My Music Journal 2025: June 12, 2025

 

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Time: 6 PM
Song: Red Rain
Artist: Peter Gabriel
Mode of Consumption: Listening to the radio on way to work night at the Carroll County Fair. 

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3RpKyeQWrZFwX2fomsq2Y8?si=e5bd40b25bb64617

“We could have made the hay tonight,” Jodi said.

We are heading to Milledgeville to work at the fairgrounds. It’s a warm, hazy evening. The sun lost behind a thin veil of clouds, possibly smoke. We’ve experienced a week or two of hazy days due in part to smoke blowing south from fires in Canada.

“Well, that’s how it goes.” I said.

We had decided not to mow the hayfield earlier this week because there had been rain forecasted for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. All of those chances dissipated as the week progressed. It remained dry as we drove north.

“Yeah, but I was always pretty good at that,” Jodi continues. “Guessing when it would rain or not.”

Hay is a guessing game. Preferably, you won’t get rain after you mow before you are able to bale it. If it rains, you must wait to get the hay dry, otherwise you run the risk of it molding once you store it away.

We guessed wrong in thinking it might rain, meaning we could have mowed it early in the week and bailed it likely tonight.

Instead, we were available to work at the fair, painting one of the booths under the grandstand.

We’ll have to make hay another day.

My Music Journal 2025: June 11, 2025

 

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Time: 3:13 PM
Song: God Only Knows
Artist: The Beach Boys
|Mode of Consumption: Listening to Pet Sounds album on Spotify.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/17QTsL4K9B9v4rI8CAIdfC?si=a5993e026b494af4

When I was in seventh or eighth grade, a quilt rack I made for a 4H project was selected for the state fair.

This meant taking the rack down to the fair to have it judged against other woodworking projects from other counties around the state. The state fair occurs in mid-August in Illinois, and my best friend, Jake, was able to go along.

Leading up to the trip, we found out that the Beach Boys were playing the night of day we would be there.

My parents must have mentioned that we might try and get tickets, because I remember Jake and I being pumped about it.

The trip has many memories for me.

• My parents basically were going to let Jake and I roam around the fairgrounds on our own. They kept reminding me that I had to be at the judging on time. I made it to the judging on time, talked to the judge, and it was my parents that strolled up a few minutes after, having missed it.
• Jake and I played a lot of laser tag that day. I think it remains the only time I have ever played laser tag.
• There was girl at a booth selling sunglasses, who took off her top. She had a sports bra or bikini top underneath, but that was enough to get two junior high kids excited.
• But… We did not go to The Beach Boys concert. I don’t remember why. I am also not sure what incarnation of the band this would have been. I wish we had, just so that I could say that I saw them.

Brian Wilson died today. He was the songwriting backbone of The Beach Boys, the guy responsible for the harmonies that was their signature. Paul McCartney calls “God Only Knows,” the greatest rock song ever recorded.

The Barenaked Ladies even wrote a song about him entitled “Brian Wilson.”

I will always think about that state fair trip though when I think about Wilson and the Beach Boys.

My Music Journal 2025: June 10, 2025

 

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Time: 9:32 AM
Song: Nearly Beloved
Artist: The Wallflowers
Mode of Consumption: Researching songs for this week’s Playlist Pandemonium 

Link to Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/2M1DWzeAgME4rzLTSGNkfH?si=8354052539214a84

This week’s theme for Playlist Pandemonium is songs by artists with famous fathers. When the prompt was posted on Monday, we had a quick flurry of song nominations from the offspring of Frank Sinatra, JJ Abrams, Bono, Rob Schneider, Ravi Shankar and more.

I had few ideas come to mind including the Wallflowers, the band of Jakob Dylan – the son of Bob Dylan. We saw the Wallflowers live last year in Little Rock.

There’s always been a clear resemblance between Jakob and his father. His voice at times is similar also. Beyond that, not a lot is the same other than they paint in the landscape of popular American music.

Bob Dylan was a folk hero in the 1960s, but he morphed away from the folk scene. A chameleon, Dylan’s sound evolved over the years, earning him a Pulitzer, Grammys, and pretty much every other accolade a musician and songwriter can be bestowed.

Jakob has predominately stuck to pop rock with a bit of country twang. During the live concert, the encore was almost entirely covers of Tom Petty songs. I realized then that the Wallflowers sound a lot more like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers than Bob Dylan and The Band.

