Tag: rock

Friday’s Theme Music.

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’.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Caught myself singing these lyrics as I walked through the late afternoon’s sunny heat to the pub to have beer with friends.

Time is the essence, time is the season
Time ain’t no reason, got no time to slow
Time everlasting, time to play B-sides
Time ain’t on my side, time I’ll never know

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.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

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).

 

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Tuesday Theme Music

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.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

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.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

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.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

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.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

Had beers with friends the other night. I hadn’t seen one of them for a few weeks as he’d been traveling to visit family. I asked him how they were, and he said, “Well, they’ve seen better days.” His sister’s caregiver said the doctors thought his sister would go into hospice soon.

Then, as we spoke, “She hadn’t really seen better days. She spent most of her life taking care of her parents.” She’d lived in their house, serving as their caretaker. When they died, about ten years ago, she thought she could finally start living. By then she was sixty and had a chronic disease. Now, five years later, she was going into hospice, even though she was ten years younger than him. All of it terribly upset her.

I thought about it a lot the last few days. She’d never married, never seen better days. She’d a boyfriend for a long time but she was taking care of her parents and didn’t think it would be fair to him so they stayed as semi-serious companions. Then he was killed in a motorcycle accident.

As I walked around, thinking about her situation, I kept humming “Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out)” by Citizen King (1999). I’ve done this song before, but it’s been over a year, and I think it fits the days. Most of us have seen better days.

Then the bottom dropped out.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This one came from yesterday’s walk. The song, “Iris”, by the Goo Goo Dolls came out in 1998. I was walking past a bed of gorgeous bearded irises. My brain said, irises, and the stream, like some weird Siri/Alexa, said, “Playing “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.” I finished the walk with that last bit thrashing through my head.

And I don’t want the world to see me.
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

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Tuesday Theme Music

Sometimes a song comes to you. I wonder if they’re like food cravings, coming to you to fill a need you feel. Maybe they’re just reflections of states of mind, a mirror on the present, and a glance back at the past.

Today’s song was written and released by one of my all-time preferences, Bob Seger. Most of us have used that expression in retrospect about something or someone, saying, “Even now, I’d go to them, if I could.” “Even now, after all we went through, I still miss them.” Bob was always good about writing about relationships, looking back at them, and wondering.

That’s what this one is all about. I don’t have any suspicions ’bout why I’m streaming it in my head. Sometimes a song just comes to you.

“Even Now”, 1983.

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