Tag: The Who

Friday’s Theme Music

Today is Friday. It’s freezing (29 degrees F) and foggy (well, a little) but not frosty. So another 3-F day, utilizing different Fs.

Sunrise was at 7:20 AM while sunset is expected at 5:31 PM. Per annual worry, we’re monitoring the snowpack. Our snow pack provides us water throughout the year. As he snowpack melts, the runoff refills our reservoirs and cisterns. As in other recent years, we’re falling short again. Right now we’re peering into the future of another dry summer, re-kindling concerns about wildfires. Fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen.

Went through a lengthy song list this morning. Seeing that fog and cloud cover, I streamed “Let the Sunshine” and “Sunshine of Your Love”, “Daytripper” (because I was thinking of daylight) and “Walking On Sunshine”; “Friday’s Child” (the Wendy Matthews song — too mellow) and “Black Friday”; and “Friday” by Phish (oh, that’s too depressing).

As none of that brought me joy, I shifted directions and recalled yesterday’s walk. Up there in the hills, I could see for miles, which brought home the 1967 song by The Who, “I Can See for Miles”. Its energy was more satisfying for the moment. Plus the fog was lifting and thinning, giving me hope for a sunnier day. It’s possible; yesterday began as a much foggier day and ended up clear and sunny. It was that deceptive cold, the kind where you look through the house glass protection out at the world and think, “It looks like a pretty nice day out there.” Then you get out there and body parts began abandoning you, running back to get into the house’s warmth.

Watching this video of “I Can See for Miles”, I was struck by my cousin’s sliding resemblance to Pete Townsend. Never noticed it before. Cousin is in hospice, thrust in there by cancer. He’s fought it for several years, but it looks like cancer is taking him, just as it took his mother a decade ago and his sister last year. Cancer is a cold asshole.

Well, stay positive, right? Sure. Test negative, wear a mask, and get the vaccine. Here’s the music. Enjoy.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

It’s spin back Saturday!

Woke up with The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, in my mind’s center hall. Then the two song medley, “See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You” (1969) goes on loop.

It’s an appropriate song when thinking about the cults of politics percolating around the world, especially of the great wing type, especially of the Trump cult. It’s in sharper focus for me because that’s my country. I hear and read the staggering knots and twists employed to justify supporting him to the detriment of everything that matters, unless you’re white, wealthy, and male. The Evangelicals, Blacks, and women who support me startle me, but this medley seems to illuminate their position.

On the one hand, you have Trump – Tommy – isolated and self-centered, emotionally distant. Where the analogy collapses is Tommy knows his state and wants healed; Trump is blissfully unaware of himself and doesn’t want healed. He doesn’t know he’s sick. Feeding his base, he doesn’t see himself as sick.

Then you have the base. The comparison with Tommy shines here.

Listening to you I get the music
Gazing at you I get the heat
Following you I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet

Right behind you I see the millions
On you I see the glory
From you I get opinions
From you I get the story

Listening to you I get the music
Gazing at you I get the heat
Following you I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet

h/t to Genius.com

Decided to post the Woodstock video as it captures the essence of that time in rock. Have a listen, please, and as they say in America, “Have a nice day.”

 

 

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke. Snatches of dream sequences cascaded through me. I was amused that I couldn’t remember more of the dreams. Enough came together that I knew I was remembering parts of different dreams and it was all out of sequence. Exasperated, I gave my mind a talking to, telling it, “Can’t you join the dreams together in proper order.” It was irksome to remember a few seconds, stop, and recall a different segment of another dream.

I guessed I pissed my mind off. It retaliated. “You want to join together? Who are you?”

Knowing what was coming, I tried apologizing, but it was too late. “Join Together” by the Who (1972) was already streaming. Not a bad song to stream, if you must. I like the song’s sentiments.

You don’t have to play,
You can follow or lead the way,
I want you to join together with the band,
We don’t know where we’re going,
But the season’s right for knowing,
I want you to join together with the band.

It’s the singer not the song,
That makes the music move along,
I want you to join together with the band,
This is the biggest band you’ll find,
It’s as deep as it is wide,
Come on and join together with the band,
Hey hey hey hey hey hey, well everybody come on.

h/t to LyricsFreak.com

Memories abound with this song, like cranking up the stereo and grinning like a madman as the sound crashed over me. I can taste my childhood just listening to this song. I always enjoyed that sentiment the song incorporates, that it’s the singer, not the song, that moves the music along. And, hey, it’s the Who, and it’s part of that classic rock sound, you know, the sound that my generation grew to love.

