Tag: theme music

Saturday’s Theme Music

A song — well, late youth. By mid-1974, I’d turned adult, becoming a legal adult (well, that varies by state, country, and era, doesn’t it?), graduated high school, left home, and joined the military.

Still, I count “I Can Dance (Long Tall Glasses)” by Leo Sayer as a song from my youth. It’s a fun song. It came to me last night when I started dancing with the cat in the kitchen. I was dancing to another song in my head. My cat (Tucker, the big long-haired black and white fella) was bugging me for something (who knows, with cats?). He sat down to watch, so saying that I was dancing with my cat is a stretch. The look he was gifting me said, “What are you doing?”

To which I replied, “I can dance, you know I can dance.” Summarizing the essence of the Sayer song, he’s hungry, comes across a sign offering friend food and drink, but discovers that you have to dance for your meal. He then goes from claiming he can’t dance to declarations that he can dance.

Sure. It was just a matter of finding the right motivation and having faith in yerself, isn’t it?

Here’s the song.

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Friday’s Theme Music

It’s 1979. Disco, technopop and technorock, progressive stuff which veers away from heavy guitars, proliferates. As a young man out in the world, I just went with the flow, primarily because, wife. On my own, my preferences veered toward Pink Floyd and The Wall, but it doesn’t have one good dance tune on it, does i?

One of the songs of that era bounced to mind this morning after a bleak review of the news. “Good Times” by Chic was all about the little things that constitute good times – making a rent payment, having a friend. It also savagely mocks the same theme, mentioning keeping your head above water and surviving, yeah, that’s good times.

Sounds perfect for 2020, doesn’t it? Survived the pandemic, good times. Made it through the wildfires and hurricanes, good times. Survived unemployment and hunger, good times.

Or, as the song lyrics originally said:

Temporary lay offs.
Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs.
Good Times.
Scratchin’ and survivin’.
Good Times.
Hangin’ in and jivin’*
Good Times.
Ain’t we lucky we got ’em
Good Times.

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/goodtimeslyrics.html

Yeah, 2020; it’ll be memorable for its good times.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I have another Seger offering. As I was checking out the sunset last night — not too red, not too many particulates in the sky — I remembered other sunsets in other places, not so much exact moments but the sense of time. Foremost was being in California, watching sunsets in Half Moon Bay. Too much thule fog kept most of our sunsets from being spectacular.

Even so, infrequently one would slip through. Occasionally, we’d encountered the perfect triad of temperature, sunset, and ocean experience to elevate it to something wonderful that I could draw on for the rest of my life.

That’s where I was last night. Out of that sense of remembrance came Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band with “Hollywood Nights” (1978). That song captures a sense of fundamental change. After such an experience, nothing is seen as the same again.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A night of intense but entertaining dreams had finished. The day was beginning with the emptying of the bladder and the feeding of the cats. They’d surrounded me and, despite bowls of kibble, were claiming starvation.

The activities engaged are the automatic sort, not much thinking required, leaving me free to ponder the dreams. That led to a Queensryche line from “Silent Lucidity” (1991):

“Your dream is over… or has it just begun?”

I mean, my dreams had been unfathomably lucid, where I as myself in my dream was interviewing the me having the dream, about a dream which was still taking place. So, I ponder, were there three dream version of me happening simultaneously, which led now to the conscious ‘real’ me pondering those three dream people? Or was this another dream?

Here’s the music.

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Monday’s Theme Music

My wife made some delicious spicy chick pea soup for dinner yesterday. We both love soups, and she delights in finding healthy recipes.

It was good soup weather, coolish but sunny, with a blue sky that let us see the far mountains. As I sat to eat the soup, I regarded its contents and breathed its aroma. Spinach, chick peas, carrots…good stuff, made with her homemade stock. Warm ciabatta bread (we’re mad about ciabatta bread) was available. Dipping the bread in the soup and eating it as the soup cooled was almost orgasmic.

After tasting it, I said, “This is great soup. What a wonderful smell. Thanks for making it.”

