An Afternoon’s Delight of Nostalgic Music #SoCS

Skyrockets in flight, Afternoon delight.

Rubbing sticks and stones together makes the sparks ignite

And the thought of rubbing you is getting so exciting

Skyrockets in flight, afternoon delight

[insert your own ‘pewww’ sound here]

The Starlight Anthem Band

Afternoon delight.

You’re humming it now, aren’tcha?

That’s one of the earliest songs I can remember as a kid. And many of the times when I hear it, I am back in car on Ruth Street in Sulphur, passing the Roller-Skating rink, Stine’s Lumber, and Mr. Gatti’s on the way to Meme and Pawpan’s. Or, sometimes, the Channel 4 News Team from Anchorman.

Even at 6, I always thought this song was about something naughty – though I didn’t know what kind of naughty just yet as I had only recently discovered my Dad’s porn stash. It wasn’t until too many years later that I learned “Afternoon Delight” was far, far superior to Turkish Delight.

It’s also one of the songs I think of when people 20 years older than me bitch about music “these days” being all about sex and filth and all was purity and light in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Yeah, no, biatch, I’ve heard 60 Minute Man by Big Dan and I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl by Bessie Smith, though the Nina Simone version — smoking (that ain’t sugar or a bowl she’s singing about!). And don’t even get me started on Clarence Carter’s Strokin’!

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “a song from your childhood.” Think of a song from your childhood and just write. Have fun!

the prompt from Linda G. Hill’s for Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Amazing how memory and song work together, and this song has worn a groove in my mind about Grand Canyon Deep.

Read about the Starland Anthem Band in a Washington Post article 20 plus years ago. They were two couples and they wrote the song at one of the bars on M Street in Georgetown.

There are a few other songs I have a deep, abiding lifelong love affair with:

A Boy Named Sue sung by Johnny Cash. My Mama has always been indifferent to music, but she did have a Cash 8 track in . . . the silver car with he vinyl roof . . . and a Cash (and a few other) 8-track cassettes. I want to say there was an Anne Murry and an Elvis in there too.

Ha, Elvis. She DID have a few Elvis records that I would listen to now and again – the Girls, Girls, Girls and whatever the Acapulto movie is called. I do love me some Elvis. Except for In the Ghetto; too damn sad and too damn relevant still.

I do sometimes wonder about some of the Jailhouse Rock lyrics – You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see, I’d sure be delighted with your company, come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.

Uhhhhhh, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s like YMCA before YMCA; “Young man . . . “

For no reason I can fathom to do this day, she also had Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. I have a deep and abiding love for El Paso and Big Iron to this day. About once a month, I’ll holler at Alexa to play one or the other.

Bad, Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce. My Dad loved him some Croce. Gone too soon in that spate of musician plane crashes in the 70s (never realized that the Lynyrd Skynnrd crash was not too far away from Hattiesburg, MS, where I went to college).

I would’ve been all about the bus had I been in a band back then. I don’t know that there’s a Croce song I don’t like. I can sign a lot of them through.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia is another song that’s been with me my entire life. I’ve always hated the “Son-of-a-bitch” radio edit, when it’s made.

Then there’s The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. I’ve heard that song hundreds if not thousands of times. Almost always find myself singing or humming along. I’d like to do one thing that memorable – and/or that lead to a movie career. What great songwriting to set a feeling, “On a warm summers’ evening, on a train bound for nowhere.”

Angst. Aimlessness. Loneliness.

I’m still a lot stunned that Kenny was in a psychodelic band before he became KENNY ROGERS. Mind was blown when I was looking at the soundtrack for The Big Lebowski and “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” is sung by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. Was even more blown when I tried to stump my Dad and he knew it.

I’ve always had music on the background, even as a kid. I’d go to sleep listening to the radio – mostly country or the local pop station. Playing with my dinosaurs or army men in my bedroom and I’d usually have the radio on. There are songs I can’t think of that when I hear them, I can still sing along to them now.

Like having some kind of musical tourrettes.

At my Dad’s, Saturday was often playing board/card games time. AM 1310 in Sulphur played the Golden Oldies (which, JFC, weren’t as old at the time as Welcome to the Jungle is now – the use of music as a benchmark for aging is something I gotta get away from!).

I pretty much love all Motown because of that. Elvis, Bob Seger, all that stuff from the 50s – Rockin’ Robin, those stupid-ass crash/death songs – seriously, who the fuck thinks “HEY! Let’s write a song about a chick dying in a car crash and we’ll call it “Last Kiss.” Freaking buzzkill.

I still love listening to music – after pulling up Just Dropped In let YouTube do it’s thing and just typing along to Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason.” Which, yeah, again further back in time from today than when sitting around a table playing Yahtzee or Uno and listening to James Brown and the Wicked Wilson Pickett, I’m gonna wait til the midnight hour, that’s when my love comes tumbling down. That song still rocks and would be a hit today (or at least should be).  

Oh, man, can’t forget two other songs that I never get tired of:

• The Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book – all of life’s wisdom is in the song
• Brandy by Looking Glass. I’ve mentioned Brandy in other posts, and probably will again, but it is the absolutely best bad song of all time. There’s a port, on a western bay and it serves a hundred ships a day.

LOL. The Animal House Soundtrack. I’ve loved it since I was 7 – my first R-rated movie. Thank you, HBO! We’d like to do for you now a tune entitled Shama lama ding dong, so hit it. It’s rare that I don’t think of that movie and don’t have a flashback to a Saturday night in my Mawmaw’s den with my cousin John and brother Adam all lined up on the floor watching it.

Like most folks, I’ve hundreds of memories tied to music. You never quite know when you’re going to get that hit of nostalgia-fueled dopamine – walking down the street, the radio, hell, even Muzak.

Regarding nostalgia, I refuse to fall into the bullshit, music was best in the “insert random decade you spent most of your teenage years.”

That’s just lazy garbage.

Fine, have your favorites. And, sure, some of that music from that time WAS great. The majority of it was shit and radio filler. Same as it is today.

Every year, regardless of genre, great records are being made. I’m particularly fond of The Teskey Brothers these days. But Zac Brown Band, Chris Stapleton, Pink, Lady Gaga, Lizzo, U2, Leon Bridges, Morgan Wade, Mandolin Rain, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and so many more are making music we’ll be wanting to hear 50 years from now.

Assuming I can still hear.

Anyways, links to some of the music I was listening to while tip-tapping away.