Category Archives: Music

A Friday night where I cannot find words to adequately capture this end-of-summer moment… and so a song will have to suffice… a song and several links hidden throughout…

Dear Heart, dear Soul
Old friend, don’t let me go
I am the fire and you are water
Drown me out, but I learnt
So if you see me, cross the street
But I still see you in people I meet
And I am fire and you are water
You drown me out, but I learnt, I got older, found out I ought to

Make ashes from stone
All of these things that I’ve seen turn darkness into gold
And when I was made from the right kind of wrong
All of these things that I’ve seen turned darkness into gold

Rivers run red, river run dry
River run red and whit?
I am the fire and you are wat?r
Drown me out, but I learnt
So if you see me, cross the street
But I still see you in people I meet
And I am fire and you are water
You ran me wild to the sea, there you’ll find me, trying to catch me
Make ashes from stone
All of these things that I’ve seen turn darkness into gold
And when I was made from the right kind of wrong
All of these things that I’ve seen turned darkness into gold
All of these things that I’ve seen turned darkness into gold

Long-ago pre-cursor for Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ (which samples such a tiny sliver of this song I challenge you to find it – hint: right down to the ground…) this is Raw Silk’s ‘Do It to the Music’ which finds us almost wrapping up this Solid Gold Summer in disco-fine form. Let that bouncing baseline shake you and let the beat break you the way this summer almost broke me.

No time for criticizing
Music’s hypnotizing
Everybody’s temperature’s rising
So get down, so get down, so get down, so get down, so get down – Do it!

The gold is tarnished now – and it turns out it wasn’t so solid after all – love’s illusions, desired delusions, and all that sort. Makes you wonder and question what part of summer was real, what was fantasy, and what was false beneath all the gilding and glamour. A net of sequins, a sparkling trap, sheer and sleight of hand – ropes of metal, gleaming and beaming like gold, hollow and empty like ancient whiskey barrels – ghosts of spirits echoing on warped wood, bound by iron, littered with flakes of fake gold.

Our summer revelry nears its end like some sonnet of Shakespeare’s – more profound than a first reading would have you realize, and over too soon as well, like summer itself. A couple more weekends before I throw the gold trappings off and slide into something more solid… stay tuned.

There are songs that will always make me tear up a bit, even when it’s just a bunch of kids singing them.

(And sometimes that makes it worse.)

This is one of those songs.

As I near the end of my final day as a fifty-year-old man, and the completion of five full decades in this world, I pause and wonder at my place in it. Well, not so much the peculiar places at which I’ve resided, but more at the places the world allows for us. So much inhospitality, so much hostility – so many ‘Do Not Enter’s, so many ‘Keep Out’s – so many private spaces and inaccessible hearts – even when I belonged, I never felt like I belonged.

So many things I would have done…

This is why part of me hates birthdays, and why they’ve always made me uncomfortable: this is when the world forces a look back at one’s life, at the year that came before, and the years that came before that, and before you know it a song like this is playing and you’re weeping at what it now means to you, and how it means so much more than it did when you were a kid and your Mom was just playing it on the car stereo as your family hurtled along on a summer vacation that felt like the happiest time you would ever have in your entire life. And maybe it was, and you didn’t know it then, but you know it now, and that makes you cry harder, and it’s all too late.

But now it’s just another show, and you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know… don’t give yourself away

Fuck.

Fifty was hard.

Harder than I ever let on, until perhaps tonight.

I wasn’t sure I was ever going to admit that.

I’m still not sure about it, and maybe I’ll pull this at the last minute. They say one should never write when the dander is up. I’d add that one shouldn’t write when the tears are down.

Tears and fears and feeling proud, to say, “I love you, ” right out loud…

When I said I was out of fucks to give, I didn’t mean it. I thought I did, but I wasn’t that strong. We’re never as strong as we pretend to be. And when we’re not pretending, we’re still not that strong. At least I’m not.

