My Music Journal 2025: March 7, 2025

 

Friday, March 7, 2025

Time: 11:30 AM
Song: Welcome to Paradise
Artist: Green Day
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Sirius Radio between Des Moines and Iowa City on way home from SLSI conference.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5kr3j5Clb9rjEposoMyLVt?si=23cbc672ed4b4b9b

Building off Wednesday’s post, we were sitting at the conference on Thursday, and they were playing music softly over the speakers in the exhibit hall. On came Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets to Paradise.” We joked about the trip the day before in the windy, snowy conditions. While Thursday was a relatively nice day out in Ames, the forecast for Friday morning was more snow.

“Boy, all we need is to hear “Paradise City,” as we leave tomorrow.”

The conversation continued and we discussed that Paradise might be a possible Playlist Pandemonium topic.

When we set off on Friday morning, snow was falling in heavy, wet clumps. The ground temperature was warm enough though that most of it that was falling on the pavement was melting. Green Day’s song Brain Stew was playing.

“You know we didn’t mention ‘Welcome to Paradise,’ when we were talking about paradise songs,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s more likely to play on the channels I listen to than ‘Paradise City.’”

Well about two hours later, we had driven out of the snow, and were nearing our lunch stop, when Green Day’s “Welcome to Paradise,” came on the Sirius channel.

I guess we learned the lesson this week that paradise has to be wherever you happen to be.

My Music Journal 2025: March 6, 2025

 

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Time: 12:25 PM
Song: Follow You Down
Artist: Gin Blossoms
Mode of Consumption: Music playing at BAM! Store in Ames.

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6rqkwoZu5oX5hugeyiJCM8?si=55bde712e14343a7

During our lunch break from the SLSI show in Ames, I mention stopping at the BAM! (formerly Books-A-Million) store to check out the selection. My selling point was that they had previously had a large selection of used DVDs. Ty is a collector of DVDS.

Well, that ended up being a false promise. Apparently, DVDs are no longer part of the BAM business model. It’s lost its spot to complicated board games, puzzles, toys and other miscellaneous memorabilia including new vinyl records.

This will probably come as a shock, but I didn’t even look at the vinyl much. I must be in the right mood to look at new vinyl, and that usually means I am going to throw down thirty bucks for a single album. That wasn’t in the cards for me today.

The thing is I didn’t really need any books either. We have a pile of about forty books at home we are working through. I just finished “The Catcher and the Rye” before leaving for Ames, and read the first few pages of my next book last night.

Yet, I could have walked around that store for an hour. There’s just something about being surrounded by all that literature that always inspires me. First, it’s nice to walk around a brick-and-mortar book store, and have the hope that in today’s internet economy, there’s still places like this. Second, it’s nice that authors have this venue to sell their books. Third, it makes me want to go home and start pounding on the keyboard.

I’d like to say that magic makes it all the way home every time. It doesn’t, but I keep telling myself one of these days there will be a little nook on one of those shelves with a book that has my name on the binding.

My Music Journal 2025: March 5, 2025

 

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Time: 4:20 PM
Song: Almost Paradise
Artist: Mike Reno & Ann Wilson
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Sirius Radio on way to Ames, Iowa

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3HI7oXJcgIXOhhPBvONWFo?si=cc94a17ef4564f9c

A few miles back, Ty and I were forced from the highway onto a side road. The interstate was closed about 20 miles south of Ames.

In the early morning hours on Wednesday in Northern Iowa, a blizzard swept through the region bringing between 4-6 inches of snow along with winds exceeding 60 miles per hour. The havoc was evident as we made our way west on I-80. Semis pushed into the medians and ditches. At least one of them tipped on their side.

Near a rest area by Grinnell, Iowa, a passenger van was flipped upside down. In another place, a truck pulling an RV had veered from the roadway down a steep embankment. At the bottom, the truck had twisted perpendicular to the RV, and the RV had slammed into it.

It was a carnage trailway, one I don’t know if I had ever seen the like before.

So, as we followed a caravan of redirected vehicles north toward Ames, there was an irony that a song about paradise played on the radio.

It was extra symbolic, as Ty grew up in Iowa City and is a devoted Iowa Hawkeye backer. Ames, the home of the dreaded in-state rival Iowa State Cyclones, was anything but paradise for him.

The important part is that we made it, and as the day went on, the wind speeds decreased. Although, more snow is in the forecast for Friday.

My Music Journal 2025: March 4, 2025

 

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Time: 9:05 PM
Song: Adam’s Song
Artist: Blink 182
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s while driving home from Write On

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6xpDh0dXrkVp0Po1qrHUd8?si=c4192a0e15684b88

During our Write On meeting on Tuesday night, we analyzed two shipwreck flash fiction stories that I judged during a recent writing contest. Both stories had strengths and weaknesses, and both took a unique approach to this specific genre.

We transitioned to talking about how we would approach this genre, and how you could write a shipwrecked story without being the cliché man or woman stranded on a desert island after his or her boat sinks.

Our lone assignment for our next meeting was to start considering how would we approach a shipwrecked story in an unconventional way.

