Salutations from the third rock from the sun. Today, we mark Monday, April 5, 2021 on the calendar. Here in Ashland, Sol presented at 6:47 AM and is expected to vacate the area at 7:41 PM. Temperatures are cooler today, just 47 degrees F right now, with supposed highs in the mid-sixties. Rain showers are likely.
Had half a cuppa coffee already. Taste buds are singing praises about the flavor and the caffeine is bubbling in my blood. Musically, me mind is mired in 1979 this AM, with Rainbow’s cover of “Since You’ve Been Gone” dominating the neurons. I think this has to do with a dream medley that I experienced that left me thinking about people I socialized with in different locations who I no longer see. Some have died, but with others, different paths were taken and gap emerged that keep us away from one another.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Welcome to Wednesday, March 17, 2021, where we’re donning green clothing, eating green food, and drinking green beer somewhere. I am wearing a green shirt, a conscious decision to celebrate. ‘Bout all I’ll do in honor of the holiday.
The sun showed itself at 7:20 AM this morning and is expected to disappear for the night at 7:20 PM. Brighter, sunnier, and calmer today, we’ve already crept into the low forties, and we’re expected to hit the mid sixties. This kid will be going for an afternoon walk.
Thinking of Saint Patrick’s Day, I thought I’d go with an Irish rock band. Many of them have plumbed commercial and critical success and achieved international fame and fortune. But when I started thinking of this, I recalled Horslips singing “Trouble With A Capital T”. I know this song and band because when I was stationed in Japan in the early eighties, a co-worker was heavy into them and would sing this song to himself. Hearing him sing it, I asked what it was. I ended up in his dorm room having a beer listening to the Horslips, who he knew through an Irish cousin. He’d gone to stay with them in Ireland one year before joining the military and had seen the band live. After some struggle with memory about the band’s name and the song and some net searching, I found this video.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Here is Horslips with “Trouble With A Capital T”.
This is it! Sunday, February 28, 2021, the last day of February, the last day of the second month of 2021. From my perspective, it raced by like a Formula 1 machine. Lots of noise, here, and now it’s almost past.
What a way to go out. Here in Ashland, sunshine has roared in. Gone is the ice, snow, fog, rain, and mist. It’s only sun, sun, sun. The cats are all, “Mee-hoo!” (Actually, I made that last up. The cats are like, “Sunshine. Whatever. Let me out.”) Sunrise came at 6:48 AM and sunset will be at (fanfare) 6:00 PM, for eleven hours and twelve minutes of glorious sun. Temperature now is 42 degrees F, but we’re looking for highs in the upper fifties. It may be for just one day but I’ll accept this gift and enjoy it.
Today’s music is “This Is It” by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald (1979). The two share song-writing credits. Loggins is the primary performer and it hit the charts under his name, but McDonald adds vocal support and has played the song many times in concert.
It’s a good song for deciding you or we are making changes or ready for changes.
There’ve been times in my life, I’ve been wonderin’ why. still, somehow i believed we’d always survive. now, i’m not so sure you’re waiting here, one good reason to try but, what more can i say? what’s left to provide? (you think that maybe it’s over,) (only if you want it to be.) are you gonna wait for a sign, your miracle? stand up and fight. (this is it.) make no mistake where you are. (this is it.) you back’s to the corner. (this is it.) don’t be a fool anymore. (this is it.) The waiting is over, no, don’t you run.
So, there it is, the theme music for the last day of the second month of the new year labeled 2021. Stay postive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. That is all.
We drove over to Medford for some errands yesterday. It’s just four Interstate exits away, less than ten miles as the Mazda rolls. While there, songs about being in a city topped my mental stream during quiet moments.
I like cities and their energy but admit, I think of them as a good place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The city’s energy steals too much of my energy in general — it’s the people, you know. But Medford is not a large city. It’s a very comfortable experience outside of the current COVID-19 restrictions and limitations. Not bad at all, though were were there for only two hours, including the drive to and from.
Amazing number of excellent songs about cities and being in the city. An old Joe Walsh favorite percolated in. “In the City” (1979) was originally by him and put into a movie, The Warriors. Joe joined the Eagles. They liked his song and included it on their album. Now, you often hear it attributed to the Eagles.
What interests about the song is how it’s a soft reflection of the city not being a very nice place. Yet the refrain, “In the city,” is a gentle, wistful wind throughout the song. Well, that’s how I hear it in my head.
Hope you have a good one. Wear a mask, please. Cheers
Several times a month, a song or fragment hits my auditory stream and lingers. Some call this an earworm. I call it an annoyance.
Once in a while, I post those as my theme music to get them out of my head. It seems to work. Sometimes, though, the stuck song isn’t deserving of being the day’s theme music.
That’s the case today. This song isn’t the theme song, but I’m sharing it with you. It’s from a famous movie, so you might now it.
Yes, it’s “The Thermos Song” by Steve Martin from The Jerk (1979).
I don’t want it for today’s theme music.
As The Jerk came out in 1979, I started thinking about that year. While placing myself in that moment, my mind had a perverse idea, introducing The Smashing Pumpkins’ song, “1979”, from 1996, in my head. Oh, that brain, what a rascal.