How and why a fifty-year-old-man should feel like the little boy he once was, walking home from school in the rain and letting the raindrops fall into his eyes so no one could tell he was crying, is one of those stupid things that happens to reveal the ludicrous state of being a fifty-year-old and remembering your youth. It’s why on most days I don’t look back.

I really don’t know life at all.

Visually, this post remains true to our Solid Gold Summer theme; musically it’s a slight side-step away from the 70’s disco sound and Egyptian accents that this summer had preciously sung out in questionable taste. Somehow, this song meets the moment at hand – when I find myself contemplating the idea of throwing away what remains of August, and summer, to the rabid wolves of the world. Usually I’m a bit more protective of this month, and these tender last weeks of the season of sun; this year I’m ready to launch full-speed into fall, forgetting every last golden bit of my 50th year on earth.

Need I say I love you?
Need I say I care?
Need I say that emotion’s something we don’t share?
I don’t want to be sitting here trying to deceive you
‘Cause you know I know baby, that I don’t wanna go

We cannot live together, We cannot live apart
That’s the situation, I’ve known it from the start
Every time that I look at you, well, I can see the future
‘Cause you know I know baby, that I don’t wanna go

Just throwing it all away, Throwing it all away
Is there nothing that I can say to make you change your mind?
I watch the world go round and round and see mine turning upside down

Just when I’m ready to let it all go, to throw away whatever is left of this crazy season, I remember that there is still a full month of summer left. A full month to recharge in what sun the summer days might allow – a time to reflect, to heal, to rebuild, and to rediscover the things that once brought me such joy, and might again. The world sometimes seems to dim the brightest lights, and I’m not always sure I understand why. Maybe to equalize things? Maybe to check the ego. Maybe to temper what might have been happiness? It doesn’t feel like humans were meant to dwell long in elation – and the gods never did appreciate those of us who flew too close to the sun. What a rotten trick to play on humanity – to give us such a capacity for hope and emotions, only to use them against us. Sometimes it’s just survival.

Now who will light up the darkness?
And who will hold your hand?
Who will find you the answers when you don’t understand?
Why should I have to be the one who has to convince you?
‘Cause you know I know baby that I don’t wanna go

Someday you’ll be sorry, Someday when you’re free
Memories will remind you that our love was meant to be
But late at night, when you call my name
The only sound you’ll hear is the sound of your voice calling
Calling after me

Yet August persists in her devilishly dogged way. Scrappy, fighting, resilient beast, like the Virgos born in her last days, she gets up for every one of her thirty-one mornings and faces whatever might arrive after whatever we might have done the night before. Reassurance and madness in one – attempting to throw it all away while seeing it indelibly into your memory palace. The more we fight things, the more they insist on staying lodged in our heads and, more dangerously, our hearts. In this mad world, it is a curse to feel – and to hang onto feelings. Throwing it all away might be the surest and safest path to self-preservation.

Just throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
And there’s nothing that I can say…

Plunging back into the Solid Gold Summer that has proved such a magnificently-mixed bag of emotional mayhem and mid-life crisis moments, I present to you ‘Boogie Wonderland’ to get your feet moving and your body grooving. Yes, sir, we still love to boogie, and this beat is sick and relentless. The lyrics at first go surprisingly deep too, if you read just a bit into them – and then suddenly they don’t, reminding us of the push and pull of the seriousness of summer, and how none it will matter in just a few months’ time.

Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men
Who need more than they get
Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman
Who has laid too many bets

The mirror stares you in the face
And says “Baby, uh, uh, it don’t work”
You say your prayers though you don’t care
You dance and shake the hurt

Sound fly through the night
I chase my vinyl dreams to boogie wonderland
I find romance when I start to dance in boogie wonderland…

A disco boogie moment reminds me of this year’s BroSox Adventures with Skip – one of the more exciting ones thanks to all the was happening in the city that weekend. Putting this summer into the past will be a bittersweet endeavor – best of times, worst of times, and all the shit – but I’m almost ready. Haven’t quite given up the summer ghost yet, and when I step into the heat and sun, and the tomatoes tumble off their vines and the salvia is still drawing the hummingbirds, it feels gloriously endless.

