Tag: 1983

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Heavy traffic downtown in our town yesterday. Ah, holidays, I figured. School is out. Last minute shopping. Meeting for drinks and meals, doing holiday things under the weak sunshine in the forty-degree air.

Which kicked Lindsey Buckingham singing “Holiday Road” (1983). I know the song from that classic comedy, National Lampoon’s Vacation with Chevy Chase. We were on Okinawa when it came out (military), and saw it on video at home. The movie became a favorite.

“I found out long ago,
“it’s a long way down the Holiday Road.”

“Holiday Road” has a lot of energy but not many words, yet it conveys that whole sense of excitement of jumping into the Family Truckster and braving the Interstates for a family vacation.

I especially like the dog’s barking at the song’s end.

Hope your Holiday Road is a smooth and safe one this year. Let’s be safe out there.

 

Had to include something of National Lampoon’s Vacation, right?

 

5

Thursday’s Theme Music

It was a rainy night so I started humming the Eurythmics song, “Here Comes the Rain Again” (1983). So sorry they broke up but bands have their own cycles of life, death, and creation.

I enjoyed the construction and sensibilities of these lines in the song:

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion

I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you?

h/t Metrolyrics.com

I happened to be walking in the open wind and remembering walking in the rain, alone, something that I enjoy. A sharp cold wind was knifing across my cheeks, and I breathed it all in with joy, satisfaction, and nostalgia. Then the clouds broke and there was that brill full moon, coming on like a spotlight. With clouds skipping past the moon’s surface and the wind quickening, it seemed like the moon sprinted across the sky, a trick of the mind. Clouds closed over the moon, and the rain came again.

Is it raining with you?

2

Saturday Theme Music

I was picking out the clothes to wear this morning when I remembered a 1983 Jackson Browne favorite, “For A Rocker”:

“I got a shirt so unbelievably right, I’m gonna take it out and wear it tonight, for a rocker.”

Only, I sang, “For a walker,” because I was dressing to go walking, and that’s the sort of butthead things that I do. It did set me up for today’s music, an upbeat song that excellent for singing in my head as I walk.

“I’ll tell you something that I have found out, whatever you think life is about, whatever life may hold in store, things will happen that you won’t be ready for.”

Yeah, I think often about how life blindsides me — “I never saw it coming.” Not alone in that, I think. Conversations planned in my head spun away in unimagined ways. I’m trying to be ready for the weather though, checking through rain gear, sunglasses, gloves, tissues, for walking.

“Don’t have to feed them, they don’t eat, they have power supplies in the soles of their feet.”

Well, that’s not me. I eat. No power supplies in my feet, just some callouses. Still a good song.

2

Friday’s Theme Music

This song, “Hold On” (1983) is by Yes and comes from one of my favorite albums, 90125. The song entered today’s song when I was corresponded with someone down who was thinking about different career options, I told them to hold on, of course. Later, reflecting on the exchange, the song came to me. So, I share it with you.

Hold on. Wait. Take your time. See it through.

 

0

Friday’s Theme Music

Mini-rant alert. As I was walking yesterday, I was watching new home construction and started thinking about overkill. Overkill — what I mean by that is excessive use beyond what’s needed — is often our response. Overkill, or do nothing. Going through grocery stores to check out most items in America leads to discoveries of brands, sizes, and qualifiers that staggers me. Look at ice cream. Chips. Soft drinks. Coffee. Beer.

I was reminded more of this while scoping television last night. Samsung has some new phone out (don’t they all?) and was trumpeting a series of images of children playing, playing, playing, playing. And Samsung’s line after all of this was about growing or building the future.

Me, with my sixty-plus year old mind, thought, but all you showed us, Samsung, were children playing. Children obsessed with their technological toys. I thought, then, that Samsung had gone into overkill, that somewhere between where children playing obsessive with their phones (but having phone) and my idea of children playing is a balance that’s needed. Maybe it’s out there, outside of my prying eyes, and past Samsung’s spiel. After all, Samsung is trying to sell more products.

Rant down, you might be thinking, with impatience, what the hell is the song? Well, it’s “Overkill” by Men at Work” (1983), of course. As it’s sung in “Overkill”:

I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it’s just imagination

 

1

Tuesday’s Theme Music

It’s gonna be a hot one out there today, with warnings from the weather services to expect high temps between one hundred and one hundred ten degrees. Yet, the music in my stream is Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble doing “Texas Flood”. Then the oh moment arrived: he died in a plane crash on August 27, 1990.

I was just remembering that amazing talent.

0

Saturday’s Theme Music

Ever get up and feel like your day already feels like a genre of music? Perhaps you have swing or a big band sound reverberating through your soul. Maybe disco is moving your hips, or soul is talking to your lips.

It’s a hard rock morning for me. My poor spouse’s right shoulder gave her sudden issues last night, a problem continuing today. I had a first impulse to say, “She did something to her shoulder,” but as you age, you realize that you often don’t do something to your body; genetics or a developing weakness or something just says, “Time to pull the cord,” and goes out.

That was gestating in my mind’s background noise as its forecourt punted reminders and prioritized errands and activities. Some actions were rejected as too late; they’d need to wait another day.

That provided a niche in the mindstream for Def Leppard to begin their hard-rock ballad, “Too Late for Love” (1983). 1983 was part of my Okinawa years. We arrived there in 1981 and stayed until the end of 1984. Two years were spent in the United States, and then it was off to Europe. We came back from there in 1991.

It was a good decade.

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s music started with a simple response to a weary situation. I thought, “Take me home,” and my stream kicked in with the Stevie Nicks song, “Stand Back” (1983). So, here we are.

2

Monday’s Theme Music

I began as a ZZ Top fan in high school art class in 1973. I introduced them to my friend, who became my girlfriend and then my wife when Tres Hombres came out that year. “La Grange” become a song that had her reaching for the volume knob and twisting it hard right whenever it came on.

I’ve seen them in concert three times. Today’s song came about from a dream last night. Multi-tasking in the dream, one sequence had me trying to feed the cats. They were going nuts for the food that I was offering them. I was trying to keep them out of it while putting the food in bowls for them. Meanwhile, a dozen interruptions were transpiring.

Anyway, from that feeding sequence, I started singing to them, “Gimme all your kibble, all your hugs and kisses, too,” because that’s how it seemed in the dream. My music stream picked it up and started cranking out “Gimme All Your Lovin'” from Eliminator (1983).

Never seen the video before, though. I was overseas during those years in places that usually didn’t have television available. Kind of a cheesy video. But it was the 1980s.

 

1

Sunday’s Theme Music

“Even Now” began streaming in my head like I was listening to the radio in 1983. There’d been nothing in my head except, “Where’s the towel?” Then here’s Bob singing, “There’s a highway, a lonesome stretch of gray.”

I said, “Bob, baby, why?”

He said, “Even now, she’s all that I want, all that I need.”

“Bob, that’s answering my question, is it, Bob?”

“She’s givin’ it all, she’s givin’ it free.”

I accepted it; the Universe had chosen my Sunday morning music.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