Category: pop culture

Wednesday’s Theme Music

I can’t trace the roots of why I’m streaming this song today. Didn’t have the record, or any of this group’s albums. I knew the song came out sometime in the mid to late 1970s, but had to look it up to find it.

The airways often shaped the musical landscape then, with television giving musical groups and their hits a step up via Soul Train, American Bandstand, and a few other shows like that. FM stereo was growing in popularity, with multiple stations dedicated to rock, soul, R&B, and country genres going on air. Once songs began getting air time, they would move up the charts, gain more air time. Suddenly they were in your ears.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. When I first started driving in 1974, our area had three FM stations. You’d punch the buttons and move around between them. I don’t punch buttons now, but gently tap them to move ‘tween stations, or use my thumb on a rocker button my steering wheel to advance to the next setting. I have five FM stations that I prefer in my area, but I also play satellite FM. The satellite capability offers about a zillion stations, but I listen to eight primary music stations when I’m drivin’ ’round town.

This song, “Baby Come Back” (1977) by Player, came to me by radio saturation. The song reminds me of Hall & Oates. I was stationed in the Philippines when it was released. We only had one station, the Armed Forces Network Philippines (AFN-P). It’s an okay song, doesn’t stir me in any particular direction, but it’s part of my memoryscape.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

With an icy wind slicing up my cheeks, I thought about living by the ocean. The ocean is always warm in my mind, even though I have experience with being at the ocean and running from arctic blasts. I guess it’s my reality that it’s not cold when you’re living by the ocean. Naw, just looking for a change from the mountains around me where icy wintry fingers are slowly clenching around it, and thought, beach! Sun! Warmth!

Which prompted the stream to deliver Everclear. You know, “We can live beside the ocean.” Except then, it being Everclear, “Santa Monica” (1995) becomes a bit dark with sparks of hope and longing for havens where we live unencumbered by all the shit wrapping its tentacles around us.

 

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Compelling

It was the fourth series of the show. I’d watched and enjoyed two episodes. Character driven but with a strong plot, the pacing was fast, with powerful acting. Then I watched the third episode…

As George T. would say, “Oh myyyy…”

I had to know what happened next. The plotting became diabolical, with more twists and cutbacks than a lonely mountain road. The characters’ complexities increased, the acting stayed sharp and the pacing intensified.  WTH, I thought as Monday slipped into Tuesday, I’ll watch one more. Then I watched another, and then, well, only one remained.

So it was that I’d binge-watched the final four episodes. And it was fucking brilliant and clever, what I look for in my entertainment. No wonder it’s been consistently nominated for awards, and often wins. Love that series, but they’re so far apart. Just like they do to me with Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and several other series I enjoy.

Sure, I didn’t get to bed until two thirty on Tuesday morning, but I have no regrets, and lots of coffee.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came via the weather. Our forecast for today said it will be sunny but a drizzle was falling, so, you know, I was a mite skeptical. When sunshine finally broke through, so did a Donovan song, “Sunshine Superman” (1966).

I enjoy this video. Television, music, and entertainment all seemed simpler, didn’t it?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Piddling through the morning and ruminating about what to do today and this week, I drifted into channels that went, “Life. It’s just a game we play.”

That naturally activated certain cells. Next thing that I know, I’m streaming Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” (1973) because of that one set of lines go, “Show and tell. Just a game I play when I want to say, I love you.”

It’s another song from that era whose every note is familiar. Reflecting on it as I walked to write, I realize that the song makes me nostalgic for that period in a way that other songs don’t. Perhaps it’s the words and their sentiments, and the way that Al Wilson delivers them. It could be the chilly and windy weather stirring up memory flashes of being in Penn Hills, PA, when the song was popular. The sky’s color out here today harkens back to memories of snow warnings.

We don’t have snow warnings here today, but some rain is forecast. As usual, untangling the threads of memories and impressions are too much. I’ll just live with the song and nostalgia.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I didn’t know who originally did this song. I don’t know why I was streaming it this morning. Somehow, between feeding the cats, opening the blinds, making breakfast and coffee, I started streaming “Gimme Little Sign” to myself. It’s one of those instances where the why is buried, but becoming aware that I was streaming it to myself, I looked the song up and learned Brenton Wood recorded and released it in 1967.

It feels like a ’67 song, mellow and relaxed, about love and relationships, and hopeful. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was talking to God(s), the Universal, the Fates, whatever, and saying to myself (or them), “Just give me some kind of sign,” about what to do or what’s to happen, and brought this song to mind. You know how humans are.

We’re all a little crazy. We’re all just looking for a little sign.

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Today’s Theme Music

This little pop song comes to you from me hearing it on the radio yesterday. (I was switching through channels, trying to escape Christmas music.) The song wasn’t — and isn’t — my cuppa music, but I know it well because it seems like we were saturated with it when it came out back in 1984. I was stationed in Japan then, and it was being played often on the radio. Besides that, it was catchy, with easily heard, understood, and learned lyrics. People seemed to delight in making jokes out of the title, “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. I returned to America at the end of ’84, and discovered the saturation was worse in America.

Here’s Wham! Sorry to do this to you, but I need to get it out of my head. Nothin’ wrong with it, mind you, just not my cuppa.

 

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Imfloofable

Imfloofable (floofinition) – a housepet that refuses to change its personality or accomodate any others.

In use: “Although she tried introducing other pets into the household, Flash was imfloofable, refusing to accept any other creature in the home. Like the Highlander, there could be only one.”

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Today’s music comes to my stream via the weather report. Looking ahead at the ten day, I saw rain, coming up…rain, rain, rain. With that, the neurons organized. “Rain, rain, rain, a wicked rain” began, the first lines of the Los Lobos song, “Wicked Rain”, from 1992. I like what I perceive as the song’s darkness.

“There’s just one chance in a million that we’ll make it out alive.”

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music will not be for everyone. I’ll be surprised if anyone likes it, because that’s King Crimson’s nature.

The song, “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969) was once said to be dedicated to Spiro T. Agnew.

I was biased against Agnew because my eighth grade civics teacher talked at great lengths about him, and didn’t like him at all. She particularly didn’t like how he attacked the press and its coverage of him. You might remember Agnew if you study twentieth century American politics or lived through the times. Agnew was Nixon’s first Veep until he was indicted and resigned after a criminal investigation into Maryland corruption. Whether the song is dedicated to Spiro T. “Ted” Agnew,  the song’s lyrics are few but memorable. Here’s a sample for you.

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man

h/t azlyrics.com

I’m thinking of this song today because I feel a little bit like a twenty-first century schzoid man on some days. Not today, particularly, but you know, some days.

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