My Music Journal 2025: April 30, 2025

 

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Time: 7:30 AM
Song: In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company
Artist: The Dead South
Mode of Consumption: Listening to a mixed CD on the way to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4eMxLQtSdgxdA1Hs6D2YuN?si=484bde6684af4bd4

We leave for vacation tonight, a five-day swing down to Nashville along with various stops along the way. We have two concerts lined up, and a bevy of other activities planned. It should be fun.

There is one snag. I’ve come down with a cold. I felt a tickle in my throat after mowing the lawn on Sunday, but hoped it was only allergies.  

That night I slept well until about 1 AM, and then fitfully until waking at 5:45. Monday and Tuesday I was in a bit of fog, and then on Tuesday afternoon the snot arrived.

I went on the offensive with decongestants, Vix, and orange juice. Today, I am feeling a bit better, and I am not quite as tired.

Illness on vacation is sort of a thing for Jodi and me.

Before COVID, Jodi came down with some sort of infection as we were about to leave. Our first stop was a U2 concert at the United Center in Chicago. She had a bad cough, and we could kind of tell that the person beside her was not thrilled. They might have even moved down a seat or two, and we couldn’t blame them.

Jodi’s had the sniffles a few times on our vacations, and I have at least once before, I think.

Part of the reason is that we usually take our trips in the spring, when drastic shifts in temperatures lead to colds. The major reason we vacation in the spring is that it makes sense with how Jodi’s company runs its vacation time. The other is that it usually allows us to hit tourist spots before the summer season floods them with people.

So, we’ll take off later today, and I am hoping I’ll get a good night’s rest at our first stop, so that I can hit vacation tomorrow in full swing.

My Music Journal 2025: April 29, 2025

 

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Time: 7:55 AM
Song: Sedona
Artist: Houndmouth
Mode of Consumption: Listening to a mixed CD on the way to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/2MQhTbX792AT6YyzwLz9dt?si=190e14ca8f9141d9

Whenever I drive our Ford F-150 to work, I pick some CDs out to listen to. Usually, I drive our Jeep, which doesn’t have a CD player, tape player or 8-track. 

Instead, you’re expected to pay for Sirius or some other streaming service. 

I plug my phone in most days and cycle about through about 3,500 songs. I could use Spotify, but then I have the occasional pauses when I lose signal and since I use the free version, I will suffer through the same few commercials over and over. 

This morning I picked a CD case filled with burned mixes that range from mixes made a year or two ago to those made in the early 2000s when we were pirating songs from places like Napster. 

There is something comforting about physical media. Clearly, I like it since I have about 500 vinyl records. 

I like CDs and cassettes, too. There is nothing like putting a mix in that you made twenty-some years ago and remembering what track was going to play next. It’s even more rewarding when you are surprised with a tune you’ve forgotten you ever had. 

I play these CDs including just regular albums by my favorite artists, and I am often transported to long car rides on family vacations or hanging out with friends, driving around the dark rural roads of Whiteside and Carroll Counties. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 28, 2025

 

Monday, April 28, 2025

Time: 7:35PM
Song: Lonely Boy
Artist: The Black Keys
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Spotify.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5G1sTBGbZT5o4PNRc75RKI?si=57ce0df8c43b440a

I just spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to access tickets to a concert we are going to on Saturday in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry.

At the risk of sounding like an old man, sometimes I wonder why we think technology makes things easier. Once upon a time, you would buy tickets to an event and either they mailed them to you, or you picked them up at the window. Now that normally isn’t even an option. 

Instead, you have to download an app, but before that you have to setup an account with its own personal password (one of about a thousand we must all try to remember or risk saving in our devices and then having stolen on the interwebs), and then they have to email you to verify that account, and then they need to text a code. 

AI is going to win by simply nickeling and diming our time away with hoops to jump through in order to receive basic necessities that once took no time at all. 

My parents went to a wedding this last weekend, and they said the hotel they stayed at required a QR code scan just to use the elevator. I am sure it’s in the name of security, but I sense it’s the type of hotel where security was never really that much in question. 

When I sign into my email account, it now asks if I want to use fingerprint or face recognition technology to make signing in quicker. I didn’t realize it took so long before. My sense is once they force this onto us, we’ll still need to enter a password and then at some point they’ll add the sending of a text to enter a code. All for me to get to an email where other than checking for writing submission responses, I never receive any messages from actual people. 

Maybe we’ll wake up one morning and realize that most of this stuff isn’t making anything better, but I doubt it. We’ll just find a way to add another layer of codes and passwords.

