I always have enjoyed convertibles. Named spyders and spiders, roadsters, rag tops, I include the targas and tee tops in this group. The top down lets the world in when you’re motoring along.
I was trying my best to emulate that yesterday. A gentle spring sun warmed the day into aspirations of summer. Our little town was an idyllic verdant green. Sunroof and windows open, I was cruising home like it was yesteryear. To help me on that journey, the radio station played C.C.R.’s eight plus minute version of “Suzy Q”. Turning it up, I felt like a teenager for the six minutes that I listened as I drove home.
Not too much to the lyrics. Very straightforward, but I enjoy the guitar work and the variations on the drums and cymbals that arise.
Of course, when I thought of this song, it was winter, and I was in a women’s march, organized by women to remind the POTUS and America that they’re here and displeased, and want to continue the agenda of change in America that’s been going on, an agenda that includes equality regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation or preference, religion, ethnicity, skin color, and many other things that America claims to be free and equal about.
It was ironic, and a little disappointing when thinking of protest songs, that “Street Fighting Man” came to mind. Where’s the street fighting women? I was surrounded by them.
Mick Jagger said that events in the United States and France inspired the song when he wrote it. It seems like an indictment of the pervasive male oriented society that only men were mentioned from that era of protests in the 1960s. Despite its inherent sexism, the song, with its driven rocking beat and discordant sitar and guitars, is a powerful protest anthem, powerful enough that Chicago radio stations didn’t play it in the summer of 1968, fearful that it would incite more rebellion and violence in a city that was already struggling with the violence emerging in the shadow of Democratic National Convention as anti-war protesters and police clashed.
Stream forward through time a few years, and the publication of the Pentagon Papers display the American Government’s hypocrisy and cynicism, a reminder that emerges through the recent film, “The Post.” Watching that film, the calls for change and to shake up business as usual sharpen with understanding, along with the bitter taste arising from the belief that our government, no matter which party dominants, is failing us. Those parties apply lip-service to our demands, but their actions often sustain the status quo and business as usual. Most Americans want change, but often split about the shape of change desired. It’s the struggle of democracy. The path seems clear, but it’s messy an slippery.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
~ Frederick Douglass
That’s why I joined those women and marched to demand change. I want change. I served in the American military to forward the ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality, with the simple truth that all people are created equal. I slowly learned how those words and sentiments are often more of a propaganda slogan and less of a governing ideal, and that many people, including our leaders, lack the principles and moral courage to fully embrace the ideals behind these words.
In the song, Mick asks, “What else can a poor boy do,” and adds, “There’s no place for a street fighting man,” a suggestion about the frustrations of limited options.
Another loopback to my early teen years. Donovan’s music, with its psychedelic, flower-power, folk-rock influences and sounds. I stream several of his songs in my head, sometimes slipping into whole albums. Today, though, I’m stuck on “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” You can imagine how the repetitive words and guitars can mesmerize someone like me, who seems attracted to such noises. Such sounds were especially enticing to me when I was twelve, when I theoretically first heard this song on AM radio. I have no clear memory of the first time I heard it, only that I enjoy all those “hurdy gurdy” and “roly poly” lyrics.
So I’m posting “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” today, but not with an eye toward stopping its looping. It fits in well with my mood, and I’m pleased to have its company.
Been thinking about time today, and I think it’s time to post a song that is about time. This one streamed into my thoughts.
Honestly, I couldn’t remember what year it came out, or the performer. I know the lyrics, though, and that was enough to find the song in this Internet age.
Turns out, it’s performed by the Chamber Brothers. It came out in nineteen sixty-eight, when I was twelve. It’s called, “Time Has Come Today”.
The playing and lyrics mesmerized a twelve-year old growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. Equal confusion and interest reigned over, “How does he play like that?” and, “What’s he singing?”
He was Jimi Hendrix, and the song was “Voodoo Child,” sometimes spelled “Chile.” That just flavored the interest.
My wife and I were picking up fur last night. The cats leave it like Hansel and Gretel left crumbs to find their way back. I guess the cats, worried about losing their way from the litter box to their food bowl to their sleeping locations, leave the fur clumps to help them find their way. “I’ll just leave this fur and follow it back.”
