Tag: southern rock

Wenzdaz Theme Music

Today’s music was almost “Smoke on the Water”. After a day that peaked at 93 F, clouds swollen with thunder and lightning climbed over the mountains to fill our valley last night. At one point, smoke coiled out from the pass north of us and hustled down the street, congregating in the valley like a well-organized demonstration. After a recce, I came in and told my wife, “It sounds like the drum section of a drum and bugle corps is marching down the street.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand what that means.”

“It means there’s a lot of thunder out there. Sounds like drumming.”

“Oh. I got you.”

The smoke surrendered, though. I never did learn a source.

Today is Wenzda, August 27, 2025. 84 F, a hazy blue sky hosts lurking cumulo thingies. Gonna get to the mid 90s F again. Thunderstorms are on the menu, but they sometimes run out before their time here. We’ll see how it flows.

Papi the ginger master of all he surveys doesn’t appreciate thunderstorms. They’re loud and ominous. He goes into the master bath to outwait them. After their passing, he heads back out to his floofdom. A bit south of midnight, cat singing commences. I go out to see Papi chatting up a black and white tux. The tux is dismissive of Papi. I’ve seen this one before. They weren’t real concerned. I asked, “What’s your name?”

That suggested a song to The Neurons. “What’s Your Name”, a 1977 southern rocker by Lynyrd Skynyrd, was pushed into the morning mental music stream. I protested to Les Neurons that the song refers to a ‘little girl’ who is a groupie. This tux was not anyone’s groupie. Being as obstinate as granite, The Neurons dismissed this objection faster than the Roberts Court rules in favor of the Trump Regime.

I’m encouraged by arguments rising out of Iowa. Democrat Catelin Drey defeated a Republican by 10 points in a state legislative contest. Okay, good news, but it’s too early for me to celebrate its significance too much. Trump still rules MAGALand and can do no wrong in their estimate. Much of what he’s doing, declaring that he’s the president and can do whatever he wants, is gut-wrenching to hear. Checking polls, many GOPers are quite happy with his declaration, continuing to support and cheer him on.

Meanwhile, much of his activities reminds me of the U.S.S.R. under Joe Stalin. Stalin’s means of governing involved one party and a police state. Stalin established purges based on his declarations that those he purged were ‘enemies of the state’ and ethnic cleansing through deportations. Any of this beginning to ring any bells when thinking about Trump’s efforts to control the media, imprison enemies, send the national guard out as a police force, and ICE disappearing people off the streets?

MAGAs and the GOP will never recognize or acknowledge any of this for the most part. They’re firmly in the ‘means justifies the ends’ corner, even if that means disavowing all the principles, tenets, and checks and balances our founders established when the United States became a nation. What is also distressing is listening and watching while so much of the established media downplays events. It seems like they fear Trump’s retribution to the point that they’re making themselves more and more irrelevant.

Well, coffee has arrived in the system. I hope peace and grace gang up and reward you with a beautiful day. Time to go write like crazy, at least one. More. Time. Cheers

0

Saturda’s Theme Music

Mid-morning, it’s 60 F today, Saturda, May 24, 2025, in Ashlandia. The sky is summer blue. 84 F is projected as our plateau. My neighbor is out working on a project involving cars, trailers, campers, and motorcycles. That’s who he is. He’s often away, but when he’s home, people frequently arrive to bring things or take them away. He’s a gregarious man with a carrying voice, and will do whatever he can to help people.

Papi was out early and quick, enjoying the weather. Watching him through a window, I saw him hunting. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Papi in hunting cat mode. In tall grass back in the yard, not far from the fence and some bushes, he was hardwired into something going on at his feet. I opened the door and stepped out to check the weather. He gave me one fast look and returned to his activity. I don’t know what his prey was. A little later, he came in for his second breakfast.

I read that the Trump Regime is gutting the Space Force. Wasn’t he the one who created that?

But that’s Trump and subsequently, the United States under Trump, tottering around with little focus, babbling something one day and then on to something else with a toddler’s ambition but less curiosity. His only constants are that he’s hired a cabinet full of reality-displaced people willing to prop him up and lie like and for him, and his golfing and bragging. It’s not a good way to run a nation, as people might find out, when they wake up and climb out from under their rocks and prejudices.