My Music Journal 2025: April 27, 2025

 

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Time: 4:15 PM
Song: Ring of Fire
Artist: Social Distortion
Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio on way home to Jodi’s Aunt Bettys. 

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3hKScGxI28Zor6zJ7JL7aS?si=115e5892f7e04633

The radio station we are listening to is promoting a concert by Social Distortion in the Quad Cities.

“I like some of their songs, but I should check out more,” Jodi says. “I don’t really know anything about them.” 

I had to admit that hearing this cover was the first time that I realized that I was listening to Social Distortion. 

We are going to Jodi’s Aunt Bettys to pick up the last load of stuff from a garage sale that Betty and Jodi had put on during the weekend. I had included a fair portion of my vinyl album inventory, and fared better than expected. Although not well enough to make the crates feel lighter when I was carrying them down to the basement. 

One plus is that I had finished the shelves I had been building (and painting if you look back to a couple posts last week), so I had a better storage situation to put the remaining albums back. 

I haven’t done a final total on the number of albums I sold, but I know that I am about $140 for the weekend. Not a bad take. 

Maybe someday a Social Distortion album will cross my path. I type this not knowing if they even have any of their albums on vinyl. Yet, it would be one of those cool finds. I’ve had a few like that including a Lagwagon album that I resold this weekend. 

I like albums like that because I know that there isn’t a huge demand for it, but I suspect those who do want it, are going to be willing to pay for it. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 26, 2025

 

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Time: 7:45 PM
Song: Turn the Page
Artist: Bob Seger
Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio on way home from birthday dinner. 

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3P2XAL8UpPBM3nfvuEjHHE?si=cf669e9d6a0e4ebe

On a short, rural blacktop north of Sterling, we drove home after my birthday dinner. 

“Maybe they will play this?” Jodi says. 

By “they,” she means Metallica, who we will be seeing this coming Thursday in Nashville. Metallica covered this song on their covers album from the late 90s known as “Garage, Inc.” This was one of the singles they pushed for that album along with a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Whiskey in a Jar.” 

I haven’t a clue what sort of set list to expect from Metallica. I assume it will be a smattering of the last 40s years. A little of the hard and fast sound from the early 80s, mixed with a heavy dosage with their more “pop” standards from the 90s, along with whatever they have been doing recently. 

I prefer Seger’s version of this song, partly because it’s the original and partly because Seger’s voice is hard to beat in my book. 

I turned 43 today. I did laundry. I swept the floor. I went to a celebration for life for Kay Clark, a member of our writing group, and followed that with some yardwork. 

Jodi and I finished the day with a dinner at Kelly’s, a local Irish-Mexican bar, and then made some obligatory stops at Jo-Ann’s, Farm & Fleet, and Menards. As far as birthdays go, it was all that I needed. 

I guess I’ve reached the age where I don’t need a lot. When I was kid, I liked a party with lots of presents. When I was a little older, there were some all-night benders. 

We went to bed at 9:30. I read for a half hour, and by a few minutes after 10, I was probably snoring softly. 

A guy my age needs his rest to hit the next day. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 25, 2025

 

Friday, April 25, 2025

Time: 7:50 AM
Song: Don’t Go Away
Artist: Oasis
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on the way to work.

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5d3GTM2ynSLRHgDIdKVZ6Z?si=a7f3b86c969449c7

A few months ago, Oasis made headlines after announcing a reunion tour featuring Liam and Noel Gallagher, their first since the band’s breakup in 2009. 

People seemed really excited about it. Others pondered if it was a risk to buy an expensive ticket only for the volatile brothers to squabble away the tour before they reached your town. 

I didn’t get that interested. That’s sort of how I have always been with Oasis. 

I remember in junior high an acquaintance was really into Oasis, and it was the first time I heard them compared to the Beatles. I was in full Beatles mode at that point, and thought it absurd that a band in their first decade of existence would boldly declare themselves in the same league. 

There were even a few songs I remember hearing that were clearly attempts to mimic the Fab Four. 

It soured me on Oasis a bit. I liked some of their songs fine, but I didn’t hear anything that stood out that much from the crowd of 90s rock bands much less something that put them on a tier of best rock bands of all time. 

I’ve often wondered if the acrimony between Liam and Noel Gallagher (By the way, I can never remember which is the singer and which is the guitarist for some reason) was purposely exaggerated to expand the lore of the band. I am sure their issues are real, I am just not sure they haven’t indulged in the feud to build to something like this upcoming tour. 

