Tag: 1967

Friday’s Theme Music

I associate many things with my childhood, especially matters of pop culture. TV was just breaking big in the 1960s in America, as was pop and rock music, and all their variations, on AM radio. As an child who was four when the sixties began, I was swept along. I didn’t choose much of the music I heard. It was everywhere from transistor radios that people carried to car radios to television. Some of the music isn’t to my adult tastes, but they’re part of my cultural DNA.

Today’s song, “Never My Love” by the Association from 1967, is one of those songs.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Another rocker

is dead and gone yesterday

leaving us with songs

In memory of Ed King, here’s “Incense and Peppermints” by Strawberry Alarm Clock, 1967. Ed King also played with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“Who cares what games we choose? Little to win, but nothing to lose.”

 

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Know these words?

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwells ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

Procol Harum released “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in 1967. When I heard it, I thought, WTF? What are they singing about? What’s it all mean? Later, in my early twenty-somethings, out tasting libations with friends, the song made complete sense. It became then a song about feeling isolated and lost, not drunk or stoned, but confused and searching. I like that in music, art, and literature, I can find one meaning to what I perceive during one stage of life, and discover something vastly different at another point.

The other thing that I like is how some of these things pull me back to a very sharp point of a moment and feel it all again.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

This song came to mind yesterday. I was thinking about lunch. What to do, what to do, what to do? Wanted something small, light, and easy. Just a little food, just a little food. Soon I was singing, “A little bit of food, yeah, a little bit of food.” With a little thought, I realized it was the tune to “Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve last heard this song, but I’ll share it with you.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This is a classic of my childhood era. Although I was a rocker, who could resist the Temptations? Their blend of R&B and soul helped me look at life, love, and relationships with new perspectives as I evolved through my teens.

This particular song comes out of the nostalgia stream because of our dry, dire situation out here in the Pacific Northwest. You may not know it, but we have many fires happening out here. Our air is unhealthy to hazardous due to wildfire smoke on most days. Hot in the nineties to low hundreds doesn’t help, nor does the drought much of the region is enduring. Events are regularly canceled as we hunker down.

Naturally, I thought, “I wish it would rain,” more than once in the past few days. That triggered the Temptations’ beautiful and melancholy song streaming into my mind. And then it rained.

Here it is, as we heard it back in 1967, “I Wish It Would Rain.”

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Monday’s Theme Music

I frequently think that there is a thin veil of existence that keeps me from successfully achieving goals. Sometimes, the stillest moments, I think I can see it, just barely shading my thoughts and being. It often comes when I’ve built energy toward a direction and I’m closing on the finish, but see the quantity of work that still remains.

Then I urge myself, break on through. So the Doors’ song, “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” became one of my rallying songs. Almost there – break on through. Press on. Go, go, go.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

A car passed by as I walked in the wind, drizzle, and sun yesterday. One of the car’s windows were down, and the Bee Gees streamed out:

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

Naturally, my mind completed the song and then put it on a loop and added it to the day’s shuffle. I haven’t heard “To Love Somebody” in a long time. I think the last time was in a movie. It was released in the late sixties, before the Bee Gees became embedded with disco. I liked a lot of Bee Gees music back then. They had some tight harmonies.

So, from my ear worm to yours. Please, enjoy this on your Thursday. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Many of you know this song because it’s one of those ubiquitous tunes that started during one era, and gets pulled out and employed to make a point.

The song is “The Beat Goes On,” originally by Sonny and Cher. Sung in a flat, almost monotonous style, it features words and stanzas that reflect superficial changes even as certain defining trends of an era continue. “Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain.” “Cars keep going faster all the time. Bums keep asking, hey, buddy, do you have a dime?”

Yes, cars are getting faster. We don’t call them bums, hobos, or panhandlers any longer, but there are still people out there asking for money, usually more than a dime, because a dime just doesn’t buy much in these times.

Here it is, from 1967.

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Friday’s Theme Music

I’ve always like the elemental approach of this song. This was one of those songs that Mom said, “What are they singing?” She also disparaged the singing. “That’s not singing. That’s…I don’t know what that is.”

No, it’s not very smooth. One generation always struggles with the next generation’s interpretation of what they’re passing. But when the band sing, “I’ve been waiting so long,” I can relate. Seems like I’m always waiting so long, somewhere, sometime, to check in, check out, get in, get out, get on, get by, although yesterday’s shopping went very fast. We only waited to check out in one line out of three.

Here’s Cream with “Sunshine of Your Love,”

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Monday’s Theme Song

I can play the what-if? game with any subject. Not hard. A reflective exercise, it can be fun, and it’s helpful when writing fiction. Mostly, the game is about wondering how things would have changed if this or that hadn’t happened.

Janis Joplin died in 1970 of a heroin overdose. She was twenty-seven. She would have turned seventy-five this week. She achieved much in a short life. Playing what-if?, you can imagine how much more she might have done.

On the positive side, she was a person who’s celebrated and remembered. Too many people die and have no one playing the what-if? game with their life. Too many die too young for vain causes or absurd reasons. Of course, it’s death, and we all die. The reasons for our death is a lot of feed for what-if?

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