Saturday, March 21, 2020

Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting

Someone told me today was the first day of Spring but Googly says it was Thursday.  Here's a question: does time even matter anymore?  Here's a follow-up: what the actual fuck?

Yesterday I said I'd try to get stuff done but I finished the night staying up really late & binging coronavirus websites & then watching two Cinemasins episodes about two movies I'll never watch.

That's no excuse but a good night's sleep would be nice.  I wonder what that would feel like in this day & age.

One thing I keep finding myself doing is hearing old classic rock songs from my youth in my head & revisiting them on Youtube.  Mostly it's a disappointment - I will for example like a section of the song but find most of it quite silly - especially noodly guitar solos - but mostly I'm surprised how many of them have lyrics I simply never quite knew.  Like the Elton John song after which this post is named.  Here's a little background:

The first album I ever owned, the first record that was exclusively mine, was Elton John's Greatest Hits.  I loved it mainly for the song "Rocket Man" (though I had yet to see William Shatner's definitive version) & possibly "Daniel," a song that always freaked me out for some reason.  Anyway, the song "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting" - & yeah, I know it's "Alright," I just can't bring myself to use the incorrect grammatical word, I'm sorry - that song never really grabbed me, & part of the reason why that I heard the lyrics wrong.

"Saturday's night all right for fighting, get a little action in," is how it goes.  For some reason - might it be because I got the record in 1976? - I thought the song said, "even in an election year."  There was a part of my eight-year-old mind that somehow accepted the premise that you shouldn't fight in election years, but Elton John was arguing that that indeed was fine.  Wanna scuffle on a Saturday in 1968?  Totally cool.  Bash some brains between Friday & Sunday in 1972?  Go for it.  Beat up some drunkards on a weekend in 1980?  You can do it dude!  Eight year old me appreciated the specificity but found it a tad unrelatable.

How many lyrics have I heard wrong my entire life?  You could narrow it down to Elvis Costello lyrics & it would be a troubling number.

Not as troubling as the world is right now, & who knows, maybe my mind is attempting to comfort me with soothing sounds from my childhood.  They might have been soothing then, but of course old Gary does find a lot of them, as I said, a little silly.  Still, keep 'em coming.  It's a welcome respite from the news which has no hope for any of us in sight.

Wait, I shouldn't speak for everyone.  The very rich will come through this all right.  They always do.

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