Springsteen Revisited

 

In my December blog, I discussed Christmas songs that I love and hate. One song I mentioned not liking was Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

Yeah, so what? Right? Everyone's entitled, eh?

Well, no. I live in New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. 

It's almost a rule in NJ that you have to like one or the other, if not both. Stating a preference for one, you still don't diss the other. It's like being asked in the 1960s whether you liked The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. (I liked both, but I liked the Beatles better.)

Since I'm not from NJ -- I spent my first 39 years in PA -- I never felt like I was required to like either of them, although I have several Bon Jovi CDs.

I don't hate Springsteen, although apparently some people came to that conclusion because of my dislike of one Christmas song. I don't mind his songs. In fact, one year, when we were vacationing in Spain and Portugal, we spent July 4th in Madrid, where we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe with a group of other Americans. When the song, "Born in the USA" came on, our entire table (including me) stood up and sang the song with the record, so I even know the words to his songs.

I just don't have any of his records. But I don't mind hearing his songs on the radio.

I am, however, a radio button pusher in the car. If I'm not in the mood for a song that comes on, I will click through my six Serius XM stations looking for something better. And sometimes a song -- no matter whose -- is just not what I want to listen to at that moment.

But apparently I put some people off by criticizing a song -- even a seasonal one -- by the Boss. He just doesn't sing the kind of music I usually prefer to listen to. That's my taste, not his singing.

However, even the bands I love have songs I don't like.

I loved the Monkees back in the late '60s, and still do. I had the first seven of their albums. But I hated Head. It wasn't what I wanted for the Monkees, just like Sgt. Pepper wasn't what I wanted for the Beatles.

It probably helps to understand that I was a little kid, or at least not at Middle School level at that point, and they were adults. My tastes were not theirs, nor were my experiences. In my head, I wanted to one day be in the band, and I was very good at pretending. I was a good bit less skilled at growing up. (I still like watching Pretty in Pink and Dirty Dancing.)

With the Monkees, even in the first seven albums there were songs in the other six (besides Head) that I didn't like. I tended not to like Mike Nesmith's rockabilly songs, and absolutely abhored "Aunty Griselda". I couldn't believe Peter Tork could sing so off-key. 

Lest the Mike Nesmith fans shoot hate thoughts at me, I did like "Different Drum," a song he gave to Linda Rondstadt and the Stone Poneys.

A Welsh band, The Manic Street Preachers -- a band eons away from the Monkees -- is a more recent favorite of mine. I have all of their albums exept the most recent one. While I like almost all of their songs, they have an entire album -- actually the one dedicated to a former band member who disappeared and has since been declared dead -- that I like nothing on. I don't care for the cover design, and the songs are simply not my cuppa. An entire album! But they're still  my favorite 90s band.

There are some bands I used to like, but usually because of being overplayed on the radio, I can't stand to listen to anymore. Billy Joel is somewhat like that.

What?

I do like his, "Always a Woman" and almost everything on Nylon Curtain, but those songs rarely, if ever, get played on the radio.

"I Love You Just the Way You Are" has been so overplayed on the radio, as well as being center stage for almost every wedding reception I've been to since it came out, that I can't stand it anymore. "Piano Man" and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" ( Y'know, "bottle of Red, Bottle of White...) are two others that will make me change the station when they start playing. They're just overdone, and I'm just over them.

The Carpenters were never a favorite of mine, but their songs on the radio didn't much bother me. Then I joined the Glee Club in high school. For four years I had to sing "Close to You" and/or "Rainy Days and Mondays" -- the choral versions, which are devoid of any emotion you might have been able to pretend to hear in Karen Carpenter's voice. And that  definitely dimmed me on the Carpenters.

Then there are the earworms.

I loved Air Supply when they came out. Apparently so did everyone else. Now I can't bear to listen to them. It isn't that I no longer like them. I still do. But their songs are the kind that, if you hear one of them, it will linger in your brain on constant replay for days, if not weeks.