I am sure it’s complicated for Jakob, wanting to pave his own way, and likely knowing, he’d never fill the shoes of his father. While he doesn’t avoid answering questions about being the son of a famous artist, I’ve never sensed it’s a topic he’s all that enthused to discuss.

I wondered after the show, if after Bob passes away, Jakob will consider recording any of his father’s songs. To my knowledge, he’s never done that.

I remember growing up and feeling like I had a father that was naturally good at anything he tried to do. I always felt awkward and clumsy and too dimwitted to accomplish the simplest tasks. I remember feeling like I was coming up short to my Dad’s legacy.

My dad wasn’t Bob Dylan. He was a farmer who worked a second job at a feed plant. An honorable person and a good father, but I’ve never had people knocking on my door asking about him, much less reporters probably a hundred times a year for the last thirty years.

I imagine that must be tough.

My Music Journal 2025: June 9, 2025

 

Monday, June 9, 2025

 

Time: 5:20 PM

Song: Drinkin’ in the Morning

Artist: Trampled By Turtles

Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on Shuffle on the way home after selling some records. 

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7vCSpR1O4fnSuIByysisan?si=cd151dfee22a430b

 

I sold three lots of records off of Marketplace today, and I dropped them off to the buyer at Sterling Towers in Sterling. It’s a tall building (for Sterling) designed to be a retirement community. I think I had only been there once, many years ago when I helped a friend move his grandmother into an apartment there.  

 

After making the sale, I turned onto Freeport Road heading north out of Sterling. 

 

It was a familiar route. 

 

Back in the journalism days, I made that trip quite a few times early in the morning after deadline. 

 

Some nights we would go to Johnny’s, a bar and grill just south of Sterling Towers on Freeport Road. 

 

We’d buzz over from the newspaper, sometimes two or three of us sports department junkies, still wired from deadline, maybe even from games that were covered a few hours earlier. 

 

Usually, we’d arrive about midnight with closing time an hour later. We’d down a few beers. Watch highlights of national games where we likely knew the winners and maybe a scoring leader or two from the roundups we’d just printed. We’d talk about local sports. About journalism. Blowing off steam, hoping there weren’t any big errors in the section likely just hitting the presses.

 

When the taps were capped for the night, we’d wander out to our cars. Probably mumbling farewells and rambling about things to be done the next day. 

 

I’d crawl behind the wheel, the glow of the dashboard before me, and drive home north on Freeport Road. Quickly out of city of limits. 

 

I’d drive thinking something would need to change eventually. Some nights wishing the change would come the next day. Some nights hoping things could always stay this way.

 

I don’t drink much anymore. 

My Music Journal 2025: June 8, 2025

 

Sunday, June 8, 2025

 

Time: 11:25 AM

Song: Come on, Let’s Go

Artist: Richie Valens

Mode of Consumption: Playing at June Daze car show in Milledgeville.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4cRfSR0QxDlXRHTKyEOu93?si=3fa5821b07ef423e

 

They came from all over the Sauk Valley and other parts of Northern Illinois. Shiny chrome of red and green and blue and purple and about every color you could think of. So bright you wonder why every new car lot is loaded with bland vehicles adorned in white, black and gray. 

 

A stage was set at the main intersection of downtown Milledgeville. A band was setting up and doing sound checks. Down one street, tractors were lined on each side of street. It is a farming community, after all.

 

Before the band played, music played over speakers. Most of it from the fifties and sixties. The sounds of the era where muscle cars were the rule rather than the exception. 

 

I’m not a car guy. Never will be mistaken for one.

 

I do wonder where we lost our way when it comes to vehicles. Not only are the new models generally blandly colored, but they are boxy hunks of plastic. 

I realize this is the past that so many want to cling to. Of bright, bold vehicles made of steel and mostly constructed within the borders of this country. All designed so that a guy (or gal) could take a wrench in his garage and fix when needed without a lot of unnecessary action. 

 

Now there are cars where you have to drop the engine out just to replace the headlight. I’d call it stupid design if it weren’t intentional. Nothing fixable without paying someone at a dealer shop $150 an hour. 

 

That’s not even taking into the account the computer components of new vehicles, the shiny screen, all things that cost extra and even more when the inevitably stop working. 

