My Music Journal 2025: September 13, 2025

 

Saturday, September 13, 2025

Time: 6:20 PM
Song: I Wish I Was Eighteen Again
Artist: George Burns
Mode of Consumption: Listening to vinyl LP of “I Wish I Was Eighteen Again” by George Burns.

Link to song (note Spotify didn't have the George Burns version of this song, so this is Ray Price): https://open.spotify.com/track/4CEl2D6p9QsHXRNG6XUZHN?si=3615927c57a64632

“Sometimes I think I’d like to be eighteen again,” Jodi says. “There be some good things about it, but others not so much. I don’t think I am up for being back in school.” 

I nod. 

“Do you want to be eighteen again?” 

I think about it a second. 

“Not really.” I don’t add a whole lot more than that. I think there are days when I think about it more than that. The night before we went to a football game, and that always gets me to thinking about being the age where I could go play four quarters of football and get up the next day feeling fine. Now, one fall to the ground would probably leave me sore for a week. 

No, I don’t think I’d want to be eighteen again, other than just to have the chance to move back in time and see the people that I can’t see anymore. If it meant scratching away the memories and lessons of the last 25 years, then I don’t see the point of it, I guess. 

As I get older, I do tend feel that there might be something to reincarnation. If some essence of me becomes eighteen again, I hope It’s a different body, living a different life, doing different things. 

I look up later that George Burns was 84 years old when he recorded this song. I don’t doubt that he was considering himself nearer to death. The chance to be eighteen would give him a burst of life. 

Little did he know, he’d live another sixteen years. 

My Music Journal 2025: September 12, 2025

 

Friday, September 12, 2025

Time: 7:45 PM
Song: Thunderstruck
Artist: AC/DC
Mode of Consumption: Playing over speakers at Sterling High School Football game.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4f5V6rbtGt67AWtNGRS9vx?si=790e427725cc4935

Jodi makes a comment about AC/DC probably making a lot money from this song getting played at football games alone as the song starts up. The teams are on the field warming up for the game. It’s a high school football game on a warm September night. 

I’ve probably been at a hundred games where the same scenario has played out. Teams warming up. AC/DC on the loudspeakers. Teenage girls dancing on the sideline. Maybe a marching band rounding the track behind one goal post or another. 

This is how football has become America’s past time. A hundred years ago it was baseball. People had their routines then for baseball whether it was attending games, listening on the radio, or playing stickball in the streets. 

That all changed sometime after World War Two. Football became a routine in American towns from one coast to the other. The place where people gathered, mostly on Friday nights. The Parents. The fans. The students. The entire community linked for a night, mostly agreeing on who to root for. 

In bigger communities and university towns, the same repeated on Saturdays for college teams, and eventually the NFL caught on, claiming Sundays. The game was tied to the weekends. A good time. The smell of pork chops on grill and the change of color in the leaves on the trees. 

It’s the crossroads of communities and big business. Hope and decline. Togetherness and controlled violence. 

Sort of like the lyrics to most AC/DC songs.

My Music Journal 2025: September 11, 2025

 

Thursday September 11, 2025

Time: 5:55 PM
Song: Any Time at All
Artist: The Beatles
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle while changing a light bulb at church.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/70XHAdaMaoLIOVb1hSaeJ4?si=55a4b28464ca4ce0

Jake and I grew up in First Lutheran Church of Jordan just north of Sterling on IL 40. We became fast friends, flinging large Lego-like blocks at each other’s head in the Sunday School room when we were toddlers.

In junior high, we began catechism together, along with some girl named Jodi, her cousin Abbie, and a couple other peers. A robust number, considering a decade later, the church would be absent youth almost completely.

We bonded over the Beatles in those days. Consuming their music, rewatching the anthology, and searching for pretty much any other available media on the band.

About thirty years later, he met me at church early this evening to help replace a bulb in the ceiling of the sanctuary. The actual changing of the bulb was a one-man job, but the building of the scaffolding was better accomplished with two people. He is also a couple of inches taller, which also proved to be beneficial to the cause.

These days, we see each other a few times a year. Many times, just in passing, or at trivia events, which are fun, but don’t often yield many opportunities for conversations.

Once when we were teenagers, we were tasked with moving boxes out of the parsonage for a departing pastor. A member of the council mentioned needing “strong backs and weak minds” for a job like this.

“Been a long time since this place need our strong backs,” I mentioned as we were wrapping up.

A few minutes later, this song played on my phone (I had the music playing the entire time. We never did anything without music on). It summed the day up well as I thanked Jake for the help; we accomplished the task with no injuries, no damage, and no other pitfalls.

My Music Journal 2025: September 10, 2025

 

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Time: 7:30 AM
Song: Sing for the Moment
Artist: Eminem
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on the way to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3CpoeW0cZSDzIRv5z34F87?si=e52b564433a34a7f

I sometimes wonder if the rise of rap was a precursor to the social media environment that burst into existence in the late 2000s and 2010s.

Stick with me. See, I like some rap music. I like Eminem. But I can’t deny that there are songs like “Sing for the Moment,” where I wonder why I want to listen Marshall Mathers complain about the pressures and challenges of stardom and navigating the legal battles he faced (that he also often caused).

