63 – It’s Money That I Love – Randy Newman – 1979

It's Money That I Love - Randy Newman 

            This one kinda bookends with 30-It’s Money That Matters, another Randy Newman opus. It comes from 1979’s “Born Again” album, the one with Newman on the cover behind a desk in a business suit, with green hair, white clown face, and green dollar signs over his eyes. 

            It has a rollicking boogie-woogie beat that I love, with delightfully funny, pointed lyrics.

“They say that money
Can't buy love in this world
But it'll get you a half-pound of cocaine
And a sixteen-year old girl
And a great big long limousine
On a hot September night
Now that may not be love
But it is all right”

Newman sings many songs from an extreme viewpoint (“Rednecks”,

“Short People”, “Political Science”) though it’s obvious it’s for satirical purposes.

            It reminds me of 1979 when I was finishing up my M.A. and came back to Accutronics as a Production Supervisor, though I was soon to become the Process Engineer/QA Manager, making around $20K a year. It was the year I purchased the only new car I’ve ever had, a 1979 Mustang, for which I paid $5600 cash, loaned to me by my grandmother, who I slowly paid off over the next 6-7 years.

            I had that car for 7-8 years, sold it for $2500 cash (the most I’ve ever held in my hand), surviving a crash in 1981 when I was drunk. Luckily, I was not found out, which is an interesting story…

            In 1981 I played 12 inch softball with a bunch of guys from Accu and some friends of friends. After one Saturday game I went to a teammate’s house to drink beer and swim in his parent’s pool.

            After several hours of drinking I decided to head for home, after stopping at the long-gone Pizza Stop for a “Pollish ssauagge wi’ mudstardpigglesandunyuns”. As I sat at a red light, waiting to make a left turn, a 16 year old kid in his brother’s new Corvette, made a left turn in front of me, onto my street, flooring the ‘Vette, losing control and slamming into me right at the driver’s door, pushing me into the right turn lane.

            The window was rolled down and glass flew out of the smashed door. My polish and fries were also flying about the car. My head bumped the bent door frame and I was slightly bleeding down my forehead.

            My inability to walk well when I crawled out the passenger side door was taken to be the result of the bump, not the 10 beers I had downed. After the police came and ticketed the kid, who had no insurance, they let me drive home.

            At the time I was renting a house from Mr. M, my boss (see also: 7 – I Won’t Let You Down), and as I pulled into the driveway I saw Mr. M in his yard next door. Since the driver’s side door was bashed in and inoperable, my only way of exit was by the passenger door.

            After I pushed open the door, I somersaulted backward out the door to my feet (pretty good trick for my drunken, 6’5”, 230 pound frame) and I told Mr. M the whole story.

            Ahhhh, youth!  

62 – You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon – 1986

You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon

A song from Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album that always reminds me of the video that was released, starring Chevy Chase, animatedly mouthing the lyrics as Paul Simon morosely lurked in the background, playing various instruments such as the bass guitar and conga drums.

It also reminds me of a concert Lynn and I attended in 1992, during Simon’s “Born at the Right Time” tour, at the Rosemont Horizon (now the Allstate Arena). The stage was on our left so the majority of the sound pounded my left eardrum. 

And it was loud (which many people later marveled at when I told them, they thought of Paul Simon as the “Sounds of Silence”, “Scarborough Fair” guy, even though the new albums were very percussion driven)

The next day I noticed my ears were still ringing, especially my left.

When it didn’t abate after several days, I made an appointment with my primary doctor and he sent me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, who performed a hearing test. It was then that I found out I had lost upper register hearing, due to running punch press for 6 months in my early working career at Accutronics, in those wonderful pre-OSHA days when we didn’t wear any hearing protection (and none was offered).

The ringing has never stopped, I just don’t notice it until I’m in a quiet area, or are sick, when it becomes hard not to think about the constant tone.

I’ve gotten used to it, I guess.

My doctor also found I had an enlarged thyroid on the right side of my throat and I ended up having half of it removed, requiring me to take synthroid forever to make up for the missing half.

           That’s a lot of medical memories linked to a fairly upbeat song

61 – Good Vibrations – 1966

Good Vibrations form "Pet Sounds" sessions

            One of my favorite Beach Boys compositions, Brian Wilson’s most creative work, done when he was all of 24. I have three versions on the Zune. One is the original version, the second a re-working by Brian in 2004 for his recreation of the “Smile” album, and the third an instrumental version from the “Pet Sounds Sessions” CD set.

            I received the 45 of this song for my birthday in 1966 (my 12^th) and played it over and over, I loved all the changes that took place during its 3 ½ minutes.

            I particularly enjoy listening to the version from the “Pet Sounds Sessions” CD, because it strips the vocals from the track and illustrates how beautifully Brian Wilson built the song.