 

We’re enslaved to technology, most of it making us dumber and lazier rather than actually enhancing our lives. 

 

None of it that can match a blue sky, a bright sun, a gentle breeze, and a small-town street a buzz with mechanical marvels of the past. 

My Music Journal 2025: June 7, 2025

 

Saturday, June 7, 2025

 

Time: 9:20  AM

Song: Young Folks

Artist: Peter Bjorn and John

Mode of Consumption: Listening to radio on the way to garage sales in Milledgeville.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4dyx5SzxPPaD8xQIid5Wjj?si=bd78b832951f4ef0

 

We debated about staying home. We each have projects to work on, and things to do about the yard. The responsible thing would be to stay home. Yet, the call of a few garage sales was too much. 

 

We’re in our forties, are we still young folks? 

 

At the second sale, the hosts were related to me. We talked about summer trips we had planned, and I bought five records for three dollars.

 

It was a steal. The top record in the stack was a near pristine copy of “Born in the USA.” I knew I could flip that for at least ten dollars. Probably closer to fifteen. 

 

They also had a copy of “Nebraska.” That one is going in the personal collection. There were two Stevie Wonder albums and one Jackson Browne.

 

It was a good start to the day. 

 

We hit a few more sales. I bought a couple Christmas games at one. I host a Christmas game each year at the Hinrichs Christmas. These should provide some material, at the least. 

 

Jodi grabbed an old suitcase at one. 

 

We closed the day out at a sale that had two boxes of CDs. The seller was our age and relating how much she loved CDs, but that she couldn’t keep them all. 

 

Jodi and I bought about a dozen, and long with another eight or ten CDs that didn’t have cases. I’ll rip songs off all of them, and most of them will go back in the sale pile. 

 

We made back home by 11:30, and spent the afternoon working in the yard before a late afternoon rain hit. 

My Music Journal 2025: June 6, 2025

 

Friday, June 6, 2025

 

Time: 8:40 PM

Song: Tragedy 

Artist: Bee Gees

Mode of Consumption: Watching Saturday Night Fever stage production at Timber Lake Playhouse.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6UXXeFqMBGiqjkzQzkMT3E?si=6fbf5997cf6d4d43

 

The secondary character, Bobby begins to sing this near the end of the first act. He’s just confessed to the female lead, Stephanie, that he has impregnated his on-again, off-again girlfriend. 

 

He’s conflicted about leaving his gang of dance-loving ruffians to become a husband and father. 

 

Foreshadowing. Have him sing a song called tragedy. 

 

Spoiler: Bobby dies in the end. 

 

I’ve never watched the film of “Saturday Night Fever,” so I am not sure how faithfully the stage adaption follows the film. 

 

My initial reaction is that it’s clear the music is what propped this script up. 

 

The stage production had this secondary melodrama of Bobby and his girlfriend. At times, Bobby seems to be the level-headed, mature one of the gang while at others he is vapidly against marrying his sweetheart (or even acknowledging her existence). He eventually dies drunk, trying to jump from pier to pier on a wet Brooklyn Bridge. 

 

I suppose from a 1970s male prospective, this movie hit the mark on issues they had with maturing from running with the buddies to settling into grownup relationships. From a 2025 prospective, it felt a bit uneven (don’t get me wrong, the performances were solid as usual from Timber Lake). 

 

The main character, Tony, is supposed to be the likeable leader of the group. At times, he’s this guy committed to dancing and wanting to do the right thing. Other times he’s downright terrible to the people in his life. The most glaring example is his sometimes dance partner, sometimes love-interest Annette. 

 

Tony in the same scenes would disparage her for being prudish, and then warns her against becoming a slut. 

 

Ultimately, he scorns her for a new partner and love interest in Stephanie. This leads Annette to drinking heavily on the night of the big dance off, and then essentially being raped by two of Tony’s buddies in the back of a car. 

 

Tony, again, admonishes with one hand and consoles with another. Seemingly ignoring the boorish behavior of his gang members. 

 

After his friend’s death, Tony resolves to move to Brooklyn. Maybe to continue dancing, but seemingly hoping to find an office occupations job. 

 

It’s a musical, so resolutions are often flimsy. The music was s trip back to the 70s. The story was just a bit of head scratcher.