It’s a bit of Beatles thing to do, right? After that split, Lennon and McCartney spent part of the 70s feuding with jabs in the media and allusions in lyrics. It fueled the will-they, won’t they reunion fervor, and heck, the supposed reconciliation between the two prior to Lennon’s death has had fans wondering if a reunion was destined for the 80s. 

I don’t know. I am probably giving the Gallaghers too much credit. They probably have been really mad at each other, and their own fandom for the Beatles probably overblown. 

They are a good rock band. That should be good enough.

My Music Journal 2025: April 24, 2025

 

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Time: 4:27
Song: Wasteland
Artist: Dead Man Winter
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Spotify “Liked” songs playlist

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5Wybb9BQ6aEWZgghuzvrTX?si=fba070738d9c4890

I wrote a story once about a support group meeting in a gymnasium. The catch was that each of the characters were people from popular songs.

For example: The point of view of the story is that of a woman named Eleanor, who is Eleanor Rigby, and she is consumed by her loneliness.

I probably make about a half dozen references to songs, have a little fun expanding a bit from what we hear in the lyrics of songs. While it’s never been published, I find it to be an interesting piece. The kicker of the story being is that they are drawn to the group by a mysterious man only known as “The Listener.”

He concludes the meeting by telling the characters that this would likely be their last meeting as he is ill. It concludes with him accepting a dance with a woman named Mary Jane. A bit on the nose, I admit.

I believe I wrote this in response to a music prompt where you were supposed to express how music shapes lives, or something to that effect. I entered it in a contest, and I think it won honorable mention.

It’s one of dozens of stories I am wondering what to do with. I suppose they are lost in the wasteland for the time being. Waiting to find life in some publication or maybe in my potential short story collection.

My Music Journal 2025: April 23, 2025

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Time: 7:50 AM
Song: If I Ever Leave This World Alive
Artist: Flogging Molly
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle while driving to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6l6UyIBwaNibzWZKfGkmJW?si=2b03f41f12a64ad8

I hit the halfway point of my drive, and think, isn’t this the perfect midweek song? I mean it’s two days into the work week, and there’s three more to go. 

It drips with that angst of wanting nothing more than to be free of responsibility. Yet, it also has this underlying current of hope, that if we can just make it through today, then we will almost be to the weekend. 

I think I first encountered this song in 2016. That was my first year after switching jobs from the newspaper to proposal writing. 

That was a hard year for me. I was a bit lost, having spent the better part of the last five years or so completely consumed by work. Now, I was at a gig where I was in complete learning mode, which sometimes led to long stretches of not knowing what the heck I was supposed to be doing to occupy my time. 

The issues didn’t end at five every evening. 

All of a sudden, I had free time, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. Jodi had her own routines, having grown accustomed to having the evenings to herself since I worked evenings at the newspaper. 

So, what to do? 

I worried maybe I wasn’t wired any longer for being at home at night. I needed that nightly deadline. That constant push. 

I suppose I was a bit depressed during that year. Maybe even felt like I wasn’t sure I’d make it out alive. 

But I did. I started finding my interests. I got used to my new work flow, new co-workers. 

And in a blink, it’s been almost ten years. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 22, 2025

 

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Time: 6:30 PM
Song: Real World
Artist: Big & Rich
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle while painting shelves in shed.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/0KcCCRdjjXfjWilwJiigr7?si=2665dff4b64d491a

We visited our money manager at Edward Jones this afternoon to talk about what is suddenly feeling like the not-too-distant future: Retirement.

Jodi and I both have our eyes on retiring by the time we are fifty-five. I turned forty-three on Sunday. Twelve years, max. It’s not a far-fetched goal either. 

It’s hard to believe, especially since I still sometimes find myself wondering what I am going to do when I grow up. 

When I was a kid, I thought maybe I’d hit it big by playing in the major leagues. Pretty quickly, I realized I wasn’t that good at baseball, and while I was a more natural football player, I was neither fast enough nor big enough to make that a reasonable goal. I dreamed of becoming a rock star, but really had no musical training or talent. My best shot was writing, and it took me a long time to get confidence to show anyone that.

Through high school I flipped through career books and could never really decide on what I wanted to do, especially for thirty or forty years of my life. 

In that regard, I suppose it’s worked out. I spent eleven years as a sports journalist. It was both rewarding and challenging, exciting and exhausting, and ultimately something I couldn’t do forever. 

The last decade I’ve been in the world of proposal writing. It’s a completely different vibe, and with any luck, I’ll be able to keep this gig for twelve more years. 

I guess I feel like I’ve been living by the “fake until I make it” motto. I still dream of becoming a bestselling author, even though I suspect if I ever publish something, it’ll be received with little to no acclaim. 

