Tag: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

I was working on my jigsaw puzzle late Sunday afternoon. Fifteen hundred pieces, it’s been slow progress. My wife rarely works on it (it doesn’t draw her – c’est la vie), and I work on it during free time. But I’m close to finishing it (well, it’s eighty percent done) and other puzzles are waiting, so I working on it.

Then I hear, “You won’t hear me.”

“What?”

“But you’ll feel me.”

It was my mind, of course. “I’m busy,” I said. “Go away.”

“Without warning, sometimes dawning, listen.”

“Wait a minute. I know those words.”

Then — bam bam bam bam bap — “Turbo Love” (1986) by Judas Priest blew into my head.

“Really?” I asked my mind. “Why?”

My mind responded by playing “Turbo Lover” over and over. So, it’s one of those ronasits that I need to share it with you to get it out of my head.

Hope you enjoy it. My mind seemed to. Check out the video at least. Such an eighties look.

0

Saturday’s Theme Music

Something disturbed my memories’ deepest levels. Don’t know what, but into this morning’s musical stream comes an oldie. We’re talking early sixties, when I was four or five.

Of course, I’d heard this song throughout the sixties. Played in movies, television, and on vinyl via Mom’s Magnavox high-fidelity stereo, I’ve heard this song sung by Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Louie Armstrong, and more.

The version I knew best, though, was Frank Sinatra. I heard him sing it hundreds of times in my childhood. Mom sang along as she washed dishes in the sing and cooked dinner. Later in life, I surprised people with my various imitations of people singing this song, including and especially Frank (although I was also very partial to the Jimmy Durante version, too — he had such a unique voice and style).

Enough, right? Here’s Frank Sinatra with “You’re Nobody til Somebody Loves You” from 1962.

Anyone else know it?

1

Saturday’s Theme Music

I haven’t read about many streakers recently. I am surprised.

As lockdowns and business shutdowns are argued and protested, I’d think that stripping off your clothes and running outside would be a natural mechanism to make your voice heard. Nothing makes people hear you more than running around with all your bits flapping. Makes more sense than shouting in police officers’ faces, or threatening others with guns.

Maybe I’m just too early on the curve, and the streaking is about to commence. Perhaps my idea will inspire someone to do it. Yeah, don’t look at me to be the spark plug. I’m a hairy fellow. Last time that I went streaking, people thought a mini Bigfoot was running around. Ended up with that nickname for years. Strangers would see me and shout, “Hey, Bigfoot, how’s it going?” Mom and my sisters started calling me that, too. I thought that showed poor taste on their part.

In honor of the idea, the song, “The Streak” by Ray Stevens (1974) is today’s theme music. Ray had the idea for the song but didn’t execute it until streakers were suddenly everywhere in the news. It’s a story-telling song that utilizes puns and double meanings to express what was going on from a reporter interviewing a witness. The witness is married to Ethel, and he’s always warning her, “Don’t look, Ethel,” and it’s always too late. The song culminates with the witness shouting, “Is that you, Ethel? You get your clothes on.”

3

Friday’s Theme Music

“Well you don’t know what uh we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl?
On a magic carpet ride
You don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me?
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

Yeah, it’s Steppenwolf with “Magic Carpet Ride” (1968). I was a big Steppenwolf fan in those days; “Born to be Wild”, “The Pusher”, “Sookie, Sookie”, and today’s theme music were heard at least once a day in the summer of my twelfth year. Mom was aware enough of them that when an article about the group and John Kay’s escape from the Soviet side of Germany was in the Pittsburgh Press, she brought it to my attention.

It’s come up today because, hey, locked into the house, a magic carpet ride would be mighty fine to do a flyover. Even more, fantasy will set you free. Fiction writing is the fantasy that sets me free. Although my quasi-official writing time is about three hours a day, fiction writers (including me) will tell you that the story and its twists and characters invade every mental recess, influencing (and influenced by) every interaction and activity. It’s an interesting trip.

Enjoy the music. Happy Friday, and happy May 1st. Another month in the books. Persevere and overcome the current adversity, endure, and then prosper.

That is all.

