The anti-folk music Beck came along around in nineteen ninety-three with ‘Loser’. I’ve always enjoyed its self-deprecatory sense of humor on display and a style I found laconic. I later learned – probably through Sarah and Vinnie on the radio – that this song’s lyrics arose when he was attempting to perform, and failed to get and keep the audience’s attention. “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?” Beyond that, I found the song’s words and tone reflected disgust about our consumer world and its hypocrisy.
Mom gave this album to me for a Christmas present in nineteen seventy-three, a gift made on my older sister’s recommendation.
I was ecstatic. I’d only heard and read a little about the album, ‘Quadraphenia,’ but I was an enormous Who fan at that point. Come on, they were fresh off ‘Tommy’ and ‘Who’s Next?,’ with the legendary, ‘Won’t Be Fooled Again.’ Their music spoke to a wannabe teenage rebel on the cusp of childhood’s end.
I played the bejesus out of this album, generally at a wall-shaking volume. This song, ‘The Real Me,’ was the opening track. While the song speaks to me with its lyrics and Daltry’s delivery, I’m enamored with Entwhistle’s flowing, active, dominating bass.
The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane
The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house
Yesterday she passed me by
She doesn’t want to know me now
I think it’s an appropriate song for the Internet age and the era of fake news. People hide behind anonymous posts and comments, putting forward false identities, deploying lies and false information to stoke fear and doubt, and further their causes.
I often stream this song when I’m walking around on warm, sunny days.
‘The Way’, by Fastball, came out in nineteen ninety-eight, a particularly pleasant, enjoyable and successful time of my life. A jaunty song with several beat change-ups, it had easy to hear and understand lyrics. The song seemed to be telling a story about adults running away.
Anyone could see
The road that they walk on is paved in gold
And it’s always summer, they’ll never get cold
They’ll never get hungry
They’ll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won’t make it home but they really don’t care
They wanted the highway
They’re happier there today, today
Later, while driving around, I learned from a radio show that the song was about an elderly couple who ended up missing. The wife had Alzheimer’s and the man was recovering from brain surgery, yet, they made the amazing decision to drive to a festival. Several weeks later, they were found dead in a ravine, several hundred miles off course. Fastball speculated that they’d decided to go off in another direction.
Whenever I think of this song, and it’s often, it seems, because it gets stuck in the stream and keeps looping through, I think of an elderly couple in sunshine, running, laughing and playing, hiding from and evading their children as they enjoy a childlike day.
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody’s comin’ to get me
Just say you never met me
I’m runnin’ underground with the moles
Diggin’ in holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring
But if you’re bored then you’re boring
The agony and the irony, they’re killing me
I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And I’m so hot, ’cause I’m in hell
I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And it’s a sin to live this well
(One, two, three, four)
Yes, that’s a couple choruses outta ‘Flagpole Sitta’, Harvey Danger, nineteen ninety-seven. Living in Mountain View, California, I worked for a medical device in Palo Alto. This song just knocked me out. Lyrics, beat, pace, it all worked for me. It became a “crank up” tune, one of those that causes my hand to gravitate to volume control.
I’ve been a Led Zeppelin since I first encountered ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on their second album in nineteen sixty-nine. After hearing it and the rest, I went back and found the first album. Then I bought every album whenever they came out. At first, it was on vinyl, but I also recorded them on open real and cassette, and then replaced it all with remastered CDs.
Zeppelin’s album, ‘Presence’, came out in nineteen seventy-six. I was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. Another airman, Jerry Martell, and I listened to this album so many times as we drove around in his Mustang. My favorite song is ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’. I didn’t know it then, but since learned, this was an old Gospel song. I’ve come to enjoy musicians putting their interpretation and flourishes on old music. It’s taken me a lot more time to come around to accepting changes to old movies and television.
Anyway, for your Friday listening enjoyment, something to stream in your head as you conquer the world, Led Zeppelin with ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine,’ from nineteen seventy-six.
Going to see the Four Tops and Temptations at the Britt this year. Buying the tickets triggered a need to hear some Motown today. What better song for this era of burgeoning WH scandals and a plethora fake news than ‘Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)’, from nineteen seventy? Shows just how long we’ve been a ball of confusion.
Gotta kick this illness, I says to myself. I have things to do. I think it’d be uncivilized of me to go out into a coffee shop, sit down to write and add a little hacking cough to the ambiance. Give me some music to lift my spirits.