Yeah, I’m talkin’ ’bout my generation, baby.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s music popped into the stream out of my dreams. An old favorite from 1969 by the Who, the song came out when I was thirteen. I was singing it to myself when I went into science class. Melissa, the girl behind me, said, “Do you like the Who?” Sure, yes, etc. Melissa invited me over to her house to listen to music.

Here’s “Pinball Wizard”. The song and memory all seem innocuous now, but it was a big deal when I was thirteen.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

A song fragment (songment?) had been trapped in my stream’s turbidity, no quite accreting enough other notes to become fully recalled, and driving me insane. All I could hear is the lead vocalist say, “Come on, move me.” Some guitar then followed.

Four A.M. this morning, the song finally fully entered my stream. It’s a little ditty called “Going Mobile” by a band called “The Who” that was released in 1971. Included on one of my favorite Who albums, Who’s Next, I don’t think of “Going Mobile” as their finest work, with interesting instrumentation lacing together some confusing and conflicting ideas.

Play the tape machine, make the toast and tea
When I’m mobile
Well, I can lay in bed
With only highway ahead
When I’m mobile, keep me moving

h/t to songlyrics.com

Being a literal sort, I always thought, how can he lay in bed with only highway ahead?

At least my brain can rest easy with the song remembered at last, and I can go on with other matters. Back to you, Jim.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke streaming this song, “Is It in My Head?”, in my head this morning (ha, ha).

I often wonder about the truths of perceptions, impressions, and memories. I don’t wonder about just mine, but how others came to their beliefs, and how difficult it can be to dislodge an idea after it’s burrowed into you. We’ve been exposed to evidence that the winners write history. History is often propaganda to justify and moralize decisions and sustain political or popular support. We all love heroes and myths.

So I wonder with myself about whether I remember something correctly, whether I’m too deeply embedded in silos and bubbles to perceive the truth and grasp it, and often, if I’m conning myself into hoping and believing that my writing efforts amount to anything. It’s a perpetual cycle of challenging, searching, and thinking.

Today’s song selection, made by my mind (and probably invited in by the latest rounds of dreams), “Is It in My Head” is from Quadrophenia by the Who. The album was released in 1973, when I became seventeen years old. I’d been searching and wondering well before I heard this song.

I continue searching and wondering today, almost fifty years later.

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Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song, “Join Together,” by the Who on the radio yesterday. It’s a song that came out the year I turned sixteen, 1972.

Naturally, my mind started looping it. I find the beginning, with the Jew’s harps and mouth organs a fascinating start, and enjoy how other instruments pile in. I admire the lyrics’ sentiments, too – join together. During this era of increasingly divisive politics, it’s a refreshing break to think about joining together and going on.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

As I endured the cold and its migrations, interactions, and pain during the last few days and nights, I began assigning musical instruments and notes to my experience, thinking, how would my cold sound musically? Just something to while away the sleepless, mucus filled hours.

Doing so reminded me of “Love Reign O’er Me,” by the Who. The song begins with a thunderstorm and rain. The song is the final cut of the Who rock-opera, Quadraphenia, and marks the final act and possibly redemption of the main character after chaotic struggles with love, drugs, family, violence, and identity.

Mom bought the album for me for Christmas 1973, based on my older sister’s recommendation. Thanks, Mom and sis!

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Another Who offering has hooked into my streaming memories.

This one, “Join Together,” was released in 1972, while I was in high school. I remember hearing it and thinking, that’s the Who, because they always had a distinctive sound, especially with Daltry’s voice. Like a lot of Who songs, interesting sounds, instruments, and arrangements lend Who songs thickly textured melodies. I like that. I prefer complications in books, movies, and music. At the same time, I’ve always been invested in guitar sounds. That’s why the guitar draws me to a lot of southern urban rock, and blues, or blues-rock, and classic rock. But even with Townsend’s synthesizers, the Who prevail and maintain a hold as one of my favorite rock groups.

Here’s “Join Together.”

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