Trump also signed an EO to hasten the building of nuclear powerplants. Because when you’re dealing with a deadly force that has the potential to kill and sicken millions, building fast is very important. Given the Trump Regime’s tendency to be hasty, mistake-prone underthinkers, I’m not looking forward to that result.

Trump has also signed EO to cut down the national parks and forests. Like, who needs trees when we need to build? Look at all that land that they can use for homes and buildings! That there is no infrastructure to support all their feverish dreams of all those homes and buildings never entered their thinking. Nor did the impact to the environment when all those trees are removed. Historically, we know what happens to air quality, soil erosion, and flooding when trees are removed in great quantities and the topography is drastically changed. But the Trump Regime proudly shuns history and knowledge, and too much of the nation follow him like lemings, little Trump-faced orange lemmings in red MAGA hats, marching right over a cliff.

Oh, yeah, and then there’s a real knee slapper in the news: Trump is blaming former President Obama for leaking secrets to Russia. Sure, I believe that *snark*. It’s more likely that Trump is trying to distract us with verbal sleight of hand while more illegal shit gets underway and another disaster is uncovered. He’s using Mr. Obama because Mr. Biden is now suffering from an aggressive cancer. While Trump cares less about that, he’s a sharp con man and knows that people have sympathy for Mr. Biden.

In honor of Trump, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and the MAGA lemmings, The Neurons have channeled Molly Hatchet’s 1979 southern rocker, “Flirtin’ with Disaster”, into the morning mental music stream. All of the original members of Molly Hatchet have passed on. Kind of sobering, as all were younger than me. Thinking about that is one of those ‘knock on wood’ moments.

Some sample lyrics, from lyrics.com, for your perusal.

We're flirtin' with disaster,
Ya'll know what I mean
And the way we run our lives,
It makes no sense to me
I don't know about yourself or what you want to be, yeah
When we gamble with our time,
We choose our destiny

I'm travelin' down that lonesome road
Feel like I'm dragging a heavy load
Yeah I've tried to turn my head away,
Feels about the same most every day

You know what I'm talking about, baby

Here we go, into the day once again. Rock on. Cheers

1

Monday’s Theme Music

Greetings! Happy Labor Day in America! This is a holiday in the U.S. It’s one of the three-day weekend holidays. This was Congress’ gift to the country — particularly the travel industry — in 1968 as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

It’s September 6, 2021. Monday, of course. We’re not doing anything special for the holiday. Wildfire smoke and COVID-19 (and the current Delta variation that’s so virulent here in southern Oregon right now) have muted it for us. Might be different if we had family close to us.

Sunrise arrived at 6:41 AM. Sunset, when the Earth turns away from the sun, will come at 7:36 PM. And I think I need to go back and fix an assertion I made on a previous post that we’ve gone below twelve hours of daylight per day. Blame it on a lack of coffee. Or a lack of cogent thinking. Or poor math skills. Temperatures continue to rise but we’re not hitting crazy levels, topping out in the low nineties. AQI for this morning is 163, Unhealthy. We haven’t had a day rated as Moderate since August 25. They’ve all been unhealthy or extremely unhealthy since then, a fact known in many areas out here in the U.S. western states.

Rickie Lee Reynolds died. 72 years old. Heart attack. He was the Black Oak Arkansas guitarist. Black Oak Arkansas was a southern rock band with some glam influences in their stage performances. They came out with a cover of “Jim Dandy” in 1973, while I was a high school junior. Weirdly, I’d encounter this song often on diner and NCO Club jukeboxes for many years. And I’d play it. Which exasperated my wife. She doesn’t like the song. But it’s a throwback, innit?

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, avoid crazy cures like ivermectin, and get vaccinated. Have a enjoyable Labor Day, if that applies to you. Gotta get my coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Yesterday, someone said, “I waste too much time. Every night, I think of the things that I wanted to do that I didn’t do, and think of the time that I wasted.”

I didn’t agree or disagree. I understand what’s he saying. When he said he was wasting time, he meant that he’d planned to accomplish things that day and didn’t. He did other things instead. In answer to my question about that, he said, “Read, watched the news, read more, ate and drank beer.” He laughed.

Was it really wasted time? No, just not time used as planned. But people get the sense they’re running out of time. They’re coming up on deadlines, end of life, a new week, month, or season.

