Tag: The Beatles

Sunday’s Theme Music

Raucous dreams consumed the night. Oh, yes, there was too a floof fight.

4:30 AM. In this corner, wearing long black and white fur and weighing in at sixteen pounds…Tucker.

In the other corner, by the kibble bowl, that eleven pound ginger blade who used to be called Meep!…Papi.

I know Tucker started it because it’s always Tucker. Little combat was involved because Papi is a shrieker. His first one bought us awake and out of bed in one leap, and it was done. I swear that we moved like ninjas…little aging, graying ninjas…

But it’s email that gives me today’s theme music. Money…financing…sales ending today…the calls for assistance and donations and contributions dominated the box in a depressing blitz. Pelosi claimed her email wasn’t about money but Biden openly asked. Amazon and Costco crowed, look at what everyone is buying. Animal shelters and rescue groups wanted cash. The USPS needs help…

Such an AM gut punch even before my brekkie and coffee. Making them was when the theme song came: “Money (That’s What I Want)“.

The Beatles had a big hit with it, but I was channeling The Flying Lizards’ 1979 cover with Deborah Evans-Stickland. The Beatles were nakedly raw and emotional in their money demands. The Flying Lizards brought a mocking, flat monotone to their appeal.

My email solicitations were across the gamut: fear — they’re winning, they’re winning, give me money to fight back — to logic — no, it was all fear, fear of what will happen if you don’t give or buy, because you will be losing.

Anyway, that’s my music choice for today. Please listen and send me money. And stay healthy. Wear a damn mask.

The end?

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Once again, my chosen theme music arrives via a dream, but is selected because it stays stuck in my mental stream. That forces me to sing it aloud and share it with others to remove it from my traps.

The dream was about neighbors, friends, and food. It was quite chaotic. At the end, almost like the music to the final scene, “With A Little Help From My Friends” plays. It’s the original 1967 Beatles version, sung by Ringo, a song version that’s both morose and jaunty in my ears. Not my favorite version (yes, that would be Joe Cocker) but it’s the one that was in my dream, so here we go.

As an aside, driven by my reflections on the dream and the song, the song came out when I was eleven, making the song fifty-two years old. Where does the time go?

Feel free to sing along. Cheers

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I read that The Beatles’ album, Abbey Road, was released fifty years ago. It’s not a surprise; it came out when I was thirteen, and I’m sixty-three. The math was straightforward. It’s more astonishing not for time’s passing — hey, that happens every day — but for the shifts that it signaled in pop music, the world’s ever-changing politics and alliances, and the monstrous technological surge recorded during that fifty years.

I won’t say it was all peace and love in 1969 because it sure as hell wasn’t. Older people were lamenting the youth, and the youth was out to change the establishment. Major civil rights advances had been achieved. Bottled water existed but wasn’t the ubiquitous commodity that it is today. Corporations were gaining power but we hadn’t yet witnessed the emergence of the super-CEOs of now, compensated and treated like they’re dictators of small countries. The U.S.S.R. and Warsaw Pact countries, and Communist China – the P.R.C. – dominated movies and novels as the U.S.A.’s greatest threat. Computers were still big machines and novelties. VCRs, DVD players, cell phones were all creeping over the future’s horizon.

History update completed, when I contemplated the release of Abbey Road, the song that popped into my stream was “Oh! Darling”. I like its bluesy sensibilities and active bass so I thought I’d push it on you.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Out walking after my writing session yesterday, I spotted a woman walking across the street. I don’t know why, but a Beatles song tripped into my stream.

The song, “Day Tripper”, was released in 1965. I was nine. It’s one of my favorite fab four songs. It’s the first of their songs that I attempted to play on a guitar. I was nine and not a focused person. When I couldn’t immediately play it like it was on the record, I quit.

I don’t know what the song is about, whether it’s drugs, traveling, or just relationships. Maybe it’s all of the above. I still enjoy it, all these years later.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

After staggering out of bed and then using the bathroom, I started feeding the cats. “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles from waaayyy back in 1968 when I was twelve, began streaming in my head. “I am the eggman — woo — they are the eggman — woo — I am the walrus. Goo goo g’ joob.”

WTH? Why? It’s another mind mystery, innit, a nonsense song in a nonsense world after some nonsense dreams. Guess it’ll work for a quiet summer day that seems like a warm autumn day, as though the seasons have been turned into a jigsaw puzzle that need to be assembled.

Listen to it. Let me know what you think. Goo goo g’ joob.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

I’m streaming the original Beatles’ version of “With a Little Help from My Friends” (1967). Don’t know. My streaming began with Ringo singing the third verse.

“Would you believe in love at first sight?”

“Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time.”

Why this, today? Don’t know. Some inhibitor breakdown in the stream, a word caught in the wind, a flash in the brain, or maybe a neuotransmitter collision. I usually imagine my neurotransmitters as little sports cars racing through my head on beautifully constructed highways and country roads. Lately, though, ala Sim City, my neuro landscape is more like a hot and humid city under constant expansion, construction, and repair. There’s a lot of jackhammer and bulldozer noise. Big rigs transport loads of information as commuters struggling to get to work in their part of the brain creep along in traffic.

Sorry, side bar. On with the music.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

“Back in the U.S.S.R” by the Beatles (1968) is today’s theme music. I thought it was appropriate to give a nod to a nation that no longer exists, one who built walls to keep their nation safe while building up a huge military and cutting their social safety nets and education, a nation whose primary concern became driven by the ruling party, who did everything they could to remain in power, control and intimidate their citizens.

It’s a pretty good song.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “Nowhere Man,” by the Beatles, came out in 1965. I vividly remember carrying a small transistor radio (with a nine volt battery) and listening to this song early one summer afternoon, singing along with it as I walked along Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg, Pa. The lyrics were simple but seemed powerful to me.

It must have been in 1966, and I was ten when I was doing that. Fifty-two years later, I’m walking along A Street in Ashland, Or., singing it to myself in an early late summer morning. It still seems like simple but powerful song.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Jeff Healey was another performer who died too young. Forty-one when he passed away from cancer, he started playing guitar when he was very young, and achieved fame, recognition, and commercial success for his skills.

I came across two of his albums in my CD collection the other day. From that, I started streaming Healey’s cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as I walked through the smoky heat. The original song, as recorded by the Beatles (with Eric Clapton) is a favorite song of mine. Prince’s performance of the solo at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies still mesmerizes me.

So, pick any of those, or any of the many other covers of the song, as today’s theme music. I’m staying with Healey for today.

 

 

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