I don't care if I get behind.
People living in competition--
All I want is to have some peace of mind"--old Boston song
This morning featured hobby fun, a poignant church service, and introducing my nephew to the joy which is pho ga', a *real* chicken soup for the soul.
The afternoon featured a walk of well-pleased dogs around the pond, NCAA basketball on television, and a delay at a sandwich chain store called Schlotzsky's, which caused my poor sister to have to make the nephew exchange at Mt. Vernon rather than Mount Pleasant. We talked of hawks and cars and
the future.
The truck stop at Mt. Vernon sold me a CD called "hot guitar licks", which, despite its daisy-sue-got-single CD cover, proved not to be riffs by people named Ygnwie, but instead a survey of mainstream FM radio classics from the era 1972--1978. I sang along from the first lyric of "Rebel Rebel" through the exuberance of Todd Rundgren's wonderful production work on"We're an American Band" to the last stanza of "China Grove". I thought to myself that "peace of mind" is more notable for its Entwhistlish bass than its hot guitar lick, and how kids in my time would have included Patti Smith or Fanny or Head East rather than Pat Benatar if we had been making a populist mixtape. I remembered people doing country-line-dances to "Smoke on the Water" at church camp, and seeing the Edgar Winter Group with Rick Derringer perform "Frankenstein" and "Rock n Roll Hoochie Coo" (and, for that matter, "Free Ride"), through heavy clouds of second-hand cannabis smoke (a novel experience for rather puritanical me) and the sad sight of someone abusing inhalants (particularly sad because my father's med school classmate had just lost their son to a fatal accident during such abuse). I sang every word to "Sweet Home Alabama" except the few I forgot during the Muscle Shoals portion of the lyric, and I wonder, as I sit there, why the CD lacked any Thin Lizzy. In my time, we all explored experimental artists with some fervor, whether Zappa or Partch or the Residents or or Magma or Bill Nelson's Red Noise, but we none of us minded a solid mainstream FM classic from time to time.
A good weekend. A busy week ahead.