Listening to the César Franck D Minor Symphony at the Bakeway on Broadway, watching the pitter patter of the feet traipse past. I thought of broadcasting that calming video to Periscope.TV but the app demands that it be the only thing running on your device. So I could not sit here and type while sharing the passing of the peoples outside accompanied by the tinny sounding pecking of the typing of these words. The periscope app also will not let me listen to music whilst broadcasting. So fuck that app.

I saw the word “whilst” somewhere today twice in two sentences. I think it was an IMDB writeup of “Taxi” or else one of the actors from that show. Oh wait it was not “Taxi”, it was the guy who played the gun-wielding stooge in “Dog Day Afternoon” (the first movie I ever saw) and who only appeared in five films. But those five films are all considered to be classics. DDA, Deer Hunter, Godfathers I and II… and one other I can’t remember.

I am foraging ahead with KLUTE but feeling no more love for it now than when it started.

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Hup. Hup. Little did we understand that torture was always an option. Torture your loaves of bread, your retired school teachers, your hoary barrels of beer from the Carter administration. Every life a mystery, tired from old men staring at you from across the bar, from behind the steering wheel.

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Just switched from Franck D Minor Symphony to “AM Gold 1974” which kicks off with “I Can Help” by a singer whose identity did not make it on to my precious PLEX server.  This song basically says that everybody gets the blues, everybody gets lonely, but according to the gospel of this singer and/or songwriter there should be an exception to that rule when it comes to beautiful women. She sounds like a hot mess, and he sounds like a lonely dude with not enough to do. I can identify with that guy. He is offering to help this woman out with taking care of her child. I made such overtured to Sandra years ago. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

Now it is “Mockingbird” which I know to be Carly Simon. I guess this is based on or at least inspired by the traditional folk song about “if that mockingbird don’t sing, momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring…” ?

The dude on WNYC who has been doing the “New Sounds” show since I was in grade school has played a lot of “Bang on the Can” stuff over the years. Lately it seems to be not all that he plays but if it is not BOAC outright then it is somehow related in sound or in social connections of the BOAC composers. Last night a strange-to-me piece by Julia Wolfe came across. The announcer introduced it like it was the next “Rite of Spring” but to me it sounded like “Different Trains” redux. I gave that piece another try today, on the Spotify, and felt exactly the same about it. “New Sounds” also has a penchant for playing Brian Eno’s “Airport Music” seemingly every time I tune in for a week or two at a stretch.

Don’t know why I care except that back in grade school I imagined that getting air time on “New Sounds” was extremely competitive and something of a badge of honor. Since them it seems to have fallen into comfortable routines so as not to waken its late-night audience.

OK, a couple of songs passed me by while spewing that needless screed. Now it is Redbone singing “Come and Get Your Love.” I guess that was a one hit wonder kind of band? I used to think this was Marvin Gaye. Not just a one hit wonder but basically a one-line song at that. I could use a few of those.

Staring out the window waiting for this song to end. A woman sitting near me is rocking out to some music or something on her laptop screen. She was pounding the counter a minute ago. I looked over only because I thought with her hitting the table she might be trying to get my attention. I should have told her “Come and Get Your Love.” Oh yeah.

Now it is “Midnight at the Oasis,” a song which lurches into my conscious mind once in a while, never reaching beyond the first line. This song has a strange place in its heart for a man and his camel. “Send your camel to bed. You won’t need your camel baby when I take you for a ride.”

Oh hell yeah, it is “Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies. I unwittingly plagiarized lines from this song in high school, in a poem that I think was supposed to be about God and the confusion of remaining faithful. The English teacher, an angry bitter nun who hauled me in for needless tutoring sessions on weekends, singled out the lines I had stolen from this song, saying they were “golden” and “beautiful.” Neither she nor I knew it was lifted from that Hollies song. The stuff I had written myself was, well, she wouldn’t even dignify it with an actual word. She had a strange skill that allowed her to both clench her fist while simultaneously waving me away with a disdainful swipe of the back of her hand.

That was the year I won some kind of literary award and was made an editor of the school paper for the following year.  She wanted no part of that, and you know, she got no part of that. I wonder where she ended up. I learned only recently that my English teacher the next year was not a whole lot older than most of us in the class. He only semi-retired this year at what was frequently referred to as an early age. So maybe he is about 10 years my senior? I also learned that for as much prestige and such that was assumed our teachers had most of them had nothing more than undergraduate degrees from the local University. Nothing is wrong with that, nothing whatsoever. But somehow we were led to believe the faculty all came from the most prestigious pedigree, and by that association we were destined for similar greatness. Hah, whatever.

Now the song is “Billy Don’t Be A Hero.” I sorta remember this one, but I think I remember it more for the sound of the singer’s voice and some other song that he did. Bah, song is over before I can think anything more of it. Echoes of “Tell Laura I Love Her”, perhaps.

The Night Chicago Died. Always reminded me of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by the woman from the Carol Burnett Show. This song is about a kid whose mother cried the night her husband (his father) was killed in an Al Capone-related shooting. My mother did not know it at the time but she was friends with family of Chicago mobsters. She put the pieces together years later. The giveaway was that they had sliding glass doors in their house. Those were commonplace in Tampa when I grew up but in the 1940s/50s nobody had those in Chicago, or so my mother said. They had a lot of money but went to public schools and showed few conspicuous trappings of material wealth. You only really keyed in to their wealth when they let you in to their home.That’s how my mother described her high school- and college-age brushes with Chicago mafioso.

I am going home. I should do this more often. Stream of consciousness based on 1970s songs.