Tag: music

Saturday’s Theme Music

We went to see Beehive at the Oregon Cabaret Theater last night. The link is to a newspaper review of the show. Music interspersed with some narrative to set or change the tone, along with clothing, hairstyles, and dancing that evoke the 1960s, is what it was all about.

It was called Beehive for the hairstyle that dominated the era for a long period. That prompted me to wonder what they’d call a musical named after our current error. Fake News? Smart Phone? Fragmented?

The show started in 1960. Most of the early years featured girl group or all female ensembles. Intermission came at the end of 1963.

With ’64 came the Brit pop-invasion, but what really changed the music was America’s evolving politics. If you were present in the mid to late 1960s, you know about the protests, the Vietnam war body counts, the civil rights movement, rioting, discontent, assassinations, and the growing power and influence of television and entertainment.

The subject matter for songs changed from simple, almost naive and innocent about meeting the right boy and falling in love to They did a fantastic job in last night’s show of portraying those changes through dance and music, highlighting singers like Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and Janis Joplin, and their diverse styles and mind-blowing performances.

Performances of “Where the Boys Are”, “You Don’t Own Me”, “To Sir with Love”, “Me and Bobby McKee”, and “Chain of Fools” stood out for me. But for today’s theme music, I went with a group of four young women from New Jersey who were there at the beginning.

Wherever these singers, musicians, and songwriters came from, thanks for the ride.

 

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Petty’s Song

trans

pan

bi

straight

another city

another country

another –

face

none this is me

i’m all this

don’t try to touch me

don’t seal me with a kiss

touch on skin

touch on lips

touch on face

touch on spit

touch on love

touch on hate

touch on kiss

touch on grace

touch on

touch on

touch

on

touch

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke streaming this song, “Is It in My Head?”, in my head this morning (ha, ha).

I often wonder about the truths of perceptions, impressions, and memories. I don’t wonder about just mine, but how others came to their beliefs, and how difficult it can be to dislodge an idea after it’s burrowed into you. We’ve been exposed to evidence that the winners write history. History is often propaganda to justify and moralize decisions and sustain political or popular support. We all love heroes and myths.

So I wonder with myself about whether I remember something correctly, whether I’m too deeply embedded in silos and bubbles to perceive the truth and grasp it, and often, if I’m conning myself into hoping and believing that my writing efforts amount to anything. It’s a perpetual cycle of challenging, searching, and thinking.

Today’s song selection, made by my mind (and probably invited in by the latest rounds of dreams), “Is It in My Head” is from Quadrophenia by the Who. The album was released in 1973, when I became seventeen years old. I’d been searching and wondering well before I heard this song.

I continue searching and wondering today, almost fifty years later.

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Life Song

Your life’s song flows through you, notes and chords struck by your routines and emotions. Sometimes, though, in your life of bent notes and thundering crescendos of cymbals and drums, you hunt different notes, just for a day, something to hear so that you can appreciate your life’s song more when you resume it, like maybe a piano concerto.

It’s like an interlude.

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The Dancer Dream

I heard violin music. It was a classical song. I knew it but I couldn’t attach a title to it.

With a personal POV like a camera was perched just over my right shoulder, I turned in search of the sound. The view around me was like I looked at the world through a misty gray light gel.

A woman came toward me, brunette, with creamy white skin, and large, dark eyes. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun. I could only see her from her bare shoulders up.

As she approached me, she sang, “I am here for you, I am here for you,” in a tone and rhythm that matched the violin tune.

Her eyes on me, she passed while still singing, turning away but then turning back to look at me again, still singing, with a hint of smile. I saw more of her. She’s dancing, I realized. She’s a ballerina, I saw, and then awoke.

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The House Band’s New Song

Quinn was all excited, accosting me as I stepped out of the shower. “I have a new song,” he said. “I’ve written the lyrics. Let me sing them to you.”

WAKE UP!

I wannawanna wannawanna

wannawanna

I wannawanna wannawanna

wannawanna

I wannawanna wannawanna

eat now eat now eat now!

“Then it repeats,” Quinn said. “I’ll get T.C. to do a screaming guitar bridge. I call it “Blue Cat @4AM”. It’s a new sound I’m exploring that I call speed floof.”

 

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For Today’s Dreams

I need to think about and research these items from last night’s dreams:

  • Eating ham, and wrapping ham to take with me
  • Q-tips
  • Attending a rock concert in Japan
  • And the words, “Trey Chico,” which made a lot of sense to me in the dream

The name of the concert was “Trey Chico.” Three boys, I wondered several times during my dream.

It was an interesting concert venue. The stage was on one end in a field, about a mile from a field for parking cars. Between the parking and stage were long, open rows between rows of small apartments. Japanese people set up blankets in the open rows, and waited for the concert in the apartments.

We arrived early, in late afternoon for the concert. My wife was with me. We were in the cheap section. Meeting others, I ate some ham. I never saw any of the concert. I left right before they were supposed to play “The Star-Spangled Banner”. My wife stayed at the concert when I left. I wrapped ham in paper to take with me before I left, and made sure I took my laptop computer with me.

It was dark, but with lighting when I left. Fences blocked some sections. Others were attempting to leave, as well. I knew that the fences were there, but didn’t know how to get around them. A Japanese man came up and told us how to do it.

Walking through the open rows to get to parking, I was warned several times not to step on the Japanese, or their blankets. I cut back and forth, sometimes running, to go the mile to the field, and sometimes entered and left one of the small apartments. I thought they were clever, and that the concert arrangement was clever.

I ran into my wife in one of the apartments. She was with friends. They’d gone to a nearby shop, and then toured this apartment. Showing me Q-tips, she said, “They have the right Q-tip holders. We saw them. Where did we see them?” I knew, but I didn’t answer her.

Reaching the parking field, I oriented myself. After counting the rows, I turned and walked down one row to my car.

The dream ended.

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Beginning Again

Cut those strings, he told himself. Release the ballast. Unfurl your sails. Anchors aweigh.

He wasn’t certain about that last expression. “Anchors aweigh.” Sounded like he should be readying a scale. He was pretty sure that’s how the song went, “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.” He owned a computer, and could easily look it all up, but he thought it a dated reference, anyhow.

Searching for something more appropriate for the digital age, he came up with “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t use that; the slash folks have trademarked it, and zealously guard their carefully cultivated expression.

Sliding back into the rocket age, he counted down, “Three, two, one…we have liftoff.” But those words failed to lift him, and he became a little depressed, because Major Tom entered his head. The Air Force song came up, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” but yonder construed a vague distance and direction.

“Where are we going?”

“Over yonder.”

“There?”

“Yes, yonder. There.”

Umm.

“Once more into the breach, lads,” he thought, but it would not do. Various people and rock performers sang about being back in the saddle again. Where was his creativity today?

What the hell. He needed an ending so he could start. “Lit ’em up,” he said, wincing. Time to reboot, he decided, pressing start, but it was such a dejecting way to begin. “On the road again,” he hummed.

Curse Willy Nelson.

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Today’s Theme Music

You call,

they call,

memories,

family,

friends,

keeping you up,

holding you back,

they won’t let go. 

Thinking of a new year and all your plans, one cannot help but remember the past. That’s what’s today’s song is about. And it has a good beat, easy to dance to and sing as you surf the wave of the day.

Here is Elle King with ‘Ex’s & Oh’s, 2015.

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