The good thing is it looks like that won’t be earth shattering from a financial aspect, so long as the current world’s economic climate doesn’t completely implode. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 21, 2025

 

Monday, April 21, 2025

Time: 7:40 AM
Song: Some Days
Artist: Wheat
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on way to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4NCK4hiEiDanKc02HAYpKv?si=a9d665890c084965

Most of my commute is cutting through backroads of rural Whiteside and Lee County between 7:30 and 8 AM. Needless to say, traffic is generally an afterthought.

This morning it was a little different. The journey from our house to Route 40, a five mile or so stretch, I had two cars in front of me and two cars riding tightly behind me. Rural roads can be interesting because some drivers will think they are on a highway and will pass no matter if it’s a passing zone or if they can really see very far in the opposite lane. Our road has several hills where oncoming traffic can remain hidden until the last moment, and that’s not counting the plethora of critters that can dart in front of cars.

After the jog on Route 40, a car turns onto the next section of Fulfs at Oak Knoll cemetery before me, and a black SUV is riding my rear.

I wait at two out of three crossroads for traffic between Rte. 40 and Prairieville. I finally find myself alone on the road after crossing Palmyra Road at Prairieville, driving the last 10 miles to work without other vehicles nearby.

When I get into Dixon, I turn onto 4^th Avenue and as that road inclines up a hill through a residential section, a fox scoots across the road a hundred yards in front of me. He’s going fast, and disappears into a small thicket of trees.

It’s a Monday morning, but it appears everybody is up to meet the new week.

My Music Journal 2025: April 20, 2025

 

 

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Time: 4:30 PM
Song: Heroes
Artist: David Bowie
Mode of Consumption: Playing the game Encore at my family’s Easter celebration.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7Jh1bpe76CNTCgdgAdBw4Z?si=5be122db479f4e77

Over the last few years, my family has started playing a game on Christmas and Easter called “Encore,” because it’s essentially game we can all play. We divide into two teams, usually with five or six people on each side. 

The game consists of drawing cards with words or categories and then you need to sing lyrics of songs at least eight words long that either contain that word or category.

With ages ranging from 81 to 13, the songs used can be pretty different. My Dad can pull some obscure old songs where most of us just nod, acknowledging they must be real songs because the lyrics make sense and he sings in tune. The first team that can’t provide a song loses that round.

One example is that we were assigned the category of “Royalty.”

We went back and forth a few times before I had a lyric in my head, but under the pressure of the game and the noise of other people singing other songs, I struggled to figure what the song was and what came next. 

All I had was: “I will be king.” 

I even had a rudimentary tune (or at least as close to a tune that a musically declined person like me can do). I lean, over and whisper the line to Jodi. 

We think about it, and then it hits. 

“And you will be queen.”

Although as I look at the lyrics now, I am not sure we did have them exactly right. Oh well, half the game is the other players realizing some word is wrong and calling you on it. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 19, 2025

 

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Time: 9:30 AM
Song: Reunion
Artist: Collective Soul
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s while painting pieces for shelf in our shed. 

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/27SumQMLlRgVS7RqO7cpk6?si=06810cde1efa4f31

My first job out of high school was working on the paint crew at National Manufacturing in Sterling. The factory was nearing its 100^th anniversary so it had hired a bevy of recent high school grads to give different areas of the factory a new coat of paint. 

I spent the summer working along my best friend, Jake, primarily painting the waste treatment tanks at both the Sterling and Rock Falls locations. 

One of the colors we used was a turquoise blue. Coincidentally, I am using a similar colored paint for half the pieces of the shelf I am constructing for our basement to store excess vinyl records. The materials are comprised of four-by-fours we received from someone we work with at the county fair and barn boards that Lee dropped by before his passing. It’s wood that’s seen many years, but this could be the first coat of paint. 

Painting things always reminds me of that summer at National. It was a summer filled with anxiety and angst and all the things that naturally go along with venturing out into the real world. It was also filled with massive amounts of boredom, dipping brushes and rollers into paint trays. Cleaning paint off hands and elbows and everywhere else. Days starting at 6 AM before the sun was up. Packed lunches. Steel-toe boots. Silly games where Jake and I quizzed each other rock songs to pass the time. 

I am sure more than once I wondered where I would be in six months, six years, and maybe even 25 years. That’s where it’s nearing now. A quarter century of living. I’ve slapped paint on walls and furniture and numerous other things over the years. 

I look back and I was getting a new coat paint myself. A new look for the next part of my life. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 18, 2025

 

Friday, April 18, 2025

Time: 10:57 AM
Song: All My Friends
Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Spotify while working.

 Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/2Ud3deeqLAG988pfW0Kwcl?si=c895ed2e44f84097

This song is 7 minutes and 42 seconds long. I’ve always been curious about song lengths, especially when they get longer than five minutes.

This song is consistently the same all the way through. No major movements or shifts in tone or speed. No guitar or drum solos. I don’t know much about this group, but it feels a little like they are mimicking a club sound, where songs can sort of linger on and on with the beat carrying those dancing.

This isn’t “Bohemian Rhapsody” where there are clear shifts, musical breaks, operatic interludes, all sorts of whistles and bells to keep the listener interested. It’s not something like “Free Bird” where the guitar solo can keep going and going and nobody really seems to mind. The long-song lineage is vast and sprinkled with all sorts of approaches.

I wonder if a songwriter sits down and thinks I want to write a long song today. Is it driven by the lyrics created? Do they need the time and space to tell a complete story? Or are there elements of musical theory that mandate a song spill from the three to five-minute expectation of popular music.

Is it harder to write long or to distill ideas down to shorter times?

As a writer, longer stories sound like they would be a bigger challenge, but sometimes it easier just to type away at a long piece without concern for constraints. A shorter piece demands precision to hit the points necessary to deliver a complete story.

I imagine it depends on the artist. Some probably sit down with a distinct vision for the song they want to create, and others probably have an idea and tinker until they feel the piece is complete.

My Music Journal 2025: April 17, 2025

 

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Time: 6:05 PM
Song: Ballad of the Green Berets
Artist: Sgt. Barry Sadler
Mode of Consumption: Listening to vinyl Ballad of the Green Berets & Songs of America’s Fighting Men

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/0yjNmllr3Ew6f97TqPuEqa?si=99c4f751e27d4b6a

The title track concludes, a song Jodi and I both know well. The tracks continue on this chest-thumping, patriotic collection. Here are a few of the titles from this 1966 release:

• When This Cruel War is Over
• The U.S.A.
• L.B.J. and Liberty

“Well, this is a little different than listening to ‘Hair’.” Jodi said. Then she starts singing “Initials,” from the soundtrack of the acclaimed hippie play from 1968.

These two records prove something that people today don’t want to admit. This country has been divided for a long time. It would be too easy to say that it started in the 1960s and the division caused by the Vietnam War.

When you really look at history, you know it’s not so simple as that.

Read Kerouac and he shows that there was counterculture pushing against the establishment in the 1950s, and the establishment was pushing back.

Read “The Grapes of Wrath,” and you get a pretty good sense there was division in the country then between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots.” The displaced farmers of the dust bowl treated as lower class as they traversed the country looking for work.

Jim Crow. Reconstruction. The Civil War.

The list goes on.

This country is many things, but the notion of being united has always been a myth. It’s a congregation of thoughts, beliefs and ideas often pushing against each other rather than melting into a pot.

So, look around, and think it’s never been like this, and be comforted that it’s more like that it’s always been this way.

Either way, keep in mind, this too will pass. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 16, 2025

 

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Time: 6:05 AM
Song: Wild World
Artist: Cat Stevens
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s while working out.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7mjSHL2Eb0kAwiKbvNNyD9?si=4254f0ab21ca47fa

Last night at Write On, we had a writing workout. Each of us had to include three poetic devices from an article we studied into whatever we decided to write. The three that I used were personification, onomatopoeia and allusion.

Here is what I came up with:

Aaron twisted the key in the ignition, stunted swears dying under his breath. The Oldsmobile hiccupped, and coughed, and at last, moaned in final defeat before falling silent. It’s maroon paint job almost paled as if blood were draining from its engine rather than oil. On the rural highway’s shoulder, Aaron placed his forehead to the steering wheel, hoping the proximity of his brain to the flesh of the car would somehow send signals of encouragement from him to it.

Inhaling one last time to calm his nerves, he turned the key.

Click.

He turned it back and tried once more.

Click.

Nothing more. Just click and silence.

Aaron placed his palms onto the steering wheel, if only he were Jesus and the ’89 Oldsmobile was Lazarus.  In a jiffy, he’d be cruising down the road, windows down with the life he was escaping disappearing a mile at a time in the rearview mirror.

Only one car had passed since he was forced to pull over an hour earlier with smoke billowing from under the hood. The steamy afternoon had yielded to a balmy, still evening. To each side of the road, green cornstalks clawed upward from the dusty earth, reaching toward the sky in hopes of pulling any drips of moisture back down to its roots. 

