Dear Friends,
There is a time and a place for everything.
Yesterday I took the car in to the shop. I was hoping that minor stuff was going on and the bill would be reasonable.
Hope is for suckers. Going to be paying for this one for a while, but I have to just accept that if I average it out over the eight years I have had the car, it’s not that much money, really, and it should be solid as hell for a while.
Stung, though, I’m not going to lie.
I also had a few moments where I was really missing Doug. Grief is a weird one. I think I have kind of been sleepwalking for the past two weeks. The reality of things hit me again yesterday and I didn’t want to face it.
Maybe it is more that I haven’t wanted to face it. I’ve been distracting myself a lot lately with good things to be distracted by, but the sting is still there. It probably always will be to an extent.
*****
Today we have a teacher meeting. I’m not looking forward to it, but that’s okay. It is my job. I think that maybe I am a bit “meeting’d out.” Seems like there is a lot of them this year. I choose to be at some of them, so that’s on me, but I feel a trend.
Here’s to productivity and that which makes me a better teacher.
*****
My Repo Man article finally came out. Pretty pleased with how it turned out, too. I have to be thankful to the New Times for giving me the soap box to stand on here and there. I hope people read it so I can write more things like this. It sucks that it is a numbers game, but people have to click on the bait.
*****
In high school, I got some cassette tapes here and there that were not stolen. They just sort of appeared in my life. I think this one was something my mom had that I just sort of took over. It was a cheesy K-TEL thing that had five songs from The Zombies and five songs from the Animals. It was called, Best of 2 Super Groups.
I wore this motherfucker out from 1985 to 1997 or so when I got my first CD player in my truck. The combination of the two bands and the songs just hit me in the right spot, I guess, and made me a fan of both bands for the rest of my life. I don’t know where the cassette is now, but I’m guessing I have it somewhere.
The Zombies’ side won me over instantly. I was a teenage boy when I got this who didn’t have the greatest luck with the ladies, so “She’s Not There” always got me riled up. I lived that damn song. Same with “Tell Her No,” which came next. Both of those are etched in my brain and can take me right back to being 16 in no time.
Both of those songs are so goddamn brilliant. Rod Argent could write a goddamn great pop hook and his lyrics were genius. The next two tracks were “I Want You Back Again” which tugs on the old heart strings with the best of them and has a killer bass line. This song was a single in 1965 and isn’t easily found if you’re not on Discogs.
“She’s Coming Home” was also from 1965 and released by Decca as a single but isn’t on the first couple of Zombies release. It’s probably my least favorite track on the compilation, but it’s still good. I wouldn’t vote it off the island.
“Time of the Season” is another great song, though. It was the last song on side one of the cassette and I’m sure I rewound it many times just to hear it a second time. Argent’s keyboards on the track are totally fucking boss. I can still sing it verbatim.
Side two featured the Animals and when I really sank my teeth into Eric Burdon’s lyrics, I embraced this side equally to the Zombies’ side. “Sky Pilot” has a groovy, 60s thing going on, but the chorus is catchy as hell and the guitars are deceptively thick, too. Cool Vietnam protest song.
“San Franciscan Nights” made me want to live in San Francisco. I fell in love with the town as a kid and this song helped cement that love. Another set of great lyrics, too. “Old cop, young cop, feel uptight on a warm San Franciscan night.” I love how Burdon touches on a lot of the different groups of people who were trying to figure out how to coexist in those days.
“See See Rider” is another cool song. Cool as hell, really, a mover and shaker. I love the organ work on this one. It always kind of made me feel like I was hip to something I wasn’t supposed to be hip to in high school. Groovy.
“Don’t Bring Me Down” is another stone-cold groove (to quote one of the hangers on in Trading Places). I listen to it now and just marvel at how Burdon ruled a song. I don’t know much about the guy, but he is talented as hell. This song is kind of the antidote to the angst I felt listening to the Zombies’ bad girlfriend songs from side one.
“Monterey” is a such a hippie, flower child kind of middle eastern pop sounding song about the Monterey Pop Festival. It made me think of my parents jamming out and being teenagers at festivals like these. “The Who exploded into fire light.” That line always stuck with me.
I’m so glad to have had this little cassette in my life. It gave me hours and hours of fun. I am listening to it again now (albeit in a playlist I made myself on Spotify), and it takes me right back.
*****
See you tomorrow.
If Repo Man was set in Kansas.
Comentários