By the pool, hidden from the rest of the world, a sanctuary sees us through these final lovely weeks of summer, a song keeps us dancing, and the love keeps us going.

All the love in the world can’t be gone
All the need to be loved can’t be wrong
All the records are playing and my heart keeps saying
“Boogie wonderland, wonderland” 

This cover of Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’ fits smoothly into our Solid Gold Summer with renewed fervor and passion, the way you can slide into things easier when they are hot and wet. Its lyrics speak more deeply to finding meaning in life, the advance of age, and the inevitable march of time. We are all at its mercy, and it isn’t very merciful. So we listen and we sing and we dance, and summer takes one more step forward without looking back.

I want to live (I want to live), I want to give (I want to give)
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold (for a heart of gold)
All these expressions (all these expressions) I never give (I never give)
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old

I want to live, I want to give
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold
All these expressions I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old

Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old

Hope rides highest on a solid song, as if music is the only way of truly expressing the human ache and soul. Some of my best posts, in my questionable opinion, are inspired and rooted in musical memories, and this Solid Gold Summer embodies that, eclectic selections and all. When the chapter of this summer is finally written (we are only about halfway through it) the songs will one day remind me of all that went down. Not sure I’m ready for that, but I’m never ready for summer to end.

I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold
I’ve been in my mind, it’s such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old

Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old

Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
Been a miner for a heart of gold
Crossed the ocean for a heart of gold

Wistful longing coupled with bittersweet glimmers of regret, summer vacillates in the night, unable or simply refusing to choose which way to turn or how to feel. Ambivalent, suspect, wary – summer nights burn unbearably hot and humid or ruinously cold and clammy, portending autumn in the air. Often it all depends on the mood whether one feels cool or warm, the way one’s interior or mindset establishes the tone of any given moment – so much of life being about perspective. A throwback song to the days when Enya reigned, lending a more somber feel to our Solid Gold Summer, both gold and summer cutting multiple ways and lending themselves to multiple readings. 

Once you had gold,
Once you had silver,
Then came the rains out of the blue.
Ever and always, always and ever.
Time gave both darkness and dreams to you.

Now you can see
Spring becomes autumn,
Leaves become gold falling from view.
Ever and always, always and ever.
No-one can promise a dream come true,
Time gave both darkness and dreams to you.

In the case of this song, a certain sense of regret pervades the proceedings, tempered by a certain sense of acceptance. Resignation and reconciliation are two different things – one is acceptance without peace or closure, one is acceptance emboldened by a certain sense of forgiveness. 

Hinting at something deeper, there is a preciousness at play here – an indication that a golden moment has come and gone, or a gift has been given up or left behind. The heart only learns and yearns until after the fact, after it’s too late. Time is always the most dangerous element to everything, especially those sweet and tender moments we most want to last. Golden time is heartbreakingly fleeting, but we go for the gold because it’s so damn wonderful – no matter the cost.

What is the dark; Shadows around you,
Why not take heart in the new day?
Ever and always, always and ever.
No-one can promise a dream for you,
Time gave both darkness and dreams to you.

The origin of those sassy horny-horn blasts in Madonna’s ‘Vogue’, this is ‘Ooh I Love It (Love Break)’ by The Salsoul Orchestra, which aligns us back on our Solid Gold Summer journey, following a recent Egyptian excursion. Things have decidedly changed, however, and this Solid Gold Summer is melting itself into something different – a new form, perhaps revealing that all is not just gilded pleasure and superficial shine. It changes the original trajectory of where I thought this summer was headed, and in today’s climate you have to be willing to evolve and roll with the punches – that’s survival. I thought that we were going to pull back the mask of golden splendor, uncovering the empty and false interior of an entity only cloaked in gold, with nothing solid or substantial about it. I guess I’ve always sort of thought of myself that way, but it turns out I do have some gold within, and a pretty decent amount of it. It just needed a little melting and reworking to realize its worth, and I’ve very much had that this sultry summer (whether I wanted it or not).  

