Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
How ’bout a little new wave on a Monday morning? Something slightly enigmatic from Duran Duran, something from 1984.
Nineteen Eighty-Four, la novel, had a heavy impact on many of us. False information from the government? Perpetual war, and war as a marketing tool? Big brother, and being spied upon, marked as an enemy of the state if you didn’t conform, with everything constantly monitored?
Fortunately, we avoided all of that, didn’t we?
Here’s “New Moon on Monday”.
Rocking out to Bare Naked Ladies “One Week” (1998) in my mindstream as I walked today. Why them? Not sure of the stream’s origins. Here are the lines that were in my mind:
Chickity China the Chinese chicken
You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’
Watchin’ X-Files with no lights on
We’re dans la maison
I hope the Smoking Man’s in this one
Like Harrison Ford I’m getting frantic
Like Sting I’m tantric
Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy
The song’s weird rap lyrics, strung around the fight between a couple, appeals to me because of its insights. The guy singing it knows how this fight went, and he knows how reconciliation will go, and he’s laughing at it. Most of us develop these insights into relationships. We know the little steps followed between growing annoyance, rising anger, the fight or disagreement, and the subsequent make-up.
It might be today’s sunny weather that kicked this song into the stream. We were house shopping in California when this song was released and rose in 1998. The connections could be that I was thinking, it’s a a beautiful day. Not being satisfied with that, I went on, flashing on sunshine splashing off waves and lamenting, I wish I was at the ocean. That triggered memories of glorious days in Half Moon Bay, where we eventually bought a place to live.
Or, maybe all that is just bullshit, and my mind just heard a noise that triggered the song, and so it began.
After a night of interesting dreams – no family, games or military, but soup, spilling, and reach – I awoke and turned to thinking about the novel-in-progress. I focused on where I’d stopped yesterday, conducting a what’s-next exercise. Then I catapulted into more generalities before spinning the wheel to think about the greater story.
The muses were present and engaged, so it was a comfortable exercise. One said, “We can do this,” and another said, “I know we can.” “Yes, we can,” a third said.
That’s when I realized that they were channeling a 1973 Pointer Sisters song, “Yes We Can Can”. Although mostly about politics, change, and unity, it’s a powerful, energetic song about trying and confidence, too.
We got to iron out our problems
and iron out our quarrels
and try to live as brothers.
And try to find peace within
without stepping on one another.
And do respect the women of the world.
Remember you all have mothers.
Read more: The Pointer Sisters – Yes We Can Can Lyrics |
Nineteen seventy-three. It was yesterday, and faraway. Here we are, dealing with madness in the White House, and setting up for more military conflict in the Middle-East. You know, because bombing other lands has all gone sooo well.
TCB. Takin’ care of business. I don’t know when the expression started, but it was in use everywhere I was by the time I reached a walkin’ talkin’ age, and I was using it by the late sixties. People would ask, “What’s up?” We, the pseudo-hip, would reply, “Oh, you know, TCB.”
Bachman-Turner Overdrive – BTO – formalized it in a song for us. It came out in 1974, the year I graduated from high school and joined the military. It feels like I’ve been taking care of business ever since.
As a side note, was a movie, later, “Taking Care of Business”, with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin, which I didn’t find too funny. Weirdly, Stewart Copeland who was the drummer for the Police, did the music for the movie.
Anyway, here’s today’s song. I’m sure you’re out there taking care of business, so feel free to stream this as you do. Its beat will help keep you movin’.
Caught myself singing these lyrics as I walked through the late afternoon’s sunny heat to the pub to have beer with friends.
h/t genius.com
Give yourself a million points* if you recognized “Burnin’ for You” by Blue Oyster Cult from 1981. Collect all the points for a chance to win big prizes.
*Points redeemable at any Points 4 Us location. No expiration date. Void in all fifty states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Cash value is one millionth of a cent. Not redeemable for cash. The points are completely bogus, which is beside the point.
