Tag: Sam Cooke

Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Slowed

Thursday, June 13, 2024, begins with a front’s impact. Chilliness rules the night and fends off the morning sun’s advances, rising through the fifties into the sixties, holding off on the seventies until afternoon. It sounds like I’m talking about decades or periods, but I’m referencing the temperatures in Fahrenheit. Right now, we’ve settled on a comfy 80 F.

While I’m still RICE-ing my right ankle, we plan to see the Green Show on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival bricks tonight. The performing band, Rogue Suspects, is one of our favorite. Through regular attendance of their shows, we’ve become friends with several of them. Can’t wait to enjoy their music tonight. They cover a wide range of rock, blues, pop. Sometimes they’re focus on a specific performer, like Aretha Franklin or The Eagles. Don’t know what we’ll get tonight, but they always give us a solid performance.

The Rogue Suspects 2023

Some good news from the Supremes about the abortion pill, mifepristone, was read this morning. Naturally I thought, man, ain’t that good news. That thought triggered The Neurons into starting the Sam Cooke song, “Ain’t That Good New” from 1964, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark still legal). Had to pause a mo’ to reflect that this recorded performance was sixty years ago.

Be positive and strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s Sam Cooke. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunrise in Pittsburgh on Saturday, September 17, 2022, brought diffused yellow light to the steel city. 7:02 AM, it would take time to heat the chilly air. Summer was heading south for the winter. Fall was making its move.

Now at ten AM, heat has stirred the thermometer to 16 C. 81 F is where the air temp is expected to go before the sun’s impact shuts down at 7:28 PM.

Staying in Mom’s home, where she’s resided for over thirty years, I’m struck by both change and stasis, again. Some things about the house are so familiar and have been as they always were. That’s not in the architecture or layout but in the details of décor and organization. Mom’s authority and control is seen in every niche and nook. She decides all. This allows me to visit as if I’ve always been here. Just remember her habits and how she organizes, and everything can be found. Probably true for most people, especially when they’ve inhabited a space for so long, but I feel it more deeply with this place of Mom’s. Of course, it’s absolutely clean – cleaning is her therapy as writing is mine – she has told me that she loves to clean, because I thought it something imposed on her, but no, she says, no – and also inside that organized structure is bizarre chaos. Wild how the two co-exist.

Thought of change prods The Neurons to resurrect a favorite song in the morning mental music stream. “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke came out in 1964, when I was eight. It’s been part of existence’s fabric for almost my entire life, and it has always spoken to me. I’m not alone in this; Sam plugged into something special when he created this song. For today, though, I’m going with a Beth Hart version. She infuses it with that same strength of belief and sincerity that I hear in Sam’s voice. Hope you hear it, too. In some ways, she reminds me of Janis Joplin with this song.

Stay positive and test negative. Here’s the music. I’m off for a second cup of coffee. I’ll go out on the porch into the sunshine-warmed breeze to enjoy it. Enjoy the world in the best way you can. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I’ve done this song before, but it’s a throwback, optimistic song. “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke was inspired by his life experiences. He released it in 1964.

It’s a good, reflective song about trying and being. The chorus is the best part (from Genius.com):

It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will

Change has come today, the same changes as every day, every year: the weather, the shadows, the temperature, the month, the date. We’re looking for more permanent changes in other ways, to the way that people act and treat one another. We need changes to the erroneous supposition that same deserve less freedom, less equality, less opportunity, because of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation or gender, or their heritage.

This is a cover by Brian Owens with his father. I enjoyed it, and thought that you might enjoy it, too.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

News stories stayed with me late yesterday as I finished walking and headed home. Too many tales about murders and suicides, impeachment and politics, wars and disease. It all felt a little heavy.

Some lyrics stole into my stream:

Been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die
‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky

I couldn’t remember more of the song, and worked on that as I reached home and made lunch. Other pieces came in but not enough for attribution. It seemed like an old song. I was finally forced to Google to find it.

There it was, Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”, from 1964. It’s dismaying to think of that song being written in the early sixties because of what he endured in Shrevesport, LA, one night. How humans treat others because of their differences remains a sad situation. We’ve made some progress on this, but we’ve also slid backwards. At times like these, I fall back on Parker’s quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice.” Parker was a clergyman in the 1800s. I always thought the quote belonged to Martin Luther King, Jr., but I found in reading that he was quoting another.

No matter who first said it, it endures. As Sam Cooke wrote and sang,

It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gon’ come, oh yes it will

I’m indebted to Metrolyrics.com, Songfacts.com, and Wikipedia.org for refreshing my memory.

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Thursday’s Theme Song

You know, when you keep your hopes alive, you keep believing, a change is going to come. Just today and tomorrow, and it’s the weekend, if that means anything to you. Fall is here in the Pacific Northwest, and winter is coming. Twenty-seventeen has built up its speed, and there’s every evidence it’s going to keep accelerating until it crashes into twenty-eighteen. Time flies; our lives fly. And we keep hoping for change.

I didn’t hear this song until long after its release. Someone covered it; I don’t know who. I didn’t know the song, and long after I first heard it, when the net finally come to be, I remembered it, bit by bit, and looked for it. Here it is, Sam Cooke, with “A Change Is Gonna Come, from nineteen-sixty-four. You gotta believe it, if you’re going to persevere.

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Today’s Theme Music

How about a little Sam Cooke,delivered live by Van Morrison with Jeff Beck’s help, to move your day along? Recorded live this year, here is “Bring It On Home to Me.”

h/t to Rolling Stone Magazine for delivering this to my ebox today.

 

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