Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Monday, December 22, 2014

How do I feel at the end of the day?

In my innocent youth, this was merely an appropriate TV theme song. Then I learned that it hit the crowd in the solar plexus just before the sun went away at Woodstock.

Of course by now it's known to me as the version--the only one--of this song...



...that even some thirty-plus years after Woodstock, gets you right in the gut. Joe does it, committing every syllable.




Thursday, December 18, 2014

Frame me and hang me on the wall

I need happy tunes today, for no particular reason.

Okay, maybe because of this.

Or this. And this. This.

(Or, despite its utter inconsequence in this unjust world, this.)



Yeah, see how things get too serious too fast? Maybe that's why I've needed several layers of satire to deal with them.

I'll miss you, Ham Rove, Dr. Stephen Colbert DFA, and everybody.

Edit - adding this to save and remember: 
"'Stephen Colbert' was about creating a full person that both heightened the absurdity of those he was parodying while also grounding them in psychological truth."

Saturday, December 13, 2014

It's just a silly phase I'm going through

I've dug this song from Day One (which, for me, was when I wasn't even in school yet). It wafted out of the tinny AM/FM tuner and all around the little Toyota, borne on a hot summer breeze (the car did not have air conditioning).

And I can dig the moniker "cloud rock," without hesitation. The song, at least the layered vocals that form the most of it, is onomatopoeic to the fullest extent.

But it was revived in a big, blockbuster summer movie earlier this year? Okay. Well, at least that's better than another robot-voice booty song being foisted on the world.


Monday, December 08, 2014

But I'm not the only one.

"Make your own dream.

That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story, that's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be.

There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you."

John Lennon, 1980