Exhibit A: Richard Harris – “MacArthur Park”
Mom was working at St. John’s Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the time. As everyone in the medical profession knows, hospital shifts involve some jacked-up hours, and I vaguely recall that Mom had to report at 6am. (This may be a lie; all I know is that it was dark when we left the house, barely awake and unimpressed that we had to get up in the first place.) We had a Volkswagen Beetle at the time, as did 97% of the planet. I would lumber towards that essentially-useless “storage area” behind the backseat, where I was still small enough to hunker down in defiance, expressing my societal outrage via personal-confinement.
Through some combination of our house being somewhat near the hospital, the length of the song, and the apparently rigid playlist of the radio station Mom then relished, Richard’s cryptic words were the only things I heard from the ignition of the car to my quick abandonment at the daycare/preschool/minimum-security correctional facility next to the hospital. Someone left the cake out in the rain at the same time that I was being left out to dry in the American educational system. No wonder I have food issues to this day.
Exhibit B: Don McLean – “American Pie”
Somewhere in the archives, there is the tale of my father having an obsession with both driving recklessly on motorcycles and tormenting me by insisting that I join him in these ventures. (Having no voting rights in the matter, I also had no choice.) Short version of this tragic and woeful saga: The climax occurred at one of those dirt-bike parks that were all the rage, with Daddy ignoring my anguished protests of violation and malfeasance as he attempted to run up a hill with a gradient of roughly 87 degrees.
We nearly died. And during this extremely spiritual moment, at least at those points when I wasn’t screaming, I could hear this song braying out of a nearby yokel’s pickup truck. (No idea if pink carnations were in said truck, as I didn’t quite have the time to do a proper review of the inventory, busy as I was with envisioning what type of choreography would be performed at my funeral. Because there WILL BE choreography, write that down.) You know your day is not going to go well when a complete stranger says things like “mister, maybe you oughta let the boy hop down before you try that” and your padre flips off said stranger.
Exhibit C: America – “A Horse with No Name”
In 1972, Evel Knievel Daddy uprooted the family and moved us from the relatively sophisticated metropolis of Tulsa and out to the sordid backwaters of nearby Broken Arrow. (The rest of us just assumed that one of us was being punished for some vague transgression; that’s just how the family dynamic worked until The Big Divorce came along and completely reworked the script, changed the cast, and forever altered the fabric of family reunions.) This meant that I was plucked out of one school system, after having only served time in the first grade and clearly not getting my sea legs, and thrown into another. Complicating matters, this change involved going from a questionably-performing but somewhat stable school system into one that was on the verge of exploding into the fastest growing system in the state.
The school board had no idea what to do. Neither did I, lost in a wave of anonymity where names became numbers and educating became processing. (If you think a child doesn’t notice these things, you may not be giving that child enough credit, especially if he has already written a treatise entitled “Reflections on the Absurdities of My Single-Digit Years”, complete with annotations and pie charts.) On the flip side, an inventive child can get away with an amazing number of indiscretions when administrators are overwhelmed with just making sure there is enough government-subsidized food in the lunchroom.
Exhibit D: Elton John – “Levon”
My respect for EJ (and Bernie Taupin) is no secret on this blog. They have collaborated on a number of songs that are actually closer to my heart, but this one allows the listener to interpret things in a variety of ways, especially the one line that helped nudge me towards realizing it is okay to question what you’ve been told. And no, it’s not about Levon Helm. It’s about life. And that musical arrangement? Well, enough said…
Exhibit E: Far Corporation – “Stairway to Heaven”
Yep, I’m breaking protocol by not including the original version but rather a years-later remake. (Blame EJ and Bernie. They told me to branch out. I listened.) The Led Zeppelin version of this song was huge, obviously, and still is, despite the fact that nobody really knew what it was about, other than a slight indictment of the commercialization of religion. (Foreshadowing? Discuss amongst yourselves.) In this left-field take, a mix of homage and questionable decisions, we experience a then-modern revamping of something we had heard before presented in a different way.
