This year for the 2023 A-Z Blog Challenge, I’m going to begin by listing a song or musical subject, and then see how fast and how far I can completely blow up my own “stream of consciousness,” and head “off the reservation,” by linking every real, and “Zulu Delta-imagined” fact, piece of music trivia, or not so apparent connection to what is racing around my head to that song in an “unstructured, graffiti-like” format. Complete and utter nonsense! Turn it up and turn it on, but as Van “The Man” Morrison said…….”It’s already turned on!”

Englishman Johnny Flynn Wrote the song “Kentucky Pill” in 2010.

I liked the music from the first time I heard it.

After listening several times, I paid more attention to the lyrics. They were amusing and disturbing.

“A Kentucky Pill and a Cow Tipping expedition.” A reference to “The Kentucky Pill-billies;” a group of opioid addicts and rural kids who go pushing cows over, as the cow sleeps standing up.  

Years ago, I might have come to believe about the legal drug epidemic but never would have believed about what cow tipping was, if it wasn’t explained to me at 0230 (2:30 AM) one morning floating around in the Indian Ocean. The shipmate who told me, was the same man who told me about how boring life was in Iowa, and how he would drive 50 miles away on a Saturday night just to go to Mc Donald’s for something to do.

As a young man, the story was outrageous and hilarious. As an older man, the story just sounds cruel and dangerous. 

I guess that sums up what it’s like to grow old.

Being neither grown up or old!

Johnny Flynn came to the same conclusion and was saddened by what he had done to the cows. 

Johnny Flynn said the song was about “growing up” and realizing there are parts of your personality that are dangerous. The lyrics also hint at the possible mass-shooting epidemic in the United States as well. This will not be the last time this blog makes this connection; sadly. 

Recently, I was out West skiing and before bed, I had retracted a YouTube video of something to show my niece. I then was linked to a video that I started to watch. It was some random movie called “Song One.” I’m not sure why I continued to watch the movie about a woman whose brother is hit by a car and put in a coma. She befriends a musician who her brother really liked. I was halfway through the movie when my “nagging thought” made me realize the musician in the movie was Johnny Flynn.

I had never seen him as an actor in any other movie, or heard any of his other songs. The voice is what reeled me in though, and I thought that was cool. 

At one point, the sister finds a Gramophone in her brother’s apartment, and I thought, hey, that’s really cool! I want one. Maybe someday? I suddenly have more appreciation for a simple vinyl record player. I still have one that I use sometimes. 

Gramophone

I still haven’t the “strength” to throw out some of my vinyl records. Maybe that’s good?

I was quite surprised to find myself lying in bed and watching the whole movie on my phone with a set of ear buds. I never thought I would see the day that happened, and I was surprised how easily engrossed I became; quickly accustomed to the auditory and visual connections. 

Every few years, I venture to the “movie house” because I want to see something on “the big screen,” but I can now see watching a movie on a phone, when not long ago I was shocked to watch a movie on a desk top computer screen, and then even the “back-seat” video display on a plane. 

Maybe soon I’ll just watch the movie “on the silicon chip inside my head……….”

I hope not.