 1979, thirty-one years old. It was a short life, but, man, did she live. ‘Lovin’ You’ is easy to sing as you walk through a day, especially if spring is finally beginning to stir.

 

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