Tag: rock

Thursday’s Theme Music

Good morning, and welcome to the third rock from the sun. It’s Thursday, March 4, 2021. (I think — or so says my computer, calendar, and Fitbit, but can they be trusted? They could be part of the fake news conspiracy.) Sunrise was 6:42 AM in southern Oregon, and the solar orb will ‘set’ at 6:04 PM. (But it doesn’t really go anywhere, does it?) The temperature is already 53 degrees F (or so science claims, if you can believe it) on its way to a prediction of 64. (But then, what do they know?)

The Wayback Machine was fully engaged this morning. I’m embarrassed to admit the song I was singing was being sung to a cat. I was barely awake. The cat, Tucker, was on the pillow beside me, peering at me as his Mack truck purr rumbled through my bones. He was doing a little kneading. So I sang *ahem* “Boogie on reggae kitty. What is wrong with you? Boogie on reggae kitty. What you tryin’ to do?”

The cat liked it.

The song, of course, is “Boogie On Reggae Woman” by Stevie Wonder (1973), a fusion of funk and jazz that was part of the music happening of the popular music/classic rock era. I love the sound that Stevie brings. It’s sad that we don’t hear boogie mentioned often these days. Used to be, “You want to go boogie?” Or someone would say something and you’d reply, “Boogie on.” Feel me?

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask and get the vax.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. Today is Wednesday, March the third, 2021. The great ball of fire rose into our sky at 6:43 AM and will do its exit at 6:03 PM here in southern Oregon. Blue dominates the sky. Although the mercury is at 37 degrees F at this moment, yesterday it went to 63. We expect more of the same as we move through Fool’s Spring and creep back toward Late Winter, projected to hustle in next week.

An old David Bowie song needled its way out of the Wayback Machine into my mental stream this morning. “Fame” was a 1975 hit for Bowie. Bowie, Carlos Alomar, and John Lennon wrote it together. It was Bowie’s first number one hit in the U.S. I think “Fame” is an apt song for the current GOP in the U.S. as Trump sucks the life out of it. He doesn’t have a platform, just a crush of hate. If he weren’t wealthy and famous, he’d probably be locked up for his protection.

Fame (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame (fame) lets him lose hard to swallow
Fame (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)
Fame not your brain it’s just the flame
That puts your change to keep you sane (sane)
Fame (fame)
Fame (fame) what you like is in the limo
Fame (fame) what you get is no tomorrow
Fame (fame) what you need you have to borrow
Fame (fame)
Fame nein it’s mine is just his line
To bind our time it drives you to crime (crime)
Fame (fame)

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

Yeah, with Trump, what you get is no tomorrow. The gods know he’s had to borrow…

Okay, beat that to death. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask and get the vax.

Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Greetings fellow humans and all the rest of you. Today is Monday, March 1, 2021. Flip those calendar pages, if you still use them. I still do. Sunrise in Ashland today was at 6:46 AM and sunset is coming at 6:01 PM. It’s warming up outside with a current temperature of 48 degrees F on the way to an expected high in the upper fifties.

Music today is provided by Aerosmith. “The Other Side” was included in the album Pump in 1990. I was singing it yesterday first as part of my walking exercise, you know, just let me go to the other side of this steep hill, then I’ll go down. Next, it gained metaphorical properties as pandemic limitations struck. “Just let me get to the other side of this pandemic and back to a more normal life and also the beach.” Then the phrase, ‘the other side’, rose again as I thought about the novel in progress and the other one being revised. This was more aligned with the sentiment, just let me get through to the other side of this effort, when the initial draft of the one is finished and the editing and revising of the other is completed (at least for this go-around).

So it’s a threefer meaning kind of song on this late winter day. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

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.

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

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.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Hi. Welcome to a new day, the first day of the rest of your life.

Today is Saturday, February 27, 2021. Outside, it was gray with a chance of deeper gray. That’s all broken up since I first squirreled out of bed. Sunshine cracked through. White clouds sail like ice floes on a blue sky. Sunrise was at 6:50 AM in Ashland. Sunset is presumed to be at 5:58 PM.

Went with a little light piece out of 1985 for today’s theme music. Just cropped into the head like star asters breaking out of the soil. Stay positive, test negative, and wear a mask. Get vaccinated, and listen to some music. You could start with The Hooters, “And We Danced”.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Friday, February 26, 2021, doesn’t look like a happy day. A flat pale gray blanket stretching to every corner covers the sky this morning. Temperature is 42 degrees F, so that’s not bad. Sunrise stole in with little ceremony at 6:51 AM. Sunset is due at 5:57 PM.

The Wayback Machine was fully activated, triggered by a Zoom call. I wasn’t on it, but lurking in the other room. The call was my wife’s dance class. One member said that the people on the call looked like the start of “The Brady Bunch”. Another suggested “Hollywood Squares”. A third mentioned “Laugh-In”.

The “Laugh-In” comment popped “sock it to me” into my head. Remember that phrase? Good possibility that you answered a resounding, “No.” Well, “sock it to me” was a popular humorous catchphrase in the late sixties. Seriously. It was like, “can’t touch this”, “where’s the beef”, and “whassup” in another decade, or “who let the dogs out?” The phrase was everywhere, in every context, and this was pre-net, pre-text, pre-video existence. At least three songs with the phrase climbed out of the Wayback Machine for my mental streaming pleasure. One had to the legs to keep my brain engaged.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. Now, please enjoy Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels with their 1967 hit, “Sock It To Me-Baby”.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Today is Thursday, February 25, 2021. Sunrise was at 6:53 AM and sunset comes at 5:56 PM. Sunset will soon be after 6 PM here in Ashland, 2021, which makes me happy. Of course, we’re barreling toward daylight savings time, that terrific day when we spring ahead one hour, losing one hour of sleep and one hour of late afternoon/evening sun. Yes, eventually, it catches up again, but I’d rather not endure it each year.