"Miracles" by Jefferson Starship is another earworm for me. Beautiful melody, if somewhat raunchy lyrics. But something about that song just burrows into your brain, and it's not even the, "Are they really singing what I think they're singing?"

I once went for a month where every time I relaxed or was about to fall asleep, the chorous of  "Miracles" would play in my head. It kept me from falling asleep, and generally annoyed the heck out of me. I would have to actively start thinking of some other song -- ironically, it was often "White Rabbit" or "Go Ask Alice" from Jefferson Airplane -- to dig it out of my brain.

Eventually, that worm died, but I don't ever want to hear that song again in case it resurrects itself.

I'm not generally superstitious, but there are actually songs that I don't dare listen to because -- probably coincidentally -- every time I listened to them in the last century, something bad or at least unpleasant has happened shortly after hearing those songs. Two that I can think of are "Tempted" by Squeze and "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins. I happen to really like both of them -- even though I'm not quite sure what the  Phil Collins song is about -- but I spent years switching the station if they came on the radio. Just in case.

Recently, since it's been a few decades, I've started tempting fate and listening to these two songs if they're played on the radio. Dangerous, I know, but so far, once I entered the 21st century, nothing bad has happened as a result of hearing either song so perhaps the jinx is over.

Music is a huge part of my life. As a singer and guitarist, I try to improve my performance skills. I spent years learning that piano isn't my instrument (I really need to be able to play something I can sing along with, and with two separate staffs to pay attention to, I just can't). I hope to be able to resume taking violin lessons soon, even though I know I won't be able to sing to that.

But singing is my  primary talent, and I like listening to songs I can sing to.

Thanks for the Memories?

 

 

Memory is a funny thing.

I have very clear – if few—memories from when I was three and four, albeit long ago in a village not-so-terribly-far-away, but I don’t remember the 1990s.

I remember clearly all of the intervening decades, but the 1990s – indeed the first decade of the 2000s as well – escape me.

Don’t interrupt – at this point in every story, someone interrupts with a fact that I know. Just wait.

Yes, I remember that near the end of the 1990s Princess Diana died. That’s my “Do you remember where you were when” moment. The people who eventually bought our townhouse came to see the house during the televised funeral.

Overshadowing the keen desire to move out of a townhouse and move into Oz – I mean Hopewell -- was the week or so of news video of the crash, theories of what – or who – caused the crash and my personal surprise of, wow, she was dating? She dated that guy? I never heard of him, but no matter how rich, I think she could’ve done better. Shows how little I paid attention to rag journalism.

But that death is simply a reminder that I do remember the ‘90s.

I met my husband at the beginning of the ‘90s. We married mid-‘90s, and Diana died at the end. But what I actually mean is I don’t remember the music.

Music has always been important to me. My earliest memories are set to a background of my mother singing Doris Day songs while she was doing housework or “Baby of Mine” when I was sad. She had a beautiful voice, and her relatives often said they had expected to hear her sing at Carnegie Hall one day – if only the depression and her working class upbringing hadn’t made that impossible. (Not to brag, but I’m the one who ended up singing at Carnegie Hall.)

I remember once rounding up my relatives, who were at our house for some occasion, and singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”, and basking in their applause when I finished. Not bad for a shy four-year-old.

The bottom edge of the ‘50s and pre-Beatles ‘60s were musically all about Ricky Nelson for me, as well as “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Then there was the British Invasion in my formative eight-year-old brain. Figuring out math problems and learning to spell were set to the music of my youth.

I relied on the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits to keep the psychedelic late ‘60s music away. When I learned that the Monkees introduced the world to Jimi Hendrix, I was furious. How dare they? Of course, Jimi, Janis Joplin and the Doors, etc., were the worst thing that could happen to music as far as I was – and am – concerned, although, oddly, I liked Jefferson Airplane.

I’ve always considered the ‘70s as the worst decade of music, starting as it did with the drug-induced psychedelia, and ending with disco. But on closer inspection, it wasn’t all bad.

