My Music Journal 2025 - Thursday, January 9, 2025

 

Time: 5:41 PM
Song: Lullaby 
Artist: Shawn Mullins
Mode of Consumption: MP3 – Driving between Princeton and Dixon, IL listening to MP3s on shuffle from my phone.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/70L4pGAmYv0pTADrgsIxpI?si=6d42308a32d346fa

We’re coming back from Springfield, and Ty mentions this is a good song for him since most of it is spoken word. 

I think back to a different car ride about twenty-plus years earlier when this song was playing. 

It was a cold night, probably January or February, and I was driving a new girlfriend across Sterling. I don’t remember where we were coming from or where we were going. I imagine a group of us had or were going out to eat on a Friday or Saturday night, and that was the reason for the trip. It was probably one of the first times we’d been alone, at least alone in a situation where talking was the only option. 

“Lullaby” came on and she mentioned liking the song. I don’t know if I said anything. I remember liking the song, but also that it was reaching a point of oversaturation on popular music radio stations, so I might have been getting tired with it. 

I don’t remember being nervous, or tired, or anything. I just remember not having anything to say. Clearly, she didn’t know what else to say either. We had reached an impasse. 

The reality is that I am quiet person. I don’t talk for the sake of talking. I might have been thinking about the song for all I remember. About the parties with Bob Seger and Sonny and Cher. I might have wanted to just sing along, but wasn’t that comfortable with this girl yet to sing in front of her. It’s possible I was thinking about a hundred of other things in my head, and frankly, wasn’t interested in finding out her opinion on them. 

Or, I was just driving and not thinking. I remember the ride, but not what was going through my head.

Either way she noticed the quiet and drew a conclusion. I think I even got a message in the days following through a friend that she wanted me to talk more. Well, that just wasn’t me, and shortly thereafter, I was back on the dating market. (Not really, dating just wasn’t that high a priority for me as a teenager). 

But I often wonder, what if I had something to say that night? Because, even as a quiet person, I do get in moods for witty banter or heartfelt conversation. Would that have made a difference? 

Would we have dated months instead of weeks? Years instead of months? 

I don’t believe it was a relationship destined for the long haul, but what ripples could that have caused, what different steps in my path.

Would I have ended up on a road between Princeton and Dixon in 2025 listening Shawn Mullins again? 

 

My Music Journal 2025 - Wednesday, January 8, 2025

 

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Time: 3:38 PM
Song: Give Peace a Chance  
Artist: John Lennon
Mode of Consumption: MP3 – Drive to Springfield listening to MP3s on shuffle from my phone.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5waa9MNixv8LTvb7I71V3x?si=54c8510cb9b84d69

When the song shuffles on, I think to myself, you know I used to like this song, but I could hit skip now and feel OK about it. 

“Did Yoko write this one,” my co-worker Ty asked about halfway through? “Not a lot of content here.” 

It’s almost reassuring to know that people still lean on blaming Yoko whenever they hear something from John Lennon or the Beatles that they don’t like. I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to her, but old jokes are like old dogs, sometimes it’s just nice to see them again. 

The song certainly came about during the height of the John-Yoko experience, and it is unique in that it was a solo song released while the Beatles were still together in 1969. The song was released as part of the couple’s Bed-In honeymoon in Montreal. 

The thing that caught Ty’s attention is that other than a couple short versus in the first half the song, it basically repeats the chorus “All we are saying is give peace a chance” over and over for the entirety of the four minutes and fifty-two seconds of the run time. 

The most likely explanation is that Lennon and Ono wanted the message to be simple and clear, and that repeating it was the most logical way of doing it. When I first encountered the song as a child, I think that worked. Like I said, I remembered liking this song. At the time of its release,it probably was also an effective device. 

The repetition is also something Lennon did from time to time – the song Revolution No. 9 – comes to mind. So, while maybe Yoko had influence, I think John probably said let’s just keep singing it. 

It just doesn’t age all that well. Now, it seems to drag on for a minute or so too long, and I wish there was at least one more verse to break things up. 

That’s the problem with repetition in song and writing, it can be purposeful, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it works.

My Music Journal 2025 - January 7, 2025

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Time: 7:55 AM
Song: Shaky Town 
Artist: Jackson Browne
Mode of Consumption: MP3 – Drive to work listening to MP3s on shuffle from my phone.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/0PcqEMaEUepcTrPGemOFfd?si=e052c2e5fd414624

“That’s a big ten-four,” Jackson Browne sings.