I thought I’d offer something light for the heavy part of the week, the thick middle often called hump Wednesday. This little ditty – no, not abut Jack and Diane – makes a simple plea. I just want to feel the day, feel okay, and know I’m okay. It is a song with a refrain that offers other possibilities. I use to sing, “I just want to eat a cake, eat a cake, eat a cake, today.” You know what I mean.
Here’s Ingrid Michaelson with “Be OK” (2008).
I woke up streaming Third Eye Blind’s 1997 song, “Semi-Charmed Life”. Although the song arrived after a flotilla of dreams, I don’t…oh, wait, there might’ve been a connection. Just saw it.
“Semi-Charmed Life” sounds very poppish, with it’s varying cadences, the doo-doo-doo, and softer, gentler inflections. Much of the words are sung fast, but trying to hear them when it came out, I thought, “It sounds like he said she goes down on him.” Eventually, search engines developed the wherewithal to fulfill powerfully important tasks like learning song lyrics.
Yes, she did say she goes down on me. Yes, they were also singing about chopping a line, and that part about crystal meth? Yes, it’s in there, too. Later, though, on other stations, those lines were gone, yes, edited out, censored. Don’t want people hearing that sort of thing. Close your ears, children. Don’t want to poison the air with words about drug use.
(Reminds me of those places like North Carolina who FORBID using those blasphemous words, climate-change. If they don’t talk about it, it won’t happen, right? And everyone will live happily on the beach, building new developments and golf courses forever. Love that logic.)
You really should listen to that bouncing, free-association, sing-song sloppy rhymes, besides the soft ones when he sings, “I want something else.” When you put it all together, it’s reflective and powerful, with desperate edges, but ironically poppish.
I don’t know ’bout you, but some days, I get up and think of my routine, and look at the world and the moment, and I think of other places. I think of beaches with a sun blistering the sea, and book stores with cafes, croissants and coffee, and strolling that endless beach in the mist of crashing waves. I look ’round and think, I just want to fly away.
Then I know what I want to do and need to do that day, and I snap out of it. But the song begun with the thought streams through me like the runoff from melting mountain snow.
Here’s Lenny Kravitz’s 1998 song, “Fly Away”. Guess I’ll have some coffee instead of flying away. You know, let the wings of caffeine lift me into the day.
I don’t think I’ve heard this song for yonks. It entered my stream because I was running. Someone in my head started shouting, “Run, fool, run,” whenever I flagged. Thinking, distraction is needed, I began thinking, “Run, run, run.” Quick as that, Jo Jo Gunne’s 1972 song, “Run Run Run” cranked into the stream, although I also flashed on the 1998 German movie, “Run Lola Run”.
Here we go. Have a Sunday run. I was running on Saturday, but whatev.
Watching the travelers and tourists around Ashland, I often wonder about back stories. I want to know what’s going on in their minds.
For example, a group of three girls and a boy were encountered as I was walking. They appeared to be sixteen, seventeen years old. All were white and brunette. The guy was dressed in white pants, white activity shoes, and a tee shirt with an unbuttoned green, blue, and yellow plaid shirt. One hand in his pocket, sunglasses on, the other hand held a Starbucks Grande cup with a straw sticking up. He sucked on that straw the entire time that I saw him.
One of the girls wore denim shorts with a white and green athletic shirt tucked into the waist with white knee-high socks and running shoes. The second was in jeans with a red shirt tucked into the waist and brown shoes. The third wore a sleeveless black chiffon dress with black spike heeled shoes, the kind of dress you’d expect to see at a cocktail party, or on Fox News. All the females wore heavy make-up.
This was eleven in the morning. I wanted to know what was going on with this group. The girl in the shorts, who was shortest, had a map that she was following, and talking about where they were and what street they were supposed to take, but the others – except the guy – chattered like birds.
I encountered them at a street corner. After assessing them and having my curiosity rise, Everlast’s song, “What It’s Like” (1998) began streaming.
Michael Seidel, writer 