I liked folksier aspects of ‘70s rock: Three Dog Night; Peter, Paul and Mary – and no matter what anyone says, “Puff the Magic Dragon” was a song about a dragon, not drugs – Crosby, Stills and Nash; Carly Simon; Joni Mitchell; The Moody Blues and Dan Fogelberg made the decade worth living in for me.

I also discovered what was being called alternative rock: Emmerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, David Bowie and Renaissance, among others, and love it.

Of disco, the less said, the better. I did like the Bee Gees, but I liked them before Barry Gibb discovered his falsetto.

For me, the ‘80s came as a relief. Bell bottoms, body suits and leisure suits went away – as did the acid rock performers – well, many of them died of drug overdoses.

Music exploded into the kinds of songs I craved: OMD, Duran Duran, The Thompson Twins, Tears for Fears, The Fixx, Wham, and so many others, especially from the UK, that it was basically a second British invasion.

People would say my music should be ‘70s, since those were my high school and college years. While I liked the folk and alternative of that period, I liked the ‘80s music better.

Although I graduated from college in the ‘70s, the career I’d trained for failed to materialize under the guise of Catch 22 – you can’t get a job without experience, which you can’t get without a job. So I experienced a rather elongated adolescence,working in my 20s in jobs my peers had done in high school.

As I worked on a variety of short-term jobs for which I was desperately overqualified, my peer group became increasingly younger. My interests simply didn’t correspond with my married-with-children friends from high school, and my wages weren’t even enough to allow me to buy a decent car.

By the late ‘80s, I’d held most of the jobs I said I never wanted to do – except become a parent – and I returned to college to train for a career that I was not that keen on, but that I could actually get upon graduation, and make a decent salary into the bargain.

Having just emerged from a 2-year course of study that caused me to lose track of most of the music from the final two years of the ‘80s, the ‘90s appeared.

Yes, stuff happened in the ‘90s. I returned to fencing, joined a writing group for the brief few months that it lasted, met my future husband, and got my first computer. I know there was music, but I was still listening to the ‘80s stuff I’d so loved.

There was also a lot of personal chaos for me in the ‘90s. I discovered there was no dearth of backstabbers and gas lighters in my job, making me feel constantly on the defensive.

On top of that, I had to dodge blind dates. People tried to convince me some guy I wouldn’t have shared the answers to a quiz with was “perfect” for me. Translation: you’re single; he’s single. One girl told me she personally thought the guy she introduced me to was a jerk. (I guess I learned what she thought of me!)

Fortunately, I met my future husband when I wasn’t looking (well, I was looking. It was across three feet of steel, and I managed to get the fencing touch while he was posing in his lunge.) Until a few weeks before he proposed, I hadn’t entertained the idea that he ever would.

 Of course, people asked all the preposterous questions based on my age at the time. What marriage was this for me? (First, last and only. If it didn’t work, it would’ve been the universe’s way of saying I shouldn’t be married.) Why did you wait so long? Geez, I married the first guy who asked!

But through all of that, while there was music, I’m not sure what it was. There wasn’t a British Invasion. There was no singer I combed gossip magazines for pictures of. There was nothing to hang the music on. Instead, I began following certain actors' careers.

There was one song: “All for One” by Sting, Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams. It became our song. Why? It was the theme song for a swashbuckler film. My husband I are fencers, and we both like the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods of history.

So, wracking my brains, I’ve come up with artists I think were from the ‘90s: The Manic Street Preachers, Tokio Hotel, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Five for Fighting and The Goo Goo Dolls.

I could be wrong. They might be from the early 2000s. I’m not sure. I’m no longer on the cutting edge of pop music. I know I have their CDs, whenever they were.

Maybe it’s just that current music doesn’t interest me. Most things seem to be (C)rap, hip-hop or Cher sounding like she’s singing under water (“Do You Believe”). The couple of Taylor Swift songs I’ve heard are pretty good.