Not a damn thing started streaming.
I thought about my dreams for a while. That triggered Tom Petty and ‘Learning to Fly’. Naw, not today, Tom.
My sister-in-law’s plight entered the thinking stream. Her husband has gone through daunting treatments in trying to beat brain cancer. She’s been with him all the way. He’s in hospice at home this week after taking a fall and breaking several ribs. Methotrexate was added to his med diet to combat some of his brain tumors. MTX is one of those good drugs with lots of bad side-effects. My wife is enduring a shot of it a week and hates it. With my sister-in-law’s man, the MTX is munching on his brain, affecting his motor skills. He can no longer walk. His appetite is gone. Tick tock, I think with sadness. But we’re all always dying from the moment we’re born. Sure, but it’s easier if that’s going on behind the curtains, and we can live with the illusion that death is far away.
Such visions that I see, thinking of him, calls to mind Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’. Great song, thanks, but not the uplift I seek today. Yet, my mind continued streaming Floyd. “Forward, he cried, from the rear, and the front ranks died.” That just embittered me as I recall how many pols, like Trump, have not served, getting deferments to avoid war, but stand quite willing to send people to death, and mock or denigrate those who did serve, passionately, proudly and braving.
Which triggered some Lee Greenwood into the stream. I shut it down. The Ramones, ‘I Wanna Be Sedated,’ streamed in. After letting that flow through and decreeing it too down, I brought up the Foo Fighters and ‘Learn to Fly’.
Yes, that fits. Life is so much trail and error. We’re always trying to fly, and often crash during our tests. The thing is to get up and fly again.
From nineteen ninety-nine – a simpler time, wasn’t it? – the Foo Fighters.
I’ve always enjoyed Radiohead. Their first hit, ‘Creep’ remains my favorite song made by them.
The song came out during the days of my final U.S.A.F. assignment, at Onizuka Air Station. Several of us were in base housing over on Moffett N.A.S. We partied a lot in those days, but it was a clean party, with some beer but nothing harder, and centered around playing music and volleyball, and grilling.
I had a decent music collection and provided many compilation tapes for our enjoyment. They asked to leave ‘Creep’ off. Most of my friends disliked the song. One had the opinion, “It’s too depressing.” A second said, “It’s not bad but it’s boring,” while the third friend’s opinion was, “It just sucks.”
I still like it. Here it is, from nineteen ninety-three, ‘Creep’.
I’ve been thinking about the Beatles’ song, “Hello, Goodbye”. A simple song, I’ve thought often of this song in the context of people taking different views of something. To me, the words were about trying to reconcile differences between people – “You say, goodbye, and I say, hello.” The lyrics were saying, “We can’t agree on anything.” Yet, the song is optimistic; they’re talking about this.
Beyond that, like most Beatles songs, I like their use of their instruments and timing to add inflections and nuances. Yet, watching the video, and the almost bored attitude as they play, and listening to the words, it’s really a tedious little song. What about those costumes, too?
But, it’s in my head, and I have to get it out, so I’m putting it out to you. Sue me if you’re upset.
Returning to my roots of being, I’m streaming stuff from the nineteen sixties today.
I was a big motor-racing, science-fiction and baseball fan then. Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, Mark Donahue, Dan Gurney, Peter Revson were among the racers I idolized. The Can-Am, Formula One, Indy (called USAC racing back then), sports car racing, with the Ford versus Ferrari battles at LeMans…I watched them all.
My baseball team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I followed them faithfully. But my emerging loves were reading and music. Although my reading tastes were — and are — eclectic, I tore through the works of Asimov, Bradbury, Zelazny, Clarke, and Heinlein. Besides my racing magazines, I bought science fiction magazines every month, and devoured the short stories.
The rock explosion was in full strength and the Brit Invasion was underway. Protests, demonstrations, riots, the Altamont Free Concert and Woodstock were part of our news cycles, along with Vietnam, political assassinations, civil rights and the cold war. The threat of nukes was a constant. Bombers and fighters remained on alert.
Consumerism, television and advertising were gaining strength. What a time, what a time, for a teenage boy in America. Into this maelstrom of my existence came Jimi Hendrix. Wow, his playing amazed me. He died young, just twenty-eight years old, but, man, what a legacy he left. What an impact he had.
