Category: pop culture

Today’s Theme Music

Crowds. Traffic. I dislike these things, and try avoiding them.

I’m also thin-skinned, dislike criticism, and try to avoid it. I also try to avoid attention of any sort, preferring to be on the sidelines, even as I attempt things that draw attention to me. Yes, I’m your standard, complicated human mess.

These predilections drive me to choice. I usually perceive the negatives – the negatives of trying and failing, or going to parties or festivals, and enduring crowds, or the negative of attempting something new and doing a poor job that will give others opportunities to mock me. But those choices, hemmed in by the possibility of being a negative experience, fence me in.

Aware of all of this, I’m trying. I try to be more positive and open. I try to armor myself against criticism, and go for it. I probably fail at both aspects more than than half the time.

This thinking brings me to today’s theme music. Fat Boy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” from the year two thousand, featured Christopher Walken dancing in a hotel. I’ve always thought it was a pretty cool video, which was directed by Spike Jonze. The words repeated throughout the song include, “You can go this way, you can go that way.”

That’s about it. We all make our choices and endure the results. We can go this way, or we can go that way.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Trump is attempting to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. Some say, including lawmakers, say, “It doesn’t matter, God will save us.”

Better get started with your praying then, because where are you going to run to when the water is rising, and the rivers and seas are boiling? Here’s Nina Simone with her powerful rendition of “Sinnerman” to get things rolling.

Sinnerman, you ought to be praying.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Here we are, cruising the quirky oceans of life. It’s relatively calm waters for me today, slight swells. Faint, high clouds and a spring blue sky don’t presage any tempestuous weather, but I haven’t read the news yet or checked the emails. That’s where my weather indicators arise.

It’s Wednesday. Used to be the “hump day,” as in get over this hump in the middle of the week, and the downhill slide begins toward the weekend. That was when I was a standard Monday through Friday nine to fiver. Now I work for myself, writing and editing. Any day can become a hump day. It depends on what I encounter. For now, I’ll take up Bobby McFerrin’s musical advice from nineteen ninety-eight to, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” He was following Meher Baba’s poster advice.

Chill. Don’t worry. Be happy.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This is the only song I’m familiar with by this artist.

His name is Tom Cochrane. The song is “Life Is A Highway.” The song came out during the last century, in nineteen ninety. I like writing, saying and thinking expressions like, “the last century.” Of course, for some, this has been their only century, so far. We don’t know how far they’ll get. They might be looking back on these times while thinking, “Remember two hundred years ago? Wow, I was only seventeen but I thought I knew it all.”

Or, maybe not. Oregon’s oldest woman on record died recently. One hundred ten years old, Birdie Johnson still only knew two centuries, yet consider the significant changes she witnessed in her lifetime.

On the other hand, advances don’t always progress as expected. The SF Chronicle recently addressed predictions they’d published back in nineteen ninety-nine. Flying cars again made the list. We keep expecting flying cars. Those cars still rolling on the ground were expected be getting seventy to eighty miles per gallon by now, so that was a strike. It was predicted that the wealthy would be living to one hundred fifty years old by now. That was considered a miss.

Too many cars and not enough houses for the SF Bay area was predicted back in ninety ninety-nine. That was considered on target, so they weren’t all misses. Yet, for all the predictions made that missed, humans still surged ahead in many areas that we didn’t expect. Yes, life is a highway. We start with birth and end with death, but the stuff in between might not be as predictable as we think.

Let’s just ride it.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Hey, it’s a holiday here in America, the one called Memorial Day. It’s a Federal holiday and pretty well accepted, so most will be celebrating it without protests or demonstrations and there will be plenty of Memorial Day sales going on, along with war movies. Although some consider it a very solemn day, and folks will be visiting graves and decorating them with flags and flowers, I think a celebration is required. What better way than with a song with Kool & the Gang called “Celebration?” After all, we’re celebrating their gift of the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our rights and freedoms.

From nineteen eighty.

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Today’s Theme Music

Never been to Kathmandu, but thanks to Bob Seger, it’s a place I want to visit.