So, I guess I’ll just go back to my ‘80s music and try to figure out what, exactly, Simon le Bon is singing in “Union of the Snake” and leave the next era of music to someone else.

Music

 

It is said that people generally form their musical tastes about age 14.

I have never conformed to my peers, and unfortunately, I turned 14 in 1969, a year I considered perhaps the worst in musical history since the advent of Buddy Holly (and I’ve never liked his music). Many will disagree with me on this.

1969 was during the peak of psychedelia. While Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album were released a year or two earlier, they were hailed as the Beatles’ coming of age masterpieces, inventing a whole new kind of music. And I didn’t like any of them. 

When those albums came out, I turned my back on the Beatles, and decided it was time to find someone new to love. I didn’t want Bearded Beatles with shoulder-length hair and psychedelic clothes. I may have been 14, but emotionally, I was about 10. I wanted my mop-tops, the Beatles I used to see in 16 Magazine. At that point, Herman’s Hermits fit the bill.

The background music of my childhood had been the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion. Now they were turning into hippies and chanting with maharishis in India.

Other musicians hitting their stride at the time were Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and a variety of others who at least wanted to appear to be drug-induced acts. Yes, the Beatles used all sorts of drugs, even in the early days, but I didn’t know that then, and it didn't ruin their ability to sing.

While Jim Morrison could sing, and I even liked a few of his songs, The Doors were not a band whose records I’d ever buy.

The yowling screeches of Janis Joplin and the slurred mumbling of Jimi Hendrix were not something I could call music, much less appreciate.

While oddly, my favorite Beach Boys song was “Good Vibrations,” and my favorite Tommy James and the Shondells tune was, “Crimson and Clover,” in the main, psychedelic music, especially endless guitar solos and guttural voices singing songs that took up an entire side of an album, like “Inagodadavida” by Iron Butterfly, were anathema to me.

14 was not a good time in my life to begin with. I was a short, fat, humiliatingly over-developed brunette in a world of tall, thin blondes. I hated me, and wanted desperately to find music that I could become. While everyone else seemed to embrace this travesty in music, I retreated to songs that were more closely aligned to what I had loved when I was eight. As far as I was concerned, 1969 was not a good year for music.

My high school years continued to be a musical wasteland to me. My only access to music was AM radio. My classmates may reminisce about how great music was in the ‘70s, but I can’t see it. I describe ‘70s music as ick (Carole King, The Carpenters, Tony Orlando and Dawn), glitter ick (Elton John) and disco.

Finally, the ‘80s arrived and brought a return to really good music, with the likes of Duran Duran, Split Enz, The Cure,  Soft Cell, The Thompson Twins and Tears for Fears.

But looking through my 45s and LPs – mostly from the ‘70s, after the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits albums – I can find music I still  sort of like. I spent most of 1971 listening to all four sides of The Who’s Tommy album on a nearly daily basis, an oasis of the '60s. And later, Quadrophenia, or at least “Love, Reign O’er Me” affected me as much.

The Grass Roots, Three Dog Night, and pre-disco Bee Gees are in my collection.  I have nearly every Moody Blues album they ever recoded – many of them now on CD – and during my college years, I finally had a radio with FM, which was no longer exclusively the domain of classical music. I not only listened to Carly Simon, Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and the band, Renaissance, but I also played a number of their songs on guitar and still sing them. That also applies to Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dan Fogelberg and Cat Stevens. But that's pretty much as much of the '70 as I could ever stand.

So,  while the 1970s weren’t quite the wasteland I remember, I still prefer the ‘80s to most of what was being played on the radio in the ‘70s. I certainly didn’t share the musical tastes of my Carole King/The Carpenters-loving peers.

There are other bands, like Genesis, The Moody Blues, King Crimson, Styx, Roxy Music and David Bowie that I continue to enjoy. Even though they were making albums in the 1970s, I don’t think of them as ‘70s performers. I didn’t discover Roxy Music until the 2000s. The others transcend any one decade, so I don’t associate them with the ‘70s. To me, they belong to that misty, ethereal “decade between the ‘70s and ‘80s.”