She said nothing. After a few minutes of quiet eating, she offered, “This is good soup, isn’t it?”

I kept eating but I thought, is this a trap? Did she not hear me before? Is she fishing for compliments, or just being redundant? (That’s probably the wrong way to think of it.)

In the past, I may have sniffed, “I just said that.” This time, I answered, “Yes, this is great soup. Thanks for making it.”

But my mind jumped on a train of thoughts about comments I’d made throughout the day that didn’t gain me a reply, no reply at all.

Which took me to the Genesis song from 1981, “No Reply at All”.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls (1998) is about a pregnant girl and her situation, slide always means, I gotta go. We consistently used it in the military during my career. It was a throwaway: “Hey, I gotta slide, see you later.”

Don’t know why it came up today, though. Just started up in my head, “Why don’t you slide.” Just one of those free-association memory things, I guess. Or maybe it was a subconscious desire to go somewhere and do something under the kind of sunlit blue skies

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s song came out in 1994. IBM had just purchased the company who employed me; that company had purchased the start-up that I’d been working for. So my employment record was like Russian dolls (which originated in Japan, BTW).

We were living in Half Moon Bay, CA, and had a comfortable life. But I had an uncomfortable feeling it was going in the wrong direction. We started making plans about where we could move. Texas? North Carolina? Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Washington…we roamed the net, searching for answers.

I’d just sold a few short stories, so I as feeling good about that. This song came out. Catching me by surprise on the radio, the repeated chorus, “What you waiting for”, seemed expressed directly at me. I listened to see who it was, but the radio didn’t say.

I hunted it down on the net, learning it was Gwen Stefani, “What You Waiting For?” Later, I read that she’d written the song in response to having writer’s block. That resonated with me.

All of that is background. Today, it was about the cats. Our air is at 52. Don’t even smell smoke any more (which reminds me, check on the fires up north and down south). The cats had been released when we hit moderate on the AQI scale, much to their joy. Today, I had the door open to let in Tucker.

He paused to sniff the air before entering, then sat down. Looking up, he intently regarded me. To which I said (yeah, you know), “What you waiting for?”

It’s a good song for today. What are you waiting for? November? Clean skies and better weather? An end to the pandemic? A sign of God.

Get busy.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Looked out the window early. Blue skies and thin white clouds stared back. There, there in the distant, still standing, were the forested mountains. Hurray!

AQI is moderate — below one hundred — so the cats and I popped out to sniff the air. That’s when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers began “Into The Great Wide Open” (1991) in my mind. Here we go, rebels without a clue.

Never seen the video before. Quite a cast, with Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, and Gabrielle Anwar.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Ah, today began with a groggy morning. Some nocturnal critter was busy under the house. So we were up addressing it by stomping on the floor to chase them out. (What else do you do at four AM in that situation?) Dominos fell, and the cats got busy (yeah, not humping, not busy in that way).

Out of the flotsam left behind were some lyrics from Blur’s “Song 2” (1997).

I got my head done
When I was young
It’s not my problem
It’s not my problem

Woo-hoo.

Yeah.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Some rhyming lyrics popped into my head this morning.

She’s been a bad girl, she’s like a chemical
Though you try to stop it, she’s like a narcotic
You wanna torture her, you wanna talk to her
All the things you bought for her, could not get a temperature

h/t to Genius.com

The rest of the song swam in, leaving me dancing around the kitchen as coffee was brewed. I thought, that’s a faux peppy song suitable for these days. I think that because so many want to pretend that everything is normal, especially the telly people setting up broadcast schedules, the sports people who want to pursue their championships, and the POTUS. “Everything is fine, look at the stock market.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. west coast is on fire and Hurricane Sally is beating down Alabama and other southern states. Unemployment is at an ugly number, food prices are rising, and food insecurity is spreading. On top of these disasters, we have the cherry on top that is the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s the death number in the U.S.? Two hundred thousand? Whatever, time for some football! Woo-hoo.

So, here is “Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello, another 1978 memory.

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