Seger was one of those hard-working people who became an “almost overnight sensation.” Starting in Detroit, he had a large regional following and a few hits, but didn’t make it nationally until after almost a decade of trying. I knew”Ramblin’, Gamblin’ Man,” but it didn’t make a great impression on me. The song that really touched me was “Night Moves.” That song was released when I was two years removed from high school and two years with the military. With it, I was hooked on Seger and sought his music. His “Live Bullet” album with “Turn the Page” remains one of my favorite live albums. As that song said:

Out there in the spotlight
You’re a million miles away
Every ounce of energy
You try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body
Like the music that you play

h/t to metrolyrics.com

I felt like Seger and the band poured it all out in that album.

But “Katmandu”, the song, has lyrics that appeal to me, too, that encourage me to chuck it all, and get the hell out of here, go to somewhere simple and quiet. Seger seemed to think that was Kathmandu.

The song was released in nineteen seventy-five, but I’ve included the “Live Bullet” version. Enjoy as you walk around this fine Sunday.

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Today’s Theme Music

This protest song, from the nineteen eighties, counters what’s normal for rock, at least as it’s experienced in America. Sure, we have some invasion hits from the Brits, Germans, Dutch, etc., and more than a few from Australia, too.

This one came from Australia with a strong rhetoric against taking the Earth from the people who already inhabited it, along with choice rails against global warm and environmental destruction. Featuring a heavy base line, it also has a fat horn section, pretty unexpected in a rock hit in nineteen eighty-seven. But the lead vocalist’s voice and enunciation will never challenge anyone for smooth delivery.

Know the song? It made news again during the opening of the Olympics in Sidney in two thousand. Sure, it’s “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, perfect for a walkabout on an unusually hot spring day – in North America.

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Today’s Theme Music

Here’s a Friday two-fer.

I’d planned for a celebratory song today but this one dominated one of my dreams last night. “When the Levee Breaks” is an old blues song. I became familiar with it through Led Zeppelin’s cover of it in nineteen seventy-one.

In my dream, it was my wake-up song, playing every day on my radio at seven in the morning. I know this because I was explaining that to other people. I told them, I’d begun doing that in June, so I’d been doing it for a year. During that time, I’d found a new shortcut, I explained. While explaining that, I pointed out a window at a new white concrete highway that was alongside a shoreline. The sky was so blue and the sun was so bright, it awed you into silence. Vehicles were on the road. It looked like typical commuter traffic.

We joked a while about hearing that song everyday. I know it was “When the Levee Breaks” because one other asked, “What is that song?” Then he answered himself as I answered him, “”When the Levee Breaks,” by Led Zeppelin.” He nodded, laughing along as we spoke. He said, “It’s a good song. I don’t know if I’d want to hear it all the time.” I answered, “I only hear it in the morning.” He replied, “Well, even that might be too much, if it’s every day.”

I awoke from that and the other two remembered dreams feeling like a dark cloud had been lifted. You decide, though: will hearing this song every morning be too much?

 

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Today’s Theme Music

…and some days, you get up, and you’re in this mood, you’re like…possessed by this restlessness, and you think, “All I want to do is have some fun. Is that too much to ask?”

Here’s Sheryl Crow singing about it. Really, it’s like an essay on a day at the bar, the car wash, and the people who are there. From nineteen ninety-four, “All I Wanna Do.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

The stream has shifted. Into the flow comes an all-time favorite by a little band called Derek and the Dominoes, with help from a guy named Duane Allman. Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon wrote the song, “Layla,” as a love ballad about Eric’s love for George Harrison’s wife, Patty Boyd. Duane entered the picture and changed the song to its more familiar rock sound.

Back in those days, I didn’t know about the confusion arising over the name of the group. I knew when I heard the song, I loved it and sought it out. I thought it was Eric Clapton playing, but if it was this guy, Derek, I didn’t care. Being a slow witted animal, I eventually grasped that it was Eric playing and singing, with help from the great Duane Allman – which explains the similarity to the Allman Brothers’ music of that period, right? It all eventually came together.

To me, this is a triumphant, feel-good song that ignites my creative energies. Pick up your air guitar. Time to jam.

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