Category: music

Today’s Theme Music

This is another one from my military annals.

I was stationed with the 7405th Ops Squadron at Rhein-Mein AB in Germany in the late 1980s. This song, ‘Roxanne’ by the Police came out in 1978. The movie was featured in ‘Beverly Hills Cops’ with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 1984. Yet, here we were seeking it at a fundraiser five years later.

We had an charity unit, the Tipplers. Joining the Tipplers cost five dollars. The Tipplers subsidized purchases that were then sold to members at cost. This things included our squadron coins and memorabilia, and the squadron wine. But this organization was mainly about charity. We supported an orphanage in Spain and another one in Germany. We also supported the annual Marine toy drive for Christmas and a few other charities throughout the year.

I was the Tipplers secretary for a few years, an elected position, at was so at this particular event. Several organizations on base had donated money, time and material to build a booth that could be used for these things. Setting up the booth on a cold sunny morning in the Main Exchange parking lot, we were grilling hamburgers and cheeseburgers and selling them to people entering and leaving the exchange.

I have a habit of singing to myself. On that morning, as I manned the service counter and awaited customers, I began singing ‘Roxanne’. 

Except I was doing it like Eddie Murphy’s character in BHC, slightly loud and off key.

And my unit decided to sing along with me.

I laugh even looking back at it. Bunch of people in jeans, jackets and hats, trying to keep warm, grilling burgers and selling them, singing ‘Roxanne’. 

Ah, good times.

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Today’s Theme Music

This choice for theme music, ‘Road to Hell’, has been around for a while. It’s hard to find a good recording of it online. A good recording is important; the song begins with the sounds of rain on a car and the sweep of wiper blades across the windshield.

The song’s sentiments, that we’re on a the road to hell, are reflected by various people and organizations. No matter the issues, politics or religions, who wins or who loses, someone will declare, this is the road to hell. Funny enough, every time I think of the road to hell, I think of a book by one of my favorite authors, Roger Zelazny, and ‘Damnation Alley’, which wasn’t a terrific novel. It’s appropriate to think of Zelazny and Rea together on a day like this, when surreal is the ‘word of the year’.

Back to the music, Chris Rea, ‘Road to Hell’, 1989. The song was originally listed as Parts I and II. Part I is like an essay with accompanying instruments:

Stood still on the highway

I saw a woman

by the side of the road

With a face I knew like my own

reflected

in my window.

Part II of Chris’ lyrics begins, “Well, I’m standing by a river, but the water doesn’t flow. It boils with every poison you can think of.” Too frequently, here in America, we’re encountering poisoned rivers and drinking supplies. Flint, Michigan leaps to mind, but a small city not far from my town has been enduring several months of boil and do not drink orders for their water supplies. Googling for such news turns up multiple more examples.

It does make one think, “Yeah, we’re on the road to hell.” Just in time for the holidays.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

It’s an ordinary winter Sunday in an extraordinary year.

The statement causes a reflexive gaze across history at all the extraordinary years in recorded history. The statement requires adjustment to put me more accurately upon the spectrum of what I know and have experienced. I ‘know’ a sliver of American history and a granule of western history. I need to context ‘know’ because I ‘know’ what was often taught in books as fact and knowledge. Much was later revealed to be false or misleading, part of a paean to the victors who wrote or interpreted the history.

We could take a swing at our Christmas practices, beginning with the time of year that we celebrate and the pagan rituals we practice, processes adopted to encourage people to be Christians. Or we can take a deep dive into how Jesus is often portrayed as a blue-eyed white man with brown hair compared to the image of a dark-haired brown man forensic scientists put forth early last year.

‘For those accustomed to traditional Sunday school portraits of Jesus, the sculpture of the dark and swarthy Middle Eastern man that emerges from Neave’s laboratory is a reminder of the roots of their faith. “The fact that he probably looked a great deal more like a darker-skinned Semite than westerners are used to seeing him pictured is a reminder of his universality,” says Charles D. Hackett, director of Episcopal studies at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. “And [it is] a reminder of our tendency to sinfully appropriate him in the service of our cultural values.”

‘Neave emphasizes that his re-creation is simply that of an adult man who lived in the same place and at the same time as Jesus. As might well be expected, not everyone agrees.’

~ Mike Fillon, ‘The Real Face of Jesus’, Popular Mechanics, January 23rd, 2015

It all leaves me a little ‘Unsteady’. The song is a repetition of many of the same words but I like it. Hold onto me and sing along with the X Ambassadors’ song from 2015.