And really, isn’t that what life should be? You take what you know and you make it your own, even if nobody else really gets it. As Levon or Elton or Jesus would say, “take a balloon and go sailing…”
Cheers.
Categories: Reflections
Bonnywood Manor 
Amazing song choices. Love them all.
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Oh, I hit the bonus round. I thought you might appreciate a few of them, but to hear that you gave a thumbs up to the whole quintet is quite satisfying… 😉
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Your post made me laugh. I like most of the songs; however, “A Horse With No Name” and “American Pie” are kind of silly.
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Are they silly? Or are they deeper than we thought they were? We may never know… 😉
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..expressible my societal outrage via personal-confinement.. 😂😂 we’ve all been there I guess! 😂 Natural stupidity somehow always made sulking look like a punishment to OTHER people, not ever quite managing notice their sighs of gratitude 😜
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Right? I took great pride in my perceived notion that heading to my bedroom and avoiding the rest of the family would express my outrage, not realizing that they all wanted me to stay in that bedroom as long as possible… 😉
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Ah! Much is revealed from the playlist songs of our lives. All of these songs are background for episodes in my own version of life and all I can say is ‘way cool!” (even though Donna Summer did a kick-ass version of MacArthur Park which is my own favorite). Share more! 😀
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Very true, in that the songs some of us experienced together in a certain place and time made an impact, even if that impact varied wildly. As for MacArthur Park, I really like the Donna versions as well, especially the one that mixes in her duet with Brooklyn Dreams on “Heaven Knows”. (“It’s not the way it should be…” Love it.) And I plan to keep sharing until an arrest warrant is issued… 😉
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I adored this insight into your life. Write many many more things like this please
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Thank you! And I will try my best to write more. I think the best stories are the real stories, where you get as close to the bone as you can without breaking that bone. On the flip side, I so love doing the absurdist bits, pushing things to the extreme. Hopefully, folks will be able to pick their way through the fallout and latch onto the things that matter… 😉
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I like a facets of your work.
I fell in love with the humor and that made me want to know more about the brilliant man behind it 🙂
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Good tunes… we had all the best drugs and good music, that’s why all subsequent generations are jealous… jc
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You have a very valid point. The 70s were so insane and surreal that it created a mindset that may never be replicated. The jury is still out on whether or not this was a good thing… 😉
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Did someone say soggy cake and pie … I’m so hungry I could eat a horse 😉 By the way I love all these songs and you have me wondering why so – what it is about each that has me captivated. I may be some time 😊
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If I may be so bold, I’d say the elusive meaning of the lyrics allows us to make them our own. And that makes for a great song… 😉
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Agreed!
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Were those first-grade Crusty Pie charts?? 😕
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You got it. Crusty is something I’m embracing more and more every day, as various parts of me solidify and refuse to cooperate… 😉
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Amazing songs – brought back a lot of memories 🙂
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Thanks, Lynne! Memories keep us young… 😉
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I love listening to American Pie and its the one song that I know EVERY single word and sing it as loudly as possible every time it comes on the radio. Reminds me of being a kid driving around in the country with my dad. I’m sad to say that if my son were to make this list there would be songs like “I’m a Barbie girl” or maybe even some “Save a horse, ride a cowboy”… um?
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I am very envious that you know all the “Pie” words. I have tried very hard over the years to learn all the lyrics, and I got close a few times, but it has thus far proved elusive. (Perhaps it’s the trauma from the daredevil bike stunt? Who knows.) Now, it sounds like your son’s song playlist would make for a great post. Hint, hint… 😉
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Finally able to catch up on some reading, had to move my daughter this weekend. Can you guess where she moved? … BARTLESVILLE, OK.!!
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Are you serious? On purpose? Just kidding… 😉
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Yes. Yes and in the country! She has to go in town to get wifi to use her phone and laptop, until she can find a provider who covers the area! She did research alright!! 😉
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Well, best of luck to her, although she might not get the message until she gets closer to a cell tower… 😉
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