He estimated it was at least 30 miles to the next town on this road, unless he retraced his route. Jordan was only ten miles the direction he had come, but it would feel like ten miles at seventy percent incline. The only rescue there was Jesse or Ingrid or Pa. The three people he had intended on never seeing again.

Of course, 30 miles ahead was a greater distance than Phillippides covered from Marathon to Athens. If Aaron made it, he doubted it would inspire a couple thousand years of runners. And, what if he did make it, who would help him there? He knew no one, had little prospects, and next to no money.

His only hope was Melody and she was still hundreds of miles away. Why couldn’t the Oldsmobile survive one more drive.

He closed his eyes, turned the key.

Click.

Throwing open the door, he stepped from the car. He peered backward. He gazed forward. Neither headlights or taillights in either direction. He stepped to the roadway, the heat of the concrete penetrating the rubber soles of his tennis shoes.

The sun was going down.

Which way should he go?

My Music Journal 2025: April 15, 2025

 

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Time: 4:22 PM
Song: Everybody Knows
Artist: Leonard Cohen
Mode of Consumption: Playing on the trailer for trailer for 1990 movie “Pump Up the Volume.”

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/60s0QWaOZ2UTzqdIHBCt3x?si=452658c0de1449a7

I complete a task at work and decide to pull up YouTube before diving into the next venture. For some reason, one of the suggestions is the trailer for the 1990 movie, “Pump Up the Volume.”

So, I remember seeing this movie. I doubt it was 1990, as I would have been eight, but it must have been shortly thereafter. Let’s say I saw this movie by 1992. Perhaps my sister convinced my parents to rent it. Christian Slater was a pretty big star in that era.

When this song starts playing, I instantly recognize it. Not that it’s a song I know, but I know I heard this song in that movie. It’s distinctive. It’s dark. I think it likely fits the motif of the movie. That’s the point, right.

I also remember the movie because I believe there is a scene where the female lead bares her breasts, and I am thinking that this was probably one of the first times I was exposed to such a scene. Look, I was a boy, and most boys remember such things.

As I watch the trailer, I am reminded more of the plot. Slater is a shy high school boy who happens to run some sort of pirate radio show at night anonymously. I feel like he gets shut down in the end, perhaps there is a death in there, too. The ending doesn’t stick out in my mind as much as the boobs.

If memory serves, Slater plays the shy loner in another film with Marrisa Tomei. In that one, he falls for Tomei, playing a waitress, I believe, but he has some sort of heart defect and dies. Otherwise, I remember Slater for playing the part of Kevin Costner’s half-brother in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” and that he was in a movie called “Broken Arrow” that I remember my mother rented twice (unintentionally), but that now I don’t remember anything about.

Considering I might watch one or maybe two movies a month now, it’s amazing to think about all the movies I watched as a kid. It wasn’t unusual for us to rent two on a Saturday night and watch both. Then there were likely Friday night movies also. That continued pretty much through high school.

It’s something that I remember these bits and pieces of these movies I haven’t seen in thirty years.

My Music Journal 2025: April 14, 2025

 

Monday, April 14, 2025

Time: 5:03 PM
Song: Apple Tree Blues 
Artist: Caamp
Mode of Consumption: Listening to a mix CD on the way home from work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7qB3O5pjTCpuEpW98jrRHD?si=5333a2b9914f497b

A few years ago, I wrote a story for a competition from the point of view of a teenage girl who is sitting around a campfire with her boyfriend, his best friend and his best friend’s new girlfriend. 

The title of the story was “Things I Wanted to Say,” and we find out what the girl wants to say throughout the night and then the often-trite things she actually says. 

The girl is intelligent, likely the smartest of the group, and yet she continues to make poor decisions including staying in a relationship with a boy she cares little for while also having a physical relationship with his best friend. 

I was rereading this story today, and still couldn’t decide if this story had value or if it’s self-indulgent drivel. Not to mention my tense use should get pulled over, it’s weaving all over the place. 

This exercise is what I hope is the start of excavating my catalog of stories and possibly compiling the best into a collection. I have published four or five stories, and I won the recent Iron Pen contest. But, just because stories are publishable, doesn’t mean they belong in the same collection. 

The issue here is I’ve never done this. I have read short story collections, but never spent much time thinking about sequencing and themes. 

I suppose it’s a bit like a playlist. I’ve made plenty of those. 

I just have to figure out what it is that I want to say.

My Music Journal 2025: April 13, 2025

 

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Time: 8:30 AM
Song: Raspberry Beret 
Artist: Hindu Love Gods
Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio on the way to church.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/0g9Rr9ny4Ps8bhSVvggm45?si=4735d4b322844f8a

This song comes on and after a moment, Jodi laughs. We know this song, but it’s not the Prince version that we know best. There’s something a little goofy about it.