At least it’s more recent than most of my theme music.

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Today’s Theme Music

Everything’s so blurry
And everyone’s so fake
And everybody’s empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
You could be my scene
You know that I’ll protect you
From all of the obscene
I wonder what you’re doing
Imagine where you are
There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far

~ ‘Blurry’, by Puddle of Mudd, 2001

I have a good life when you consider everything but it sometimes still gets all blurry about how good things — and how bad it could be. ‘Blurry’, though, is about emotions. Emotions care little about a situation logic, something often forgotten during passionate discussions and angry debates.

‘Blurry’ also show us that emotions can help us overcome ‘logic’:

There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far

I might be adding layers and insights. They’re clearly writing about love and a tumultuous relationship. I see more. That’s the point of art, including literature and music, isn’t it? The composer, writer and artist are drawing their vision. Their vision, though, remains unique to them because it must be shared with others through the filters the viewer brings upon the scene. And these individual, personalized interpretations of words and intentions can make it all seem very ‘Blurry’.

 

Hope this all comes out properly. It’s relatively colder than usual outside (17 F). Google Chrome apparently has some problems when it’s cold.

 

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Decided to do something more recent and upbeat. The mental jukebox came up with Bruno Mars, ‘Just the Way You Are’. Hey, it’s only six years ago it was released. That’s like yesterday in beer years.

This is a good song for walking around and singing. In fact, I witnessed just an episode about two weeks ago. I was walking. Another guy approached from the other direction. I could tell he was singing but couldn’t yet make it out. It was clear he was budded up. And then, crossing the street, he sang loudly, in a pretty close approximation of the right key:

And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for a while
‘Cause, girl, you’re amazing
Just the way you are.

I smiled to myself, impressed that he was so willing to sing aloud.

Sing along. Don’t worry about the key.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This isn’t a theme song. I could tell you that I chose this song because it’s rainy, cold and foggy outside. Or it’s Thursday and this song fits Thursday’s vibe.

It’s none of that, though. I just like the blues, Albert King, and this song. Play it. Listen to that playing and singing. Appreciate it and play it back in your head later.

Here’s the late Albert King with ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’. 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

An usual choice for me today, this song isn’t my favorite from this band, and I don’t consider it their best. It was very different from their preceding work, and I thought of it as a sell-out at its debut. The lyrics draw me more than anything. It’s a bit sad, though, but the refrain, “But I don’t ever want to feel the way I felt that day,” is an empowering theme to sing to yourself when you’ve made a decision, if you’re a romantic.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Under the Bridge’, 1992.

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Today’s Theme Music

In light of the beer news of acquisitions, sell-offs and mergers, I thought I’d go with a brew theme. What could be better than Cream’s ‘Strange Brew’. Most Americans and many other world citizens have watched Donald Trump win the presidential election to become the President-Elect. His support and campaign were also pretty strange brews, as was the whole election cycle.

So what the hell? Let’s finish this year and see how far the strange brew carries us. BTW, be sure to check out Eric Clapton’s clothes and hairs. Woo. Stylin’. Sadly, perhaps tragically, or comically, I remembered being adorned in somewhat similar styles in my teens.

Life sure is a strange brew, and fashion can be the strangest brew of all.

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Today’s Theme Music

I wanted something lighter today. A favorite parody is ‘My Cubicle’, a take-off on James Blunt’s song, ‘You’re Beautiful’, 2004. The parody probably emerged within two years. I always had an office. However, my team and a lot of friends worked in cubicle warrens, and my wife was an office manager and HR manager. Between them, I received a daily infusion of irritations and frustrations with cubicle working. I once visited an enormous Air Force office space that had been converted into cubicles and was appalled. Of course, I think cubicles are better than those enormous open spaces of rows and columns of desks and filing cabinets that provided no privacy. That’s just my sense of it because I never worked in one of those, but only knew of them through visiting, television shows and movies.

Anyway, turn it up and sing along. I hope it provides you with a laugh.

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Today’s Theme Music

Last night’s dreams saw an exit and took it, and then merged onto the erotic highway. These dreams will go into the private collection. All I’ll write here is, wow, that was intense.

Some today’s music continues with the dream theme. Since I was surprised, asking myself about these dreams after I told myself to dream and explain the previous night’s dreams, I’m going with ‘These Dreams’, performed by Heart and written by Martin Page, 1986. Pretty fitting for writers and artists pursuing dreams, as well. Enjoy.

 

 

 

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