Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song emerges from the country-rock genre (crock?) and the mists of 1973. 1973 was a good year and a bad year, a memorable year and a forgettable year, a year of tests and trials and learning, and a year of growing, wondering, coping with hormones, and passing days doin’ nothin’. I was seventeen for ’bout half of the year, and sixteen for the other half.

“Amie”, by Pure Prairie League, is a light melody with folkish overtones. The lyrics are easy to hear, learn, and remember. It’s a good song to sing to your floofs, should you feel a need to sing to them.

As always, the lyrics catch me. When hearing the song, you might think, this is about the singer trying to woe Amie. It’s not. This is about the man’s ambivalence about his relationship with Amie, and her decision to move on. Meanwhile, he laments that she’s taking so long to decide. The decision’s been made, dude.

Don’t you think the time is right for us to find
All the things we thought weren’t proper could be right in time?
And can you see which way we should turn, together or alone?
I can never see what’s right or what is wrong
Oh, you take too long

Most telling is at the end, as he sings, “I keep falling in and out of love with you.” Amie knows this, and she’s tired of it. That’s why he’s asking, “Aime, what you wanna do?” He’s in full denial and full of hope.

She is not.

NOTE: This analysis is my own. As with anything I say or write, it could be complete bullshit. Just think of it as Schrödinger’s bullshit.

November 27, 2018 15

Sunday’s Theme Music

This is such a maudlin, sloppy song. It started streaming apropos of nothing that I can recall, but as I streamed it from memory, I thought about how meaningless the words might be for a younger listener.

“Sealed With A Kiss” came out in 1962, when I was six. It was a hit, so it was on the radios often, but I’m more familiar with the Bobbie Vinton version released when I was a teenager. This song is all about being morose because they’re missing their love, so they’ll send all their love, every day in a letter, sealed in a kiss.

I thought, well, these days, they probably wouldn’t be sending a letter. I imagined youth saying, why didn’t they just send them a text or a selfie? Why didn’t they just Skype?

I decided that, “I’ll send you all my love, every hour in a selfie, clicked with a kiss.”

WTH.

October 28, 2018 0

Today’s Theme Music

My stream is back-flashing to high school. I remember talking with my buddy, Bob, about a new Moody Blues song, “Nights In White Satin”. I already knew the song and was puzzling about how I knew this song so well already. I told Bob that I was certain it was an old song. Later, on the radio, they mentioned that the song had been originally released in 1967, but didn’t chart well in the U.S., but had been released again in 1972, the year Bob and I were talking. I felt absurdly validated and pleased that I’d accurately remembered the song had come out several years before.

September 24, 2018 0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

“And the love that I feel is so far away. I’m a bad dream that I just had today. And you shake your head and say, it’s a shame.”

Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick album was released in 1972. Sixteen years old, I bought it on vinyl and wore it out playing it. Listening to this concept album last night – concept albums were big in those years – it reminds me of some of the era’s Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer music — or they remind me of Jethro Tull. Like most art, it’s a continuum of exploration and imagining, building on what’s heard and done.

“But your wise men don’t know how it feels, to be thick as a brick.”

August 28, 2018 7

Saturday’s Theme Music

I had a wild night of dreams. After awakening, feeding the cats, and thinking about the dreams, I began humming this song from 1972. Because the dream had large segments about seeing and trying to understand what I was seeing, I realized my mind had started streaming, “Doctor My Eyes” by Jackson Browne. The song came out when I was sixteen and straying along the hinterlands border between being a child and an adult. (Even at sixty-two, I still frequently reel and weave along that border.) I laughed at the connections my mind had managed to find between life, the dream, and memories.

I found this live version today and just went with the flow.

July 21, 2018 1

Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song, “Join Together,” by the Who on the radio yesterday. It’s a song that came out the year I turned sixteen, 1972.

Naturally, my mind started looping it. I find the beginning, with the Jew’s harps and mouth organs a fascinating start, and enjoy how other instruments pile in. I admire the lyrics’ sentiments, too – join together. During this era of increasingly divisive politics, it’s a refreshing break to think about joining together and going on.

June 17, 2018 0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I always thought this song, “Long Cool Woman in A Black Dress” by the Hollies, is memorable for the era because it was a simple rock and roll song. It reminds me of CCR’s music for that reason. They, too, used a simple, distinctive approach. All of this song’s elements, from its guitar, drum, and bass use, to the vocals employed to tell the story, to the story itself, are basic. “With just one look, I was a bad mess. Cause that long cool woman had it all.”

How many of us didn’t meet someone who made us a bad mess with just one look?

June 12, 2018 2

Thursday’s Theme Music

Lyrics once again drive this song.

I began streaming it in my mind yesterday when I was walking and saw a yellow cab. Song fragments took turns with the connection for a bit before I settled into Harry Chapin’s “Taxi”. A bit maudlin, the reflective song addresses our aspirations and shortcomings, and what we become instead of the people we want — or expected — to be in the rush of youth.

It also encompasses a bit of Sylvia Plath poetry in the middle. What the hell is he saying there, I used to ask myself, listening. Eventually, the intertubes revealed the Sylvia Plath connection, once again providing proof of the web’s usefulness.

I don’t think “Taxi” was ever as popular or well-known as “Cat’s in the Cradle”. From way, way back in 1972, here’s the late Harry Chapin and “Taxi”.

June 7, 2018 0

Sunday’s Theme Song

I heard “I’m A Man” by the Spencer Davis Group, but the Chicago cover (when the band’s name was still Chicago Transit Authority) is my preferred version. I have a fond memory of being sixteen. I was at a friend’s place with several others. We had the lights low, and were smoking some grass, drinking beer, and listening to “I’m A Man” cranked up. That opening bass begins, and then drums rise and other instruments join and build tension.

Ah, fond memory.

April 22, 2018 0

Sunday’s Theme Music

We attended a show called “Million Dollar Quartet” at the Oregon Cabaret Theater last night. Great show, very lively. I was familiar with the music played but it was all from before my time. Still, it put me in a rock and roll frame of mind while I was walking to my writing today. Lots of songs streamed in, but the one that grabbed me was David Bowie’s “Suffragette City”.

I enjoy how the song cranks up with raucous overtones right from the start. It seems like both a conversation between the singer and others about a woman he’d met but also an internal conversation about a person reflecting on who he is, his sexuality, and where he’s going and doing. There’s a sense of a decision being made at a fork in the road. Most of all, though, it’s a rocking song and easy to sing. Love that hook, “Ahhh, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.”