My Music Journal 2025: August 14, 2025

 

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Time: 7:04 PM
Song: I Can’t Have You
Artist: The Gulls
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle after eating at Basil Tree in Dixon.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/07aqD6zYskpBMTZNf0SJpK?si=679fbd9e7d27431d

It’s not often that we go out to eat during the week, but we did tonight for Jodi’s birthday, which is actually Friday.

Basil Tree is an Italian Ristorante in downtown Dixon, and it’s the usual pick for her birthday meal. We each had a tomato soup appetizer followed by pasta and then split a piece of tuxedo cake.

Near the end of the meal we talked about our niece leaving for college soon, relatively far from home.

Jodi had gone to a nearby community college the first two years after high school, and I went an hour away to Northern. She transferred to Northern her junior year.

So, we were never very far away.

“Could you have gone far away at that age?” she asked.

I thought about it.

“I think so.” Both my siblings had gone to school three hours away in Champaign. My older brother moved to Atlanta after graduating college. The idea of moving away wasn’t a foreign concept in my world.

Jodi’s brother had moved to Rockford after high school but was home often. So, her experience was a bit different.

The truth is that if I had a direction in life at that point, I might have moved away or pursued a school farther away. I wish I had more confidence in myself and my writing abilities at that age. It perhaps would have led to different professional opportunities. Jodi made a similar comment after having a career goal.

Later, Jodi said: “Oh well, we’re pretty happy with how things turned out.”

I agreed.

My Music Journal 2025: August 13, 2025

 

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Time: 6:08 A.M.
Song: Lyin’ Eyes
Artist: Eagles
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle while working out in the basement.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5lQKRR3MdJLtAwNBiT8Cq0?si=3c818ed0dac147ec

The lyric played while I was doing jumping jacks.

“A rich old man and she won’t have to worry.”

A few moments later, Jodi’s voice calls out down the basement steps.

“You know, if I find a rich old man, you’d be the one I’d be cheating with.”

She was joking, of course, but after having a few days off last week, I think we are both thinking of ways that we could move out of the workforce.

“I’d share the money with you,” she continued. “At least we wouldn’t have to go to work tomorrow.”

The last part of her statement is from the “Darmine Doggy Door” skit video from Tim Robinson’s Netflix show “I think You Should Leave.”

In the video, Robinson plays a man short on sleep who thinks a monster has entered his house through a traditional doggy door. He makes the remark while realizing that he might be eaten that he “won’t have to go to work tomorrow.”

It’s a line we drop a lot now whenever the potential for something bad happens.

My Music Journal 2025: August 12, 2025

 

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Time: 5:04 PM
Song: Losing My Religion
Artist: REM
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on the way home from work.

I have a distinct memory of this song playing at Westwood Sports Complex in Sterling at some point in my youth. My sister, Kim, played her youth softball games at fields located to the east of the main Westwood Complex.

Doing a bit of Googling, I see that the song was released in February of 1991. So, it’s possible it was the summer of 1991. I would have been 9 years old.

I don’t remember anything else.

Just that I was there, and I am pretty sure watching my sister play softball, and “Losing My Religion” was playing

I don’t know where the music was playing from. I don’t remember there being speakers at any of the softball fields. Youth sports were played too much less fanfare back then; I imagine that went double for girls’ sports.

I suspect someone had their car radio blaring.

Or maybe the game was over, and we were sitting in our car for some reason with the radio playing.

I don’t even know why I have this memory, or why it pretty much comes to my mind anytime I hear the song, or I happen to be at Westwood.

I do know that I never quite understood what the phrase “losing my religion” meant, but I always assumed it was something sordid, and as a youth, likely something sexual that I didn’t comprehend.

What I can say, is that the song is catchy, and it’s a good one to sing along to on the way home from work and wonder about some random evening when I was nine.

My Music Journal 2025: August 11, 2025

 

Monday, August 11, 2025

Time: 5:15 PM
Song: I’ll Take You There
Artist: The Staple Sisters
Mode of Consumption: Playing at the dentist’s office

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5YLnfy7R2kueN0BRPkjiEG?si=01337d8d289e442a

The opening lines of this play:

“Oh, mmmm, I know a place

Ain’t nobody cryin’…” 

And I think, I don’t think I am at that place. A few minutes later, that’s confirmed as I can hear the dentist comforting a young girl through some sort of procedure and the girl’s cries could be heard throughout the office. 

I’ll also realized that even though I have probably heard this song hundreds of times, I’ve never thought about who recorded it. With nothing else to do while the hygienist scraped plaque from my teeth, I figured it out. 

That’s Mavis Staples. 

Has to be. While I am far from a Mavis Staples expert, her vocals are unique. So, there, I learned something at the dentist’s office. 

After the cleaning, the dentist arrived, and she commented on a Supremes song playing. The hygienist, who I think is older than the dentist, crinkles her nose. Apparently, she doesn’t like oldies. 

From there, I get a breakdown of a recent change to the music played at the office. They rely on broadcast radio, and recently the station they traditionally listened to changed format from Top 40 to hard rock. It just didn’t work for their clientele. 

