“I Want to Bang on the Drum All Day”

by Michael Sahno | Nov 15, 2021 | Articles | 0 comments

Ever have an old song pop into your head and then it’s just there all day?

For those of you reading this who are old enough to get the reference, today’s blog post title comes from a Todd Rundgren song from the early 80s, “Bang the Drum All Day.”

Todd Rundgren was known as a bit of a musical wizard, an intellectual type not easily pigeonholed. Described on Wikipedia as “unorthodox,” Rundgren had two big hits in the early 70s, “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light,” both pop confections that still sound timeless today.

Ten years went by and Rundgren hit the charts again with the purposefully moronic “Bang the Drum All Day.” Favorite lyrics include the following:

Every day when I get home from work

I feel so frustrated

The boss is a jerk

And I get my sticks and go out to the shed

And I pound on that drum like it was the boss’s head

Because I don’t want to work

I want to bang on the drum all day

I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t like that guy? Well, okay, maybe a few bosses…

“Ready for your next assignment?”

This afternoon I tried to find a clip from Charlie’s Angels that said “Good morning, angels. Ready for your next assignment?” But to no avail. Instead I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole featuring Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett. It’s been hours!

I’m kidding, of course, but today I did feel a bit like Charlie’s Angels must have felt sometimes when they heard his voice piping out of that vintage Western Electric speakerphone. A sense of “another one?”

In short, I’m ready for Thanksgiving.

Don’t get me wrong: I love it that my clients keep feeding me work. And right after finishing one assignment today (17 articles), I got another one (ten more). It’s good news. I’m grateful, as I should be during “Gratitude Month.”

But really: I’m ready to watch some football on a full stomach.

Have a great week—and I’ll see you right before the official holiday!

← Got Those Old Indie Author Newsletter Blues Books: Great Holiday Gifts, or The Greatest Holiday Gifts? →

There’s Not Much Funny About Dementia

I must admit, I never thought I’d be writing a blog post on a topic like “how maintaining my sense of humor helped me deal with my mother’s dementia.” Not that I was oblivious to the possibility. My grandmother on my mother’s side developed dementia in her early 80s,...

Five Ways You Can Help With a Local Book Launch Event

This week I want to write a bit more about my fourth novel, Whizzers. It’s my current Work-In-Progress, and I plan to have it finished this year in order to launch it in 2019. One of the few luxuries of being an independent author is that I haven’t set a firm...

Anti-Vaxxer Hysteria and the Mo-ron Contingent

I can’t help but wonder: what kind of idiot do you have to be to believe that Bill Gates has nothing better to do than follow you around while you schlep to Wal-Mart, pick up your dry cleaning, and eat the free breadsticks at Olive Garden? I've always got my cell...

Closed for the Holidays

This week's blog post isn't about writing or reading or even about having a great holiday. It's about self-care. Ordinarily, I don't create an entire blog post about being closed for the holidays, but this year I'm making an exception. I used to work for a company...

Taking a Page from the Dylan Playbook?

Although he doesn't use the term himself, recent Nobel winner Bob Dylan's relentless touring has been referred to as the Never-Ending Tour. Taking a page from the Dylan playbook might seem like a weird idea for an author, but recently I have thought about doing just...

MLK Day 2023

Here’s wishing everyone a safe, sane Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For many of us, today is always something of a day of mourning: not only mourning the loss of a great civil rights leader, but also mourning the turn our great nation seemed to take in recent years....

Going Off The Rails (But Not On A Crazy Train)

Last April, I wrote a blog post called Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress. Part of that post was to talk about the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser” (and to describe myself as a hybrid of the two, a “plantser”). Another, less obvious motive, was to...

Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress

Last week’s unusually short blog post was entitled Closed for Maintenance: Me. Between my busy freelance schedule and other commitments, I didn’t have time for myself, much less for the blog (which is, after all, an unpaid avocation). Today's post is about getting...

More Fun With the ISBN Number

I've grown so accustomed to cranking out my blog posts on Monday afternoons, I almost forgot to schedule one for today. Thanks to the magic of WordPress, I can write this in the morning and schedule it for the afternoon. By the time you're reading this, I'll be out on...

Are Authors Typically Obsessive-Compulsive?

Recently I’ve noticed a trend in author blogs toward the confessional. After all, no one wants to read about your characters all the time, and God knows that readers don’t want to read about marketing. They want to know something about you. Happy to oblige. Although...

← Got Those Old Indie Author Newsletter Blues Books: Great Holiday Gifts, or The Greatest Holiday Gifts? →

What’s The Problem With Shameless Self-Promotion?

While I still find it somewhat hard to believe, I've been on Twitter for almost eight years. I know this not only because Twitter shows Joined March 2015 on my profile but also because, even if they eliminate that feature, I use a tracker called Who Unfollowed Me? If...

MLK Day 2023

Twitter Tips for Authors in 2023

If you follow my blog, you probably connected with me via Twitter, whether you’re a fellow author or not. In 2020, I wrote a post about Twitter for fellow writers that got a good response. Three years later, the landscape has changed, but some Twitter best practices...

Going Off The Rails (But Not On A Crazy Train)

Happy Holidays from Sahno Publishing!

Those Tricky French Authors and Their Obsessions

Today’s blog post was originally going to be Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. III. However, after seeing parts I and II lined up, I decided to call an audible and make it something less repetitive. Somehow the SEO gods have gotten into my head. As I’ve mentioned...

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. II

In last week’s post, I mentioned a pretty well-known author who has publicly reported his publisher “wouldn’t touch” a new release, in part because a character in his novel referred to herself as “fat.” I heard this story on a podcast, and I remember thinking, “Wait...

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want

I’ve been stewing on this for a while. It’s been brewing for quite a while. I could probably write a song about it (how about a rap?), but I don’t think I will. This is more of a blog post topic, and it might even deserve a series. And that’s the title and topic of...

Should Every Month Be Gratitude Month?

When I was a kid, I loved Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. I read it daily and collected nearly every paperback volume of the cartoon, so I could see what I’d missed since the comic strip’s inception in 1950. Certain things stuck: quotes like “happiness is a warm puppy”...

More Thoughts On Robot Writers and The Tech Dystopia

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post here called When Will the Robot Overlords Replace Us? Apparently, I’m fairly obsessed with this stuff, because every time I come here and empty my brain, it seems to come up again. Today is no different. Part of the reason,...