Tag: rock

Sunday’s Theme Music

Sly and the Family Stone gave us a lot of awesome music when I was young. Today’s theme song, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a favorite. This song’s deliberate mondegreen in its title delighted me. I always knew it as just “Thank You.” When I bought the greatest hits album (actually, on an eight-track tape that the machine ate within a year, but not before torturing the sound into a strange warbling), the full title baffled me. I’d always heard the lyrics correctly, not something that always happened with songs, but did happen at the time. That’s when I was first introduced to mondegreens.

That greatest hits album deserved that title, and that’s why it was worn out. That was common for that time, to wear music out because of its medium, whether it was tape or vinyl. Digital has made a huge difference.

Onward.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

A week out from election day, 2018, I find myself streaming an old Stevie Wonder song from 1973.

His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty
He spends his life walking the streets of New York City
He’s almost dead from breathing in air pollution
He tried to vote but to him there’s no solution
Living just enough, just enough for the city…yeah, yeah, yeah!

h/t to AZLyrics.com

We’re at a crossroads in America, where the divisions are strong and stark. We have white supremacists insisting that things need to change, and they’re willing to change it by lying, cheating, intimidating, and killing. Their hate knows few boundaries, becoming directed at liberals, minorities, women, science, education, and just about every other nation in the world.

At the head of this monster is a clueless POTUS consumed with self-adoration, an empty vessel that mouths calls for unity as he leads chants for violence and threatens everyone who doesn’t  support his claims. Instead of seeking a brave new world of social justice and equality, he promotes greater divisions of wealth, opportunity, and hope. He builds more borders with words and threats, and builds walls with his mindless rhetoric. He places his optimism in a time that’s passed him by, but bolstered by people living in a hopeless fantasy existence, he remains empowered.

We end up, again, with people barely hanging on, coping, as Stevie Wonder wrote and sang, with just enough for the city.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I have mixed thoughts and emotions about today’s theme music, “Bad Motor Scooter”, by Montrose (1973). It’s an energetic song, but when I listen to the lyrics, I sometimes cringe. Then again, escaping on my bad motor scooter is really appealing on some days. Just race up through the gears and away from cares and civilization.

What the hell. It’s music. Love the rock attitude (rockitude?) on display in this video.

 

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

In this throwback, I started streaming this song sometime yesterday afternoon. “Show Me the Way” by Peter Frampton, from the Frampton Comes Alive! album was a monster hit from a monster album. Nothing against Frampton, but this isn’t one of my favorites as an album, song, or performer, but I heard it often as I traveled throughout 1976-77. I always preferred edgier stuff, but edgier stuff in rarely heard on commercial radio in those years.

I’m not certain of the genesis for streaming this song yesterday or continuing it this morning. Is it the weather triggering memories of youth, or the jetsam of a lost thought? Perhaps it’s just echoes of mortality or mourning for another time. It could be just a misfired neuron setting others off.

Who the hell knows.

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Surfing my thoughts this morning as I thought of my dream and tended my dream, I began streaming a Rolling Stones song, “Beast of Burden” (1978). I always considered the song a defiant protest song, but also a pondering reflection of relationships’ complexities, asking at its base, what does it take?

This was in direct response to dealing with Quinn. I was giving him his meds. He doesn’t like them, and hides in anticipation of receiving them. Giving them to him is a small battle,  but with experience, I’ve developed a winning technique. Afterward, Quinn takes off and hides from me, distrusting my approach. Yet, he returns in a little while, looking to me for comfort and food.

As an aside, the meds seem to be doing as hoped. His energy levels have gone up and he seems less miserable. While he’d been declining, he’d stopped grooming himself, and had lost his voice. Yesterday, I saw him wash his face after eating for the first time in weeks, and today, he’d found his meow, and his tall was pointed up in classic Quinn fashion when we went into the room for me to feed him.

So I’m hopeful, but I usually am.

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Friday’s Theme Music

According to Wikipedia.org, today’s song choice was released in 2007 and has been used in movies and televisions. I hadn’t heard it until I was shopping in Fred Meyers yesterday. Listening to the words, I told myself to look it up when I returned home. And ‘lo, I remembered and did.

Here is “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Walking before writing, heading toward the coffee shop, almost there, I checked my steps and saw 5150. Oh, Van Halen, I thought, which was an immediate invitation for my mind to begin streaming in songs from 5150 (1986).

This was the first album with Sammy Hagar as the lead vocalist, replacing David Lee Roth. I remember that a friend hadn’t like either singer for the band. He thought Roth was too flamboyant and his skills didn’t impress him. However, Sammy Hagar wasn’t the answer in my buddy’s mind because, with Sammy, Van Halen performed softer rock. I recall trying to suggest other vocalists to him, like Ronnie James Dio. We didn’t come up with a new singer.

I never saw him again as our military tours completed and we went separate ways. I always wondered what he thought of Gary Cherone as the singer.

Here’s “Why Can’t This Be Love”.

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This is another one that I blame on the cats. Little Quinn is suffering from lymphoma. Picking him up and holding him last night, I sang this to him, but softly and slowly.

Here’s Jimmy Eat World with “The Middle” (2001). It’s amazing to think of this song coming out so long ago. It seems like yesterday. So much has changed since then, but that’s the nature of our existence, innit?

Singing it to Quinn – whispering it, really – I focused on the chorus part that goes, “It’ll take some time, but everything, everything will be all right, all right.”

We were both doubtful.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (1981) has me hooked today. I enjoy the middle part where the vocalist (Sting) laments,

I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
And ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?

h/t AZLyrics.com

I think that passage captures the angst that so many encounter when trying to move their relationship forward through the waves of love, hope, fear, and doubt.

I also think often of this song, and how the magic of a relationship changes through the years. The magic remains but often comes in different guises from the magic that we first experienced. Every now and then, though, that first magic is felt and remembered, one more time.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes courtesy of an overheard conversation at the coffee shop. One person said, “Call me,” with the classic hang gesture to indicate a phone.

“Okay,” the other said, with a wave and a laugh. A rushed, “Bye,” followed, and then zipped across the cafe.

By then, my brain had started streaming Blondie’s “Call Me” from American Gigolo (1980).  Sometimes soft, gentle, and persuasive, other times assertive, masculine, and urgent to the edge of being frenetic, with a slight sense of desperation, I thought the song was perfect for the movie.

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