I consider myself a child of the ‘80s because that’s where I came into my own – and made all of the mistakes my peers made in high school. It was the decade I was at my best. I was an independent adult, and I had music that thrilled me. Everything about my life in the ‘80s just seemed so much better – we just won’t look too closely at the social aspects of that life.

Blogs Happen – And for Me, This Is How

Recently – okay, this morning, which is probably about three months before you will actually get to read this – I was lying about in bed. Because of the pandemic lockdown, as well as a dreary-looking day, I didn’t have much reason to get up.

The result was that I had plenty of thinking time, and as a consequence, two things came to mind: the idea of pretty, swiftly followed by the idea of feminism.

It started when I began thinking back to a blog I had written about dresses and why I hate to wear them. And I wondered when the last time I did wear one was.

My sister-in-law’s wedding, probably 20 years ago? My first trip to Wales at a posh castle-hotel 18 years ago? My brother’s wedding 12 years ago?…

No, to my horror, probably only about 5 years ago, on one of the river cruises Blue Scream and I took. It wasn’t for more than an hour, and I can’t imagine why I bothered. Probably because I packed the thing, and I like to wear everything in my suitcase at least once.

Then I remembered a friend’s comment on that blog, and how she disagreed with my assessment. She liked wearing dresses. They make her feel pretty.

Fair enough.

I presented my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t expect anyone else to conform to them. In fact, I’d be worried if they did.

But pretty – there it was again.

I’ve never felt one way or another about myself because of clothes.

Okay, I’ve felt uncomfortable in some clothes, either because they didn’t fit properly or because they didn’t fit the occasion for which I was wearing them.

But pretty? Ugly? Like a princess? Like a virgin – Oh wait, that’s a song!

No, never once.

I’ve looked at clothes and thought, That’s beautiful! Or, You could not pay me enough to touch that, much less consider wearing it.

But clothes have never transferred their beauty to me or how I feel. I guess that’s why I’ve never been a slave to fashion.

But as far as pretty goes, I consider it a false bill of goods women have been sold for centuries. Even though we’re no longer seen in society as purely ornamental, we’re still expected to feel ornamental.

“Oh, but doesn’t wearing sexy underwear make you feel sexy?”

Um, no.

Those lacy bits of butt floss that pass for underwear and padded, wired brassieres on someone who neither needs nor wants wiring or padding are simply uncomfortable. Even if I knew what “sexy” felt like, I couldn’t begin to have any notion of it while wearing such uncomfortable clothing.

Sell sexy if you like. I’m not buying it.

Which brings me to feminism.

Growing up, I always insisted I wasn’t a feminist. My rationale was that I didn’t believe in “girls are better than anyone.” I believed in equality. And I didn’t think feminism was about equality, but rather, about pushing girls to the fore, above everyone else.

I didn’t like being disqualified from doing things because I was, “just a girl.” I didn’t ask for it, so why should it be held against me?

My mother used to frequently say, “There may be people who aren’t as good as you, but no one’s better.”

She never said there were people better than me. I was as good as anyone else. (Irish mothers aren’t known for praising their children.)

Still, I did not see myself as the next Betty Freidan.

It wasn’t until the new wave of feminists, people like Emma Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch in the “I am a feminist” ads that I realized, That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I am a feminist.

It isn’t about girls being better. It’s about equality.

When I was first introduced to the word, I was still enmeshed in being disqualified. My brother, Rob, told me I would never be accepted to Penn State because I wasn’t smart enough – don’t even get me started on the fact that nearly all of my high school classes were what would now be considered AP classes. Then, when I was, in fact, accepted, he told me it was because I was a girl, and the university was trying to get more female students.

I proved I was as good as. But, to my mind, that didn’t make me a feminist.

“Women’s libbers” as they were called at the time were generally the ugly, long, unkempt hair, braless, paisley-clothes-wearing women who carried signs and didn’t know how to use their indoor voices.

