My Sick Mind

While I'm listening to Cocteau Twins I am thinking about my musical influences and how I came about them. The Beatles were unavoidable.  Their music was everywhere, and even a 7-year old couldn't avoid them.  Lucky for me. Their subsequent British Invasion clones and American counterparts would shape my thought as a young person of the 1960s, and I found myself drawn into pop radio and its influences, mostly because I exhibited no independent thought.  Once I did, however, my mind wandered. Chicago Transit Authority would be later (and better) known as Chicago, and their music was foist upon me by their radio popularity and their popularity among the young hipsters in my high school. That led to bands like Focus; Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Grand Funk Railroad who became popular among my high school friends - and me, in the case of Focus and ELP.  I remember being on my school bus one morning asking a seat-mate if he had heard "Hocus Pocus" by Focu...

The National Football League is a marketing machine.  They have figured out how to make working out (The Combine) and choosing-up sides (The Draft) into prime-time television programs that run for several nights on big-time cable television stations. What is more amazing is that people watch. It reminds me of the saying:  Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public. Is he really going to have GRIFFIN III on his jersey or was that just a prop for the draft? I love the coconut water drinks that have started showing up over the past year or so.  I wonder if it's real coconut water or just a mix of chemicals designed to simulate coconut water?  I saw "Cast Away" and it didn't look to me like Tom Hanks was getting a lot of water out of those coconuts.  At least not enough for somebody to think that they could bottle the stuff and earn a profit. We're a conflicted people.  Every day (or so it seems) we hear about h...

I picked up my bag, I went looking for a place to hide; When I saw Carmen and the Devil walking side by side. I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown." She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around." Take a load off Annie, take a load for free; Take a load off Annie, and you put the load right on me. Levon Helm died on Thursday.  It prompted a lot of airplay for "The Weight," one of The Band's most popular songs.  One DJ said that hearing the song makes him cry.  I have heard the song a number of times and frankly, never had that reaction.  Mostly because I never knew what it was about. I found the lyrics online and read through them and I still don't know what it's about.  That got me to thinking. Tons of people love that song [pun] and if you asked them, I'd bet that either they don't know all the words or, if they do, they couldn't put their finger on exactly what the song means.  While it appears...