Jodi hits the button on the radio that identifies songs: Hindu Love Gods. 

“The vocals sound like Warren Zevon,” I say. 

Jodi’s driving so I pull my phone from my pocket. Sure thing, the Hindu Love Gods was a side project of members of R.E.M. and sometimes Warren Zevon. 

I am sure there will be someone out there that will be incredulous that I didn’t know about this mashup. Well, it was released in 1990, and I would have been eight, so that’s probably part of the reason. 

 Much like John Prine, Warren Zevon is someone that I have discovered in my thirties and forties. He’s an artist that blends witty writing, humor, and usually interesting instrumentation. While Zevon is best known for “Werewovles of London,” there are plenty of other gems in his catalog. 

And, apparently, he did one clever side project with the darlings of 1980s college radio: R.E.M.

Check it out if you get a minute. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 12, 2025

 

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Time: 12:15 PM
Song: Too Sweet 
Artist: Hozier
Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio on the way back from an estate sale in Forreston, IL

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4IadxL6BUymXlh8RCJJu7T?si=446248e816a642c8

“What does taking your whiskey neat mean?” Jodi asks. She’s a complete non-drinker. I’ve mainly been a beer drinker during my adult life. 

“I think it means without ice,” I reply. I don’t know why I know that, but she Googles it, and it’s basically drinking whiskey at room temperature. 

Outside of a couple sips of Boones County Farm wine offered by my parents once and awhile when I was growing up, I didn’t drink alcohol until my freshman year of college. I suppose if I had really wanted to, I could have found booze in high school, but it never was something that really motivated me. 

In college, my roommate Jake and I obtained a bottle of Schnapps and a bottle of vodka early in our fall semester. I don’t remember exactly how that came to be. Had to be procured through someone else on our dorm floor, but the specifics are gone to my memory. 

We were light drinkers at that point, and not particularly sophisticated. We mixed the vodka with Hawaiian punch. I am not even sure what we mixed the Schnapps with, which leads me to believe that maybe Jake had more of that than I did. 

There were a couple parties that year I know we went to where we drank beer, but for the most part, I wasn’t a big drinker until my sophomore year. That’s when I moved in with a fella named Erik, and when most of my heaviest drinking occurred, but for the most part, that was beer drinking. Bud Light, specifically. 

I’ll have the occasional mixed drink now. A Moscow Mule in honor of my late father-in-law once a year or so. Maybe some apple cider mixed with caramel vodka and/or Fireball. 

But, I am not a whiskey neat kind of a guy. I like my drinks cold. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 11, 2025

 

Friday, April 11, 2025

Time: 3:08 PM
Song: I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous
Artist: Frank Turner
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Spotify.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1ZdqkFeP6fTzwJG9nfSvTd?si=b801defcd42b4d51

My freshman year at NIU I took a literature course. It wasn’t a General Education course, as I had tested out of having to take those in English. It was like a half step above those. I wanted to take an English course as I was trying to decide if that would be my major. Frankly, I look back at that time in life and realize now just how haphazardly I made decisions.

The course was taught by Professor Wiliam Baker, an elderly man who I believe was from Scotland. He was fiery. He was gruff. He seemed enamored with challenging this course comprised of bleary-eyed freshmen. I am pretty sure it was an 8 AM class.

One of the pieces we studied was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot. I remember being intimidated because I don’t frankly remember studying much poetry in high school. I suspect like grammar; poetry was starting to get phased out of the average curriculum. Both grammar and poetry are difficult subjects for most students, making the day tougher on both teacher and student, and those looking at the big picture feel like they are things that most students don’t really need either much in the modern world.

It’s unfortunate but true. I grew up in the era where math and science were preached to any student considering college. I remember classmates doubling up on math courses so that they would get the requisite calculus taken during their senior year. I wonder how beneficial that turned out for most of them.

It’s a shame, because poetry and grammar also require a deeper level of thinking and reasoning. Just the sort of things that seem lacking when I look around the world.

Anyways, as far as poetry goes, I felt defeated. I hadn’t much clue what these were poets were getting at.

Still, there was something about Prufrock and Eliot. I didn’t understand it, but it felt different than Shakespeare’s sonnets, or even Milton’s epic poetry that I’d encounter later in my college career. Prufrock is a puzzle with opening lines I remember to this day:

“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;”

My Music Journal 2025: April 10, 2025

 

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Time: 7:25 PM
Song: Thrash Unreal
Artist: Against Me!
Mode of Consumption: Listening to our downloads on Apple Music.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3c3XnCPwxGhQEHFxxjQcWe?si=6e1b97fecf384601

For the last seven or eight months, I have basically been running our Write On group. Our former leader, Kay, had been looking to step back from her role, and then sadly she became ill before passing away in March.