While I had heard that phrase mostly in TV shows depicting truckers, it wasn’t one I used until I started my job at ASE at the end of 2015. My boss, Tom, uses 10-4 in his emails frequently, and it’s something that I have adopted in my communications.

Vernacular is like that. We all speak like the people around us. When that environment changes, new words appear in daily conversation and others fall by the wayside.

I remember in junior high in the mid-90s, Beavis and Butthead became popular. At that point, I didn’t have a cable or satellite dish TV, so I never actually watched the show, but I didn’t have to. Dozens of kids just started talking in the characters’ clipped, weird cadence to the point that I am sure I slipped into the lingo, too.

During my college years, I worked third shift at National Manufacturing during the summers with a small group of guys. They had a habit of making a strange collection of sounds, not words really, randomly throughout the night. It’s hard to describe in writing. By the end of each summer, I had grown accustomed to doing the same. Gradually, I lost that when I returned to school because the meaning was lost to others.

Since joining ASE, I’ve noticed other changes to my vocabulary. I use the phrase “I sense that…” and sometimes the word “Suss,” although that can be a bit of cheeky thing around these parts referring to a former co-worker. I am sure there were phrases that I used daily when I was reporting on sports, but none of those come to mind now.

This collage of people and experiences form the basis for my communication, so much of it scavenged along the way without my even realizing it. It’s something to consider when crafting characters and the things they say.

My Music Journal 2025 - January, 6, 2025

 

Monday, January 6, 2025

Time: 5:17 PM
Song: Ants Marching  
Artist: The Dave Matthews Band
Mode of Consumption: MP3 – Drive home from work listening to MP3s on shuffle from my phone.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/2FfZg072w8RoxlMOR7M4CT?si=6a35db6d52394d29

There’s an episode of the sitcom “Community,” which spoofs David Fincher thriller movies when the study group is working to save Greendale from the exploits of the “Ass-Crack Bandit,” an anonymous deviant who is terrorizing the campus by dropping quarters down the backside of unsuspecting bent over students and faculty. One of the few clues is that the perpetrator is a fan of Dave – that being The Dave Matthews Band. 

When Alex “Starburns” Osborne, a middle-aged student/drug dealer surfaces after it was assumed he had previously died in a car accident, he is collared as the bandit and the campus celebrates with a party. While lights flash, the music plays and, of course, it’s Dave.

“Wait, who is this?” Starburns asks. 

“Wait, what?” Jeff Winger, the leader of the study group and a former lawyer, responds. “You don’t know Dave.” 

Winger, of course, knows that they’ve been duped into believing that Starburns in the culprit, a classic plot twist. 

“Oh, yeah, I remember this,” Starburns said. “It’s from the 90s, it’s that guy that goes HE-Haw, He-HAAW.” 

I can’t hear Dave Matthews without hearing that impression of his singing. 

I received the album “Under the Table and Dreaming” in high school from my sister for my birthday. She chose it because it was the Matthews’ album that she most connected with. I’ve kept the CD, and while I enjoy this track and a few others, I’ve never grown into a huge Dave Matthews fan. 

Still, I hold onto this album, because I think I look for what my sister heard in it. That is the great part of receiving music from others, particularly albums and artists that I haven’t necessarily requested. I know there’s a reason they picked it. It’s my challenge to hear what they hear.

My Music Journal 2025 - January 5, 2025

 

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Time: 7:45 AM
Song: Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked 
Artist: Cage the Elephant
Mode of Consumption: Radio – Planet 93.9 FM on the way to church.

Song link: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Pzh926pXggbMe2ZpXyMV7?si=fbd2fbf10b624413

I’m riding passenger in our dark blue Ford F150 on a gray morning. I punch the button the dash that identifies songs being played on the radio.

“It’s Cage the Elephant,” Jodi said.

I’m not sure I even cared, I just like pushing the button and seeing the answer. It passes the time during our 10-minute trip to church.

My father-in-law once talked about having to learn that the church was also a business. He was on the church council for most of the last three decades of his life, holding the title of council president for many of those years in both official and unofficial capacities. The life of the congregation may be dependent upon the holy spirit, but it’s also reliant upon those willing to keep the books, to arrange contractors for maintenance of the building, mow the grass, print the bulletins, hire pastors, perform public relations, and so on and so forth.

I’m in my second year as treasurer for the church, a position I am not particularly interested in nor suited for, but which was bequeathed to me as there really isn’t anyone else left to do it. It really blows my mind when I think about how much I used to goof off in church during my youth, and now I balance the checkbook for the place. Lord, help us.

