Your everlasting summer, I can see it fading fast,
So you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last,
But you wouldn't even know a diamond if you held it in your hand;
The things you think are precious, I can't understand.
Steely Dan, Reeling In The Years
Well, tonight I made my second music CD on Bast. It's the one I've been thinking about for weeks, the first one I'm willing to share. Here's the play list:
The disc holds 69:27 of music, so I really could have squeezed another selection onto it, but I didn't feel like trying to have to decide at the moment. :-)
That is all I have to say. -=DAH=- 26-Mar-96
It was a couple of years ago, and I was leaving on one of my innumerable trips for Computervision. I think that I was heading for Europe, but I can't remember the destination. All I can remember was that the flight was delayed, but they'd cleared us out of the terminal, taken our boarding passes, and left us in the access tunnels to the loading ramp for nearly half an hour.
Fortunately, I had my pocket FM radio with me. Because of the interference from being so deep in the bowels of Boston's Logan Airport, my selection of clear stations was limited. I had been listening to one of the classical music stations in the terminal, but had put the radio away when they started "boarding" us. Once I got fed up of waiting and pulled it out again, all I could get was the strongest Classic Rock station in the vicinity. (Don't ask me which one. :-)
This was the next song they played, and I caught it from the beginning, without any voice-over. This is the chorus:
Are you reeling in the years?
Stowing away the time?
Are you gathering up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?
I guess this must have been during the first year after breaking up with my second ex-spousal unit, because this is obviously a "breaking up" song.
Hearing this song saved my sanity in a no-win situation. It's got a nice harmony of male voices in the chorus and some Truly Bitchin' guitar work. When I got back from the trip, I bought my very first Steely Dan CD.
This was what I wanted to be the first track on the first Classic Rock CD I mastered on my computer, and that's the end of that story.
You know, I never knew until after I bought this double CD of Queen's Greatest Hits that they were a "Gay" rock group. I mean, today we've got these overt Lesbian Rockers singing, "I Kissed A Girl" on MTV. Anywho, their lead singer, Freddy, just died of AIDS. That brought new meaning to the lyrics of this song, but I wasn't going to let that diminish my enjoyment of it and the meaning I'd attached to it.
About a year ago, two of the Most Important Things in my life were Brucilla, my computer, and an Apache helicopter simulation called Gunship 2000. The character "Brucilla the Muscle" piloted a 24th Century equivalent named Mama Spank, with a black, female gunner named "Cookie". When flying through simulated tree tops at 150 knots, dodging missiles and rockets and spears and arrows and ducks and geese, I imagined myself in the cockpit of the Konigen das Nacht (Queen of the Night), named after a character in Mozart's opera, Die Zauberflut (The Magic Flute).
After the climactic bombing of "SAM City" in the movie Fight of the Intruder, the pilot and BN fly away from downtown Hanoi (a Forbidden target) singing:
The lights are much brighter there,
You can forget all your troubles,
Forget all your cares,
And go Downtown …
The first time I took out a surface to air missile radar installation, and then survived a knife fight with a MiG-23 on the Way Home, I felt like singing this song's chorus:
She's a Killer Queen,
Gunpowder gelatin,
Dynamite with a laser beam,
Guaranteed to blow your mind … anytime!
I don't do Gunship 2000 on Brucilla now that she's a Linux machine, but I still keep the 1:72 model of a McDonnell AH-64 Apache on top of the monitor, and if I ever add a sound card to her again, this sound byte [454K wav file] will be her boot siren.
This is another song that helped me get through a Bad Situation, so I bought the album. I was living Rochester, NY, driving to work at Xerox during a bad winter storm. I think that my co-worker and car-pool buddy Dick Alrutz was with me at the time.
We were stuck in traffic, creeping along, and listening to a local station instead of NPR so that we could get the latest weather and traffic … it wasn't too late to bail, and if we heard about the plant closing, we were going to turn around and go home at the Next Available Exit.
Since it was a morning show, we got treated to a long cut, and I fell in love with this song all over again.
All complete in the seat of light with you.
This has a really nice jazz keyboard introduction, during which this really juicy electric bass comes in to repeat the riff with a staccato variation before a second guitar comes in to complete the trio. The intro goes on for a minute and a half before you hear the first verse:
So you think your school name is funny?
Well it's hard not to agree.
You say it all depends on your money,
And who is in your family tree.
Right! You're bloody well right.
You know you're bloody right to say,
Right! You're bloody well right.
You've got a bloody right to say.
I first heard this in 1974, while doing photography at The Archive in Rochester, NY.
Everything old that's good becomes new again. This is the 1995 concert performance (Hell Freezes Over) of their 1976 song. I want this version played at my funeral!
Mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice,
and she said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device."
In the master's chambers we gather for the feast;
Stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remembered, I was heading for the door.
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before.
"Relax," said the night man, "we are programmed to receive;
You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave!"
Back to Steely Dan, and a good, old fashioned, grown-in-America Rock&Roll kinda rhythm and beat.
Bodhisattva, won't you take me by the hand?
Bodhisattva, won't you take me by the hand?
Can you show me
the shine of your Japan, the sparkle of your china?
Can you show me?
Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva.
OK, so WTF is a bodhisattva? A Zen master who has forsaken achieving nirvana (the ultimate spiritual consciousness) in order to help others find the Way. Kinda like Moses, who would see the Promised Land, but not pass over into it.
Say, did you hear about the Zen monk who walked up to the hot dog vendor and asked him, "Can you make me one with everything?" :-)
I understand that this is very popular at sporting events, where the crowd will stamp their feet and clap their hands in unison with the driving back-beat (they can't understand or remember the words) and chanting the chorus at the top of their lungs.
Buddy, you're an young man, hard man,
Shouting in defeat; you're gonna take on the world some day
You've got blood on your face, you big disgrace,
Waving your banner all over the place, singing,
We will … we will … rock you!!
We will … we will … rock you!!
In and around the lake,
Mountains come down from the sky,
and they stand there.
Another long cut from a concert performance. Classic Rock. 'Nuff Said!
It starts with a harmonica over the piano, and the harmonica and alto-sax solos make this a Most Memorable jam session.
This is So Special to me on So Many Levels … I have often taken the Long Way Home. Sometimes it's because it's prettier, sometimes because home is the last place you want to be at the moment, and sometimes because there just ain't no other way to get there.
I can remember taking the Long Way Home to avoid certain people or places, and other times it was to catch a glimpse of someone or something special.
The theme song from the soundtrack for the movie Flash Gordon. This was the last 45 RPM record I ever bought, and the first in over ten years. I think I still have it somewhere. It's one of the reasons why I bought the Queen double CD collection.
The first new song by the group in almost 20 years. A very 90s kind of Attitude. I played it the day Uncle LeRoy died in order to be able to compose myself for a business supper meeting that could not be postponed.
I don't like this live concert performance as well as like the studio version, but I don't have a copy of it. :-(
[ Bought another Yes CD that has a version I like better! -=DAH=- 04-Aug-96 ]
I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way …
This is the first thing I can remember by them that really caught my attention.
The flip side of We Will Rock You, and the triumphal conclusion music for the movie, Revenge of the Nerds.
Last update:
21-Aug-96 by
dennette@wiz-worx.com