I'm on the line, one open mind

How did I not know that number XX on the list of my All-Time Favorite Songs (Not Just the Ones By Tears for Fears) was released on my birthday? Here is a system of touch!

Speaking of that lyric, I love that Roland and the actor in the video are so genuinely awkward. They are like two teens in a John Hughes movie. 

I've been longing to write, and didn't know it was going to be about this since I decided to prattle on about whatever Sirius New Wave threw at me upon turning it on this evening. And, lo, there this was. Whether true synchronicity, or Jukebox Fate, or the luck of the dial (programming), I'm all in on this. 

Except what is there to say? Only, cryptically, that this represents, as it felt like in '85 when released, being in the middle of a change that now feels like it's finally gonna come. This track's deep-throated drums and liberal application of phasers feel like the advent of something. Not that Advent that is the rehash of every year, and that asks you to rebelieve the same story each time. No, something actually different and new. What is it? I'll never find out til I'm head over...

The general synopsis at one-eight-double-o

I wish to drift in the day the way that this sounds. For TFF, this was a snippet, a throwaway experiment, a b-side with the instrumentation of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" with a recording of British Isles' daily Shipping Forecast.

How comforting it sounds, an almost lyrical recitation of the weather on the faraway seas, intoned four times daily! A schedule, a structure, some wrangling of the uncontrollable. Speaking about the roiling ocean, but not from it, or upon it, or affected by it. Instead, issuing warnings, forecasts, affixing words and numbers to the wind and water.

Maybe Roland added this in the spirit of experimentation, making no connection to the song or its progenitor. 

But I'm glad to discover this odd and wonderful ritual, and feel its comfort while I seek to move to different sea areas.

Fooled by now, we mystify the past

Some might think (or just the animal in my head does) that every opportunity to make something outta this blog and its/my online, er, presence, was missed, from the first blog revolution to being deemed "comedy cognoscenti" by all the Twits to doing I-don't-know-what-the-hell on TickTock or whatever, has been missed.

Right. Well, there isn't an audience for soft-rock treatises and record player reminisces, with a side of trips to back to Turfland Mall and Landsdowne pool

But this is the way I am trying to tell you (you, or just the animal in my head) that I am am alive, I am living. I know all the moments these songs vibrated the chain of tiny bones in my ears. I remember them all. I remember this one (Clybourn Avenue, rain), this one (San Diego County), here (outside of North/Clybourn Red line), and here (moving and moving on). 

It all happened. It all happens, every time. 

Here is when my bike ride to the lake would time out exactly for me to fly down the hill at the northern end of Lincoln Memorial with this song on the tape player. The water-sky line, the sun, the wind, the speed, the water on the rocks, cars climbing toward Kenwood Avenue, all of it, mine and mine forever. 

When it's all mixed up

An album--a group (or solo act, depending on the album)--I've returned and responded to for decades and will continue to. Balm for everything. I'll be asking for this in my dotage, to be sure.

But why, oh why, when they tour, is it sporadic and not here?

Still, I have these beloved albums that never grow old to me, and feet to hit the pavement as I listen to them, and a brain to process it all, so who needs a live "bringing-back-the-retro-hits" show?

Hope for a Badman

But at least the seeds of love will be sown...

Anything is possible.

ALL-TIME FAVORITE.


Tears for Fears Sowing the Seeds of Love by Celtiemama


High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man
And the lovetrain rides from coast to coast
D.j.s the man we love the most
Could you be, could you be squeaky clean
And smash any hope of democracry ?
As the headline says you're free to choose
There's egg on your face and mud on your shoes
One of these days they're gonna call it the blues

And anything is possible when you're sowing the seeds of love
Anything is possible - sowing the seeds of love

I spy tears in thier eyes
They look to the skies for some kind of divine intervention
Food goes to waste !
So nice to eat, so nice to taste
Politician grannie with your high ideals
Have you no idea how the majority feels ?
So without love and a promise land
Were fools to the rules of a goverment plan
Kick out the style ! bring back the jam !

Anything...
Sowing the seeds
The birds and the bees
My girlfriend and me in love

Feel the pain
Talk about it
If you're a worried man - then shout about it
Open hearts - feel about it
Open minds - think about it
Everyone - read about it
Everyone - scream about it !
Everyone
Everyone - read about it, read about it
Read in the books in the crannies and the nooks there are books to read
Chorus !

(mr. england sowing the seeds of love)

Time to eat all your words
Swallow your pride
Open your eyes

High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man
And the lovetrain rides from coast to coast
Every minute of every hour - I love a sunflower
And I believe in lovepower, love power, lovepower !!!

Sowing the seeds
An end to need
And the politics of greed
With love

On Repeat: Make love your destination

On Repeat: When People Run In Circles

After seeing live music last night that was very, very good but also very earnest, I am compelled to return to my safe harbor of cynicism and irony, dredged from years of absorbing and loving things that clash instead of meld.



The beauty of TFF's "Mad World" is that, to explain it like we're in kindergarten, the lyrics don't go with the sounds. Or at least I want to think that is what Roland was going for and is not necessarily the product of the contemporary trend of making music by generating bright sounds out of machines. Apparently there are a lot of covers of this song; most appear to be by dark European outfits ascribing to varying degrees of rock (punk, goth, etc). The most famous are warbled by teevee singing sensations and sonically superimposed over scenes of tense cadaver inspection and melancholy family introspection, and these are the ones that don't capture the space between light and dark where the song lives. You know, where it's kind of funny, and kind of sad.