My Music Journal 2025 - January 20, 2025

 

Monday, January 20, 2025

Time: 5:15 PM
Song: Life in the Fast Lane
Artist: The Eagles
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on car radio on ride home from work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7aMJo6bv0PFq2bX969Wgos?si=15276693f5214131

The ride to and from work takes approximately 23 minutes, or somewhere between five and seven songs on my MP3 player. 

It’s a Monday evening on a bitterly cold January day when the month is transitioning from mid-month to late-month, and daylight is gradually extending deeper into the five o’clock hour. The sky is a mixture of purples and blues and grays. Not beautiful, but far from an eyesore. 

It’s a big day for the U.S., as the 47^th President is sworn into office, and I am sure there will be an avalanche of happy and angry posts piled into my social media accounts. I have decided to sit this term out. I am limiting my Facebook time and reduced my Twitter time to almost nil. I lived through one of these train wrecks clinging to my sanity, this time I am just going to do my best to ignore it, and hope we come out the other side okay. This is less a commentary on the political figures and more on the (over)reactionary nature of social media in this partisan climate. If you believe in democracy, and the republic we’ve built, then there shouldn’t be seismic shifts from one election, that’s sort of the point – stability. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. If you want huge changes, you probably are going to get something other than a republic and likely a complete loss of stability.

That’s all l am going to say on the matter. I’m sitting this one out, remember. Maybe not the most responsible action as a citizen, but that’s where I am at. 

My path home is mostly a two-lane country road that starts out through the rolling hills of a subdivision filled with pretty nice houses. Some of the homeowners like to pull out in front of me daily without looking to see if anyone is coming. Sometimes I swear at that, but I’ve grown used to it. 

Just past that, there’s a stretch where there’s a smattering of farm houses surrounded by empty fields. In the middle of a field to the left, a single deer stands, it watches me as I watch it. Then I am gone. 

Prairieville, a tiny village, passes on my left a few minutes later, and after that, I pass the imaginary line between Lee County and Whiteside County. 

I pass houses where I know the people inside. I wonder what they are up to. I pass houses of people I don’t know, and wonder what they are up to. 

At the stop sign at IL Route 40, Oak Knoll Cemetery is on the right. I think of the loved ones there. My grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. My father-in-law. I pass this place every day, and figure someday I’ll stop here and never go anywhere else again. 

It’s about five miles to home from there. It’s getting dark, probably colder. I am thinking about things I’ll do tonight, and about things I need to do tomorrow. 

I get home. I pet my dog. I kiss my wife. 

In twelve hours, I’ll be waking up to do it all over again. 

 

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Time: 1:30 PM
Song: Eli’s Coming
Artist: Three Dog Night
Mode of Consumption: Listening to vinyl record Around the World with Three Dog Night while finishing book work for church and then packing lunch for work the next day.

Link to song (Note Spotify doesn't have the actual versions I listened to): https://open.spotify.com/track/3jdCnDXRXsjYpJFqVNXZen?si=5c0351ac42634b71

One of the first concerts I remember attending was Three Dog Night at the Rockford Metro Center sometime in the mid-1990s with my parents. The tickets came through some sort of fundraiser for the Firefighters Association. Other bands I saw at the Metro Center were America and Nelson. I can’t remember if all the bands played at one event, or if we went a couple times. Perhaps there is another band in the mix during this era, but that’s lost in the tunnels of my memory. 

Three Dog Night got their start in 1967 with their peak running until 1976. So, by the mid 1990s, they had been on the road for nearly 30 years. In my teenage mind, they were an oldies band, which was fine because I listened to plenty of oldies, but that’s where they were relegated to by me. I doubt if Three Dog Night had released a new album in the 1990s that I would have been clamoring to hear it. Maybe their hardcore fans would have bought a CD of new material, but the idea that they would once again reach the popular charts was unlikely. 

It just didn’t seem like it would have fit alongside the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Green Day. They were a band from a different time. They were middle aged men, who were excellent performers and generally made it big by singing songs written by other people. For the most part, bands from the 60s didn’t have much of a chance with new material in 90s unless they were the Rolling Stones. 

But times change. 

Earlier today, we were running errands and listening to a radio station that plays current music and still does a countdown of the top songs on the rock charts. 

They ran an interview with Dexter Holland from The Offspring. He talked about working on a new album during COVID since they couldn’t get out and perform, or do much of anything else.

Holland was born in 1965, two years before Three Dog Night formed, and The Offspring formed in 1984 with the height of their popularity being the mid-to-late 1990s. And, now they have an album with songs finding their ways onto the charts. 

We also just saw The Offspring play last summer at music festival in St. Paul, Minnesota, and never once did I think about them being an oldies band, even though their height of popularity was nearly 30 years ago, much like Three Dog Nights was when I saw them in Rockford in the 1990s. 

In fact, they were my favorite act of the two-day event that included other artist from the 1990s (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Gwen Stefani) and newer artists (Gary Clark, The Head and the Heart, The Hold Steady).

