Several years ago, I worked at a place where they played one or two classic rock stations all the time on the radio in the office. You learn how few songs they actually have on those classic rock stations playlists. Surely something like what can fit in a 256 meg MP3 player. The type of thumb-drive that is so small that they don't sell it new anymore. So yes you get the same songs over and over again: "Hotel California" and "Margaritaville" every hour it seems, and a couple of times per hour one of those songs about a mean evil/witchy/devil/black magic woman. They all blend together after a while.
One of the songs that they played a lot was Bob Seger's "Night Moves". For some reason, I could not get the song out of my head after I had stopped working at that one particular place.
Eventually the song started to resonate with me, even though I did not have Bob Seger's lifestyle much at all, and for all of the years since it it had been released, it was just background music. I never greatly liked Seger's music, but never hated it either. (There was even one song of his, "Still the Same", which I have always liked a lot more than anything else of his) . According to this song facts page, it was autobiographical, "Night Moves" was originally inspired by George Lucas' film "American Graffiti".
Could've used a few pounds
Tight pants points hardly reknown
She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
The points (the ones the male narrator had) were inspired by a pecular early 1960s Detroit fashion phenoemon in which men wore pointed shoes. Shortly after this time period, Detroit went to hell in a handbasket. Perhaps there is something about men choosing elf footwear that heralds the decline of civilization.
Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
Out in the back seat of my 60 Chevy
Workin' on mysteries without any clues
Workin' on our night moves
Tryin to make some front page drive-in news
Workin' on our night moves
In the summertime
In the sweet summertime
I did remember my girlfriend from at the end of and after high school. It was the summer of 1982, not 1962. It was some sort of Ford Torino two-door. Or was it an Olds Toronado? Brownish or purple whatever it was. One of those ugly late-70s giant coupes with two-doors the size of house-doors that always got stuck deep in snowbanks when you opened them in the winter. And yes there was a drive-in, now a dwindling ruin that I see from time to time.
We weren't in love, oh no, far from it
We weren't searchin' for some pie in the sky summit
We were just young and restless and bored
Livin' by the sword
And we'd steal away every chance we could
To the backroom, to the alley or the trusty woods
I used her, she used me
But neither one cared
We were gettin' our share
Workin' on our night moves
Tryin to lose the awkward teenage blues
Workin' on our night moves
And it was summertime
Yes, it was summertime. But nowhere near as hot and heavy as in this song (along with a lot of other differences. really). But we were in love. And also present was my girlfriend's best friend, who was rather jealous. And who hated Bob Seger music, by the way. I think that contributed to our breaking up multiple times. The friend's jealousy, not the friend's hatred of Bob Seger music.
Instead of the back room and alley and trusty woods, we had the basement of The Church. Well, it wasn't a church, but everyone called it that. It was just her house It sure seemed strange that someone would build a modern house with a high-peaked symmetrical living room that loomed out over the neighborhood.
And oh the wonder
We felt the lightning
And we waited on the thunder
Waited on the thunder
I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Aint it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in.
And yes, autumn is closing in now, and at times I have woken to the sound of thunder earlier in the month. And the song I remember from 1982 not 1962 is "Night Moves".
Below is an old music video of the song, with Matt LeBlanc, long before he was famous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgOA24hAe60
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