Jeremiah's School of Levitation
Upsy-Daisy!
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
The Era of the Scary Songs
Okay, so maybe what I'll do is just publish my rambling thoughts so that I can get a blog going here. I am fairly embarrassed, turning maroon over here, at my output. The Big Giant Software Giant has given me more homework than I had in college. Also, I've been playing with music, composing some stuff that has reggae riddims and banjo. Coupled with family and exercise (I can't go to the gym until 10 pm, once everyone's asleep and I do the dishes), and trying to write my own stuff (I've gotten off on a tangent trying to write a sitcom about a woman who works in a fancy, but wacky health club--the working title is Fit to Be Tied), I am so dang busy that I'm letting my chair at the blog meetings get covered with cobwebs and those empty sunflower seed shells that Badoozie keeps tossing on it.
So, until I have something substantial to say, I'm just going to say something fragmented and goofed-out.
Like, 70's music...I love it, really. Lots and lots of great songs. I came of double-digit age in the seventies, and I have solid memories of me lying on the shag green carpeted floor of my bedroom, listening to my mother's clock radio. I used to unplug it and bring it into my room, as fast as I could so that she wouldn't lose TOO much time on the clock (this was one of those clocks where the numbers were on flaps that were held up by little latches, so you couldn't wind it backwards, so if it fell behind in time, you had to wind it forward 24 hours to get back to the correct time, which I hardly ever did, which means that, slowly, my mother began being late to everything by odd increments that were only a few seconds long).
Anyway, I'd bring it into my room, yeah, and plug it in and lay down in front of it, the shades drawn, and I'd tune to K98 and curl up with the tinny speaker to hear Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Wings, Earth Wind & Fire, and all the other 70's biggies, and, little Jeremiah was in a little private heaven.
The biggest problem I had with 70's songs was that some of them were awful scary. Yes, scary. The 70's was the Era of the Scary Songs.
I mean, as a kid, I lost a lot of sleep thanks to the scary songs. You know what I'm talking about. "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," with bloodstains on the floor. And, "Tallahassee Bridge" with people jumping off and stuff.
And, how about that cheesy "Run Joey Run" song with that line: "Then Julie yelled, he's got a gun, and she stepped in front of me. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and I saw Julie falling."
And, Cher bellowing about "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," which didn't say anything really scary, but had a scary feel and that line about men coming around to lay the money down always gave me a tic. Same with "Bless the Beasts and Children," but I think that scared me because it was in the movie of the same name where a kid got shot.
And, of course, the scariest, and most browbeating song I've ever heard: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." I mean, so much for a light foot! That guy just about pummelled me with fright, over and over again:
"That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed."
"At 7PM a main hatchway caved in. He said fellas it's been good to know ya."
"And later that night when his lights went out of sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"Superior, they say, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early."
That's just a sampling of the horror! I know, I could have turned off the radio, but I was mesmerized by that song, and it felt like the "gales of November" were blowing right through my rib cage, so I dare not move lest I become a resident of the "ice water mansion"! AAAHHH! To this day, I get spooked/angry/annoyed when I hear that song.
I don't miss the era of the scary songs. I was an impressionable kid who believed in ghosts, ghouls, hars, haints, Bloodybone (that was a beast my uncle made up), bigfoots, werewolves...well, you get it. The scary songs didn't help, especially when I thought I was safe with the clock radio, as full of mom as it was.
But, in a way, I'd like to see someone do a scary song like those today, because what passes for scary now is gang-banging tunes about busting caps in heads which, in comparison, is much scarier since it is more likely you'll end up getting shot than ending up on a sinking barge in the Great Lakes. I suppose it was the menace of those 70's songs, but the unlikelyhood that you'll actually have that happen, that makes for pleasant nostalgia, but that, years from now, when I think of the sentiments of 50 Cent or Snoop Dog, I'll actually really be thankful I made it through these years unshot.
So, until I have something substantial to say, I'm just going to say something fragmented and goofed-out.
Like, 70's music...I love it, really. Lots and lots of great songs. I came of double-digit age in the seventies, and I have solid memories of me lying on the shag green carpeted floor of my bedroom, listening to my mother's clock radio. I used to unplug it and bring it into my room, as fast as I could so that she wouldn't lose TOO much time on the clock (this was one of those clocks where the numbers were on flaps that were held up by little latches, so you couldn't wind it backwards, so if it fell behind in time, you had to wind it forward 24 hours to get back to the correct time, which I hardly ever did, which means that, slowly, my mother began being late to everything by odd increments that were only a few seconds long).
Anyway, I'd bring it into my room, yeah, and plug it in and lay down in front of it, the shades drawn, and I'd tune to K98 and curl up with the tinny speaker to hear Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Wings, Earth Wind & Fire, and all the other 70's biggies, and, little Jeremiah was in a little private heaven.
The biggest problem I had with 70's songs was that some of them were awful scary. Yes, scary. The 70's was the Era of the Scary Songs.