I didn’t want to be one of those. Short hair, three-piece-suit with a shirt and tie and Oxford shoes was more my style.

At about that time, Janis Ian’s At Seventeen album came out. The eponymous single was the anthem of every girl from puberty to 30. Everyone of a certain age born without a Y chromosome could identify with the “ugly duckling girl like me” in the song, even the tall-thin-gorgeous women who hadn’t known an ugly day from their Gerber Baby beginnings to prom queen.

Yet, even though I strongly identified with the song, that was the only one on the entire album I never figured out the guitar chords to. I could sing and play all of the other songs a la Janis, which, in their own way, were feminist, but for some reason, I shied away from that one.

I suppose it was too close to the bone.

“To those of us who knew the pain /of valentines that never came/ and those whose names were never called/ when choosing sides for basketball…”

Maybe I wasn’t quite a feminist then.

Perhaps I was still seeking permission to be one.

Perhaps I should spend time lazing in bed considering things more often.

Days of Music Passed

I used to like Billy Joel.

Oh, yes, I can hear the gasps and hisses at the words, used to.

I have the first few of his highly successful albums. But that’s the problem: his albums and singles were so successful they were played almost constantly “back in the day.”

However, “back in the day” continues into the present.

I can’t tell you how many weddings I have attended in which “Just the Way You Are” was the bride and groom’s first dance song. In fact, that song alone has been played so many times, hearing it actually makes me nauseous.

If it were just one song, I could deal with that. But every single, it seemed, became a hit. And every hit was played ad nauseum on the radio. Even without listening to ’70s and ’80s stations, it’s a rare day I don’t hear a Billy Joel song on the radio.

Any song played repeatedly becomes tiresome. It takes several years without hearing it for nostalgia to kick in, so that a song, once liked, that has outworn its welcome, becomes a pleasant memory. Even a band that has never recorded a song I didn’t like (The Moody Blues) has one song that continues to be played far too often (“I’m Just a Singer in a Rock n Roll Band”). It has reached the point where I can no longer bear to hear it. But that song, along with Billy Joel’s hits, have yet to reach the point where they’re no longer played. So nostalgia can’t kick in.

It isn’t that I don’t like anything of Billy Joel’s. My favorite album of his is Nylon Curtain. I have two favorite Billy Joel singles: “Goodnight Saigon” and “Always a Woman.”

But even with the favorites, there’s a problem.

“Goodnight Saigon” is very sad for personal reasons. It brings home the aftermath of the Vietnam War that I saw my brother go through.

“Always a Woman” is a sweet, singable melody. But have you ever listened to the words?

I’m not sure if Billy is singing about a particular former  lover or about “Everywoman”. It speaks to me of the latter. And as I listen to the words, I’m ticking off all the things I don’t do. I’m not like that woman. If you listen closely, all of the things he’s letting go about her because “She’s always a woman to me,” make her sound like an absolute witch with a capital B.

 Pretty as the song is, I can’t imagine any woman feeling complemented by the words.

Maybe I look too closely at song lyrics.

“Just enjoy the song!”

But the words nag: If you’re female, this is you.

To which I say, Anyone ready for a little “Nights in White Satin?”

Retiring Minds

Some people love their jobs so much that they work twice as many hours as everyone else.

I am not one of those people.

I can’t justifiably complain about my job. I have one. And I make a good living.

Ever since graduating with my degree in occupational therapy, I haven’t had to worry about job security or the ability to get a new one when I become dissatisfied with an employer or workplace.

This doesn’t mean I love – or even like – my job. The job is okay. There are some aspects of it I even enjoy.

But this was never what I wanted to do with my life.

In fact, for the past 15 years, I’ve been counting down to retirement.

No, I haven’t been wishing my life away. I don’t look forward to being old. I’ve never even pretended to be older than my actual age. In fact, I’ve often passed for younger.

I might spend a few minutes from time to time thinking about what I’ll do in the future, but the rest of the time I live in the present.

This is not to say I don’t plan for the future. 