 

 

3

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Just a simple song from my youth, sparked by random thoughts, “Gee, a road trip would be nice today. Maybe head to the coast, smell the air, listen and watch the waves, experience life as it was, when that was all taken for granted.”

Like a proper theme song, Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” (1969) began.

For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I’ve got one thing I got to do

Ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now
To sing my song, I’m going ’round the world, I gotta find my girl
On my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day
Ramble on, gotta find the queen of all my dreams

h/t to Genius.com

Think I’ll ramble on into the kitchen for a cuppa coffee.

 

0

Friday’s Theme Music

Back in 1985, I was traveling frequently with the military. Based in South Carolina, I was a frequent visitor to California, Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey. Between them, I spent months in South Korea and Egypt, dashed through Spain, and part of a week in Belgium. This travel all revolved around war readiness planning and exercising.

Somewhere in those travels, I picked up on a song called “Live is Life”. I’d heard the song but didn’t know who did it. It didn’t seem to have much playtime in America. Eventually I hunted it down and discovered it was by Opus, from Austria.

Anyway, as I adjusted to today’s limited agenda and travel plans and admired spring’s growing presence outside, the song returned to me. It’s a jaunty song without deep lyrics, kind of odd as a rock song — more pop than rock –but it’s easy to sing.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Looking out, sipping coffee, I questioned myself, seeking the day and date. Wow, the sixteenth, half of April is already gone. Thursday again, already? It seemed like we just had one. Pretty soon, it’ll be the weekend all over again.

The weekend doesn’t have much true meaning for me. Military existence as a shift worker made them moot. When I joined management, it changed, and I kind of got the hang of it, mostly due to my wife saying, “It’s the weekend. We should do something.”

Everyone seemed to have a mindset around the weekend – do something, or do nothing. Meanwhile, since dropping out of the employment world to enter the sinister world of being a novelist, I’ve drifted back out of the weekend thing. Everyday is for writing in my world, but I still clash with the rest of the world and its idea of the weekend (along with those pesky interruptions called ‘holidays’).

Weirdly, out of all this, the song by the Killers, “Human” (2008), splashed into my thought stream.

I did my best to notice
When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind
And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord

h/t to Genius.com

Interesting to me but probably no one else how my mind jumps through these connections. It makes me smile.

That could be the coffee, though.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Such a simple mind have I. Watching the sunset pulling into the day, my mind punched the buttons for a 1984 Don Henley song, “Sunset Grill”.

Let’s go down to the Sunset Grill
We can watch the working girls go by
Watch the “basket people” walk around and mumble
And stare out at the auburn sky
There’s an old man there from the Old World
To him, it’s all the same
Calls all his customers by name

h/t to Google.com

I was feeling nostalgic. We’d hit 75 degrees F, and summer was strolling through, teasing us with looks and smells. Also, it was Wednesday, when my buddies and I meet to chat about science and the world and quaff a few pints.

It would’ve been a perfect day for the Sunset Grill.

 

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

This came straight up the memory pipe into the music stream this morning, right out of Canada and 1983 in my head in the U.S., 2020. I don’t know what resided down in the memory wells that said, “Let’s fire this mutha back into conscious memory.” Nothing leaps out as an ignition moment. But here we are with “Hot Girls in Love” by Loveboy.

0

Today’s Theme Music

Dreamed about a Chev. Corvette last night. My Dad and I were in it. I was driving it first. We stopped at a store. People complimented us on the car. I told everyone that it was his, and most people said, “Yes, I had that impression.”

I’ve had similar Corvette dreams before, but it put a Corvette song in my head. Prince’s 1983 song was “Little Red Corvette”, but that’s what came to mind this morning as I was thinking about the dream.

I vividly remember hearing “Little Red Corvette” while stationed on Okinawa. (I was assigned to the 603d MASS on Kadena AB, 1981-1985.) We’d gone to McDonald’s on a whim because we were going to have some corn soup. Standing outside in sunshine afterward, “Little Red Corvette” was playing on a car radio beside us. We were talking about going to the American Bakery for dessert. It’s a strangely vivid moment in life.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