To that end I am revving up and returning to the sparkle and pizzazz that has always been on display here, only now it comes with a more sturdy and secure base – a solid gold realization that took most of spring and summer to discover at this mid-to-late stage of the game. Empowerment sometimes happens when you are just trying to get through a difficult stretch of days, and it’s somehow more potent when you don’t even realizing you’re doing it. 

What does that mean for the final half of summer that stretches out before us? A bit more of the golden glamour that was initially promised, a promise that part of me was ready to let go in a few moments of doubt and despair. Fuck all of that, fuck any who fail to realize our value, and fuck all those who assume there is nothing solid beneath the sparkling veneer. There is more dancing to be done, more divas to be adored, and more gold to be polished before August slips away, so strike a pose because there is very much something to it.

We resume this Solid Gold Summer with a return to sparkle and sequins and superficial glamour, and a powerhouse rock ballad by the legendary Prince titled fittingly ‘Gold’. After the last week of rain and dreary weather, I was about to throw in the summer towel early, but that’s the stuff of wimps and losers, so I indulged in a few days of rain-filled mourning, then got on with it. There is still much summer to be had, and I’m not wasting another moment on woeful nonsense. My crown is intact, the sun is still out, and the night is young, even if it is a Sunday.

There’s a mountain, and it’s mighty high
You cannot see the top, unless you fly
And there’s a molehill of proven ground
There ain’t nowhere to go if you hang around
Everybody wants to sell what’s already been sold
Everybody wants to tell what’s already been told
What’s the use of money if you ain’t gonna break the mold?
Even at the center of fire, there is cold
All that glitters ain’t gold
All that glitters ain’t gold

There’s an ocean of despair
There are people livin’ there
They’re unhappy each and every day
But hell is not fashion so whatcha tryin’ to say?

Summer was never meant to be so serious. Summer demands a lighter touch. Summer is golden splendor beneath a glowing sun. Summer sparkles, summer sizzles, summer wants only to shine, stimulate, and scintillate. Into this season why pour all the tears and ruinous rain? Fall will be here soon enough for that mess, and trust me we will get messy then. For now, relax – have a swim, have a rest, have a read. Get lost in the gold…

Everybody wants to sell what’s already been sold
Everybody wants to tell what’s already been told
What’s the use of money if you ain’t gonna break the mold?
Even at the center of fire, there is cold
All that glitters ain’t gold, no no
All that glitters ain’t gold, no no

With June and July fading from the rear-view mirror, August and September are all we have left of summer, so at this crux let’s have a look-back at our summer playlist 2026 – it’s a musical smorgasbord of the most messy and eclectic kind, which is just the sort of playlist I like best (and why the algorithms of Spotify don’t work well with me – my taste is too varied and too unpredictable). As I was listing these out, it suddenly struck me how much has happened in this single summer, and we’re not even halfway through it. Part of me shudders, part of me is relieved it’s over, and part of me is still in shock. Click through these musical moments to remember… if you dare.

SOLID GOLD SUMMER 2026 PLAYLIST

Solid Gold Theme

Magic

Second Night of Summer

Macarthur Park

Golden

Yes Sir, I Can Boogie

We Are Golden

Golden

Read My Lips

Young Hearts Run Free

Night Lights

Solid Gold Theme (reprise)

The Journey Home

Hallucinate

Glory Days

Cloudbusting

Isimo

Cleopatra (Main Title)

Walk Like an Egyptian

The Egyptian (Suite)

Pyramids

You’re the Top

Remember

We Are Family

As the Years Go Passing By

Summer Is Here

Rain

Egyptian Mood

Shahrzad

Every Time We Say Goodbye

Desert Egypt

Cleopatra

Gold Rush

Summer Years

Death Cab for Cutie has inadvertently insisted on inserting its music into our Solid Gold Summer – perhaps slightly at odds with disco or Egypt, but message-wise on perfect, heartrending point, bringing this summer into a rainy, somber focus, stripping the golden gilding off all that seemed to shimmer in the spring, and revealing the hum-drum, mundane make-up of its only-too-basic structure. I’m all for superficial shine when it comes to appearance, but for matters of the heart the idea of gilding is heartbreaking. You can’t capture or coat the heart. You can’t pretend passion. The heart will tug no matter how golden the day turns, no matter how brilliantly the sky shines. And here is a transitory song for the moment at hand, closing out the month of July.