I’ve taken a course and taken some pro-active steps to establish myself in voice-over work once I retire. I don’t know whether or not it’ll pan out, but I’m making the effort.

And the beauty of it is, it doesn’t require leaving home. A computer, a good microphone and an engineer on the other end of the phone, and it can be done easily.

That, at least, is closer to the career in acting I always wanted.

There are also my books. I have a file folder full of story beginnings that I never got around to finishing. There are a few very intriguing ones on my thumb drive, as well.

If I’m able to make some extra cash doing voice-overs, I might be able to take a few courses in marketing to learn how to get my books to sell. Publishing on Amazon certainly isn’t doing it.

The hard part will be trying to stay awake through such boring classes. I can’t envisage marketing being remotely interesting.

But retirement is supposed to be about no longer working, isn’t it?

Perhaps for some. I know me well enough to know how lazy I can be. It would be easy to fall into sleeping late and spending the rest of the day playing on Facebook, reading or watching TV.

I don’t want to be that person.

And current science says that staying active, and keeping the mind strong are the keys to living a longer, more fulfilling life.

I’m all for that. The problem is, my full-time job gets in the way.

I love to travel. But that takes more money than a pension, an IRA or Social Security will cover.

I also have more things I want to learn.

I want to be able to play my violin without the cheater strips on it.

I want to spend more time playing my guitar and singing – preferably to an audience.

Learning Welsh, Irish, French, German and Russian are also on the agenda, as well as improving my Spanish and American Sign Language. And I wouldn’t mind learning British Sign Language as well. I have a smattering of all of those languages, but I sometimes substitute a Russian number for a Welsh one, or get the Welsh word for blue and the Irish word for green confused. (For the uninitiated, they’re the same word.)

I’d also love to learn to draw. I have absolutely zero talent in this area, but I’ve spoken to a few people who insist they could teach even me to draw.

That would be awesome. I could then design my own book covers!

And then there are the shelves of books at home that I still haven’t read.

Of course, in between all of this learning and earning, I’d like to spend time riding my bike, and maybe re-learn in-line skating.

If my hearing gets bad enough, perhaps I can return to kickboxing aerobics. I had to leave that because the music got too loud, and I can’t keep earplugs in my ears.

I do hope to be in better physical shape by the time I retire. If so, my fencing whites should finally fit again, and I can return to that sport.  I have no delusions that I’ll do well in it; I’ve never been athletically gifted. But I love playing with pointed sticks.

So, you see, my interests all take money, which means if the voice-over work doesn’t pan out, I may have to return to working at Burger King, unless I want to return to OT.

Last summer I did a dry run for retirement. I had the summer off.

Each evening, I made a list of what I wanted to accomplish the next day, since I had lots of cleaning and getting rid of things that have been taking up space for a while. I made sure I only had a few minor things to do each day: clean off one shelf or drawer; practice piano; complete one Irish lesson; spend a half hour riding my bike; spend a half hour playing guitar; float around the rest of the afternoon in the pool reading a book.

I tried to keep it all limited and assigned a time frame to each activity.

It looked good on paper.

And I did accomplish most of the things I wanted to get done.

But most days it was too hot to ride my bike, and my guitar is still waiting to be taken out of the case.

With few exceptions – it was summer, after all – I didn’t waste my time off.

So, there is hope for my retirement.

The thing is, I’d better live to be 100. I have too many plans for anything less.

The Creepiest Love Songs

Recently, a friend asked me to consider getting together to record an early Carol King song, “One Fine Day.”

To say I loathe Carol King is the understatement of the century. Her album, a “Tapestry,” was considered the end-all and be-all in the early 1970s, when I was in high school.

I hated it.

My religion teacher in 10^th grade plagued me with that album. She would use a song from it at least once a week as our prayer at the beginning of class. Rather than putting me in a prayerful mood, I would spend those agonizing minutes with fingers in ears in a way that she wouldn’t be able to tell.

