Category: music

Today’s Theme Music

I haven’t been out to sample the holiday shopping crowds. Shopping and crowds are anathema to my sense of peace and social tolerance toward others. My small town yesterday demonstrated again and again how people change during this season. A flip was switched. Cashiers seemed to already be eyeing customers as threats to their patience. The rules for driving seemed to be eroding. My impression of their thinking evolved from their actions.

“One way? No problem, I’m just going a short distance, and I need that parking space. I’m in a hurry!”

“Two lanes? They can move over. There’s plenty of room for them to go around me. I’m special.”

“Stop signs – I rolled through. Close enough.”

“Turn signals? I’m barely aware of where I’m going, and you want me to think of turn signals?”

“Hurry, hurry, let’s get home, quickly, quickly, faster, faster. Get on his tail. That’ll make him go faster.”

This is what was happening in our small, mellow town. Holidays and precipitation seem to unhinge people’s thinking. I don’t know what was going on in one woman’s head as she drove down the twenty-five mile an hour residential street at what I guessed was thirty-five to forty, her head down and her phone up, texting away.

I think this song is the theme for many. I hope it’s not harrying your mind. Here’s Al Hirt on the trumpet solo and Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee”, as used for the theme music for the television show, ‘The Green Hornet’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Good morning, Mr. Phelps.

Thanksgiving is yesterday’s news until next year. Black Friday has commenced.

Winter is coming.

Now it gets serious.

You’re going to what today…? Diet? Exercise? Shop till you drop? Keep talking with the voices in your head and writing while maintaining a reasonable facade of sanity?

Drink till you drop, or never eat or drink again?

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to get it done, whatever you’re pursuing today. Here’s the music to use at pivotal moments to build momentum and carry you on.

This message will self-describe in five seconds, taking whatever you’re reading this on with it. Oh, come on, don’t act surprised. Planned obsolescence has become a fine manufacturing art. Its destruction will help the economy because you’ll be forced to buy a new one. So it’s really a blessing.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This is it in America. Finally, a world-shaking significant event has taken place:

Thanksgiving…has arrived.

Others will scoff. I scoff at the scoffers. Go ahead and scoff back at me scoffing at you for scoffing. You want a scoff off?

Let’s scoff.

But Thanksgiving happens every year, doubters say.

Oh, you doubters, I scoff. Yes, Thanksgiving happens every year, which is a large part of its importance. It’s one of the big holiday anchors in America, the others being Christmas, the Super Bowl, and the Academy Awards. Their annual occurrence don’t make them any less special and amazing anew every year. Thanksgiving is especially important for America because the holiday season that commences on the Black Friday the day after T-Day is economically critical for America’s commerce and pop-culture. The only thing not going on sale in this period is healthcare. I’m sure they’ll get around to it. Without Thanksgiving and Black Friday, they wouldn’t be Christmas, and then that damn music that’s been playing in stores since early October would go and on and on, like that damn pink Energizer bunny.

So you need a theme song that will carry you as you sit down with relatives and play twenty questions to catch up, confront a spread of food and gorge on dessert, or rush out the door to shop. Something to hum to yourself to gird your courage for these gritty, daunting moments.

I give you the theme to ‘Dragnet’.

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Today’s Theme Music

I reached out of my usual sphere for today. I enjoy this woman’s voice and like the message behind the song’s lyrics. The song reminds me of ‘Philadelphia Freedom’, but it’s not.

Here’s Heather Small, ‘Proud’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Another shot from the past, this one features two pretty good vocalists sharing a rock song, ‘Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves’. I enjoyed Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin on their own, and this coupling worked like an Oregon Pinot Noir with a sharp white cheddar.

While the beat moves me, I like the song’s thrust, that women are taking care of their own business. I’m a feminist and applaud that attitude. As former enlisted military and a careerist, we knew early on, you got to take care of yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you. But the song, and we, recognized that we’ll do better by doing it for ourselves by doing it together as a group. Working together to change your situation is the best way to approach it.