Sometimes I wake at night
And watch the rain fall through the street lights
‘Cause you’re standing still in my mind
Fading out, waving goodbye

And I wonder where you are tonight
If the one you’re with was a compromise
As we’re walking lines in parallel
That will never meet and it’s just as well

A rainy night in summer makes for the ideal backdrop to listen to this song. It speaks to things more succinctly, if mysteriously, than my clumsy prose could ever capture or convey, music winding its way around words and strangling them in such exquisite agony. When it sounds so good, and looks so pretty, you step into the trap willingly, sliding the noose pleasantly around your neck, teasing asphyxiation, daring it to do its damage.

Sometimes I’m overcome
By every choice I couldn’t outrun
The junctions all disappear
You can’t double back to your summer years

And I wonder where you are tonight
If the one you’re with was a compromise
As we’re walking lines in parallel
That will never meet and it’s just as well

I didn’t mean for things to get so dark so soon this summer, but sometimes life takes us where we may not want to go, but absolutely need to be. It’s no longer worth it to fight the currents of the universe, and I’m much happier to let things play out without upending the apple cart entirely. A few apples are sure to be lost, but perhaps they’re just the bad apples – no love lost there.

This is a difficult time of the year for me. Memories of Dad’s last days mingle with summer now – a sad alignment for the supposedly-sunny season, but one that still manages to bring a certain degree of comfort to the hot days. I remember the days of goodbyes, the time with him for those last few weeks, the rare and revelatory moments of clarity and consciousness when the Dad I remembered would only-too-briefly surface and be present for a few seconds. Tomorrow will mark the third anniversary of his leaving. As I finish this post, it’s pouring rain outside, and I do not mind it.

And I wonder where you are tonight
And if the one you’re with was a compromise
As we’re walking lines in parallel
That will never meet and it’s just as well
It’s just as well…

Nothing gold can stay, or so some say, and the idea of permanence no longer seems to be part of the current world’s situation. Nothing seems stable, nothing feels permanent, nothing can be relied upon for more than a brief moment – and perhaps this is the lesson I’ve needed to learn. To be honest, I thought I’d learned it during and after COVID. My idea of anything being set in stone was destroyed way back then, and it’s never fully, or even partly, recovered. It’s hard to count on things when the whole world shifted beneath our feet and threw us to the ground; we got back up, those of us who survived, but I’ve never trusted my feet, or the ground, since. 

Digging for gold in my neighborhood
Where all the old buildings stood
And they keep digging it down and down
So that their cars can live underground
The swinging of a wrecking ball
Through these lath and plaster walls
Is letting all the shadows free
The ones I wish still followed me

I remember a winter’s night
We kissed beneath the street lamp light
Outside our bar near the record store
That have been condos for a year and more
Now that our haunts have taken flight
And been replaced with construction sites
Oh, how I feel like a stranger here
Searching for something that’s disappeared

This song leans into the golden moment as transitory, mourning the passing of time, and the evolution of neighborhoods and physical locations. As buildings are torn down and roads revamped, so too do people crumble and rebuild themselves, often right before our eyes – people being the mercurial and impossible-to-fully-understand wild cards that are more fickle and capricious than any evolving environment. If you can’t count on the stability of the land beneath us, how could we ever count on a creature as variable and moody as a human being? 