My Music Journal 2025 - January 18, 2025

 

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Time: 2:32 PM
Song: How to Save a Life
Artist: The Fray
Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio Mac 94-7 while finishing writing contest story.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5fVZC9GiM4e8vu99W0Xf6J?si=a61cf0db7987441a

I’ve just finished a draft of the story I started last Saturday for a writing contest. Truthfully, I did a complete rewrite this morning from a 3,000 word draft I had completed during the week. 

As a reminder, the contest prompt demanded that I do certain things. I had to pick from five possible characters and settings. I picked a journalist and a tavern that also rents out a few rooms. The story also had to have a well. 

My first draft was a about a journalist coming to a small town to do a story on a missing serial killer. It was a dark and brooding story that led to a pretty empty climax of the journalist abandoning the story and town for a lead on a different story. I liked some of the writing but it wasn’t all clicking together on the page. 

This morning, I decided I liked the setting and character, but the idea of researching a serial killer wasn’t working. 

I altered the central issue. This time it was about digging into the story about a boy who went missing in his family’s pasture 40-years earlier. I gave it more of a supernatural bent, and it breathed a new life into the urgency of the story. 

I even kept a few scenes from the original, in part because I didn’t feel like I was spending enough time at the tavern as required by the rules. 

The sticking point on this version of the story was figuring how the story was going to be resolved. I knew that I was going to lead my journalist down the same pasture path from 40 years earlier. He was going to go with the boy’s twin sister. 

But what would happen?

Would the man be lost? Would the twin be redeemed? I won’t spoil it, but as the Fray’s song plays on the radio, it felt appropriate. 

The song is about taking the time to talk to people who are experiencing depression and other mental issues in order to save their lives. 

While part of me didn’t want to take the time today to completely rewrite this story, I saved the story’s life by doing so. At least, I think I did. I still have to edit out a couple hundred words, but I feel a lot better about it now.

My Music Journal 2025 - January 17, 2025

 

Friday, January 17, 2025

Time: 9:46 AM
Song: Mixtape
Artist: Butch Walker
Mode of Consumption: Spotify – List of possible songs from the year 2004 for Mixtape Challenge.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7h5Z6sSNDZ6DWe5EdB0gnX?si=4f7589db692b4d40

This is the fifth and final post for my Mixtape Challenge for my Facebook Group Playlist Pandemonium for songs from 2000-2004. This post is for songs from 2004.

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I remember hearing or reading something from Tom Petty where he was deriding people about CDs because they were too lazy to get up and flip a tape or record. I don’t remember where that comes from, it might even be him talking between tracks on one of his albums.

For Mr. Petty, the physical aspect of listening to an album was part of the experience. Albums were planned and mixed, the artists wanted certain songs to kick off the album, and then when it was flipped for a new song to introduce the second half. Each song played a role in whatever story the artist was trying to tell.

For us music enthusiasts, we couldn’t create the songs, but we could make our mixes. Painstakingly planning out playlists for friends, crushes, and whoever else we shared music with.

It was a chance for us to express ourselves through music. A chance to let someone know how we feel. A chance to just share music we wanted the people closest to us to hear.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it was hard to not doomscroll through all the things going on with both the virus and with politics and with social media. Everywhere we turned there was contention and anger and anxiety.

I started the Pandemonium as a place where a community of people could share music and take a break from everything else. Each week we have a different theme, and members get to contribute three songs to each list. I think we’ve made somewhere around 250 playlists, each serving as a distraction. I don’t know if anyone else listens to them, but I know I have listened to each one from beginning to end while I am working away.

This week my Mixtape Challenge brought back a lot of memories from my college years, and the music that really shaped the first decade of this century for me. I was able to include it in this journal that I’ve committed to this year. I would like to have spent more time researching songs and refining my list, but I can say that the result was truly a mix of the most popular tunes and the tunes that reached me the most. What tunes from 2000-2004 hit you most. Let me know in the comments.

My picks for 2004

1. Mr. Brightside by The Killers
2. Float On by Modest Mouse
3. Confusion by The Zutons
4. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
5. Mixtape by Butch Walker

My Music Journal 2025 - January 16, 2025

 

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Time: 3:43 PM
Song: Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call
Artist: The Weakerthans
Mode of Consumption: Spotify – List of possible songs from the year 2003 for Mixtape Challenge.

Line to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/50fBHxSJMSvCdQITydVLc2?si=e86212d8890d4882

This is the fourth post in my Mixtape Challenge for the songs from the years 2000-2004. 

Today has been a blitz of emails. Requests for this, meetings for that. The sort of day where you blink, and it’s gone from 8 AM and suddenly it’s 3:30 PM. Most days don’t go that fast here at ASE. There is usually a flurry of activity here and some more there, and in between you work on this or that. Listen to some music. Sometimes I scan Facebook quickly. That sort of thing.

Back in the journalism days, things were different. Every night was a sprint with the deadline approaching like a train in a tunnel. It required a master juggler when I was in the sports editing chair, balancing page design, copy editing, answering the occasional phone, and maybe typing a few roundup blurbs and box scores. That’s just scratching the surface, and doesn’t even take into account staff management, public relations, planning, and probably writing a column or a feature either for that night or the day’s to come.

