SONGS OF MY DAYS: BAND ON THE RUN

LOL.. sitting here in Seoul the iPod served “Band on the Run” up and for some weird reason I rewound it 5 times and listened fully through it. Wasn’t til the 5th time I realized why the song poked at me.

Of course it was from the wayback machine…

I was somewhere outside of Palm Springs when reality hit. On a hot day in the desert, no drugs and no bats, I realized that my sister was human.

This was a realization that contradicted over 10 years of observed history.

I can’t remember what year it was, so it could have contradicted nearly 20 years of observed history.

It revolved around “Band on the Run” by the once semi-great and now treacly Sir McCartney. I had developed an immoderate love for the tune, particularly the long version. Back in the day, when dinosaurs ruled the earth), radio tended to cut singles down to snappy 2:29 ditties.

A few songs had come along and busted this up a little – “Stairway to Heaven” had been pretty impossible to:

a) deny, and
b) chop up

since it built and didn’t strictly adhere to the verse/chorus/verse model. Unfortunately, McCartney, even when brilliant, wrote in clichés, and “Band on the Run” was editable due to its formulaic structure.

So it often was edited, and I loved to hear the long version…

During summer, as usual, my parents had abandoned my sister and me to the clutches of one of the sets of our grandparents. This time, fortunately for me, it was our grandfather and his second wife. They had a closet filled with the boozes of the world and, as bored with us as we were with them, allowed me full access. I have no idea how my sister dealt with the boredom, although I did notice a lot of dead birds around the birdbath (NOTE TO SELF: Contact Hollywood Re: “Bloodbath at the Birdbath”).

The Grandparents had something on the lines of a Victrola, and my only contact with the outside world was through a portable radio the sister had smuggled down to Palm Springs.

So, in the midst of some kind of spat with sister, THE SONG came on the radio and I started grooving.
My sister was apparently adopted from as clever a family as I had been adopted from, and immediately noting that I liked the song, changed the channel.

I was, as is my habit, angry.

We got into a verbal brawl (I felt I had a minute or two for this, since the song was so long) but sister would not turn the channel back. So I grabbed the radio, or attempted to, and in the tussle I broke the antenna.

Radio reception went to black. To my utter surprise, my sister began to cry (dispelling the idea I had in my head that she was a reptile…. But.. hang on.. “crocodile tears?” it still could be true).

Sitting there, with a bent arial (better than an italic dingbats) in my hand, I felt ridiculously rotten.

In that moment I learned an important lesson –

I needed to buy my own technology, cause you can’t trust a skirt!