Tag: rock

Saturday’s Theme Music

I watched Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Tarentino always makes it interesting and watching it for memories of that era was a delight for us Boomers.

Circling around an actor and his stunt double and friend (Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt) and Charlie Manson’s family, the movie offered some fond side trips down pop culture lane. Our American television diet was prominent, because this film’s story was about TV and movie stars.

But pop music was in there, too. And in the background of one scene was an old Vanilla Fudge favorite from 1967, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”. Loved the song by the Supremes, but the VF’s more psychedelic version spoke to this eleven-year-old lad. My older sister had an older guy interested in her. To win her over, he tried winning me over by loaning me his Vanilla Fudge album, so I played it enough that the notes and I were familiars.

The movie entertained me with its what-if premise. I always enjoy what-if, but the attention to details really impressed. Even period piece can openers were used.

Our favorite character? Brandy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Well, time was up.

Past ‘up’.

I was supposed to have departed the fix about fifteen minutes before, so I was now behind my schedule. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop writing. Coffee was gone, butt was uncomfortable, and my sciatic nerve was causing pain issue from being perched on the coffee shop’s new hard chairs. All the signs were aligned, time to go, mo-fo.

But —

Yes. Closing up with a stern order, go now, I packed it all up, strapped on the backpack, and headed into the sunshine. It was doing little good against the wintry air, but it was in the low 40s, a better place to be than, say, single digits that some in Alaska are enduring, and it’s better than Australia’s fires and blazing heat. So, couldn’t complain.

Walking up the hill, the distinctive piano playing of the Moody Blues cover of “Go Now” (1964) arrived in my stream. It’s a wondrous juxtaposition when the thing you’ve been doing, memories of places and events, and what you’re now doing come together in a perfectly mellow mood. I usually need a beer, a glass of wine, cup of coffee, or the toke of a joint to arrive in such a state.

But here I was, just me and the small town, with myself and music in my head, cold in the air, and sunshine on the other side of the valley.

 

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Yeah, out of the dream reflections about the party dream came Pink’s song, “Get The Party Started” (2001).

Not much of the lyrics have much to do with the dream except that others were present and urging me to party. It’s more that after I was thinking about it, I got up and moved onto other things, telling myself as I did, “Well, it’s time to get this party started.”

I was referring to the day so it gave me pause as I pondered new accidental insights into the dream. Then Pink’s music jumped the stream, and off I went.

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Monday’s Theme Music

It seems like my mind is determined to turn back time in my dreams. It’s also making all these song connections. (Like, boom, Cher has begun singing, “If I could turn back time.”)

The dreams were crazy chaos, leaving images like flashes of sunlight off of windshields. The dreams’ theme was ‘anything goes’. That theme conjured up the show tune from the musical with the same name, “Anything Goes”, which, let’s see…came out twenty-two years before my birth, but the movie did come out the year I was born.

Out of this throwback, go-go sense came the song that’s haunting the morning’s stream (now I have this image of a musical urine stream…oh, boy. (“I heard the news today, oh boy.” Yeah, the Beatles.) It’s from a 1964 movie, so I was eight.

The song is “The Monkey’s Uncle”. Although the Beach Boys perform it with Annette Funicello singing it, it’s written by the Sherman Brothers. Yeah, I looked it up. I knew the first two pieces but not the third. The Sherman Brothers were prolific songwriters. You should check out their list. I can tell you that one of their other songs, “It’s A Small World”, has entered my stream.

Meanwhile, the monkey’s uncle idiom amuses me. In one of those flashes in the dream, someone else says it in what feels like a sitcom moment. I’m looking at the guy when he does. Canned laughter kicks in, and then the song begins.

I don’t hear people say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” that often any longer. I think it was dying out as a popular saying even when I was young, sputtering along in movies and television where caricatures of old folks say it.

That frenetic dream activity left me felt energized, like it was a storm blowing out my mind’s systems. Anyway, the long and short of it (had to throw that in, it was in dream), is “The Monkey’s Uncle” is today’s theme music.

Feel free to sing along, or if you’re like me, laugh along, with the video.

 

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Once again, my chosen theme music arrives via a dream, but is selected because it stays stuck in my mental stream. That forces me to sing it aloud and share it with others to remove it from my traps.

The dream was about neighbors, friends, and food. It was quite chaotic. At the end, almost like the music to the final scene, “With A Little Help From My Friends” plays. It’s the original 1967 Beatles version, sung by Ringo, a song version that’s both morose and jaunty in my ears. Not my favorite version (yes, that would be Joe Cocker) but it’s the one that was in my dream, so here we go.