As I drove home through an early March drizzle, “Adam’s Song” came on, and I realized that this song about depression and suicide could be construed as a shipwrecked song. The subject of this song feels isolated from his friends and family, and probably because of his depression, seeks the isolation as in the lyric, “I couldn’t wait until I got home/To pass the time in my room alone.”

This person has a longing to go back in time to a better point in his life, when things were easier, and the future seemed brighter. Metaphorically, this person is shipwrecked in their current situation, isolated from others, and seemingly incapable of getting back to where they feel they belong.

Sadly, for this song, they feel the only solution is to end it.

If I were to fictionalize this scenario, I think the challenge would be to somehow provide a life raft for this character.

My Music Journal 2025: March 3, 2025

 

Monday, March 3, 2025

Time: 6:10 AM
Song: Highway Patrolman
Artist: Johnny Cash
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s while working out.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1GalAzXQW0EB8YhqPHnzFS?si=6ada0cfba8344d16

Near the end of his life, Johnny Cash gained a last modicum of popularity with his cover of the Nine-Inch Nails song “Hurt.” The Man in Black turned Trent Reznor’s grim tale of drug abuse into a heartbreaking eulogy for popular music’s senior voice.

This success made it easy to forget that Cash spent much of last half of his career pushing his limits by covering other artist’s songs. The American Recordings, a series of five albums beginning in 1994, were comprised of popular songs from popular artists all set to Johnny’s deep voice.

We’ll this one is from way before that. Bruce Springsteen released “Highway Patrolman” in 1982 on the “Nebraska” album, and Johnny included his cover on his 1983 album “Johnny 99.” The title track was also a Springsteen song.

I’m a pretty big Springsteen fan, but “Highway Patrolman” was never a song that I listened to all that much. That being said, I think this is another case of Johnny taking a song and making it his own. It’s a better song with Cash on the lead, and it sounds very much like something he would have written in the 1960s.

Of course, Springsteen always had success with other people covering his tunes.

Most people don’t even realize that “Blinded By The Light” is his because Manfred Mann took it and turned it into something completely different. And, then there is also Patti Smith taking “Because the Night” to new heights.

I wrote the other day on when covers go wrong, or at the very least fall short, but I do believe there is an opportunity in covers. A chance to turn the song into something else, and to expand the horizon’s set by the original artist.

My Music Journal 2025: March 2, 2025

 

Sunday, March 2, 2025

Time: 7:55 A.M. 
Song: Question
Artist: Old 97s 
Mode of Consumption: Listening to 93.9 on the Radio on the way to church

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5T936HyDwKBmfEySj7JGf0?si=14e294e5b5d04866

“Geez, what are they doing, playing one of you mix CDs this morning?” Jodi asks as Question comes on as we turn onto Luther Road off of Fulfs. 

It’s the second song to play since we’ve hit the road for church on this first Sunday of March and the last service before Ash Wednesday and Lent. The first song to play was “Hero” by Family of the Year. 

I don’t remember how I came to know “Hero.” It was just an averagely popular song in the 2010s, I believe.

“Question” on the other hand, I do know where I heard for the first time. It was in an episode of Scrubs when Turk asks Carla to marry him. The scene closes the episode with J.D. and Eliot running around the couple with sparklers. I believe the scene happens at a park or something. 

“Scrubs” was a show that I first heard several songs. I am a sucker for a well-done scene with a great song playing as the soundtrack. 

“What do you think the question is?” Jodi smirks. 

It’s an obvious question, she’s just being funny and then references a scene from the movie “Tom Cats.” 

I never claimed that Jodi and I have deep conversations while driving places. 

And, yes, both are on mix CDs I made sometime in the 2010s. 

My Music Journal 2025 - March 1, 2025

 

Saturday, March 1, 2025

Time: 11:45 A.M. 
Song: Leader of the Pack
Artist: The Shangri-Las 
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s between Elkhorn and Eagle, Wisconsin. 

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6wzLLGFlWQ5jqTL13MU069?si=391682675b474d0a

We’re riding with my parents to watch our niece perform one of her last dance recitals as a high school student. We had bought my parents an MP3 device several years ago and loaded it with songs they would like, and that’s what was playing on the trip to Wisconsin.

I’ve never been a dancer. Or a performer for that matter. 

But…

At the end of sixth grade, our class spent a few days at a local camp with the entire trip being called Outdoor Education. During the days, we had different workshops with various instructors doing outdoor activities like measuring the current of a creek and studying foliage. Frankly, I remember very little about what we did. A lot of messing around for the most part. 

One of the team building exercises was that each cabin, which was comprised of six to eight students were assigned a song, and on the last night, the group had to perform a skit while the song played. 

Our group of rowdy boys was assigned “The Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las. 

My buddy, Kyle, who was small for his age, played the role of the lead singer. Another friend, Brian, was the “Leader of the Pack” while a tall blond-haired kid named Josh was a tree. I don’t think the song mentions a tree, but we decided that’s how the song’s namesake met his demise, running his motorcycle into a tree. 

And who was the motorcycle? Well me. naturally. I even rolled my hands after we crashed to imitate tires spinning. 

The entire performance earned us second place. Another cabin received “Monster Mash” and just happened to have brought a bunch of makeup and props appropriate for the song. We’ve always claimed the fix was on.