The Beat Goes On

The other day at Target the kids and I were torturing BigGuy. He had kinda hit his "point" (parents know what I am talking about) - trying to distract the kids to help him we went to the music department where SuperStar was trying to figure out how to spend some of her birthday money. Spidey and I were entertaining Babers by pushing buttons on one of those machines that lets you test the music on different Cd's they are selling. Apparently the quick changes made from one venue of music to another did not help BigGuys nerves. However, for fun I decided to buy a CD that we don't need called "1967 The Summer of Love". This is the year I was born, only in the winter - so my parents didn't have any of the fun that was apparently had that summer because they were too flippin' exhausted from my keeping them up all the time. Then again, I probably was the perfect child and slept through the night by summer. Anyway, we have been listening to the CD - okay, the kids haven't listened happily, but I do get to choose too and it can't all be girl rock music like they request.

So................I have always kinda loved Sonny & Cher (the Monkees too - and whoever sang Jesus Christ SuperStar - the older kids in the neighborhood used to have me sing it over and over again, wait, I am SuperStar aren't I?). My love for Sonny & Cher goes back to watching their show when I was a little kid. My dad worked 2nd shift and he was never at our house when the show was on (mom, my sister & I watched) and I was certain that Sonny was my dad (must have been those mutton chops he wore) and Chastity was my sister (I guess I didn't care who that made Cher - my mom did have long hair like hers, but she was with us watching so it couldn't have been her). One of the songs on the CD is The Beat Goes On - you are listening to it now if the music link is working. While not my total favorite, I do like the song. Then, when the children were out of the car and I could actually hear the words in the song I realized something - nothing has changed in the past 40 years!! They talk about Mini Skirts being the new rage - well, how many times a week do we hear about how short the skirts are and how some celebrity or another has forgotten their panties and gave a big picture opportunity to the cameras? Teenyboppers run the world - please, everything is basically geared to sell to our teens today and we are always hearing about an incident - both good and scary bad that involve the teens of today. "Grocery stores are Super Marts" - today Super Marts are Mega Marts - just last night I was watching a show about the Evil Empire (Walmart - nicknamed by a friend) and how they are basically the worlds largest distributor world wide. So many people feel that if you have an Evil Empire you really don't need to shop at another store for a single thing. There are other phrases that catch directly to today as well - but none more so then talking about men continuing to march off to war. I saw the other day that our countries loss in lives is up to 3,828. Nothing like the Vietnam War that the Bono's were referring too (211,454)- but needless none the less. Just found that interesting - a song that was big during the Summer of Love, 40 years ago, still being pretty much about the same stuff going on today.