I mean, as a kid, I lost a lot of sleep thanks to the scary songs. You know what I'm talking about. "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," with bloodstains on the floor. And, "Tallahassee Bridge" with people jumping off and stuff.
And, how about that cheesy "Run Joey Run" song with that line: "Then Julie yelled, he's got a gun, and she stepped in front of me. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and I saw Julie falling."
And, Cher bellowing about "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," which didn't say anything really scary, but had a scary feel and that line about men coming around to lay the money down always gave me a tic. Same with "Bless the Beasts and Children," but I think that scared me because it was in the movie of the same name where a kid got shot.
And, of course, the scariest, and most browbeating song I've ever heard: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." I mean, so much for a light foot! That guy just about pummelled me with fright, over and over again:
"That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed."
"At 7PM a main hatchway caved in. He said fellas it's been good to know ya."
"And later that night when his lights went out of sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"Superior, they say, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early."
That's just a sampling of the horror! I know, I could have turned off the radio, but I was mesmerized by that song, and it felt like the "gales of November" were blowing right through my rib cage, so I dare not move lest I become a resident of the "ice water mansion"! AAAHHH! To this day, I get spooked/angry/annoyed when I hear that song.
I don't miss the era of the scary songs. I was an impressionable kid who believed in ghosts, ghouls, hars, haints, Bloodybone (that was a beast my uncle made up), bigfoots, werewolves...well, you get it. The scary songs didn't help, especially when I thought I was safe with the clock radio, as full of mom as it was.
But, in a way, I'd like to see someone do a scary song like those today, because what passes for scary now is gang-banging tunes about busting caps in heads which, in comparison, is much scarier since it is more likely you'll end up getting shot than ending up on a sinking barge in the Great Lakes. I suppose it was the menace of those 70's songs, but the unlikelyhood that you'll actually have that happen, that makes for pleasant nostalgia, but that, years from now, when I think of the sentiments of 50 Cent or Snoop Dog, I'll actually really be thankful I made it through these years unshot.
Elliot, 11:35 AM
6 Back at me:
wow, you listened to the same stuff that I did as a kid...
AM radio, gotta love it!
AM radio, gotta love it!
I don't remember them being particularly scary, but now you mention it.
My parents had me tuned into to Helen Reddy, PP & Mary, Jim Croche, and Simon & Garfunkel. By the time I realized it was old stuff, I was grooving to Kool and the Gang.
and even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
My parents had me tuned into to Helen Reddy, PP & Mary, Jim Croche, and Simon & Garfunkel. By the time I realized it was old stuff, I was grooving to Kool and the Gang.
and even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
dude, those scary songs don't hold a candle to the stuff on popular stations now. i heard some of it today, and turned green, red and orange
"One Tin Soldier" gave me the creeps. And that other song about war, I don't remember, the guy singing it? You know the one....
ipod: I did love it. I spent hours
listening to the radio.
Emma: Like I said, I was an impressionable kid. I used to think the static between the television station had ghosts in it.
Dooz: Yeah, I agree. As I said, some of these rappers, goth, and death metal bands pretty much hit on all the horrors of life and language within about 4 minutes.
Mona: That's my son's favorite tune! Which is interesting as I don't recall at his age having a favorite song that was 30+ years old. Unless you count "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and a handful of Christmas carols...
listening to the radio.
Emma: Like I said, I was an impressionable kid. I used to think the static between the television station had ghosts in it.
Dooz: Yeah, I agree. As I said, some of these rappers, goth, and death metal bands pretty much hit on all the horrors of life and language within about 4 minutes.
Mona: That's my son's favorite tune! Which is interesting as I don't recall at his age having a favorite song that was 30+ years old. Unless you count "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and a handful of Christmas carols...
Cool topic, Jeremiah.
That line about the main hatchway caving in always did give me the willies. Kind of like those old war movies I used to watch at 2:30 in the morning, where the crew of the submarine had one bad thing after another happen, and finally they were out of air, light, and time. As I thought of how horrible it would be to die like that, I was so overcome with claustrophobia that I couldn't breathe.
But the all time creepy '70s song was Bloodrock's "D.O.A.", which described the grisly aftermath of a plane crash from the first-person perspective of one of the victims. That one lost me a couple nights of sleep, you betcha.
And then there's The Buoys' ode to mine disaster and cannibalism, "Timothy". Penned, surprisingly, by Mr. Pina Colada himself, Rupert Homes.
That line about the main hatchway caving in always did give me the willies. Kind of like those old war movies I used to watch at 2:30 in the morning, where the crew of the submarine had one bad thing after another happen, and finally they were out of air, light, and time. As I thought of how horrible it would be to die like that, I was so overcome with claustrophobia that I couldn't breathe.
But the all time creepy '70s song was Bloodrock's "D.O.A.", which described the grisly aftermath of a plane crash from the first-person perspective of one of the victims. That one lost me a couple nights of sleep, you betcha.
And then there's The Buoys' ode to mine disaster and cannibalism, "Timothy". Penned, surprisingly, by Mr. Pina Colada himself, Rupert Homes.
