Tag: Tom Petty

Mewsday’s Theme Music

The Tucker floof awoke me with song at an early time. “Get up, get up, it’s time to eat. Get up, get up, no time to sleep. Get up, get up, feed me some food. Get up, get up, or I’ll keep up this tune.”

Which he did. So I did. That makes this Mewsday.

The sky crashed down on his last night. Well, starting just after two in the afternoon, winds shifted, bringing the Rum Creek fire‘s smoke right down the I-5 corridor, changing the color of our air quality indicators from green to red like a traffic signal at work. Although it looks and smells better today, we’re at 152, red, and not good. Actually, the peculiarities of the narrowing valley and slope that I live on brings the air quality down to a more endurable 105. A wind shift can take that away, making us like the rest of the city.

Sunrise was a mellow and uneventful period at 6:33 AM. Sunset cometh at 7:50 PM. Cool 54 F now but a high of 34 C is on deck.

Got a Tom Petty song in mind. Heard it on the radio the other day. The Neurons said, “We like this,” and kept it on as background music in the mental music stream since. The song is “Leave Virginia Alone”. I remember hearing the Rod Stewart version back in 1995. Didn’t move me deeply. I was unaware that Tom Petty wrote it, learning that later, when he covered it himself. It sounds more like a Tom Petty style song than a Rod vehicle to me.

Okay, where is the coffee, please? The cats have abandoned me. Tucker is silent and coffee is needed. Stay positive, test neggy, etc. Have a good Monday, whatever that means on your spectrum. Here’s the song. A little mellow for a coffee-less Monday to my ears but it makes The Neurons happy. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Well, we come down the hill and turned into a glade, and there it was, majestic as ever: Sunday, August 21, 2022. So I, for one, can say, it does exist. I’ve seen it once and I’ll probably never see it again.

It’s a beautiful day on the beach. Though clouds blanket the sun, its presence is here. The ocean is a sleepy murmur. No fog or marine layer. 64 F. Today will be a little warmer, 70 F.

Sunrise trickle across the eastern skies at 6:26 AM and the sun’s luminescence will leave us with sunset at 8:12 PM.

A dream last night featured Tom Petty saying, “Let’s do the crocodile song, the rock song.” He said this three times, not in a row, but at three different times. I knew he referred to Elton John’s hit. Whenever he said that and his band played, I would go off and tell myself, “I need to be more like Tom Petty, and take more risks, put myself out there.” The dream also featured two-day POTUS Ronald Reagan and four-time NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon. It was an interesting dream.

But when thinking about the dream, “Crocodile Rock” and Tom Petty, The Neurons responded with Tom Petty and “Running Down A Dream”, a hit song from the 1989 album, Full Moon Fever. I was in Germany at Rhein Main Air Base when it was released, returning to America in 1991. The Neurons know I like this song. Who am I to argue with them? Yes, the song has been featured here before, but we’ll survive that.

Yes, I’ve had coffee, so I’m mellow, as are The Neurons. As I say, the ocean is a sweet companion today, in a mellow mood, and it’s infectious. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Enjoy your Sunday, yeah?

Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

My wife declared, “I love this weather.” It’s a cool Sunday. June 12, 2022. Clinging mists obscure the downslopes of pine and hardwood trees. The temperature dropped fast last night. It’s back up to 63 F but with clouds and rain dominating, that’s the day’s high. And it’s peculiar, as I was out last night with the cat, admiring the bright moon. “Pretty nice, isn’t it?” I said to him. “Not quite a full moon. I like the air’s smell. It’s so fresh.”

“That’s a waxing gibbous.” The cat yawned and stretched. “About ninety to ninety-five percent, I’d say. Rain’s coming.”

I checked, and he was right about the moon. Clouds stormed in, delivering a snare-drum rain performance before sunrise at 5:34 AM. Sunset: 8:47 PM.

Songs about flying fill the morning mental music stream. Don’t know what the neurons are thinking with that; did I have a flying dream that I don’t remember? Or are they gaslighting me?

But looking out the window reminded me of Germany. We lived there in the eighties while stationed at Rhein Main AB. Clouds and rain were frequently experienced in that region. The neurons eventually began singing “Jammin’ Me” by Tom Petty (1987). They didn’t give a reason although it might be that friends and I were discussing this song because we’d gone to see The Grateful Dead. Conversation had turned to Bob Dylan, and one person mentioned that Bob Dylan wrote this song with Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. Could be. The reflective trip down the memory highway ended with the usual refrain, wonder where those guys are now?

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Friday’s Theme Music

And another Friday has attacked.

My energy is low this March 4, 2022. All three of my floof companions are sick. That begs the question, WTF? One is cancer, and we’re just doing comfort and quality of life for him. He fights on, impressing me with his spirit and determination. Death not going to take him by the neck without feeling his murder mittens and their deadly devices. The other two…is it a cold? Malaise? COVID for cats? Another matter? WTF.

It’s a gray and cold, damp day. Like charcoal briquets from last summer’s final grilling. The sun’s energy today would lose a heating competition with a fast-food restaurant’s lamps. Rose before quarter to seven this morning. Gonna stay up there, dealing with the clouds, until just after six this evening. Temperature is now 37 F and weather services say a fist of degrees more will take us to our high. The clouds — must be more than one, but who can say — are a featureless gray monolith, like someone infused the typical blue with a squirt of gray so pale, it doesn’t seem like a color.

