Not much thought to today’s choice. (Like there’s ever much thought behind my song choices, right? Right.)
Cats aren’t involved in this one. My dreams are. Multiple dreams, all very uplifting. In one, a man gave me a bag, telling me, “These are for you.” Inside were gold coins. Must’ve been hundreds, and all shone like Coronado’s gold. I was so happy and pleased and excited. “Why did you give me this?” I asked the man, but he was gone. Another guy came up, though, and surprised me with a gift of gold ingots. It blew me away. “Oh my God, what I can do to help the world with this.” My head was spinning.
But it wasn’t over, as another arrived with gold jewelry. Without saying a word, he put it in my bag. Gaping as I took it in, I said, “I have gold coins, ingots, and jewelry in this bag.” He answered, “Yes, you have it all.”
See what I mean about uplifting?
So, puttering into the morning, feeding the three fur beasts and dressing, I hummed a remembered song that drifted into awareness. It turned out to be “Ventura Highway” by America from 1975.
Ventura Highway in the sunshine Where the days are longer The nights are stronger than moonshine You’re gonna go I know-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh ‘Cause the free wind is blowing through your hair And the days surround your daylight there Seasons crying no despair Alligator lizards in the air, in the air
Okay, take me to court. Today is a repeat from 2017. Sue me.
I awoke with Billy Idol blasting “White Wedding” into my mental stream. I knew I’d posted it before and looked it up.
It was a brief post pre-NC (novel coronavirus).
But, then, naw…”Rebel Yell” began streaming, and quickly segued into one of my favorite Billy Idol tunes, “White Wedding.” “It’s a nice day to start again.”
It’s cooler today, with a projected high of just eighty-eight under clear blue skies. Definitely a nice day to start again. Here it is, Billy Idol, from nineteen eighty-two, when I was just a wee man of twenty-six years. Boy, what would need to be sacrificed to be twenty-six again, hey?
Which is exactly where my mind is today, you know, the start again part. It seems like we’re always starting again, beginning again. You clean the house, and then it’s time to clean it again. For me, it’s the bathroom and the yard. Did the front yard on Monday, went polished the wooden cabinets in the kitchens and bathrooms, and polished the furniture in the master bedroom. Now it’s, clean the bathroom, vacuum the office, and work on the back yard.
Oh, yes, and there’s writing.
“It’s a nice day to start agaaaiiinnn.” Right after I have a cup of coffee. Maybe two.
I’d been out shopping when Peter Frampton’s song, “Do You Feel Like We Do” came into my head.
The song was released back in 1976, one of several hits from the album Frampton Comes Alive! That title always calls images and legends of monsters into my head. It sounds like Frampton may have been dead, but look! He’s come alive! Good for Frampton.
Frampton mania ruled for a while in 1976. As often happens with pop culture in that era, when someone achieves great success, talk-show hosts and comedians include references in their acts. The song titles are incorporated into word play. The performers show up on television shows, magazine covers, and radio interviews. The song themselves on heard simultaneously on multiple stations. There’s just no escaping it.
Why I was thinking of it now can’t be clearly traced. Had it been playing somewhere in a store or passing car, missed by my conscious thinking but picked up by my subconscious?
Don’t know.
Didn’t know how I felt, either. Sorting feelings, I concluded, I feel pretty good. Scale of ten, probably seven.
Pretty good is defined more clinically as, I’m not worried or stressed, nothing is bothering me, and I feel no pain or health issues, right? Why don’t I feel great? Don’t know; maybe a COVID-19 malaise coupled with election fretting dampens my spirits from great to pretty good. After sixty-four point two five years of living, I’m still sorting the feeling mystery. So many variables blaze in to change the balance.
Anyway, I feel pretty good. Peter seems to feel good in the song. How ’bout you? Do you feel like we do?
There are moments in a day sometimes when I say, “I don’t care, I give up, I gotta walk away.” Things fill up my give-a-shit tank until it’s overflowing, enervating me beyond patience and sympathy. Then, time’s passing boosts spirit and changes mood, and I’m back at it.
These 2020 moments usually involve politics. In past years, they may have involved relationships or work. Whatever it is, it pushes the button where into my head and out of my mouth spouts the words, “I don’t care.”
When I did it this morning, Icona Pop’s “I Love It” (2012) immediately gushed into my stream, filling the nooks and crannies of thoughts. It’s a cynical, fast-paced anthem, a perfect momentary, fuck-you reaction. Sure, it’s almost as repetitive as “Got My Mind Set On You”, but that works once in a while. After listening to it, I felt a helluva lot better.
Owe this song choice today to the second season of Fargo. That was the season about the Sioux City massacre, introducing us to Molly Solverson as a child, and her father, the medically retired state trooper. Keith Carradine played Lou Solverson (Molly’s father) in season one; Patrick Wilson played the younger iteration of him in season two. The story of this year is briefly mentioned by Lou Solverson in year one.
Anyway, the song is “I Got A Line On You” by Spirit came out in 1968. I had to look that year up. I was twelve then, and the song was a regular on rock stations for a long time. Yet, I’ve not heard it in a while, until Fargo brought it back to mind last night.
