I Like to Look at the Mountain

Odd tune in my head this morning, stirring about, uninvited.  “Mountain” by Sunshine Theatre.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD8pGuoe-5Q&index=18&list=RDQSc8SPiNxLU . This from a collection of psychedelia on Youtube.  The chorus is catchy, insipid:  “I like to look at the mountain, why don’t you?”  The parenthetical on the posting though, suggests its “Mod psych from Wales.”  This is rather graphic.  I picture Celts on scooters, and psilocybin, darting about beneath the Brecon Beacons peaks. 

Considering the morning emails, my old friend had sent an unexplained link to a song I hadn’t heard in years and soon he was listening to “Mountain” as well and we were tapping out notes, considering the unquenchable Anglophilia of our youth. 

Driving my kids to school I was mindful of the spare tire that was holding the car up at the front right. I drove more slowly than usual.  I tried even harder than usual not to be annoyed by the guy tailgating me or the lady who tried to cut ahead of me at the line to drop the kids off. 

The morning routine is such that they get to put the music on: “somebody put something on.”  The older one usually has her iPhone cocked and ready.  With genuine curiosity I always pursue the same line of inquiry:  “Who’s this?  What’s the name of the song?  Where are they from?” Then I listen.  And I reach to the same source of self- discipline that can master feelings of road rage and try not to be snarky.  “Did he just they were going to put their faces together in concrete?  What’s the chorus?  I didn’t catch it.”  Sometimes it’s funny.  Sometimes it’s annoying.  Friday’d been the prior.  Today was the latter. 

Driving home the Jam’s 1977 classic “In the City” popped on and I turned it up loud and considered Rick Buckler’s drum fills and Paul Weller’s pleading “about the young ideas.”  Facile, and certainly annoying, but I always keep asking my daughter if there isn’t anyone at school who is in to notably odd music that no one else cares for.  “Make friends with that kid.”  Perhaps music’s currency of power to buttress an identity is on a wane from its pre-computer, pre-web, pre-smartphone, pre-ubiquity apex of my youth.  As John Lennon once cuttingly said to a host that had them on a British variety show, when asked “what’s it like being famous boys?”  “Oh.  It’s not at all like in your day.”