Category: pop culture

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I enjoyed good mouth organ, harmonica, and French harp playing. My favorites are Little Walter, Charles Musselwhite, Sonny Boy Williamson, Stevie Wonder, and John Popper. When I first heard Culture Club’s “Church of the Poisoned Mind”, I thought that must be Stevie Wonder playing the harmonica. I was wrong. It turned out to be Judd Lander. Since hearing him with Culture Club, I’ve listened for him, and have found him playing with numerous others.

Those guys have a style I enjoy, but I don’t have much knowledge about the players, instrument, or their relative abilities. Like other instruments, styles vary by genre. I like these guys as much because I’ve been exposed to their skills, and remember.

Do you have a favorite on this instrument? Think about it while listening to “The Church of the Poison Mind” (1983).

 

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Today’s Theme Music

My stream is back-flashing to high school. I remember talking with my buddy, Bob, about a new Moody Blues song, “Nights In White Satin”. I already knew the song and was puzzling about how I knew this song so well already. I told Bob that I was certain it was an old song. Later, on the radio, they mentioned that the song had been originally released in 1967, but didn’t chart well in the U.S., but had been released again in 1972, the year Bob and I were talking. I felt absurdly validated and pleased that I’d accurately remembered the song had come out several years before.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

This song, “Out of My League” by Fitz and the Tantrums (2013) reminds me of early 1980s techno-pop. I like its rhythm and peppiness. Although lacking screaming guitars, it’s jaunty, and acts like a musical mood enhancer.

Listen, and see if it has the same effect on you.

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Friday’s Theme Music

As I’ve done on other days, I selected today’s music because it was streaming in my mind when my dream ended.

“While You See A Chance” comes from Steve Winwood’s Arc of A Diver (1981). It’s not my favorite song from the album, but some of the song’s lines were going through me.

When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance, fake it
Because it’s all on you

h/t azlyrics.com

I thought those lines were being remembered because I was thinking that it was an old dream that I was remembering, one that I recalled dreaming before (and thinking, oh, great, my dreams are in re-runs — or maybe I’m remaking them, rebooting them, in accordance with the current television and film trends — and scoffing), and it was a cold morning. Perhaps subconsciously summoning the song, I thought about the endless road of life and drifted into tangents about my life’s minutiae. Then the song streamed in.

I had a final laugh, then, because a cold tomorrow had found me, and then got up to feed some beasts and hunt down coffee.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Didya hear? There’s talk of building walls….

Too many events IMO degrade into shouting contests and threats, with a sort of you better run and hide mentality steaming up and rippling across the national scene. Accuse someone of something and someone else with counter with threats against you.

All this brought to mind Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell”, 1980, from The Wall.

You better run all day
And run all night
And keep your dirty feelings
Deep inside. And if your
Takin’ your girlfriend
Out tonight
You better park the car
Well out of sight
‘Cos if they catch you in the back seat
Trying to pick her locks
They’re gonna send you back to mother
In a cardboard box
You better run

h/t to Lyricsfreak.com

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I was streaming “Eye of the Tiger” (Survivor, 1982) in my head as I was cleaning the carpets today.

“Eye of the Tiger” is one of those songs that was released and gained popularity while my wife and I lived outside of America working for Uncle Sam. In this case, we were at Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan. I was mostly working twelve-hour shifts in the 603rd MASS Command Post. Between those shifts and typhoons, it seems like we didn’t hear much from the outside world. When we visited Hawaii on leave, we discovered that McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets were the next greatest thing, MTV had launched and was gaining popularity, and Rocky III was the hot movie, with “Eye of the Tiger” as the movie’s defining song.

It all seemed a little surreal.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

“For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays was released in 1974, the year I escaped high school by way of a bar of soap carved to look like a diploma. Like a zillion other people, I immediately took to the song’s funky sounds, hip lyrics, and the message that money corrupts. I started singing it then, and I still sing it now.

For the love of money, people will steal from their mother
For the love of money, people will rob their own brother
For the love of money, people can’t even walk the street
Because they never know who in the world they’re gonna meet
For that mean, oh mean, mean green
Almighty dollar, cash money

h/t to genius.com

It seems like this song is more relevant today than it was over a quarter of a century ago. If you don’t have money, you have to get it, and if you have it, you hold onto it. If you have a lot of it, it becomes a disease to hold onto what you have and get more. Money inspires corruption, power, selfishness, and greed. It’s a simplistic take in a complicated world.

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Monday’s Theme Music

It’s strange of me to be streaming Paula Abdul. It’s not the musical style that I normally stream.

I enjoy the poppy and catchy song, “Straight Up”, but the song also inspires me. The way I remember hearing it — and this may have been from Casey Kasem on American Top Forty — Paula was working as a choreographer and trying to make it as a music star by recording at night, after work. She heard a demo of this song. While others didn’t think much of it, she heard something, liked it, and made it work. Others didn’t believe in her, but she believed in herself. It became her first hit.

That’s what all of us need: to believe in yourself.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

This is a hopeful song streaming today. “Love Will Find A Way” by Pablo Cruise (1978) is about experiencing the betrayal and heartache of lost love, and the wonder whether you’ll ever find love and happiness. Some don’t try, once they’ve been burnt. Others think that love doesn’t exist or matter, and more settle for a safe zone of living with another that you sometimes love, but sometimes hate. A few, though, never find love, and an’t sure about what they seek.

 

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Sunday’s Bumper Sticker

This bumper sticker pulled me in because I just finished watching “The Almighty Johnsons” series on Netflix, and Ullr (Mikkel/Michael) was attempting to rule.

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