            You hear the guitar, Hammond Organ, tamborine, then the drums come in, along with the Theremin and bass, and finally, the sleigh bells!!

            As the Wikipedia entry so eloquently describes it, the song was put together by “…recording and re-recording…specific sections of music, followed by rough mixes of the sections edited together, further recording as required, and the construction of the final mix from the component elements…The various sections of the song were edited together by Wilson into an innumerable amount of sound collages, and its production spanned 17 recording sessions at four different recording studios. The recording is reported to have used over 90 hours of magnetic recording tape, with an eventual budget estimated between $50,000 and $75,000 ($360,000 - $ 550,000 today).”

            “Pet Sounds”, the whole album, had cost $70,000.

            Hearing the 45 version, I am reminded of the one birthday party I had growing up. Birthday’s weren’t the event, in my circle of friends (or anywhere back then), like they are today when you and your kid are judged by the party you put on for them.

            It was probably my 11th birthday, 1965, I had invited 3-4 guys over to go to see the latest Jerry Lewis movie, “The Disorderly Orderly,” at the Dundee Main Street Theater, the closest to Algonquin back then.  

            We piled into our Dodge Valiant station wagon and my mom drove us to the theater and when we got there we found that the movie had changed and so we saw “King Kong vs Godzilla.”

Quite the disappointment as I recall.

60 - On Every Street – Dire Straits – 1991

On Every Street - Dire Straits 

     This song has one of Mark Knopfler’s best riffs (or is it a refrain?) in a career full of great ones. It’s from Dire Straits’ last album and, like many of his songs, it builds slowly. After the verses are sung, his guitar plays 10 single notes, once, twice, then a little drum comes in and it repeats a couple more times, then it repeats (sounds dull, but give it a listen) and adds instruments (even some cowbell at one point, I think!), then he adds a little slide guitar and the bass comes in and it builds into a rollicking, ..and it fades…. 

     I can listen to this over and over. Lynn likes it, too.

     It reminds me of the Christmas in 1991 when I asked for this album from Lynn’s mom as my X-mas present.

     It also reminds me of the X-mas when we had a round robin gift giving (I don’t think that’s the name for it, but I’m 60 now, an old man). Everybody brought a gift and then we sat in my brother in law Dave’s Chicago “bachelor” pad and took turns either taking a gift or passing yours to someone else, taking theirs.

     Everybody seemed to end up with their own gift, as I recall, and I was happy because I ended up with the DVD of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. At the time, we were the only ones with a DVD player so I guess I knew what I’d end up with.

59 – World Turning – Leo Kottke – 1997

World Turning - Leo Kottke 

This is Kottke’s cover of Lindsay Buckingham’s song from his Fleetwood Mac days, and like the other covers by Leo on my Zune, I prefer his to the original. It has a great vocal and Kottke plays a little sitar on it as well.

I was not a big Fleetwood Mac guy, though I feel that Lindsay Buckingham is one of the great guitarists, up there with Leo and John Fahey, as a finger picker. One of my favorite albums is “Out of the Cradle,” which begins with a 25 second instrumental which showcases his virtuosity.

I’m thinking back to 1997 when this song came out and the main memory it brings is my short stint at Ibiden Printed Circuits, a Japanese owned company about a mile from our house here in Elgin. I left Tingstol, which was in Elk Grove Village (about a mile from where I work now), for a chance to work closer to home, but had never worked for the Japanese before (or since).

When I got there they said I needed a passport, because at some point  I would be sent to Japan to work in the main plant  for several weeks to learn how to do it their way. After a couple weeks I was told that Hitachi was coming in for an audit and we had to get ready in one week. I looked at the documentation they had on file and saw everything was translated from Japanese into English, but not easily readable in that it was too literal.

I saw that we were trying to get ready for a full blown ISO audit in one week, which is kinda crazy and I told the Japanese president it would be impossible to do so. His response was, “But we must try.”

And try we did, I worked several night until midnight or one AM (starting at 8 AM), translating the literal English into readable English, line-by-line, then going in to the president’s office and discuss whether I had got the true meaning of the sentence.

At 10PM each night the whole shebang would come to a halt as they (all the Japanese managers) would go into the president’s office and call the Japanese plant since it was 8AM there. Other Japanese office workers could not leave until the president did, so they actually slept at their desks as these all-nighters went on.

When the audit occurred, we failed and I saw more frustrations like this on the horizon, along with that totally unsupervised trip to Japan that loomed ahead.

So I did something I have never done, before or since. After calling my old boss at Tingstol, to make sure I had a job to go back to, I waited one morning until the 9AM production meeting started and I took a box, swept everything from my desk into it, and walked out the door. I went home and told my wife not to answer the phone and I never went back.

I’m not proud of that moment, but I have never felt so frustrated and lost with any job I’ve ever taken on.