They tried a couple other stations. 

“One was Top 40,” the dentist said. “Really it was Top 4. That’s all they seemed to play. We called in ‘Pink Pony Radio.’” 

“I kind of miss Pink Pony Radio,” the hygienist said. 

My Music Journal 2025: August 10, 2025

 

Sunday, August 10, 2025

Time: 3:31 PM
Song: Room at the Top
Artist: Tom Petty
Mode of Consumption: Listening to the album “Echo” on Spotify

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7By7UYWA21PcKoKCl8ZaI7?si=34e4220bcd5f4941

This is the follow up post to yesterday’s post. 

The second album that always makes me think of the fair is Tom Petty’s “Echo.” 

In the summer of 1999, Petty released this album and simultaneously DirectTV was playing a free Petty concert on loop where he was debuting a lot of these songs along with some of his classics. 

This was the summer before my senior year of high school, and so really, the last fair of my youth. I don’t remember a lot about the actual fair, other than it was in an era when it was starting to hit some tough times. The crowds were small, and there might have been a night or two of rainy weather. 

I ran around most nights with a group of friends that included Jodi, her cousin, Abbie, my friends Jake and Kyle, and likely a few others depending on the night. 

I don’t think I had started football practice yet for the season, although it’s possible that was starting, too. I also might have baled some hay during the days. 

All of that is possible. 

I do know that we went back to Jake’s house at least one of the nights and re-watched this concert, probably for the tenth or eleventh time that summer. 

It’s easy to slip into listening to Tom Petty. Clearly, his tunes are catchy, but they sort of seduce you into the little four-of-five-minute worlds he creates. 

I realize now that I was in a little four-or-five-minute world of my own, one that was on the brink of changing drastically over the next year or two. 

My Music Journal 2025: August 9, 2025

 

Saturday, August 9, 2025

Time: --
Song: Mysterious Ways
Artist: U2
Mode of Consumption: --

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3KsBkosKDPSB235IeoHOby?si=398c5ec8d73f48bb

So, a first for the blog: We arrived home from the fair last night about 10 PM, and I realized that I didn’t have any song from the day in mind. To be honest, I couldn’t even remember any of the songs that I had heard.

“Do you know what songs were playing when we were driving home?” I asked Jodi. 

“Not really. There was a Lumineers song.” 

We had talked for most of the ride home, and between the conversation and from being exhausted from the week, I couldn’t think of one tune, much less having any sort of deep thoughts about them. 

So, I thought, what songs remind me of the fair? 

There are a few. Actually, there are two albums. I will write a little about one here. Maybe save the other for a rainy day (maybe Sunday).

Sometime when I was in grade school, my sister bought the album “Achtung Baby” by U2. It must have been right around the fair. 

It was also the year that they were re-surfacing and doing some realignments for IL Route 40 north of Sterling to Milledgeville. So, we had to take a detour around to get to the fairgrounds, so the trip was a bit longer. 

Either way, I feel like we listened to the tape every night on the way to the fair. It probably was only one night, maybe two, but in my mind, it was every night. So, the songs from that album always make me think of the fair. 

My Music Journal 2025: August 8, 2025

 

Friday, August 8, 2025

Time: 8:50 PM
Song: Mountain Music
Artist: Alabama
Mode of Consumption: Played by the cover band “Blue Steel” at the Carroll County Fair.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7BjmEKAVTnJNkRNaUzBy2K?si=e2593178fa174cc2

This was the second consecutive year that Blue Steel was the main attraction on Friday night at the Carroll County Fair. They are a cover band, a pretty good one. 

The trouble with music acts for small fairs is that to get an act that will draw a crowd, you have to pay said act more than they will draw in, most likely. That’s been an issue for nearly thirty years. Its roots are good. Getting artists and the crews that travel them the money they deserve after years where musicians and the army of people touring with them were basically controlled by record companies and paid comparatively little. 

The problem is fairs have small budgets, generally, and so that means they have one of two choices. 

They can pay a small act who might have had a hit at one time in the last twenty-some years, or possibly an act that is building toward having a hit, and will likely not draw that big of a crowd. The fair did that for the better part of two decades with mostly low-level country artists. Or, you get a cover band, who isn’t likely to draw a huge crowd, but will at least play songs people know. 

It’s amazing to think that in the seventies and eighties, people like Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, The Statler Brothers, and Tom T. Hall came to Milledgeville, Illinois. It’d be great if something could shift in the music industry to bring brand named acts to small communities. 

This year Blue Steel played a pretty country-heavy set until the second hour of their show, and being sort of a novice country music listener, it was hit-or-miss with me in terms of knowing the songs. 

I know this Alabama hit. It made me think maybe we should do a “Mountain” playlist for the Pandemonium. 

Some came to my mind right away. 

• “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin.
• “Mountain Sound” by Of Monsters and Men
• “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. 

Stay tuned to the Pandemonium this coming week, I think this will be the topic.