Tag: Don Henley

Tuesday’s Theme Music

We’ve reached another milestone, a day that ends in ‘y’. This one is a Tuesday.

It’s March 29, 2022, for those of you playing calendar bingo. Sunrise came at — ta da! — 6:59 AM. Sunset will be at 7:33 PM.

A weak sunrise was experienced, one like a cup of tea made with a tea bag that’s already serviced a dozen cups as tattered rain clouds still harrumphed across the blue. We had a few stretches of steady rain yesterday, one bit of that which hit five on the Floof Scale. I always use the Floof Scale to measure precipitation. A five meant, find cover, it’s coming down. Ten is head for high ground and hang on.

Average spring temperatures remain the norm. The digits sit at 48 F now. We expect 67 F today. Back out to weed this afternoon.

Today’s music was brought on by yesterday’s writing session. I’d been finger dancing on a kb for a while as the muses whipped my back and urged more writing, faster. Stopping for a breath, I discovered the digits said it was almost four PM. The day had slid past in a word sprawl. The neurons, catching on to my surprise about the time, began singing, “Time, time, ticking, ticking away,” repeating that chorus. They were testing me, of course. “The Last Worthless Evening”, Don Henly, 1988, The End of the Innocence, I told my neurons. To reward me for getting it right, they started playing the song, and now it’s stuck in the morning mental music stream.

Stay positive, test negative, and remain alert to what’s going on. Here’s the music. I’m gonna go treat the neurons to a cuppa java. Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdxXZMQu09k
0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Sndy, Sndy. I do like that day.

Today is Sunday, July 11 (7/11), 2021. I remember the first time I ever visited a 7/11 convenience store. I was twelve. One was built along the edges of our housing development. We could walk to it for gum, candy, ice cream bars, whatever. Mom would send me on missions to procure bread, milk, and cigarettes. Salems or Kools. She shifted brands. Walking to the store was our era’s equivalent of surfing the net. Just killing the day.

Today’s daylight began at 5:45 AM and will end at 8:48 PM. Minutes are starting to be shaved off each day. Soon we’ll be heading toward the time change. Then the earth’s trip will move my hemisphere away from the sun’s pleasures. Autumn will drop on us. Winter. We’ll be racing toward the shortest day of sunlight and I’ll be longing for sunshine.

We expect cooler temps today, lows in the lower sixties F, highs around 97 degrees F. No rain in sight. Wildfire smoke soils the blue sky. Two fires east of us by a hundred miles feeds the smoke. Watch your time outside as the air quality slides down the scale into the unhealthy zone.

My brain has opened the day with Don Henley singing “Dirty Laundry” from 1982. The morning music began first with “Those Shoes” by The Eagles. Thinking about that album (The Long Run) took me onto a memory path where I visited with my wife’s family and her sister’s husband. We both enjoy rock, although he, a Vietnam vet and Purple Heart recipient, doesn’t deviate from a narrow definition of what should be heard. He despised disco with a deep passion. Did appreciate soul, R&B, and blues, but had no use for country or rap. He really enjoyed “Dirty Laundry”. And here we are.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask when needed, and get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8uF7NdtMM
0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Up early. (Well, early-ish.) (With le chats.) Opened the back door and ventured into the cool air (well, coolish, low seventies, but it’s a relative thing, innit?) and clear blue sky (well, clear-ish and blue-ish, save for the marring brung in by wildfire smoke to the south and east, gentle nudges to check the wildfire updates). Birds were speaking but it was quiet (well, quiet-ish, as cars’ motoring punctured the mo’ — again, again, again). Thought of the world sit, rolling into longing for where I was and where I preferred to be.

Here’s a song from another time which I think evokes those senses, “The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley and Mike Campbell, with Campbell on guitar, from 1984. By coincidence, it captures the sense of summer, 2020: “Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach. I feel it in the air, the summers out of reach. Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone.”

Hmm, seems like an -ish kind of day…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrvVQm6kKZ4

 

3

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I enjoy today’s selection of nostalgia-laced tones and plaintive words. Of course, being from 1984, it’s also a trip back to a different era, a time of Wayfarers and Deadheads.

I guess today’s theme is nostalgia for me. Here’s “Boys of Summer”, Don Henley, with Mike Campbell, who wrote the music and plays guitar on the song.

“The Boys of Summer”

 

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is a courtesy of Don Henley and Mike Campbell. The song is, “The Boys of Summer.”

This song, with lyrics like, “I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac,” about looking back and change, and coping with it. I’m a person that looks back a great deal. I’m not obsessed with it, but looking back helps me re-imagine where I’m going. It’s one of those arrows of time. Looking back helps me keep straight.

A little voice inside my head said, “Don’t look back. You can never look back.”
I thought I knew what love was,
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever,
I should just let them go, but-

Today’s technology encourages looking back. I can watch movies that star actors that died, leading me to wonder, are they still alive? I can check a friend’s post, even though he died a few years ago, and replay movies, television shows, and interviews from the past, and pretend that past is today, or yesterday, although it was created decades ago.

It’s nostalgia, isn’t it? It is for me. Television, pop and rock music, and movies were part of my scenes as I grew up. Songs come on and take me back to a happier moment, as do smells, and touches. I like going back there; I like feeling happy.

There are fewer happier moments today. Experiences temper my expectations, and I’ve become jaded.  It could be from looking back, or simply being cursed with too much ability to recall times and events. It’s part of who I am, so I don’t decry it.

Well, maybe I decry it a little, because that’s who I am, as well.

3

Today’s Theme Music

To continue with the theme of dancing through the first week of the season change, I’ll continue with Don Henley. “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” is one of my favorite Henley offerings. Coming out in nineteen eighty-four, the song was written by Danny Kortchmar.

I enjoyed its tech sound and cynical lyrics. The song is like a war story being told in a bar about a serviceman’s experience fighting in another country. The impression is, the heavy-handed government is locking everyone up and bugging everywhere, battling “wild-eyed pistol wavers” in a long-going engagement. The rebels are using the weapon of revolutionaries before I.E.D.s, Molotov cocktails, mixed up in their kitchen sink. Meanwhile, the serviceman is coping with a local young women. All she wants to do is dance, make romance, and party. She seems oblivious to everything going on. It becomes clear by song’s end, who was oblivious.

I thought it was an apropos song for the time. It came before the Gulf Wars and after Vietnam, during the cold war era when the United States and U.S.S.R. were trying to align other countries, no matter who led them, with “their side,” propping up governments with money and weapons, enriching the countries’ power elite at the expanse of the poor. The Soviets were battling in Afghanistan against Osama Bin Laden as the U.S. armed and trained the revolutionary. Meanwhile, the U.S. buddied up to Saddam Hussein, arming him.

With its heavy beat, this is an excellent song for streaming and tramping around. It’s a bitter reminder, too, about how weapons and places have changed, but we’re still arming and aiding governments to fight rebels.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