BTW, I enjoy Fargo. Its characters and non-linear style speaks to me. Each of the seasons I’ve watched featured strong casts. Year one included Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman as main characters, along with Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman. Jordan and Peele show up as FBI agents. Stephen Root is a murder victim.
Year two includes Ted Danson, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Jean Smart. All do the impressive job that you expect of them, along with Bruce Campbell as Ronald Reagan. My favorite, though is Zahn McClarnon. Although I’ve seen him in multiple films and television shows through the years, he really stood out as Matthias in Longmire. Where we knew exactly who he was in Longmire, he’s enigmatic, smart, and unreadable in Fargo, yet manages to portray sad weariness.
Okay, on with the music. This is a fun live version. Hope you enjoy it as I did, as a sharp look back to what was. Please wear your masks. Cheers
This was several months ago in our car. My wife was speaking.
I was listening. I didn’t know the song. “What is it?”
“It’s ‘Watermelon Sugar’ by Harry Styles. It comes whenever I’m in the car. Then I can’t get it out of my head. I walk around singing, ‘watermelon sugar pii-ieee.”
“Watermelon sugar pie? What’s that? I could go for some pie right now.”
“It might be high.”
“What’s a watermelon sugar high? What have I been missing out on?”
I don’t know. Listen.”
I couldn’t tell. “Should we stop and get some pie somewhere?”
I looked it up after I got home, and it’s high, not pie. A book inspired the song, which I thought interesting.
The song came on yesterday when we were out dropping off our ballots. So, in her honor, “Watermelon Sugar” is Sunday’s theme music.
Give it a listen. See if it sounds like he’s saying “watermelon sugar pie” to you.
I gotta go find some pie. I’m so weak. Yeah, sue me. Later.
A 1980s power ballad burst into my head this morning. I was a little lethargic getting up. Not really looking forward to the day.
Seems like I’m in a rut. I don’t think I’m alone in that self-appraisal, not just in the U.S., but in many parts beyond our coastlines.
A large part of my malaise is the novel coronavirus who dances under several names, but most frequently appears as COVID-19. “Winter is coming,” George R.R. Martin has Ned Stark warning us. Up here in the northern climes, the daylight period is falling shorter. Night hangs on a little longer. With an overcast day like this one, there’s no daylight, just a pale grey nothingness to the sky.
I long for my old, comfortable routines. Man, am I a person of habit. I used to be flexible and adapt, but as I’ve aged, my processes have ossified. Change comes hard.
Different songs about change and attitude set the background to my dream reflections and morning routines, but then an absolutely obstinate cat – we call him Boo – crystallized the choice.
Here’s “Never Surrender” by Corey Hart (1985). For Boo.
When I was growing up in the sixties, music was usually heard on the AM bands on my transistor radio, bedroom radio/alarm clock, or in the car. This was augmented by Mom’s music on her console stereo, and my sisters’ music on the older sister’s portable phonograph. It was red and gray suitcase with a record player inside.
By the end of the sixties, we were listening to more sources, including cassette tapes and 8-tracks. FM was coming on a purveyor of pop culture, though.
Overseas in the military, I depended on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Services. We had a heavy dose of popular songs. I listened to some local radio but not understanding the language was often a turnoff.
By the time I returned to the United States from overseas for the last time, it’d all changed. CDs were on the scene. Digital and the net were rapidly emerging. Radio stations became more segmented. I had three primary music stations in the SF Bay Area. One each for alt rock, classic rock, and top forty rock, which included pop. I had buttons for country and western, young country, R&B, soul, rap, gospel, along with the news, sports, and talk stuff. It was an amazing plethora.
Yeah, just thinking and remembering, that’s all. Today is sooo different.
All of was triggered by Genesis as my theme choice yesterday. Early Genesis with Peter Gabriel was much different than Phil Collins’ Genesis but I enjoy both. Fascinating how Peter and Phil also found solo success, along with Mike Rutherford of Genesis.
As they were all on my mind, I’m going with another Phil choice. This one combines Phil Collins with Phil Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire. Here’s “Easy Lover” from 1984.
Many songs have the potential to be the theme song for the COVID-19 season for folks locked up in their house together. We can get under one another’s skin, you know?
This 1983 Genesis offering came when I was contemplating should I eat one more cookie. We don’t usually have cookies in the house because we eat them. For cookies to successfully stay available for a while, they must be cookies we don’t like, or frozen and tucked out of view. As I’ll eat just about anything, it’s tough finding cookies that we don’t like.
But that whole should-I-eat-one-more thing brought about lyrics from “That’s All”, “Taking it all instead of taking one bite.” Phil Collins, the vocalist, delivers it with outrage.
It was an amusing exercise. For the record, one cookie was left. It was due to be my wife’s, but she came in and said, “You can have that last cookie.”
She’s such a nice person.
Also, for the record, this song always seems like it could be by the early Bee Gees or a Gilbert O’Sullivan song.
I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.
Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.
The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan,Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.
I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.
That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.
Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.
Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.
So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.
Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.
Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.
Michael Seidel, writer 