As an aside, driven by my reflections on the dream and the song, the song came out when I was eleven, making the song fifty-two years old. Where does the time go?

Feel free to sing along. Cheers

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

After reading the news updates yesterday, I mourned the patterns, the things we keep doing and won’t change. Haven’t we seen this show before? Assassinating leaders and promoting greater violence while claiming to be de-escalating. We’ve changed centuries; shouldn’t we change our tactics and strategy. No; they continue to fight the last war and run the last political campaign. Of course, there are some that lap it up and beg for more. 

The timing was impeccable for this murder. Australia burning, glaciers melting, people fleeing wars and droughts as other nations turn refugees away, but hey, let’s de-escalate by killing others.

Out of that, I started singing Steve Winwood’s “Freedom Overspill” (1986).

Keep on talking all you want
Well you don’t waste a minute of time
Who cares, who knows what’s true
Coffee and tears the whole night through
Burning up on midnight oil
And it’s come right back on you

Freedom Overspill
Freedom Overspill

Force of habit, you could say
The way they talk you’re talking away
Who cares, who knows what’s true
Your wounded pride is burning you up
Burning up on midnight oil
And it’s come right back on you

h/t to Metrolyrics.com cuz’ cutting and pasting song lyrics is easier.

That ‘Force of habit’ line is what hooked me. Nations, like people, fall into habits, especially as leadership and thinking diminishes. Like marketing, they think, well, this worked before. Press drumbeats follow soon. We’ve seen it happen so many times already in this young century.

It takes strength and awareness to change. Does anyone out there have it?

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music choice emerged reflections on my dream. Written by Paul Simon over fifty years ago, it was used in a movie, The Graduate, as well as standing as a hit on its own. It came about in my stream today because of the reference to a baseball player, Joe DiMaggio.

From 1968, Simon & Garfunkel with “Mrs. Robinson”. Fascinating to listen to the lyrics again.

“We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files.

“We’d like to help you learn to help yourself.

“Look around and all you see are sympathetic eyes.

“Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.”

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music came from another cat moment.

I was speaking with Boo, a backyard panther who wandered into our lives several years ago. He was in great shape so I thought that he must be lost. His people were never found and he stayed with us.

Many issues reside in Boo, dealing with trust, other cats, movement, sounds, etc. He seems a little psycho to us. Sweet but psycho is our description of him.

That’s literally the name of a 2018 Ava Max song, “Sweet but Psycho”. It would’ve been surprising if its melody hadn’t sprung into my stream and on into history as today’s theme music.

“Oh, he’s sweet but a psycho, a little bit psycho.” That’s about all that really fits Boo from the song.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Walking with a sense of ennui yesterday, I noticed several blue cars. Teslas, Priuses, Subarus, Volkswagens, BMWs…it was an odd parade of mostly blue cars, with a few silver and green in the mix. All those blue cars brought home the 1996 song, “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla.

I always identified this song with ennui. They’re counting cars and jumping over cracks, like children do, asking questions, like children do, like some people often do without end, searching for an answer, not knowing the question.

Yeah, Happy New Year.

 

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The Rock

“Follow me.” She took the movers into the backyard. It’d been a last minute decision but was appropriate.

A foot taller than her, they followed her out into the immaculate backyard. Winter had drained its color and autumn had jerked the leaves from the trees but a sense of comfort embraced her as she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, glanced up at the milky sun, and limped across the grass.

A innocuous rock about a foot high and a foot wide rested in one corner in sunshine by a patch of dirt. She pointed at it. “This rock. I want this rock to go, too.”

The movers, without exchanging looks, said, “Yes, ma’am.” The three encircled the rock and studied it. She said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Turning, she strode back into the house, casting eyes over the cottage. She and her husband had bought it twenty-one years before, ten years after they’d retired, coming up here for a more relaxed life. Then came the cat, a tiny tabby mewing on her porch as rain poured outside. The husband had died later that year. The cat, though, had lasted for twenty-one. The rock had been the cat’s favorite sitting place in the back. Sunshine always found the rock, and Pebble, named for her petite size, always found the rock.

She could leave the house – had to, really, because small as it was, it was too much for her  now – but she wouldn’t leave the rock. The cat was gone, but she’d always have the rock. And who knows? Maybe in the new place, she’d put the rock on the tiny balcony and perhaps find a new feline companion.

Or maybe it’d find her, as Pebble had.

It would be nice to have another rock in her life.

NOTE: Someone posted a photo of a mover carrying a large, unpretentious rock into an apartment. Others wondered why someone was moving a rock into an apartment.

So did I.

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