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.