Digging for gold in my neighborhood
For what they say is the greater good
But all I see is a long goodbye
A requiem for a skyline
It seems I never stopped losing you
As every dive becomes something new
And all our ghosts get swept away
It didn’t use to be this way

Somehow, I still manage to love them – in the general sense of humanity. Despite popular belief, I’ve maintained a generosity of spirit that is hidden behind my own somewhat self-obsessed guises, and it has always felt right to love rather than waste or ruin my time doing anything else. If it means screaming into a void, and loving those who might never love me back or even be aware that I exist, I’ll continue undaunted. The hope of a gold rush payout is ever on my horizon; it sparkles in the distance, glinting like flecks of precious metal in the cold rush of a stream. Calling to me, time after time, asking that I don’t give up, threatening hope and heartbreak – and I know I will always answer. It’s how I was made, and no matter how much the world or the people around me may change, I’m not ever going to stop.

I’ve ascribed these monuments
A false sense of permanence
I’ve placed faith in geography
To hold you in my memory
I’m sifting through these wreckage piles
Through the rubble of bricks and wires
Looking for something I’ll never find
Looking for something I’ll never find

A musical twist on our recent Egyptian excursion for our Solid Gold summer, this song is neither very Arabian in sound or disco in beat, and it comes courtesy of The Lumineers. It also suddenly has deeper meaning, while dovetailing with the Nile and the sparking gold themes this summer has wrought. Summer always seems to turn more serious than we ever want it to be, and that can’t be helped.

I was Cleopatra, I was young and an actress
When you knelt by my mattress, and asked for my hand
But I was sad you asked it, as I laid in a black dress
With my father in a casket, I had no plans, yeah

And I left the footprints, the mud stain on the carpet
And it hardened like my heart did when you left town
But I must admit it, that I would marry you in an instant
Damn your wife, I’d be your mistress just to have you around

But I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life
And when I die alone, when I die alone, die I’ll be on time, ah, yeah

Hurtling toward the last days of my fiftieth year here on earth, I suppose it’s as good a time as any to consider death, even if it’s in an abstract or musical way – perhaps it’s easier that way too. I’ve brushed up against it at such an early age, it doesn’t scare me – it never has – in some ways it feels like a friend I haven’t seen for many years, but with whom I can pick up and rejoin as if no time at all has passed. Better to make some sort of peace with the end than fight it – as it comes for everyone.

While the church discouraged, any lust that burned within me
Yes my flesh, it was my currency, but I held true
So I drive a taxi, and the traffic distracts me
From the strangers in my backseat, they remind me of you

But I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life
And when I die alone, when I die alone, when I die I’ll be on time

And the only gifts from my Lord were a birth and a divorce
But I’ve read this script and the costume fits, so I’ll play my part

For so much of my life, every day was a pose, an act, an expectation delivered from the perfectionist nature of a Virgo who didn’t dare deviate from what he thought the world wanted. A series of guises, all in service of hiding who I really was – and even when I finally came into my own and accepted who I was, the pattern was set, the lines etched too deep in my forehead, the pathways of the brain already too well-tread to re-route. It was sometimes easier to pretend, always safer, and usually worked out better anyway. If someone were to see behind the curtain, I didn’t trust they would like it, and I cared too much about what other people thought back then. It makes for a sticky way of being true to yourself – makes it almost impossible. And so I would become just about anybody else – Mr. Oud, Father Time, the Godfather, the Exhibitionist, the Introvert – anybody to not have to be myself. That made for the perfect conditions for a disaster, and disasters came more often than I’d like to admit. Once I started therapy and meditation, it was time to stop being anyone other than myself, and all the faults and failures that comprised the person I’d been concealing had to be acknowledged and confronted. It turned out they weren’t as bad as I thought they were – and that I wasn’t as bad as I thought I’d been. It was an effort in forgiveness, and acceptance, and it came just in time for what will hopefully be the second half of my journey here.

I was Cleopatra, I was taller than the rafters
But that’s all in the past love, gone with the wind
Now a nurse in white shoes leads me back to my guestroom
It’s a bed and a bathroom
And a place for the end

I won’t be late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life
And when I die alone, when I die alone, die I’ll be on time, ah