I’ve drifted away from that. Part of my drift is because so much of what’s on our lists are impermanent matters given amplified importance. You got to sort through these things and decide what’s really important, and what’s just being driven by the ghosts of the past called tradition, or the demons of expectations.

Meanwhile, the conversation naturally kicked a song into the stream. Several, in fact. One that surprised me leaped in from 1972 and an album called Eat A Peach, when I was sixteen. That Allman Brothers album, released after Duane Allman’s death, had a lock in my playlist for over a year, joining another Allman Brothers favorite, At Fillmore East, a double live album.

The song that jumped out was, “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”. It really came, again, as I stepped out and called in a cat last night. I looked up for the stars. The cat was right there, but clouds obscured the stars. From there came the song’s lines,

Lord, lord Miss Sally, why all your cryin’?
Been around here three long days, you’re lookin’ like you’re dyin’.
Just step yourself outside, and look up at the stars above
Go on downtown baby, find somebody to love.

ht to AZLyrics.com

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

The Wayback Machine injected another song into the stream yesterday.

I was out walking through an autumn day. Reds, golds, oranges, and yellows have been splashed across the foliage but leaves aren’t dropping yet. Temperatures have dropped in a fallish segment, thirties to forties at night, fifties to sixties in the day, with rain showers.

As I walked through this, I noticed how many people weren’t dressed for the day. Maybe, like my friend, in his loud flowery, tropical shirt, they’re making a last stand for summer. Perhaps they expected the area to follow its tradition of quickly reverting to warmer weather, or, it could be that they’re just denying that the season changed, or they’re not paying attention. I also thought that they were tough people, unfazed by chilly, soggy weather, and were wearing tee shirts and sandals because the weather wasn’t affecting them like the rest of us mortals. The majority them looked cold and a bit miz, though.

So, reflecting on the weather change, I chanced to glance upon a far-away scene, where the leaves were a splash of fiery color on the mountain. Natch, the WM poured a 1975 Marshall Tucker Band song, “Fire on the Mountain” into the stream, and off I went, humming and singing as I continued on.

Of course, “Fire on the Mountain” is about a futile search for gold so a man can improve his family’s situation. He fails and dies. That’s often life, innit?

1

Sunday’s Theme Music

38 Special began as a standard southern rock band. Their sound became more mainstream rock than the likes of Marshall Tucker, the Allman Brothbers, CDB, by their third album. I liked the transition. This song, “Hold On Loosely” (1981), epitomized the new sound. I offer it today because it’s stuck in my ear. While it’s a good song, it’s been looping in my stream for the last twelve hours. I need to get it out of there before I start screaming.

3

Thursday’s Theme Music

My rocking stream was turbulent this morning. Portugal! the Man kicked it off. Then I bounced into Train and GnR to Springsteen. Run DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” came up, which led to Aerosmith’s cover of the Beatle’s “Come Together”. From there, I bounced into Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” and then the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”. Next, though, Marshall Tucker invaded, followed by CBD, which took me to Lynerd Skynerd.

A cat provoked the last. Tucker, the black and white feline enigma for which little outside his fur seems black and white, followed me around as I prepared to depart the fix. At one point, he got underfoot, and I chided him, “Won’t you give me three steps?”

That’s how I got her. Here’s “Gimme Three Steps” from 1973.

1

Today’s Theme Song

Accumulating steps and miles for my Fitbit in Ashland’s downtown yesterday, I heard a busker belting out an acoustic version of “Simple Man.” Remembering it from my high school years, I started singing along to myself. Lynyrd Skynyrd was part of the rising southern rock movement in the seventies, along with ZZ Top, the Charlie Daniels Band, and the Marshall Tucker Band.

The song, with its clear vocals and power guitars, reminded me of those years and a simpler period of life when my main concerns were getting gas money and passing tests in school. When the song stopped abruptly yesterday, I hunted the busker down in an unused business entrance on Main Street where he was changing a guitar string. We chatted a bit and I donated a few bucks to his cause.

The song, of course, hijacked my mental stream and stayed, so I pass it on to you. Here’s Lynyrd Skynyrd with “Simple Man,” from their first album in nineteen seventy-three.

2

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxAMa3Prhk

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