Today’s song comes courtesy of an overheard conversation at the coffee shop. One person said, “Call me,” with the classic hang gesture to indicate a phone.
“Okay,” the other said, with a wave and a laugh. A rushed, “Bye,” followed, and then zipped across the cafe.
By then, my brain had started streaming Blondie’s “Call Me” from American Gigolo (1980). Sometimes soft, gentle, and persuasive, other times assertive, masculine, and urgent to the edge of being frenetic, with a slight sense of desperation, I thought the song was perfect for the movie.
I’m going with Billy Squier’s most well-known song, “The Stroke” (1981). That song came to mind as I read about Donald Trump’s rallies, and what Republican politicians are saying. Those guys know how to stroke their base, and their base does a fine job of stroking the politicians back. Perhaps that would be a backstroke. Maybe not.
Put your right hand out, give a firm handshake
Talk to me about that one big break
Spread your ear pollution, both far and wide
Keep your contributions by your side and
Stroke me, stroke me
Could be a winner boy you move mighty well
Stroke me, stroke me (stroke)
Stroke me, stroke me
You got your number down
Stroke me, stroke me
Say you’re a winner but babe, you’re just a sinner now
(skip)
Better listen now
Said it ain’t no joke
Don’t let your conscience fail ya’
Just do the stroke
Don’t ya’ take no chances
Keep your eye on top
Do your fancy dances
You can’t stop you just
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.
I awoke with Outkast’s “Hey Ya” streaming in my mind, but another song replaced it. The lyrics, sung by a woman went, “He’s the last of the secret agents, and he’s my man.”
I thought, was that Nancy Sinatra? Sure sounded like it to my brain. Thinking about Nancy granted permissions to stream “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”, followed by a duet with Frank Sinatra, “Something Stupid”. Hearing Frank made the stream believe it was okay for him to join in, so I heard “Winchester Cathedral” and “Fly Me to the Moon”.
I’d decided I was becoming a basket case, which opened the ports for “Basketcase” by Green Day, followed by “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. Thinking, enough, I went through a little of “Enough is Enough” by April Wine, followed by “No More Tears” (Streisand/Summers).
By then, I knew that it had been Nancy Sinatra streaming “Last of the Secret Agents” (1966). I never saw the movie, btw. Anyone know if it was any good?
My wife and I were picking up fur last night. The cats leave it like Hansel and Gretel left crumbs to find their way back. I guess the cats, worried about losing their way from the litter box to their food bowl to their sleeping locations, leave the fur clumps to help them find their way. “I’ll just leave this fur and follow it back.”
Doing this task last night, I streamed, “I’m a fur picker. I’m a fur picker. Picking up fur. Fur, fur, fur.” The song was to the head music, “I’m A Girl Watcher,” a song from nineteen sixty-seven. I thought, that’ll be my Tuesday theme music.
Then, I began thinking about the song and the times. The song objectifies women. The attitude incubated at that point can lead to some of the rapes, molesting, and harassing now revealed across America.
Or I am overthinking it? I’m prone to such things. I can hear other argue, the song is about a boy who is growing up and developing an interest in sex, in this case, in girls. It’s completely innocent. To which I hear others say, it’s not completely innocent. It’s mostly innocent, but it’s part of larger cultural and social trends about women’s roles and men’s attitude toward women in America.
It was a lot to think about before my morning coffee. I decided not to do that song. Instead, I give you song from a year later, The Moody Blues with “Tuesday Afternoon.” I believe the song’s line, “The gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh,” perfectly exemplifies my thinking conundrum about being a girl-watcher.
It’s a complicated world. My thinking probably makes it appear more complicated than it is.
Decided to do something more recent and upbeat. The mental jukebox came up with Bruno Mars, ‘Just the Way You Are’. Hey, it’s only six years ago it was released. That’s like yesterday in beer years.
This is a good song for walking around and singing. In fact, I witnessed just an episode about two weeks ago. I was walking. Another guy approached from the other direction. I could tell he was singing but couldn’t yet make it out. It was clear he was budded up. And then, crossing the street, he sang loudly, in a pretty close approximation of the right key:
And when you smile The whole world stops and stares for a while ‘Cause, girl, you’re amazing Just the way you are.
I smiled to myself, impressed that he was so willing to sing aloud.
I was doing things differently on Thursday night. That change in routine delivered me to television channel surfing.
Television channel surfing has changed during my lifetime. We didn’t really have channel surfing in the early days. Our home enjoyed four channels for a number of years. Rotary dials, and later push-buttons, controlled the channel selections and volumes. That met getting up to change the channel or turn the television up or down. Schedules were pretty fixed and everything was well-advertised. Little was controversial because most of it was being buried the way a killer hides a body. Surfing really exploded with development of cable television and the remote control.
Now I have remotes but no cable. My television comes to me via a Roku in the study (a.k.a. ‘The Snug’) and an Internet connected ‘smart’ television in another room. The rest is received over-the-airways.
OTA is growing in popularity. Stations showing old shows are growing with it. I watched the ‘Comet’ television station the other night along with ‘Me TV’. On one of them (I was surfing, remember), I came across ‘Barney Miller’ reruns and watched two episodes. It was cool seeing Hal, Ron, Abe and the others, people who have aged or passed on, and enjoy some of their skills and talents once again, along with the writing, directing and producing talents of all those people behind the scenes. The shows ignited a flood about fashion and bell bottoms, too.
You probably know where this is headed if you’ve read anything of me. The ‘Barney Miller’ theme song has lodged in my head like a deer tick in my calf. I must rid myself of it, and to do that, others must hear it. So, please, I beg you, men and women of the Internet, play this song and relieve me of my suffering.
To be fair, it’s not bad as theme music goes. Reminding me of old jazz, it begins with a slow, low bass line, and then the song builds in tempo as more instruments are layered in, becoming an upbeat tune by the end. Go ahead, take a listen.
Ah, the holidays are rolling faster down the hill toward us as we gape back up at them, pointing and shouting, “Look out!” Let’s retreat to a little Adam Sandler singing the “Chanukah Song”
The holidays are upon us, as we like to solemnly note in America, as though we’re prophets and not ground hogs looking at the shadows of days of the future past.
Time to get real. And what better way to get real than with a terrific theme song that energetically conveys a nostalgic period, one that most people know and can sing.
I haven’t been out to sample the holiday shopping crowds. Shopping and crowds are anathema to my sense of peace and social tolerance toward others. My small town yesterday demonstrated again and again how people change during this season. A flip was switched. Cashiers seemed to already be eyeing customers as threats to their patience. The rules for driving seemed to be eroding. My impression of their thinking evolved from their actions.
“One way? No problem, I’m just going a short distance, and I need that parking space. I’m in a hurry!”
“Two lanes? They can move over. There’s plenty of room for them to go around me. I’m special.”
“Stop signs – I rolled through. Close enough.”
“Turn signals? I’m barely aware of where I’m going, and you want me to think of turn signals?”
“Hurry, hurry, let’s get home, quickly, quickly, faster, faster. Get on his tail. That’ll make him go faster.”
This is what was happening in our small, mellow town. Holidays and precipitation seem to unhinge people’s thinking. I don’t know what was going on in one woman’s head as she drove down the twenty-five mile an hour residential street at what I guessed was thirty-five to forty, her head down and her phone up, texting away.
I think this song is the theme for many. I hope it’s not harrying your mind. Here’s Al Hirt on the trumpet solo and Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee”, as used for the theme music for the television show, ‘The Green Hornet’.
Michael Seidel, writer 