I like Pearl Jam, and I like this song, “Alive”. Although released in 1991 and categorized as grunge, it’s a hard-rocking song (with softer moments) like the rock I grew up with in the late sixties and early seventies.
Now, it’s classic rock.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Alice Cooper came into my scene around 1969, when I was thirteen. Their Killer album, with its snake on a blood-red cover, was a favorite. From that album were “School’s Out” and “I’m Eighteen”. Those two songs were generally played a couple times a day at very loud volume for a few months after the album came out in 1971, but my favorite song on it was “Under My Wheels”.
Lyrics draw me, and did the same with this song. The delivery, backed by rising guitars and horns, becomes more frenetic and intense, which I thought was a reflection of some relationships. He wants one thing, she’s offering something else, and it’s all messed up.
Thursday’s Theme Music
This is one of those songs that I asked of myself, “What the fuck are they singing?” when it was first released.
It came out in 1987, before the Internet became the familiar household pet it now is. That meant learning what was being sung wasn’t easy. I listened to the song and discussed it without others. Beer was involved. You’d think that with beer involved, a solution would be found, but nobody knew the words.
Hell, it’s no wonder, now that I can use the Intertubes to find the lyrics:
I cry wolf give her mouth to mouth
Like a movin’ heartbeat in the witchin’ hour
I’m runnin’ with the wind a shadow in the dusk
And like the drivin’ rain yeah like the restless rust
I never sleep
Hmmm? Yet the song works as FM rock fodder, delivering that need for a chorus, something that everyone understands and can sing with them:
I got ta feel it in my blood wo oh
I need your touch don’t need your love wo oh
And I want and I need
And I lust animal
And I want and I need
And I lust animal
n/t lyricsfreak.com
Electric guitars and lots of pounding drums and thumping bass go a long way to making the song memorable. It’s definitely modern rock.
Today’s Theme Music
I woke up in a Foghat state of mind.
I’d had an exciting and interesting dream about a recent dream. Without disclosing more, it was tremendously uplifting, bolstering my self-confidence to scary levels. I will note that I dreamed about the number eight again, which makes, unofficially, but what I can remember and enumerate, seven times. I’m waiting to see if I’ll dream of eight an eight time to end the series.
Back to Foghat. Those of you of certain ages and inclination will remember this song. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” is a blues staple that’s been well-covered by some great artists. But I encountered Foghat’s version first. It was nineteen seventy-two, and I was sixteen, a wonderful combination. By then, I was enamored with rock and guitars. Foghat’s cover of this song opens with rocking guitars, and doesn’t let up. What else needs said?
Today’s Theme Music
It’s a basic rock and roll, guitar-hero, hot as hell day. I employ hyperbole, of course. It’s not as hell today, but will be a toasty, sweat inducing, hyperbole-inspiring ninety-seven degrees on the beloved Fahrenheit scale.
Love this song. Stationed in Germany with the U.S. Air Force and watching the Soviets when the song hit the waves and created a stream source in my head, I always considered it a direct, mocking response to President George H.W. Bush’s inauguration. Here’s my reference:
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.
h/t to azlyrics.com
Yes, values, priorities, and directions can get a little skewed in the free world. Here’s Neil Young from nineteen eighty-nine with “Rockin’ In the Free World.”
Today’s Theme Music
The stream has shifted. Into the flow comes an all-time favorite by a little band called Derek and the Dominoes, with help from a guy named Duane Allman. Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon wrote the song, “Layla,” as a love ballad about Eric’s love for George Harrison’s wife, Patty Boyd. Duane entered the picture and changed the song to its more familiar rock sound.
Back in those days, I didn’t know about the confusion arising over the name of the group. I knew when I heard the song, I loved it and sought it out. I thought it was Eric Clapton playing, but if it was this guy, Derek, I didn’t care. Being a slow witted animal, I eventually grasped that it was Eric playing and singing, with help from the great Duane Allman – which explains the similarity to the Allman Brothers’ music of that period, right? It all eventually came together.
To me, this is a triumphant, feel-good song that ignites my creative energies. Pick up your air guitar. Time to jam.
Today’s Theme Music
How about a little Dirty Mac today? Mitch Mitchell, John Lennon, Keith Richards (on bass!) and Eric Clapton, from The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, 1968, introduced by a young Mick Jagger. Oh, the hair, the youth, the beat, the playing!
Today’s Theme Music
“You’re flirting with disaster,” people have told me just about all of my life.
To me, they’re saying, “You’re taking a risk.”
You betcha. Take a risk. Tug on Superman’s cape, pee in the wind…no; those are not flirting with disaster.
Flirting with disaster is about assessing a situation’s intangibles and variables and deciding, “I can do this. I can make this happen.” Others’ impressions that you’re flirting with disaster is more about their state of mind than it is about the situation.
Everything I write seems to be flirting with disaster – which, as an assessment, is about my state of mind. But that’s why we have editing and delete buttons.
Here is Molly Hatchet’s ‘Flirtin With Disaster’, from 1979. It’s a good theme song to hum as you walk the day and make decisions.
Today’s Theme Music
I dreamed of pretzels. People, mostly women, were pushing around small forest green shopping carts crammed with food. Many had large pretzels in them. I wanted one of those pretzels. I tried asking, “Where did you get your pretzel?” But each turned away as though I wasn’t there. I took to a double-decker bus to find the answer, and returned to the same place where I began. I till didn’t have a pretzel.
Ah, pretzel logic. I always fail to grasp it. ‘Pretzel Logic’ was also the name of Steely Dan’s third album. But this is Fond Final Friday, so I elected to post ‘Black Friday’ from their fourth album, ‘Katy Lied’. Sue me if I got it wrong.
Sing along if you know the words. Fake it if you don’t.
Today’s Theme Music
Oh, Yes! Like many rock bands, Yes’ membership has changed a few times. For me, in high school in the early seventies, they were part of the core music line up in art class, as our hip teacher was convinced we would be permitted to play cassette tapes on a portable player (we didn’t call them boom boxes or ghetto blasters in those days) as part of the creativity cycle. Yes was rotated in and out with BTO, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, Eric Clapton, Deep Purple as we painted and drew.
But today’s song is from their comeback. Having disbanded, they re-formed in 1983. (You know, whenever I write words like that, I can’t help but think of Spinal Top, the fake rock group in the center of the mocumentary, ‘This Is Spinal Tap’. ) When ‘90125’ was released in 1983, it was added to the listening library on Okinawa alongside Boston, the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Eric Clapton…hmmm….
Here is one of the most known songs from Yes, ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’. As they say, the owner of a lonely heart is much better than the owner of a broken heart. Rock lyrics…only the Kinks worked hard on language. Whatever: “You’ve to to want to succeed.”
Crank it.
Michael Seidel, writer 