We go to a country church that once had weekly attendance over a hundred people in the seventies and eighties, but has been in steady decline since the 90s. We could write a novel on the reasons – Socio-economnic, political, religious shifts, and likely a few contentious decisions made by various folks that were put in charge of the “business” side of the church at various times.

We’re left with an average attendance in the teens with average age of congregates in the 70s. Jodi and I are the youngest of the regular attendees, and unless something changes, we’ll oversee the last days of this 150-year-old congregation.

That will be sad business. Sometimes it’s easier to just punch the button on the dash and see what song the radio station is playing than think about it.

My 2025 Music Journal - Saturday, January 4, 2025

Time: 12:49 PM

Song: Ho Hey  
Artist: The Lumineers
Mode of Consumption: Radio – Sky 95.7 FM.

Song link: https://open.spotify.com/track/0DwClY2t9YAWHBROMIgrXb?si=f490b15df20244f6

A Saturday morning in January. 

7 AM – I eat a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a banana. I take six pills. The digital numbers on the thermometer read 14 degrees outdoors. 

8 AM – Dressing. One pair of ankles socks, one pair of athletic socks, one pair of thick, heavy socks. Underwear. Long Underwear. Jeans. T-Shirt. Thermal shirt. Hooded shirt. Overalls. Boots. 

8:05 AM – Outdoors. No wind. Sun. Crisp. Begin taking down outdoor Christmas lights and decorations. 

9:30 AM – Stop to pet our dog, Millie. We are on the deck, she’s sitting near me on the patio, the sun hitting us both. Her rear end curls as I rub her down. That’s a good dog. That’s a good man. 

10:45 AM – I break a plastic stake holding a string of candy-cane lights. The bottom half is frozen in the ground. 

11:45 AM – I’m finished. Lights and decorations taken down, stored in the garden shed for next year. Except for the remaining half stake for the candy cane decoration. That’s in the ground. Will have to get that whenever there’s a thaw. I wonder if glue will hold it together. 

Noon – Jodi is finishing with the inside decorations. I sweep the kitchen and dining room floors. There’s a pile of plastic needles from our fake Christmas trees. Does that make them more real or less? The radio plays and I consider songs I hear for my journal entry. 

12:25 PM – A load of towels finish drying before we make a small lunch. We hug the warm towels before folding them and putting them away. 

12:35 PM – Eating. Salad. Ham sandwich. Cookie. 

12:49 PM – “Ho Hey” plays as my hands sink into dishwater, and I think I’ll use that song. There’s something utilitarian about it despite its pop sensibilities. 

My Music Journal 2025 - Friday, January 3, 2025

 

Friday, January 3, 2025

Time: 7:40 AM
Song: All I Wanna Do
Artist: Sheryl Crow
Mode of Consumption: MP3 – Drive to wo
rk listening to MP3s on shuffle from my phone.

Song link: https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZpQiJ78LKINrW9SQTgbXd?si=b2d84790d7944077

When this song was released in the summer of 1993, Bill Clinton was in the first year of his first term as President, and I was 11 years old. It’s strange how the young mind works, but when Sheryl Crow sang about the man at the bar at noon on a Tuesday with the name of William, who probably goes by Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy, I envisioned President Clinton.

It’s still what I think about when the song plays, and in some alternate timeline in a parallel universe, it’s entirely plausible to envision an alternate version of Bill Clinton, having forgone politics for a run at Hollywood stardom or something, day drinking in a bar in LA and trying to pick up women.

Can’t you see the dingy bar on a dusty LA street? A woman crosses the threshold, the sun behind her back, shining through her blonde locks. At the bar sits a graying forty something male in a polo shirt that billows noticeably at the stomach with a half empty brown bottle in front of him, the label peeled away in pieces and scattered on the bar top and floor.

The woman selects a stool a few feet away. Orders a drink from a sleepy bartender who waits tables at another juke joint down the street in the evenings.

“All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die,” William or Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy says. It seems like an innocent enough statement, but she suspects his notion of fun is sexual. Too bad he is ugly, she thinks, because maybe she was hoping for some “fun,” too.

He has a hint of a southern accent, but he hides it well when sober. Another beer or two later, he reveals in a thick drawl that his middle name is Jefferson, and she’ll have to guess which historical figure that references. He lights matches, watching them burn, grinning more and more as the flames near his finger.

He does have a certain charm, she thinks, and will probably later regret it.

She orders another Bud.