Tag: 1967

Saturday’s Theme Music

Bob Mustin commented on yesterday’s theme music. He wrote, “The song favored by my class at the Naval Academy was The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.””

I hear that. His comment summoned a memory. We were in Egypt in nineteen eighty-five as part of Exercise Bright Star. It was July, or maybe August. Living in a tent city in the desert, the ops portion was done. We were awaiting redeployment. There was a lot of down time. While enduring the Sahara heat in our tent’s shade, one of the guys played “Green, Green Grass of Home” on a small cassette player.

One of the other guys said, “Man, turn that off. It’s depressing.”

The player said, “I think it’s nice.”

“It’s about a guy in prison,” one person said.

“Nice,” someone said. “It’s not nice. Makes me remember my wife is suing me for divorce.”

“Yeah, and it makes me remember my home when I was growing up,” the first speaker said. “There wasn’t any green, green grass at our house. It was all cement and asphalt, even the playground. The ball field wasn’t paved, but it didn’t have no grass, either.”

“Yeah, and my folks are dead,” said another guy. “There’s no one going to be there to meet me when I get home.”

An argument arose about the song and its meanings.

Ah, sweet memories. We heard the Tom Jones cover in Egypt, so that’s what I’m playing for you.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I associate this song with Thanksgiving, and as it’s the day before Thanksgiving in America, I thought I’d proffer this humorous, mellow gem from nineteen sixty-seven.

Peace out.

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Today’s Theme Music

Sentimentality creeps up on me again.

As I was walking, reflecting on my dreams, and writing in my head, a voice slipped past the disparate, disorganized words. Drizzle stole in past trees and fresh, cool air invited me out of myself. Looking around, I thought, “What a wonderful world this can be.”

Not always, mind you. Yeah, we know. We’ve seen the images and we’re still reading the stories.

Of course, the voice I was hearing was Louis Armstrong singing “What A Wonderful World.” Armstrong recorded and released it in nineteen sixty-seven. I first heard it before I was a teenager, but it leaped back into public awareness with the movie, “Good Morning, Vietnam,” in nineteen eighty-seven. Serving in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, I saw it in a theater at Rhein-Main Air Base. “What A Wonderful World” was a sobering moment in the film, as the music was juxtaposed against the young military and the weapons of war. Of course, this is a flawed moment; “Good Morning, Vietnam” was set in nineteen sixty-five. “What A Wonderful World” came out two years later. It works, despite that flaw.

Life moves on. Rhein-Main Air Base closed. My unit and its mission, spying against the Soviet Union, is gone, as are the Soviets. We’ve lost Louis Armstrong and Robin Williams, but I’m part of an era where technology saves us from depending on memories alone, allowing us to more sharply and accurately revisit our past.  So, here it is again, “What A Wonderful World.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Jimi Hendrix took me like he’d done so many others. I heard his music and thought, “Whoa. Who is that?”

Hendrix died when I was in my freshman year at high school. School had just begun a few weeks before. Attending John H. Linton Intermediate school, I was smitten with Melissa Smith. Melissa sat behind me in science. I was shy, so Melissa took it upon her to talk to me. Her opening gambit was about music. First we talked about “Tommy” and other Who songs. Then Hendrix died, so we talked about his music and death. Funny, but in my memory, Melissa was my opposite. She dressed in a preppie style, skirts, blouses and sweaters, while my attire skated along the spectrum toward unkempt hippie. My hair was a wild and curly mess while she sported something from “That Girl.” Nevertheless, we liked each other.

Years after Hendrix’s passing, I learned about his influence on the British musicians, like Clapton, Lennon, Jagger, Jones, and Townsend. Their interest and impressions of him provided me with a vicarious bond to the times.  Almost fifty hears later, “Fire” energizes me in a way few other songs ever do.

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Today’s Theme Music

This song was written in nineteen sixty-six, and released in nineteen sixty-seven. The lyrics, though, speak to our times now as much as they did to the era which produced them.

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

h/t to MetroLyrics

What’s interesting about that song is that Stephen Stills wrote it about a curfew on Sunset Strip. While they speak to the mood in America in the nineteen sixties and the twenty-first century, they speak to the life and times in the U.S.S.R, Nazi Germany, and other places ruled by fear, paranoia and oppression. People seek rights and freedoms; others squash them to preserve their status and wealth. It’s a cycle as old as humanity, except, instead of a man with a gun, there was a man with a rock, spear, bow and arrow, or other weapon.

