I don’t expect you’re like me, but if you are or can sympathize, know that I detest Steve Miller Band’s most popular album, Fly Like an Eagle. But it’s complicated. As expressed so perfectly by the Butthole Surfers in their epic, “Johnny Smoke“:

It’s about being in love and loving the love that’s hating the love and the love and the hate that’s loving with all it’s around the love that’s hate that’s the hate that’s the love and the love is the love that is the hate that’s hating the love, it’s loving the hate.

It’s the beginning pieces, the “Space Intro” and the other instrumentals on the record: the beginnings of “Fly Like an Eagle” and then on side B, “Blue Odyssey” (an homage to the synthesizer?) and maybe even the wierd little track that comes afterward, “Sweet Maree.” Are these the forgettable throway tracks on the record? Are these the tracks they dropped in to appeal to young stoners? Well, I am appealed, but the other tracks count for shite. Please forgive me if you love the Steve Miller Band… I still NEED you! I need to know about the other small but wonderful instrumental tracks hiding on all the other Steve Miller Band albums. I will adore them, I promise, like a stray kitten, I will take them home and feed and play with them and give them string to play with. And what about all those other awesome instrumental filler tracks on 70s pop albums I haven’t heard of. Please tell me about them. And then I will thank you.

Love, spaceling.

About Aharon N. Varady

Aharon's Omphalos is the hobbit hole of Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project. He is a community planner and environmental educator working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His advocacy for open-source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Atlantic Magazine, the Yiddish Forverts, Tablet, and Haaretz. He is particularly interested in pedagogies for advancing ecological wisdom, developing creative and emotional intelligence, and realizing effective theurgical praxes. He welcomes your comments, personal messages, and kind words. If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

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“Help with Steve Miller” is shared by Aharon N. Varady with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.