Especially now that the song is probably two decades old. The daughter he mentions is grown. The legal problems are likely forgotten by most of the world. Why does this song matter? Do I like the sampling of Aerosmith that much?

While other genres certainly have songs where the artist aired their problems, it always seemed like rap did it more and with less ambiguity.

It’s like a Facebook post. One where we decide that publishing our gripes in a Festivus type “airing of grievances” is somehow going to improve the situation in any matter. In my experience, it only amplifies the problem.

That being said, it is therapeutic to release anger, fear, sadness, and other emotions. Using it to create something artistic is also taking a negative and making a positive.

Still. It’s twenty years later. Do I care about Eminem’s problems enough to keep listening to this song?

My Music Journal 2025: September 9, 2025

 

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Time: 7:48 AM
Song: Circle the Drain
Artist: Katy Perry
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on the way to work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7s0YfJE6hNNYq9BV26iCw6?si=cf1f267cb0d8446f

Okay, I am in an abusive relationship.

The transgressor isn’t my wife, Jodi. No, it’s not any of my friends, my co-workers or my boss. It’s the football team I have chosen to support.

The Chicago Bears.

Last night was the first game of the 2025 season, and it left me wondering if I should bother watching anymore. I’ve seen this show before. Lead most of the game. Miss chances to extend the lead. Commit needless penalties. Challenge a play that clearly was called correctly to burn a timeout. Give up 21 points in the fourth quarter to lose. Repeat a similar script a few dozen times and you get the typical Bears game over the last, oh, 20 years or so. The only time it really changes is when they get completely blown out of the building, which usually happens twice a season, at least, and the four-to-six games where the opposing team is equally incompetent

Anyways, there were a couple other noteworthy things that caught my attention from football this weekend.

• The television announcers clearly have been instructor to refer to the quarterbacks by first name. While I’ve heard this done some in the past, it was pretty much every reference last night and in other games this weekend. Having played football where you are branded by your last name with tape on the first day of practice, I find it jarring. I know it’s likely some sort of branding magic that the NFL ad-Wizards have conjured, I am not sure I am on board with it.
• There seems to be a growing desire to have the quarterback pitch the ball to the running even with runs inside the tackle. The Bears almost exclusively did it, but I saw it frequently in other games I watched brief parts of this weekend. I see it, and think, that’s a fumble waiting to happen. I also think the backs are slowed down by having to watch the ball longer before moving their eyes up to find the hole. That certainly seemed to be the case with the Bears. I would prefer they scrap that and just have the quarterback take two steps and hand the ball off. 

My Music Journal 2025: September 8, 2025

 

Monday, September 8, 2025

Time: 6:45 P.M.
Song: All of This
Artist: The Naked and the Famous
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle while varnishing boards in our garden shed.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4Ip2JTqyVA9OOEFvNAkzdf?si=d2b1a6f6745f433b

A few months ago, I bought metal bases for an outdoor coffee table and an end table at a garage sale. My plan was to make tops for both from old barn boards that have been sitting in our garage for probably a decade.

I finally started the process this weekend, cutting the boards to length and then sanding them down. I followed that by staining them on Sunday.

Tonight, I wanted to get the first coat of varnish on them before the Bears game at 7:15.

I always like the process of taking drab, tired looking boards that threaten a splinter with any touch and smoothing them down, enriching the color and then watching as the varnish pulls the grains of the wood to the surface. It’s like giving the boards a second life.

I did this once before with a metal base and put the table up for auction at the Festival of Trees. It did well.

I haven’t decided if that’s the future for these two tables. I hope to have everything finished with them by the end of next weekend, so that I can move on to the next project. I will either donate them for the festival or put them up for sale.

It’s always weird. I spend so much of the summer mowing the yard and getting things ready for the fair that I always feel like I am rushing to do projects like this in September and October before the weather turns cold.  

My Music Journal 2025: September 7, 2025

 

Sunday, September 7, 2025

Time: 1:10 P.M.
Song: My Girl
Artist: The Temptations
Mode of Consumption: Played by a musician at the Grand Detour Arts Fair.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/745H5CctFr12Mo7cqa1BMH?si=5c71114588174674

There were about 40 arts & crafts vendors arranged around the John Deere Home grounds in Grand Detour, IL. The weather was fine. Sunny. A slight breeze. Fall-like temperatures in the 60s.

We spent an hour or so wondering around, viewing the paintings, the photos, the carvings, jewelry, pottery and about anything else you could name.

Jodi and I were joined by my parents and her mom. There were food vendors, and we had lunch at a set of picnic tables placed in the shade. A giant old tree is in the center of the grounds near the vendors.

“That tree was here when John Deere was here,” my dad said.

“Probably before.”

Later, we ate ice cream and listened to a musician. He placed an instrumental version of Collective Soul’s “Shine”

“A day like this is a good day to play a good time oldie,” he said between songs. He then began his rendition of “My Girl.”

Jodi was sitting between her mother and me. I could hear her mother say:

“Lee always requested this song when we were at places.” She smiled thinking of her late husband.