Of course, when we were asked to suggest something as a prayer, I would volunteer some poetry from a Moody Blues album (at least I was wise enough not to suggest the words from the song, “Timothy Leary.”)

But back to “One Fine Day.” That song was sung by a woman with a similar sort of babyish brassy voice as Carol King’s, which to me is like nails across a blackboard.

And the words!

Shubee do wah!

It tells of a girl pining away for some guy to want her. In the early 1960s you weren’t anything if you didn’t have a man. All you could do was sit and wait (anticipate).

And while I’m not a militant feminist (see my blog for February, 2019), I have never put my life on hold waiting for someone else to fulfill it.  So, the words to the song would have strangled me if I’d tried to sing it.

Having grown up with the love songs of The Beatles, the surfer girl songs of The Beach Boys, and songs that demonstrated the roles of the sexes like “Walk Like a Man” by The Four Seasons, “One Fine Day” wasn’t so out of place – when I was 10.

With the exception of “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini,” that’s what songs were.

Then imagine my shock in 1967, when one of the songs released on the Sgt. Pepper album had the following lyrics:

I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved
Man, I was mean but I'm changing my scene
And I'm doing the best that I can (ooh)

What? MY cute, cuddly Beatles were singing about abusing a woman as if it were the most normal thing in the world? And it’s okay because, “You have to admit it’s getting better?”

What did the Maharishi and all those drugs do to my boys?

The Sgt. Pepper album was what made me walk away from the Beatles in preference to Herman’s Hermits and The Monkees. At least those two bands still sang the fluffy stuff that I loved. “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” was about a guy pining for a girl who dumped him. And “I Wanna Be Free” may have been one of the first I-don’t-want-a-commitment songs, but at least he wanted to be friends. No beatings involved!

With the recent uproar about the Christmas song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” I started thinking about words to songs that are far more sinister (and I don’t mean left-handed!) than they at first appear.

While my personal belief about “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is that no one is being coerced; it’s a simple back and forth flirting song – he wants her to stay, she wants to be talked into it, or she would’ve left as she was free to do – there are more modern songs that, if you actually listen closely to the words, they’re creepy.

Take for example “Want You Back for Good,” by Take That. I’ve always called this song, Emotional Abuse. The music is very soulful and pretty. You can really put your heart into singing it. That is, until you take the time to think about the lyrics.

 “A fist of pure emotion” smacks (no pun intended) of some physical abuse that went on before the lady in question left. But even more telling are the words to the chorus:

Whatever I said, whatever I did
I didn't mean it
I just want you back for good
(Want you back, want you back, want you back for good)
Whenever I'm wrong
Just tell me the song and I'll sing it
You'll be right and understood
(Want you back, want you back, want you back for good)
I want you back for good

In other words, I don’t know what I said that you didn’t like, but I don’t really care. Tell me what you want me to say, and I will. And yeah, yeah, you’re right, I’m wrong (eye roll!). Whatever. I just want you back. I just need to win, because I’m in control – and don’t you forget it.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into the song, but it just takes on the same attitude as all of the TV police dramas where a woman is beaten, finally has the guts to leave (I’ve never understood why, after the first slap they didn’t leave) and the guy comes crawling back, promising the moon, fools her again, and the abuse starts over until someone’s dead.

Having been on the receiving end of some emotional abuse in my younger years, I’m sensitive to anything that sounds like one person trying to control another.

You may or may not accept that that song is about abuse, or even that “Getting Better” might be about a man changing his ways, rather than focusing on just how bad he was. 

And there are other creepy songs, like Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” which is the female version of getting even.

But in this age of Internet stalking, Social Media bullying and other high tech menaces, by far the creepiest song ever recorded has to be Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.”

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you

Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you

Oh can't you see
You belong to me
My poor heart aches
With every step you take

Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you

Oh, and in answer to whether or not I’d record “One Fine Day,” I could, although I don’t like the song. What I suggested instead – that people don’t realize I could also do just as well -- was “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.

 Yeah, I’m my own kind of creepy.