Category: pop culture

Friday’s Theme Music

So, confession, again. I enjoy the original Mad Max trilogy. The first is the least of them, but I will watch The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome again and again without too much thought.

Which is what I did this week. Thunderdome ends with Tina Turner singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Which makes sense in that context; they’ve already lost it all. Civilization has been wiped out, and they’re trying to rebuild something out of the wreckage, something more humane than Bartertown and the Thunderdome.

But I wake up and read the news, and think, we need a hero. Seems like any fucking day, someone is going to decide, “Today is a nice day to nuke! Let’s find someone and make a radioactive statement.” Then a shit storm of retaliation will fire up. Anarchy and chaos get stirred in as civilization’s plastic veneer melts, and norms, morals, and ethics get tossed.

(As an ironic aside, I first saw The Road Warrior on VHS while I was on temporary duty with the Air Force in South Korea.)

Yeah, gloomy fucking Friday, right? Not really. A hero can stop all that. I don’t see anyone riding in at the moment, but I’m always an optimistic person that eventually sanity prevails.

So listen to Tina singing in 1985, and think about it. Focus on the song’s words, “Looking for something we can rely on, there’s got to be something better out there.”

Yes, there’s got to be.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I like this song for the call and response, and weird title, but this line always bugged me:

You like a four letter words when you’re ready to
But then you won’t ’cause you know that you can

Really? “You like a four letter words…?” 

Yes, of all the things out in the world that’s wrong in music, this is the piece wedged in my grammar craw. I always believe the title part, “Armageddon It,” was a piece of misheard words, like “D’yer Mak’er.”

Are you getting it? Armageddon it.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

U2 is hot and cold for me. I really enjoy The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum albums, but I was less enthused about others. This song, “Mysterious Ways” from Achtung, Baby, is my favorite track from that album. I like the mystic romantic aspects the lyrics present, and the sharp guitar hook juxtaposed against the beat and bass line. It’s a song that I crank up, and one that I sing to my cats. I sing it to myself, too, as I contemplate the world and my writing. Talk about mysterious ways.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

This was one of those who and what situations.

I heard the lyrics, “Looking for the answers in the pouring rain.” Whenever I heard the song on the radio, I tried listening for more lyrics and the name of the song and group. They used to give the song title and performers’ name on the radio; not so much, anymore. But hearing those lyrics, I did an Internet search. First I thought the song was called “Cage the Elephant.” That didn’t make sense. I didn’t hear elephants mentioned in the song. What was I missing?

Oh, Cage the Elephant is the musical group’s name. That makes more sense, right? The song turned out to be “Cigarette Daydreams.”

I was surprised by how long Cage the Elephant had been around, so I went retro, searching out their music. Meanwhile, here’s “Cigarette Daydreams.” I do like these lyrics:

You can drive all night
Looking for the answers in the pouring rain
You wanna find peace of mind
Looking for the answer

h/t AZLyrics.com

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Monday’s Theme Music

I have an affinity for songs about rain. While some are happy songs (“Singing in the Rain”), many of them are about depression or mental illness, like “No Rain.” I like this particular song, “Only Happy When It Rains” by Garbage, because of the delivery, but also the statement it makes. This is a sad and bitter person who likes being sad and bitter. Hey, that’s so honest, and is such a mockery of so many other songs about being happy or morose, those, “Oh, what am I going to do?” songs.

It just happens that today is sunny, with hype that it’s going to be warmish and springish. There’s not a sign of rain.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I wasn’t enthralled with Duran Duran and their music. Some of their music hit the charts in a big way, and friends like them, so I was exposed to them. Despite that, every once a song strikes a sweet spot in the day and hangs with you.

So it happened this morning as I looked out the window. It looked deceptively warm and beautiful, deceptively because my weather station warned me that it was thirty-one F outside. But it was beautiful, yet ordinary with its vistas of far, snowy tree covered mountains juxtaposed against the local greenery and blooming plum trees and daffodils. This is our every day view, so ordinary and special. Yet, changes, from seasonal movement to economic shifts and the ways of life and death, were visible from where I was.

So I streamed, “But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find. And, as I try to find my way in an ordinary world, I will learn to survive.”

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In Green

I’m wearing green today, homage to St. Patrick’s Day in America.

I don’t celebrate holidays much, and celebrate them less as I age. I don’t look forward to them much. Putting out decorations rarely occurs to me.

After thinking about it, I’ve realized that I little associate with the external world. Events are remote. I live by and enjoy the internal worlds created as I imagine and write. It’s a problem, and it’s a benefit. The problem is that my wife is exasperated because I’m not all up about holidays like other people. The benefit is that I feel like I’m successfully writing, and that makes me happy. Like most things in life, the value is on a sliding spectrum, and changes often.

I suppose I could change it, or try, since I’m now aware, but I’m not inclined to do that – for now.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

My cats were singing this to me last night and this morning. Okay, it may have only seemed like they were singing (or humming, or purring) it because everywhere I went, and everything I did, they were watching me.

Here are The Police with Sting’s composition, “Every Breath You Take.”

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Friday’s Theme Music

I like Oasis, and found myself singing “Wonderwall” to myself this morning.

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don’t know how

Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You’re my wonderwall.

Of course, I was singing it to a cat. Technically, that means I wasn’t singing it to myself. The cat seemed to like it. Of course, they were waiting to be fed.

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