Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
One of the cats followed me around this morning because I hadn’t fed him yet. “Hungry, buddy?” I said. “Want some kibble? Anticipating brekkie?” Naturally, I started singing, “Anticipation, anticipation is making me late, is keeping me waiting.”
That made it today’s theme music. Here’s Carly Simon, “Anticipation”, 1971. Those were the good old days.
Today brought me another Aretha Franklin classic. She didn’t write it, but she sang it with power — of course. We’re talkin’ ’bout Aretha Franklin.
Don’t know what prompted it to enter my morning stream and dance around the kitchen. I tried coaxing the housefloofs into singing and dancing with me but they were havin’ none of it, preferring to sit down and disparage me with judgmental stares.
Here we go, “Chain of Fools” (1967). It’s good hump day music, ya know?
I didn’t recall when today’s theme music came out. I guessed about 1966, ’67. I was wrong. It was 1969. I remembered it the other day, when I was reading about Oregon’s marijuana glut a few days ago. Oregon has grown about one million pounds of surplus weed.
“Little Green Bag” by the George Baker Selection sounds weirdly like it’s from several different eras of pop-rock. Its beginning is often used to define cool in a movie or television show. A group moves in slow music, typically turning toward the camera as the music plays. This was done in Reservoir Dogs and the BBC television show, Red Dwarf. That song’s beginning, with its bass line and isolated percussion, is cool.
I always remembered the next lines, though, thinking, hey, he’s looking for a bag of grass, as in marijuana. It sounded like he dropped it and has gone back for it, except he wasn’t singing bag, he was singing back, like, greenback. Which, I realized in one history leson in school, was dollars. So he was looking for dollars, not grass. That amused me, but perplexed my friends, who didn’t know what the hell song I was singing.
I’d never seen the video before today. They look very uncomfortable to me, like they’re self-consciously cringing inside.
Here it is, though. This is how we used to roll.
Once again, a debt is owed to the house clowder for coming up with a song. One cat was briefly absent, prompting me to say, “Where have you gone?” That was enough to let “Good Thing” (1989) by Fine Young Cannibals shoot into the morning stream. The cat turned up almost immediately after I began singing the song. My cats are always curious about me when I start talking, singing, or typing, apparently thinking, “What’s that sound he’s making? I better go check on him to see if he’s okay.”
Discussing my dreams with the cats as I fed the coffee maker and overfloofs, we went out for the paper and agreed, yep, just another day.
Paul McCartney’s song, “Another Day” (1971), squirted into my stream. Milliseconds later, I’m singing, “It’s just another day. At the office where the papers grow, she takes a break,
drinks another coffee and she finds it hard to stay awake, do do do dit do do. It’s just another day.”
The song is an observation of a woman’s life as she cleans, dresses, and works. Under that melody and the surface word, as they sing, “So sad, sometimes she feels so sad,” is a sense of milieu ringing through other pop-rock songs of that era, is this it? Is this life? And accepting that, yes, this is life, people hunt escape. It’s just another day, over and over and over, going through motions while looking and hoping for some unspoken other thing.
A disturbing new movement is taking place in the opinion of this average white heterosexual male. After watching women of color under the Democratic Party banner win Congressional seats in the mid-terms, stories are emerging about why women shouldn’t march or wear pink during marches, or support and attend these marches. Three different reasons to date have been raised, about women of color not being involved and the marches being too white, about wearing pussy hats because that’s excluding or offending some, and now, the latest, that the group is anti-Semitism. Because of these stories, fewer marches are being planned. This year’s turnout is projected to be much lower.
I suspect that other reasons for not supporting the women’s marches will be raised in the coming days. I’m suspicious that the unification of women and their rise are terrifying the established powers — like the Koch Bros. and the white, male-dominated GOP, groups that prefer that women, no matter their education and accomplishments, their religious beliefs, or color of their skin, need to be kept in their place — and they’re fighting back through a whisper campaign to divide women.
Women’s success in the 2018 elections buoyed my hopes for the future. I love hearing and seeing women raising their voices to promote equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. Men have been dominating our politics since our nation’s founding, and look at the state we’re in. Look at our priorities and how ineffective our government has become at the highest levels.
I hope women keep strong, rally, stay united, and overcome these issues. If not, our country will be set back, yet again, at a time when we really need to push forward. Please, don’t let them break you.
Resist. Fight back. We need to change the status quo.
After feeding the cats, I read the news and skimmed social media while drinking a mornin’ cuppa. After reading a bit o’ America’s plight, the rush toward extinction of the Monarch Butterfly, some murder and scandal updates, I was ready to move on. Thinking, gotta get away from that same old, same old, I need a chance just to get away. If you could hear me thinking, this is what I’d say.
Poison’s song, “Nothin’ but a Good Time” (1988) burst into my stream. It was almost like their video.
Hah. Yeah, right.
Fixing the cats and mumbling to the coffee this morning, I streamed remembered dreams and pondered forgotten songs. The morass cleared after I ate some kibble and gave the cats some coffee. Losing its turbidity (a word of which I’m quite fond), the stream drew down into Joe Walsh with “All Night Long”, from Urban Cowboy, 1980.
Reading the news yesterday and today, I was shaking my head, partially laughing while crying. You know, it was the same old story.
That led to me streaming Aerosmith.
It’s the same old story
Same old song and dance, my friend
It’s the same old story
Same old story
Same old song and dance
It was an easy song to identify with when I was a teenager and the song was released. When you asked questions, you often heard, “That’s just how it is. That’s how it goes.” It was always the same old song and dance, no matter what you were asked.
It’s a song and dance I’m getting tired of now with politics. It’s always one thing or another. Back in the military world, you tired of hearing you must do more with less — same old song and dance. Hurry up and wait — same old song and dance. In the corporate world, it became doing more with less, and then cut expenses and increase profits, or we can’t give you a bonus or pay raise, little boy, while they spread some B.S. about us being a family, or a team, and how much they care. Same old song and dance.
“Same Old Song and Dance”. Only the voices change.
I started streaming this song today, and then started flipping between various versions that I knew.
“Route 66” by Bobby Troup seems to capture or convey something elemental that people like to sing. He wrote the song while driving cross-country with his wife. His lyrics are the foundations for multiple interpretations, from Nat King Cole to John Mayer, with a chunk of people in between. I happened to start with the Depeche Mode cover today, and then popped into the Mayer version before jumping back to Nat King Cole and then then the Stones. It’s intriguing how each performer adjusts it to their style and era of music. As fascinating as all of that, Route 66 features powerfully in the Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Enjoy them all, a celebration of a classic road and a classic song, “Route 66”, about a road that barely still exists.
Nat King Cole
Bobby Troup – the composer.
Chuck Berry
The Stones
Depeche Mode
John Mayer