We were a tight crew of journalists, even though the faces changed every couple of years. Often, we’d head to the local watering hole after putting the section to bed to get a beer or two in before the last call at 1 AM. Sometimes it was to one of the bachelor’s apartments for drinks and to watch some television.

There are years when that hour between midnight and 1 PM was the only normal thing I was able to do in a day. We got to share some laughs, blow off some steam, and talk shop. How can we get better? What should we be covering? What’s happening in the local scene?  

It was our little club, a group of night lifers with no real life other than local sports and computer screens. I miss that camaraderie, that feeling of belonging to something, but I don’t miss the hours, the low dollars, and the stress.  

But there was something both sad and satisfying about being the last person seated at a bar, taking that last gulp, and walking out the door to the world.

My picks for 2003

1. Happy Alone by Kings of Leon
2. Such Great Heights by The Postal Service
3. Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez
4. Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon
5. Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call by The Weakerthans

My Music Journal: January 15, 2025

 

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Time: 10:08 AM
Song: Don’t Know Why
Artist: Norah Jones
Mode of Consumption: Spotify – List of possible songs from the year 2002 for Mixtape Challenge.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7f5zk7bC3XL5AuGvrg6rsp?si=20541c8383814846

This is the third post concerning my Mixtape Challenge to create a playlist of songs from 2000-2004. 

My first three years after college I worked as a teacher’s assistant in a behavioral disorder program at the local high school. It was a humbling experience, working for minimum wage while also moonlighting as a part-timer for the sports department at a newspaper.

The humbling part wasn’t only that I had gone through all those years of schooling only to be making less money than I did working at the factory in the summer, but more than that, I was confronted with my own privilege.

I was surrounded by students ranging in age from seventh grade to seniors in high school who came from chaotic home lives, had to overcome biological and psychological challenges that I couldn’t understand, and do all that while tackling most of the same teenage pressures and changes as their peers in the mainstream high school courses.

These kids were never going to go to college. They likely were going to struggle to graduate high school. Their bodies betrayed them. Their medications altered their personalities. Their parents were often inadequate sources of support. It all contributed to their placement in the program, isolating them from peers for their peers’ benefit. Many of these students struggled to maintain their behavior in classrooms, usually becoming belligerent when they weren’t already requiring excessive amounts of a teacher’s attention. That doesn’t even get into their academic and learning challenges.

Those days in that single classroom could drag. No changes of classes. Minimal changes in the teacher. Their teenage dispositions bubbling and sometimes exploding.

One of our defenses was music. Calming music, which we played whenever we were providing time for them to work individually on assignments. So pretty much daily, if not multiple times during a school day.

Our selection was limited. One CD was Norah Jones’ album “Come Away from Me.” When “I Don’t Know Why” opens that album, I feel some of the tension in my shoulders, and I think of those kids, who now are in their thirties. For those whose fate I don’t know, I wonder where they are. Did they make it in the real world? Did they age out of some of their issues? I only hope that I helped in some way.

My five choices for 2002

1. Do You Realize? By The Flaming Lips
2. I Am the Highway by Audioslave
3. Letters to God by Boxcar Racer
4. Hurt by Johnny Cash
5. Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones

My Music Journal 2025: January 14, 2025

 

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Time: 8:10 AM
Song: Last Nite
Artist: The Strokes
Mode of Consumption: Spotify – List of possible songs from the year 2001 for Mixtape Challenge.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3SUusuA9jH1v6PVwtYMbdv?si=802821bec7c64841

This is the second post concerning my Mixtape Challenge to create a playlist of songs from 2000-2004.

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Last night, I took two allergy pills because I knew it would help me to sleep.

The night before that I woke up at 1:30, and suddenly I was wide awake and sweating. Nagging issues burst into my brain. An insurance issue with the church. A contentious family situation. An approaching project at work. A floundering writing contest entry. It’s strange how the brain works, going from slumber to full speed ahead. Jumping from an idea of about one issue and then springing toward the pitfalls of something else.

The current list is probably considered adulting. For as long as I can remember, this sometimes happened. My memory recalls that as early as grade school that I would spend copious amounts of time when trying to get to sleep worrying about the next day. Homework I didn’t do. Conflicts with peers. The usual childhood concerns that seem tiny today. Back then, I think I felt like I was the only one that tossed and turned with troubles. It’s hard as a kid to see beyond the scope of your own concerns. Maybe, most adults still assume their problems trump the problems of those around them.

I can’t say.

Last night, I took allergy pills, and I slept soundly. I have a foggy memory of waking in the middle of night, thinking it was near time to get up, and squinting at the clock to see that I still had two or three hours of sleep. No other thoughts made their way through, either subdued by the medication or my brain’s desire to keep resting.

When I woke up, my brain took minutes to start firing on all cylinders, and it was probably a half hour before I was ready to turnover the running list of issues for the day.

I guess that’s just how my brain works. Hopefully some of you will understand.

My five choices from 2001.

1. Whatever Happened to my Rock ‘N’ Roll by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
2. Last Nite by The Strokes
3. We’re Going to Be Friends by the White Stripes
4. Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz
5. New Slang by The Shins