Folks get 'round in the sunshine

Everybody does, even when it only goes up as high as your eyes like it does here in November.

Then as it was, then again it will be

Is anyone else surprised when they (re)learn that Zeppelin released an album in 1975? Aren't they indelibly of 1969-72? Or, my god, in 1979? I mean, I like those songs to be sure, but they are kind of the shadow of the former selves.

This one still has the hip-hugger pants magic, in a way, and the Green World/cheeseball lyrics ("We are eagles of one nest / The nest is in our soul"). 

Today, I think it just sounds like autumn time. And looking back at paths not taken. 

Time, beckoning me

This is what you listen to when you have writer's block. Or don't know what to write, or both.

It could kind of be a hymn, like Dust in the Wind. It was in the hymnal (or, rather, binder with mimeographed pages of songs), but we never, ever got to sing it. I don't know if it was somehow officially sanctioned, or if it was sneaked in there by a fan of Kansas.

Time followed up the first single, "Games People Play," which was decidedly more prog and prone to be played in a bar while you're playing pool in the early 2000s, but never to be played during Mass (maybe confession, though).

This, though, is sweet and sad, and not so slick that it doesn't take you someplace, whether it's up in the clouds or a daydream you had in the backseat of the car in the summer of '81.

Waiting out the winter was a little too much for him

Brrr. What is this?

Well, we will just have to deal with winter in November. And dream of sunlight in May.

Strange ways coming today

Summer’s snaking backward in memory and the air is clear and feels anxious. It’s all starting to die around you, so hang on to excitement now. Once the pall comes, you can get to work.

Just follow your eyes.

I can't stop listening to



Maybe because it's fall now, and trees are front and center, dying gorgeously. Though this sounds like the stark ones of November, blotting a pale sky, their former glorious dressing rotting and crunching underfoot.

This was the peak of the epic show I saw in lush, pre-solstic summer.

Just give me some truth

...now

All else are castles built in the air

I've been listening to this playlist because 1984 is, of course, the Best Year. These spins ease into 1985, too, but I don't mind that. After all, the early months of year was a continuation of '84 musically--Purple Rain, Born in the USA, and Wham! are represented--and in that we were still wearing natural fabrics and Madonna-inspired flounce and flash (and rubber bracelets), with the neon, knit, and cut-outs of the latter months not having taken hold.

Where was I?

This song.



I like this song because of its similarity in tempo and atmosphere to her bigger, and, of course, Best Year hit . It doesn't quite fit the movie, but it fits Tina's ca 1984-85 zeitgeist.

And, duh, the same dudes wrote it.

Someday I'll figure out why those 18-24 months hit so hard, then and now.

I need some sentimental hygiene

Warren of 32 years ago, when he was 40, gets me now.

And do my job, whatever.



Every day I get up in the morning and go to work
And do my job whatever
I need some
Sentimental hygiene

Everybody's at war these days
Let's have a mini-surrender
I need some
Sentimental hygiene

Everybody's had to hurt about it
No one wants to go without it
It's so hard to find it
Sentimental hygiene

Every night I come home exhausted
From trying to get along
I need some
Sentimental hygiene

Everybody's joining up to fight
For the right to be wrong
I need some
Sentimental hygiene

Some nights I drive my car
Up and down the boulevard
It's so hard to find it
Sentimental hygiene

It comes and it goes

The soft rock radio hit by Clapton that gets me the most isn't "Tears in Heaven" (though it's a eye-weller when you think about it) but this movie theme song.

And not because I loved the movie (or the song) that much, but because I think it was a first or second date.

Once again, music x time = that moment again.