“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.” ~ John Steinbeck
Songwhip 
Motivations
Roo
This tune is most definitely about drugs, but all I hear is:
“Make your way over to the park…
Right back where we left off”
And all I see is that perfect day in the park or someone’s backyard. Maybe some barbecue or takeaway, laughing kids, a beer or two and above all high fives and hugs and friendly touches by the dozens! In the background Mattiel is singing this treasure of a song and everyone is very, very happy. Those were the days.
I didn’t know I would miss those little physical signs of affection, but I do, I really do. I would like some handshaking with a stranger right now and what I wouldn’t give for a real king of a high five. You know the kind that you can feel for a good fifteen minutes in your palm.
Mattiel is such a great artist and I can’t really understand why she isn’t more well known. She should be topping the charts everywhere! Kids should be wearing t-shirts with her name on it! She has released two awesome albums and this tune is from her debut from 2018. Silver Pillbox is my absolute favourite song from that album. It’s super-cool sound with Mattiels even cooler song never fails to make me feel good. There is a good portion of nostalgia in there and I suck it up like a thirsty sponge – a high five craving sucker with dreams of times passed… right back where we left off in the park.
Viktor
When Roobin first mentioned this challenge it was about hugs but something about that wasn’t sitting perfectly. For one Roobin is a family man with two kids so the bulk of his hugging has naturally not been affected by social distancing and me, well I’m not a hugger even in the best of times. We soon arrived at High Fives as the perfect fit for the challenge.
Not sure what it is about High Fives that make them so special or even when they became such an important part of my day normal. Disclaimer! I’m now embarking on a two paragraphs long completely unnecessary deep dive into this question. Feel free to skip the next two paragraphs and just read about some great music below them.
Of course High Fives are the universal gesture to celebrate cooperative success but unlike many other gestures that just holds symbolism the High Five somehow naturally embodies the whole emotion and becomes as much part of experiencing the elation of achievement as simply expressing it.
I work with kids aged 12 through 16 and as a male teacher working with that age group I need to be very sensitive as to how I interact with my students especially when it comes to physical interactions. The High Five is the perfect way to manage to actually get all the benefits of physical interaction without any issues with boundaries. It is the least problematic way for mutual physical interaction.
…so after all that, here we are, in the days of social distancing, I have to make due with the pathetic elbow bump. It doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing and I miss the real thing. I never thought I would, not like this. See the Elbow bump is severely lacking in energy as well as actual physicality. It’s almost unnerving.
I don’t presume to know what the heck Robbie Pfeffer is actually singing about in Horses off of the new Playboy Manbaby EP Debbie from Zumba. He’s on about guilt and shame but also looking for the keys and then realising he doesn’t have a car so your guess is as good as mine. On this track as is often the case on the best Playboy Manbaby tracks they channel the over-the-top-edness of prime Dead Kennedys. It’s that same tension that the Kennedys specialized in where they drive up-beat way past mania, all the way through hysteria, ’til you have circumnavigated the whole earth and arrive at melancholy.
That unnerving emotion and that weird energy perfectly correlate to what I feel every time I do the elbow bump and listening to the song inevitably makes me dream of the times when I could do the real thing as well as long for when I will again.
… and for our next task, we will find a tune that…
…has a given place on the playlist for this summer.
Not that there were any actual winter this year but there has been an awful long autumn that has lasted and kept lasting ‘til some confused plants started spewing their allergenics …and here we are, preparing for summer the only way we know how, with a summer playlist. but before that!
…we have a special challenge due just the day before the regular one on account of the national holiday celebrating …well, you see, Sweden doesn’t have an independence day (other countries have days commemorating becoming independent from us) nor any other form of birthday. Just happens that a bunch of weather insensitive people have been hanging around in this inhospitable region for a long-ass-time. Gradually that turned into a nation because …why not. Shit if that’s not cause for celebration I don’t know what is…
We will celebrate by taking on our traditional challenge to find a tune that…
…is great and also written in Swedish.
…so this time we hope to see you on Saturday the 6th.
…and then of course again on Sunday the 7th two weeks from now, as usually, when we have to complete the regular challenge.