I was a child, emerging into my teenage years during the 1960s. That meant that the Beatles were the group I heard most. Beatles, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones…you know the list. The press was always atwitter over what any musical band was doing. That’s what pop culture is all about, innit? Movie stars had been dominating until then but the landscape was shifting.

Anyway, a song by the Beatles, “Hey Jude”, has captured the mental musical stream this morning, beginning to end. It’s one of those things — yeah, an earworm — where I believe that I must share it in order to save myself. Sorry.

This is a repeat. The song was selected as the day’s theme music back in 2016. At that time, I heard it on the store’s PA system. You know, stores like piping music in to create the right environment, set the shopping pace, distract shoppers, etc. On that day, “Hey Jude” was playing as I shopped. Most shoppers encountered were lipping the words or singing it to themselves. Imagination ran with it, creating a Broadway musical where we all come together in the aisles, singing and dancing. It would be an episode of “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist these days.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. Also, listen to this 1968 song. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Hello. Welcome to this edition of Wednesday, brought to you by 2021. “2021. The year that has to get better.” Today is the twenty-fourth of February, meaning that February is fast running out of time. Today’s sunrise came at 6:54 AM in Ashland. We expect sunrise about eleven hours and four minutes later, at 5:55 PM. A sun bomb has gone off but the air is chilly at 40 degrees F. We expect another late charge into the low to mid fifties by late afternoon. The mountains blocks so much sun as it steals over the sky, robbing us of warmth and plunging us into early twilight. Across the valley is the land of sun, where it’s bright all day long, you know?

Rush is the music provider today. “Limelight” from 1981 skipped into the mental music stream as I walked yesterday. Its rhyming lyrics, with their sharp enunciation, are memorable.

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage

Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

And so the song goes, a good walking song, solid beat except where it slows for the solo, but that’s how prog-rock often goes, innit? Stay positive, folks, and test negative. Persevere, carry on, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. If that all fails, have a drink. Think I’ll go get a coffee, black, thank you, and unsweetened, like my soul.

You know?

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Good morning. Today is Tuesday, February 23, 2021. Sunset was at 6:56 AM and sunset will be at 5:53 PM in Ashland. Just a few more minutes less between the two and we reach eleven hours of daylight. Hooty-hoo.

Today finds the sun out in full force, unfettered by clouds, giving us an early temperature of 46 degrees F. We expect to hit the mid-50s. We’re told clouds are regrouping by the coast a few hundred miles away as the clouds flow, and rain is a late day possibility, but I’m living in the present.

Although I push that claim (about living in the present), the music Wayback Machine was busy pulling in tunes from the last century. Lyrics and melody were recalled. But I was then stymied: who is that? What’s the name of the song? Damn, I should know this. Well, thirty minutes later, some memory chipped its way to the surface. Exerted by effort, memory said with the heavy breathing of extended exertion, “I think it’s Bread.”

Bread? Really? Are you sure? A few minutes of net searching confirmed the song is “Mother Freedom” by Bread, 1971, yes, fifty years ago.

Freedom, keep walkin’
Keep on your toes and don’t stop talkin’ ’bout
Freedom, get goin’
Lots to be learned and lots to be known ’bout
People gotta reach ’em
Sit ’em right down and then you gotta teach ’em ’bout
Freedom, gotta win it
Gotta put yourself smack dab in it

h/t to AZLyrics.com

I unnerstand why Bread didn’t immediately pop to mind for this harder pop/rock song. Bread was mostly soft pop, like “Diary”. This song wasn’t a big hit for them.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get vaccinated, and keep on rockin’. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Thickening fog is graying out this Monday morning in southern Oregon.

Hi. Today is February 22, 2021. The temperature is 39 degrees F. Sunrise and sunset are 6:57 AM, 5:52 PM, presenting us almost eleven hours of daylight.

My mind has been busy with dreams, reading, writing, and thinking. Among the thoughts. They mentioned on the radio that, oh, surprise, people are creatures of habit. Surveys show that eighty percent of Americans have daily routines that they follow. They eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, go to the same places to shop, watch the same shows, etc.

Well, hello, yes. Much of this is driven by routines but by prices, selections, availability, health, and convenience. My breakfast, for example, is usually oatmeal. How it’s flavored varies. I add different fruits and nuts to it, or raisins, or peanut butter, or sometimes all of it. Yogurt with granola stands as an infrequent breakfast alternative. Once in a while, probably once a month, I’ll buy a breakfast burrito from a store. Once in a while, maybe every other month, I’ll have a doughnut or pastry for breakfast.

These things, though are driven by nutrition, taste, cost, availability, and convenience. I used to make and eat other things for breakfast. Metabolism changes, life style changes, and weight gain all started nixing how often I do that, along with convenience and laziness. Making a more elaborate breakfast (besides being pricier) is time consuming, and there’s cleaning up afterward.

Boy, I sound defensive, don’t I? But they’re right: we shop at the same seven places for our groceries when we go out. Those seven: Shop N’ Kart, Trader Joe’s, Costco, The Food Co-op, Market of Choice, Bi-Mart and Albertson’s. They’re all within a twenty-minute drive. They have decent prices. The food quality is good. We’re checked out places, but these are the ones we trust.

Enough whining. On to the music. Today’s theme song is “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fear, 1989. Don’t ask me why; it came into my head this morning, and I had no reason to not select it.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. We’re still a few weeks from being eligible for the vaccination, ourselves. Here’s the tune. Enjoy.

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