One of the things we talked about with the change is how we wanted to structure the meetings. We concluded it would be good to look at different pieces of published writing to try and glean inspiration or intuit writing devices, skills and concepts from them. So, one of our two meetings each month is dedicated to this, and we call it the “Craft Conversation.” 

So, each month I scour my personal library looking for a short story, or nonfiction essay, or poem, or whatever happens to catch my eye. Sometimes it comes easy. Maybe it’s part of a book I am reading. Maybe I remember studying a certain piece way back in college. 

For the first meeting in May, I decided to scan a portion of Stephen King’s “On Writing.” It’s the first two sections of his chapter entitled “Toolbox.” I am scanning the few pages while this song plays. 

I picked this section for a couple reasons. 

• Our last meeting included an article about poetic devices that can be used in prose. So, these devices are all things we can start including in our writer’s toolbox. 
• We are also going to celebrate my birthday during the first meeting in May, so I picked a selection that I remember enjoying and finding helpful. 
• Finally, the entire book does a wonderful job of illustrating the writing ideas and concepts. I think it will be helpful for the members of our group. 

So, I scan a page, and it’s talking about vocabulary, the value of powerful vocabularies and those that write powerful sentences with simple structures and words. 

The song hits its chorus. 

“No mother ever dreams that her daughter’s going to grow up to be a junkie.” 

My Music Journal 2025: April 9, 2025

 

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Time: 7:50 AM
Song: Angel From Montgomery
Artist: Bonnie Raitt
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on drive to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6JssQFiBCi6ZcE6060S9A7?si=8692b408ef434647

There’s a line in this song: 

“How the hell can a person
Go to work in the mornin’
And come home in the evenin’
And have nothin’ to say.”

First, John Prine lyrics with Bonnie Raitt’s voice is just a good way to start the day. 

Second, sometimes lines like that worry me because I am the kind of guy that can leave in the morning and come back home and really have nothing to say. Maybe I’m boring. Okay, there’s no maybe about it. I’m boring.

I’m just not a talkative guy, and while sometimes that’s true for people when they are young and then they grow out of it, I actually find that I have less to say as a I get older. Most of the time, I prefer not to say anything at all. I’m not into chit-chat. I don’t carry conversations. I say what I need to say and rarely anything more. 

I like to think I get it from my Grandpa Reed. He was a quiet fellow who pulled off silent and stoic with ease. Of course, he had seventy some years of life by the time I met him, that included the daily grind of dairy farming and whatever atrocities he encountered in war to add depth to his silence. My silence, I regret to inform you, I find to be pretty shallow. 

Sorry for those disappointed that I’m not opining on the next Great American Novel when you’re with me and I’m not saying anything. I assure you, I am just as disappointed. 

My Music Journal 2025: April 8, 2025

 

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Time: 7:40 AM
Song: Crazy Train
Artist: Ozzy Osbourne
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on drive to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7ACxUo21jtTHzy7ZEV56vU?si=4e7d631f51934df2

The morning started with adulting. Contacting our HVAC person because our furnace was leaking and then heading to work.

“Crazy Train” started to play, and I had a few memories jump to mind.

The first was that I remember sitting in my truck in high school, I think in the Northland Mall parking lot, and this song came on. The opening salvo made me jump. I don’t know why. I believe I was listening to a tape, and I knew the song was coming, it just really hit that time. The nefarious sound sent a quick chill up my spine.

The second is that during high school, professional wrestling’s Attitude Era was popular. I had been a big fan of wrestling as kid in the late 80s and early 90s. As I got older, and the product’s target audience remained younger, I drifted away.

But, about 1996, the approach by the two major wrestling companies changed to an older demographic, namely young men and teenagers. My closest friends (Jake and Kyle) and I were hooked on it also.

That included an influx of video games on Nintendo 64. These games featured a “create a character” function, and we developed a faction known as “The Devil Train.” Our characters were Jeffrey Diablo, Lucifer Menedez, and Hades McKenzie. It’s crazy that I can remember that all these years later. While each character changed looks depending on the game, I think we stuck to red and black outfit colors.

I’ll give you one guess what song we wanted to use for our entrance. Of course, it wasn’t on the game, but if it ever became real life, we would have demanded paying the licensing fee.