Doing this task last night, I streamed, “I’m a fur picker. I’m a fur picker. Picking up fur. Fur, fur, fur.” The song was to the head music, “I’m A Girl Watcher,” a song from nineteen sixty-seven. I thought, that’ll be my Tuesday theme music.
Then, I began thinking about the song and the times. The song objectifies women. The attitude incubated at that point can lead to some of the rapes, molesting, and harassing now revealed across America.
Or I am overthinking it? I’m prone to such things. I can hear other argue, the song is about a boy who is growing up and developing an interest in sex, in this case, in girls. It’s completely innocent. To which I hear others say, it’s not completely innocent. It’s mostly innocent, but it’s part of larger cultural and social trends about women’s roles and men’s attitude toward women in America.
It was a lot to think about before my morning coffee. I decided not to do that song. Instead, I give you song from a year later, The Moody Blues with “Tuesday Afternoon.” I believe the song’s line, “The gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh,” perfectly exemplifies my thinking conundrum about being a girl-watcher.
It’s a complicated world. My thinking probably makes it appear more complicated than it is.
Wow, Thursday already. October, already. The fifth already. Come on, let’s back off the time accelerator. It’s all moving too fast.
Today’s music is “Spooky.” It was originally an instrumental. I once heard the instrumental and thought someone was playing it that way. I later learned that the words had been added after the instrumental was written and performed.
I heard the original version with words, by the Classics IV, in the late nineteen sixties, on my trusty AM/FM clock radio. But I awoke with the A.R.S. “Spooky” version looping in my head today, so that’s what I’m posting.
As a sidebar, I wonder what happens in my brain that I awake with songs streaming in my head? I’ve researched this earworm (ohrwurm) or brain itch, as different sources label it, and found that researchers believe ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of people endure earworms. A two thousand three news article cited a study found which songs afflict most people:
He found that some 98 percent of listeners were at one time or another bothered by a tune that wouldn’t leave their heads. The study also found some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle (“Gimme a break”), “Who Let the Dogs Out,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the theme to “Mission: Impossible,” “YMCA,” “Whoomp, There It Is,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “It’s a Small World After All.”
The study also showed that musicians and those with compulsive tendencies are the most afflicted. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though the act of repetition — in popular songs on the radio and on the rehearsal floor for musicians — plays a role.
The 559 students used in the study had lots of trouble with the Chili’s jingle for its baby-back ribs and with the Baha Men song “Who Let the Dogs Out. ” But Kellaris found that most often, each person tends to be haunted by their demon notes.
Compulsive tendencies? Moi? Perish the suggestion. I guess I’m fortunate that my ohrwurms rotate and offer a variety.
The Ginger Blade wanted out last night. He’s a cat; he’s young; they go out at night.
As I let him out the door, he paused and looked at me over his shoulder. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then, he trotted into the darkness.
From that streamed the music for today. Thinking of Papi’s words, my mind connected with a nineteen sixty-eight Simon and Garfunkel hit. “Mrs Robinson” was on the album “Bookends,” but is probably best known for its inclusion in the movie, “The Graduate.” When Papi told me, “I’ll be back,” I started singing, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.”
I wonder at what age people ask, “What movie? What song? Who is Simon and Garfunkel? Who is Joe DiMaggio? Who is Papi? Is he the Ginger Blade?”
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.
My wife reminded me of this one. It came out waaaayyyy back in the 1960s. That seems like three lifetimes to some, and yesterday to others. It’s like the day before yesterday to me.
The Isley Brothers wrote it, but this cover, by The Human Beinz, is the one I know. The Human Beinz release made it to the Top 10 in 1968. My wife called it the ‘no-no’ song. Its real title is ‘Nobody But Me’, but listening to the lyrics, it’s easy to understand her confusion. They sing no thirty-four times in a row. Featuring a fast, jaunty beat with lively bass, the words and melody are easy to learn. My little sister likely doesn’t recall this, but I used to sing this song to her; it amused me as a twelve-year-old jerk to sing, “No, no, no, no no, no no,” to a toddler.
Michael Seidel, writer 