For your song today, The Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, joined by Aretha Franklin, from 1985. For fun, you may substitute, “Writers are doing it for themselves.” It fits with NaNoWriMo, don’t you think?

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Today’s Theme Music

You know how writers are. Maybe I’m assuming too much. Permit me to note that writers are moody. Weather affects them. News. Food. They’re so overly sensitive and moody, staring into space, or hunched over a notebook, typewriter or keyboard, or swilling coffee, tea, or libations. What’s going on in their heads mystifies normal humans. Only animals seem to understand, and other writers.

Well, Ashlandia is dripping with wintry cold precipitation today. Kind of a ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ or Blind Melon ‘No Rain’ day. It’s Monday, drawing out the Mamas and Papas, the Carpenters, or Burt B and raindrops falling on my head.

Screw that noise. We’re here to write. It’s all about the words, buddy, to paraphrase Meghan Trainor. Keep that in mind as she sings, ‘All About That Bass’.  It’s all about the words. And move your booty and get some exercise. Seriously. It’ll do your heart, mind and soul good.

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Today’s Theme Music

Some days, the mood requires more mellow and reflective music, without a guitar’s lash and a drum’s hammer so often found in rock. Rock is my known and preferred genre, so I lean that way.

But other genres and influences have nuzzled through way into me. So it is with today’s song. Written in 1941, Glenn Miller was the first force behind it, although he didn’t write it. Sung by many, it’s a signature song for one person for an entire generation. Others have famously covered it – like Cyndi Lauper and Beyonce Knowles – but Etta James comes to me.

‘At Last’. Life is like a song.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

The essence of good theme music is that you carry it through your day, singing it to yourself as you write, work, drive, walk and complete the other tasks that fill your existence. Something that your mind hums along that you sing aloud in spurts.

Today’s theme music comes from Aretha Franklin. I love her vocal style and there are so many songs I could post here. But I decided that the spirit of ‘Think’ from the ‘Blues Brothers’ movie (1980) with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and a big ol’ cast worked best for today’s them music because it’s pretty damn infectious. It’s pretty funny, too, that it’s IBM’s slogan, as I worked there all those years.

You better think about what you’re trying to do to me.

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Today’s Theme Music

Having beer with friends last night and talking, we reminisced about music and humor, so today is more about humor surrounding music. We came up with three of our favorites.

First, More Cowbell, from SNL, with Christopher Walken. The song they’re playing is Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, a hit for BOC back in 1976. Oddly, I associate Blue Oyster Cult more with ‘Godzilla’, but whatever.

Next, of course, was the moment in ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ (1984) when Marty Dibergi (Rob Reiner) is interviewing Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest). Nigel is Spinal Tap’s lead guitarist, and he’s taking us through his instruments when he explains why his amp is special.

 

Last is just the classic rock issue of fans calling out, “Play ‘Freebird’.” ‘Freebird’ is by Lynyrd Skynyrd, so here we go.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Keeping it simple today, and following a theme (rim shot). I’ve been dreaming a great deal, and remembering many dreams in the past ten days, more than I usually remember. Of course, it’s my experience that remembering dreams and thinking about them builds the ability to remember dreams and think about them, so it’s a natural function to remember more as I think more….

Sorry for the diversion. To return to the theme, it’s dreams, of course. There’s a lot of music featuring dreams but being a rockboy, I’m going straight to Van Halen. The song and video came out while I was stationed at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, so it ties in with my recent dreams. And we liked the video – nice beat, easy to play air guitar with it and sing along – although, ahem, they were Navy jets, and we were the Air Force. We didn’t hold that against Van Halen or the song.

Here is ‘Dreams’.  Sing along if you know the words, or just make some up.

 

Update: after watching the above video, I didn’t think it was the one I knew. I believe the one below is the correct one. Same song, though, and, um…theme….

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