The neurons folded a Tom Petty song into the morning mental music stream. The neurons thought it an appropriate response to my chatting with one of the ill felines. “You Don’t Know How it Feels” from 1994 seemed right, though. I was trying to understand what the cat was feeling. It’s him singing it to me. I know little about his life. He goes out, is gone a bit, returns and seems fine, but what did he witness out there? Anyone try to get him?

Those sentiments can be glued onto just about anyone. Beyond their physical manifestation, we rarely glimpse their true history. Their inner world is shut off to our senses. We don’t know how it feels to be them. They don’t know how it feels to be me.

Definitely time for coffee. Stay positive, test negative, etc. You should know it by now. And it’s changing. Fingers crossed, right? Sure.

Here’s Tom. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I found myself remembering some Bob Dylan lines this morning.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow

[Refrain]
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

h/t to Genius.com

This song, “My Back Pages”, is by Bob Dylan. I was more familiar with the Byrds’ version which came out in 1967. It struck me as I was moving toward my teens and getting my footing in the music that moved me. I’ve always thought it was about learning and changing, which fit my evolving philosophy.

So I sought the song today, thinking it fit these times, and found this version. Featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn, Neil Young, George Harrison, people I think are pretty good musicians, it’s the 1992 Bob Dylan tribute concert from 1992.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Walkin’ yesterday, post writing session (which wasn’t an overly great session), my stream introduced a Traveling Wilburys song to my mind.

The writing session had been a lethargic affair, brief spurts of reading bridged by long periods of pensive thinking. Two thirds of the way through it, I noticed that the folks on either side of me had low energy as they pursued their ‘puter biziness, yawning, sighing, stretching. So I think it was a low-key energy tide affecting me and others.

Dream speculations occupied me afterward as I thought about a new recent trend in my dreams. Then came the song, “Heading for the Light” (1988) by The Traveling Wilburys.

I enjoyed the Wilburys album. It was released while I was still stationed and living in Germany. This was before the wall fell. Five talented individuals – Harrison, Petty, Dylan, Lynne, and Orbison — with well-established careers came together to record a song. One song led to an album. One album led to two, but death — Orbison’s — curtailed further activity. Harrison and Petty have since followed him. Only two Wilburys remain.

This song, unlike most Wilburys songs, has a hugely distinctive Harrison/Lynne sound to it. Not surprising, as they were the producers. But the lyrics, a look back at where a person has been, how they changed it around, and where they’re going now, was perfect for the moment, then and now.

The song hung around in the stream, and is there today, where there’s little light permeating the soft rain clouds. That makes it a nominee for today’s theme music.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” is all over my private music streams today. It kicked into the stream yesterday. I don’t know why. Maybe I caught a piece of it airing out of a passing car.

The song, performed and released by Stevie Nicks, is one of my favorite Nicks songs. Tom Petty sings on it, and the Heartbreakers played the song. It wasn’t surprising to discover that Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers and Tom Petty were the song’s co-writers. It has their flavor all through it. I like the song for its anguished sense of what’s been going on, and the decision that a line’s been drawn, and this needs to end now.

Baby, you come knocking on my front door
Same old line you used to use before
And I said yeah, well, what am I supposed to do?
I didn’t know what I was getting into

So you’ve had a little trouble in town
Now you’re keeping some demons down

Read more: Stevie Nicks – Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around Lyrics | MetroLyrics

You know that’s how it often goes. Love is difficult to find. We don’t like letting go, or giving up. Makes us feel like unwanted losers, doesn’t it? Yeah, and momentum and familiarity are easy to form and hard to break.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Thinking of many things today, and from that morass streamed an old Tom Petty song.

Many consider “Breakdown” (1977) to be the Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ breakout song. It’s a mellow, reflective sound with some edges, a sweet and weary reflection of love and trying. I prefer the live version included in An American Treasure.

 

 

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Tom Petty did some good rock and roll, with and without the Heartbreakers, keeping the beat alive. This particular song is one that streams into me once in a while without any connection to anything else. It was released in 1981, just before we left America for an extended tour on Okinawa, but I don’t remember it making an impression on me at the time. Honestly, REO Speedwagon’s album, High Infidelity, which came out the year before, was still the hot album for people like me.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I was in stationed in Germany when this came out. The album, “Full Moon Fever,” quickly became a favorite for home listening.

It’s ironic to think of that time. The U.S.S.R. was the United States’ towering enemy. Germany was divided, a creation established at the end of World War II. The Berlin Wall stood firm. A few years later, it, and the Soviet Union, were gone. We’ve just celebrated the anniversary of Germany re-unification.

The people I was stationed with in Germany were hard-working, patriotic, dependable, and loyal. Yet, two decades later, I’m on a the other side of a political divide from them. They’re angry with pro athletes who take a knee. They want a wall built. They fear refugees and distrust Muslims. A lot of them love Con Don Trump. Many despise Hillary Clinton for reasons they can’t explain, except it’s Hillary, and they don’t trust her.

It’s interesting to contemplate what’s come between us. Maybe it was just music, a common mission, and enjoying a good time that brought us together.

One more time, from the heart, Tom Petty, with “I Won’t Back Down,” co-written with Jeff Lynne.

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