Let’s listen to Buffalo Springfield and “For What It’s Worth.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

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.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

The Wayback Machine started streaming music from nineteen sixty-seven this morning. I don’t know what triggered that setting. Maybe it was that I read a VOX article ranking the best Rolling Stones songs yesterday, and several of the top ten seemed to be from the mid to late sixties.

At any rate, from the Stones came a Van Morrison connection. I enjoy his voice and style and found myself singing several of his songs, including ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. I’ve always enjoyed the simple melody and nostalgic, evocative lyrics. Much later in life, I discovered that the song’s lyrics were too suggestive for the radio. I learned it at the same time that I became educated on ‘Wake Up Little Susie’s’ shocking lyrics. I’ve also read, but haven’t been able to vet this, that Van Morrison didn’t think much of his hit.

His thoughts on his song doesn’t change my impressions of it. I hope you enjoy it, and that the lyrics don’t offend you too much.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

In these through the looking glass sort of days, I think today’s song is appropriate. Besides, I like its slow beat and long crescendo sort of style as it builds toward a conclusion.

‘White Rabbit’ was written by Grace Slick in the mid nineteen sixties. She and Jefferson Airplane released it in nineteen sixty-seven, and it became a hit. More, the song became forever associated with that era and the psychedelic movement. In me, an eleven-year-old growing up in America, was inspiration to think more and challenge beliefs and opinions, but it also fired my creativity. The song references Lewis Carroll’s characters from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and discusses sensory distortion with those characters. The lyrics employ the logic that I always enjoyed, an encouragement to look at the world differently.

Of course, its drug overtones and association with drugs through popular culture worried mom. Still, I like streaming it in my head as I walk about, especially the way that Grace sings, “If you go chasing rabbits.”

It’s a treat to find this YouTube offering from the Smothers Brothers. Loved that show.

The weirdest thing for me now about Grace Slick and this song was that she was just four years younger than mom, and Grace is now seventy-seven years old.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is another hit from Wayback because I’m thinking about progress. This one, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’), was written by John Phillips but released by Scott McKenzie in 1967.

The song attracts me today because I heard it on the radio this morning. Some of the lines include, “All across the nation, such a strange vibration, people in motion. There’s a whole generation, with a new explanation. People in motion.”

Yes, I thought. That’s one of the things about the last Presidential election in the United States. Donald Trump preached a movement back. He appealed to people stuck in time. They weren’t in motion and weren’t moving forward. If they were moving, they were going backward to when men had more rights and white men had the most rights and privilege of anyone, and the wealthy were on pedestals as capable people. While these voters and supporters wouldn’t say they’re against these things, the man they selected is against regulations that protect people, animals, the environment, and the poor, sick and needy. Tearing down the public school system through Betsy DeVos isn’t a move forward, as that billionaire who never attended a public school will try to do. He’s gutting every system save defense while he promises new jobs and to rebuild the infrastructure. Yet, he also is going to cut taxes, reduces revenue, so there will be no money to pay for that infrastructure. He preyed on them with fear and promised he will build a wall to protect them. The Trump Wall will be beautiful, he claims, a big beautiful wall.

Many of those voters are in impoverished areas where industry has disappeared or pay minimum wages. The areas are dominated by elderly people, and the disability rates for these area are higher than the national average and increasing at a faster rate. These are the very people that the social net Trump is tearing about helps the most. Trump said he was draining the swamp and that he would change business as usual. His attack on Syria and his selection of wealthy cronies and family members to staff his White House show very much that it’s still a swamp. He criticized Obama for golfing too much while he golfs almost every weekend.

He is not the path forward. I’m going on without him and his supporters. Yes, the song may be fifty years old, but the sentiment that there are people moving forward and causing change is older yet. Yet, for some, it’s all new, strange and dangerous.

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Today’s Theme Music

This whimsical song, ‘At the Zoo’, is from yonks ago. I don’t agree with Simon and Garfunkel’s characterizations of the animals but they’re interesting. Reading about the song on good old Wikipedia.org, I discover that the song was written for ‘The Graduate’  but was never used.

I remember being young and awash in sunshine as I walked some Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg where we lived in a duplex. Dad had given me a small transistor radio. A brown leather carrying case was provided for it. I could slip my belt through the back of the leather case and carry the radio around but have my hands frees. I was listening to this song, clapping my hands to it as it speeds up, trying to sing the lyrics.

Anyway, it’s a mellow, lighthearted song. Hope you have a mellow, lighthearted day. Me, I’m drinking coffee, listening to the music, and reading the neighborhood out my window.

It’s my own sort of zoo.

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