It’s been over a year since I used “1979” for a theme song. (Yeah, I looked it up.) Why not, I thought. 1979 was a simpler time for me. Not for others, of course. As we slide over the time spectrum, time and life, and their impact on us, shift. Sometimes things skip off his like a stone skimming across a still pond. Other days, news whacks us like an asteroid taking the Yucatan Peninsula.
For me, though, best memories are not the ugly ones, but the sweet ones where I remember laughing with friends, getting ready to go out, and generally worrying about things other than drought, war, pandemics, politics, and climate change. It was like a day of freedom from stress.
Not all people have such stress-free days, but I’ve had some. Some of them were back in 1979. Mind you, that wasn’t a stress-free era. We still lived under the threat of nuclear war. Mr. Jimmy Carter was POTUS, and the Iran Hostage crises was the story of the day. But besides all that, I went to the movie theater with my cousins and wife in San Antonio to watch a movie called The Jerk.
Three songs have been jumping in and out of my attention stream during the preceding twelve hours. You may have heard of them: “Purple Rain” by Prince, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart, and “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summers. All were pop hits in their respective years, 1984, 1978, and 1979.
Each had a different reason for being in my head. “Purple Rain” was kicked into mind by a photo of Jacaranda trees in South Africa on Facebook. Purple dominated in beautiful fashion, stirring thoughts of Prince’s song. It’s a glorious, hopeful song from my perspective.
“Hot Stuff” came about from my spicy dinner burrito. I bit into something and my taste buds squeaked, “Hot stuff.” The song then gained traction from its use in the 1997 movie, The Fully Monty”. Four of the main characters are in line in the unemployment office during a low point in the movie. The song comes as background music, and they grudgingly start moving and dancing to it.
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” just popped into my head, though. A spoof on the disco scene, the song was ubiquitous that year, heard on television and radio, a staple in humor from people on the streets to late night comedians.
While three strong choices are there as amusement for my head and theme song for the day, “Purple Rain” wins.
Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changin’ It’s time we all reach out for something new That means you too You say you want a leader but you can’t seem to make up your mind And I think you better close it and let me guide you to the purple rain
It’s 1979. Disco, technopop and technorock, progressive stuff which veers away from heavy guitars, proliferates. As a young man out in the world, I just went with the flow, primarily because, wife. On my own, my preferences veered toward Pink Floyd and The Wall, but it doesn’t have one good dance tune on it, does i?
One of the songs of that era bounced to mind this morning after a bleak review of the news. “Good Times” by Chic was all about the little things that constitute good times – making a rent payment, having a friend. It also savagely mocks the same theme, mentioning keeping your head above water and surviving, yeah, that’s good times.
Sounds perfect for 2020, doesn’t it? Survived the pandemic, good times. Made it through the wildfires and hurricanes, good times. Survived unemployment and hunger, good times.
Or, as the song lyrics originally said:
Temporary lay offs. Good Times. Easy credit rip offs. Good Times. Scratchin’ and survivin’. Good Times. Hangin’ in and jivin’* Good Times. Ain’t we lucky we got ’em Good Times.
Raucous dreams consumed the night. Oh, yes, there was too a floof fight.
4:30 AM. In this corner, wearing long black and white fur and weighing in at sixteen pounds…Tucker.
In the other corner, by the kibble bowl, that eleven pound ginger blade who used to be called Meep!…Papi.
I know Tucker started it because it’s always Tucker. Little combat was involved because Papi is a shrieker. His first one bought us awake and out of bed in one leap, and it was done. I swear that we moved like ninjas…little aging, graying ninjas…
But it’s email that gives me today’s theme music. Money…financing…sales ending today…the calls for assistance and donations and contributions dominated the box in a depressing blitz. Pelosi claimed her email wasn’t about money but Biden openly asked. Amazon and Costco crowed, look at what everyone is buying. Animal shelters and rescue groups wanted cash. The USPS needs help…
Such an AM gut punch even before my brekkie and coffee. Making them was when the theme song came: “Money (That’s What I Want)“.
The Beatles had a big hit with it, but I was channeling The Flying Lizards’ 1979 cover with Deborah Evans-Stickland. The Beatles were nakedly raw and emotional in their money demands. The Flying Lizards brought a mocking, flat monotone to their appeal.
My email solicitations were across the gamut: fear — they’re winning, they’re winning, give me money to fight back — to logic — no, it was all fear, fear of what will happen if you don’t give or buy, because you will be losing.
Anyway, that’s my music choice for today. Please listen and send me money. And stay healthy. Wear a damn mask.
Today’s theme music came after reviewing my dreams. Empowering dreams, I enjoyed them, in part because they seemed fuller and more coherent than the last few sleeps’ fragile fragments. As I thought about them and the almost one eighty shift in lucidity, I thought, the dream police must’ve stepped in, which gave me a chuckle.
Like that, the brain said, “Oh, “The Dream Police” by Cheap Trick,” and began playing it like it was Alexa gone nuts.
So, I went with it. 1979: a good year to be young and getting older. Amusing video. I don’t think I’ve heard this song in a looonnnggg time.
Today’s song is actually the cats’ theme music. As I’m reduced to staying at home (see: novel coronavirus news), the cats have employed a shadowing technique. Wherever I’m at, here they come. That brought to my mind (and I’m sure it’s already in the cats’ minds), Blondie’s song – “One Way Or Another” (1979) – about stalking.
Michael Seidel, writer 