Steve Miller Band – "Take the Money and Run" (1976)

Go on

Take the money and run

Something rather remarkable happened to me last Saturday: the universe presented me with a gift at the precise moment that I needed that gift.

Or maybe not.  Maybe the universe was testing my character instead of giving me a gift.

I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me what you think.  

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Every Saturday morning, I walk to a nearby farmers market.

One of the vendors that’s been selling at that market for years is Coulter Farms, a family-owned producer of milk, cheese, and other dairy products.

Not true!  (Keep reading!)

Coulter Farms makes wonderful chocolate milk.  I have a couple of grandchildren who are addicted to it, so I usually buy a quart for each of them.

These days, I pay for just about everything with plastic.  But Coulter Farms charges a 50-cent fee to customers who use credit cards.  So I pay cash money for my weekly chocolate milk purchases.

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Unfortunately, I found myself with only $2 in cash when it was time to head to the farmers market last Saturday.  So it looked like I was going to have to cough up the extra 50 cents and use a credit card.

By the way, trying to save 50 cents by using cash instead of a credit card does not mean that I am cheap!  I am NOT cheap – but I hate to waste money for no reason.  

(If you still think I’m cheap, let me point out that a quart of Coulter Farms chocolate milk costs $6 – significantly more than the grocery-store stuff.  But I think it’s worth every penny, and I happily pay the premium price.)

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I grabbed a baseball cap from my car before walking to the market, which meant using the elevator that services the parking garage at the 2 or 3 lines world headquarters building. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw two $20 bills lying on the floor in front of that elevator’s doors!

At first, I was hesitant to pick them up.  It seemed too good to be true – the modern-day equivalent of the manna that God provided the Israelites while they wandered in the desert after escaping from their bondage in Egypt.

I looked around carefully before bending down to pick up the cash, but there was no one in sight.

I stuck the two twenties into my pocket and hit the elevator’s “down” button.  But then I took one of the bills and dropped it on the floor where I had found it.

After all, $20 was more than enough to cover my chocolate milk purchases that day.  No sense in being greedy and inviting bad karma – right?

*     *     *     *     *

What would you have done?  

Would you have picked up the twenties and gone on your merry way without a second thought?

(Maybe you agree.)

Would you have left the cash on the ground in hopes that the person who lost it realized what happened and was able to recover it before some other rando snatched it up?

Or would you have pocketed one of the bills and left the other one where it was – which is what I did?

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Steve Miller’s early records were much better than his later ones, but the later ones were much more popular.  Go figure.

Click here to listen to “Take the Money and Run,” which was released on the Steve Miller Band’s 1976 album, Fly Like an Eagle. 

Click here to buy “Take the Money and Run” from Amazon.

Cheap Trick – "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School" (1977)

I like you and you like me, yes?

Sorry but I had to gag you

Unlike the ephebophilic title character of today’s featured record, I did stay in high school – where I not only got all A’s in my high school mathematics classes, but also co-captained the school math team.

Those mad math skills come in very handy when it’s time for me to fill up my car with gas.

You might think choosing where to buy gasoline for your car isn’t that complicated.  But you would be wrong!  

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Let’s begin at the beginning.

My car takes 89 octane gasoline – often called “plus” or “mid-grade” to distinguish it from regular (87 octane) and premium (93) octane.

Did you know that if you mix gasolines with different octane levels, the overall octane number in your tank will be an average of the fuels you've mixed?  For example, mixing equal amounts of 87 and 93 octane will result in a blend with an octane rating of 90.  (That’s because 87 plus 93 equals 180, and 180 divided by two equals 90.)

So one way for me to get the 89 octane gas recommended for my car is to fill my tank with two parts 87 octane regular and one part 93 octane premium – 87 plus 87 plus 93 equals 267, and 267 divided by three equals 89.

Why would I want to go to the trouble of doing two transactions at the gas pump – filling my tank two-thirds full with 87 octane gas first, and then pumping enough 93 octane gas to end up with a full tank of 89 octane – when I could simply fill my tank with 89 octane fuel?

Check the prices for all three grades of gasoline the next time you stop by your local gas station.  I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll find that the price that the price for 89 octane is much closer to the price for 93 octane than it is to 87 octane.

For example, the Shell station nearest 2 or 3 lines world headquarters currently charges $3.01 for regular, $3.81 for mid-grade, and $4.01 for premium.

If the mid-grade at that station was priced in proportion to its octane content, it would be priced at $3.34 instead of $3.81.  This means that you can save money by mixing your own mid-grade at the pump.

Say you need 12 gallons of gas.  If you fill up with mid-grade at that station, you’d pay $46.72.  But if you bought eight gallons of regular and four gallons of premium, you’d pay only $40.12.

By mixing regular and premium in a 2:1 ratio rather than simply filling up from the mid-grade pump, you’d end up with the same amount of 89 octane fuel but you’d spend 14% less!

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How many of you shop at grocery stores that offer discounts on gasoline based on how much you spend on groceries?

In my area, one of the large grocery chains has a deal with Shell.  For every $100 you spend at one of that chain’s stores, you save 10¢ a gallon when you buy gas at a local Shell station.

Let’s say you spend $500 on groceries in a month.  That means you can save 50¢ a gallon on your next fillup.

But you can only use that discount once.  If you buy five gallons, you save $2.50 – but if you wait until you have room in your tank for 15 gallons, you save $7.50.  So it’s best to wait to use your discount until your tank is almost empty.

I have on occasion made people who are riding in my car very nervous because I will drive until I have only a few miles’ worth of gas left before I fill it up in order to save as much money as possible.

*     *     *     *     *

I had a little less than a gallon left in my tank when I decided to fill up the other day.

I was sitting on an 80¢-per-gallon discount for Shell gas.  The easiest thing for me to have done would have been to go to the nearest Shell station and fill my tank with 89 octane mid-grade, which would have cost me $3.01 a gallon with my grocery-store discount – or $45.01 for the 15 gallons I needed.

Would I have saved money by mixing 87 and 93 octane?

Ordinarily, that would have been the way to go.  But if I bought ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, my grocery-store discount would have applied only to my purchase of regular.

Let’s do the math.  Ten gallons of regular at $2.21 a gallon ($3.01 minus the 80¢ discount) plus five gallons of premium at $4.01 a gallon adds up to $42.15.  

That’s a 6.4% savings.  Not bad, but could I do even better?

*     *     *     *     * 

I usually fill up my car at the neighborhood Marathon station, which consistently sells gas for significantly less than the Shell station.  (Both Shell and Marathon offer gasoline that meets the “Top Tier” standard established by leading automobile manufacturers, so I’m happy to buy either brand.)

But I can’t use my grocery-store discount at Marathon stations – it’s good only at Shell stations.

Gas at the Marathon station currently costs $2.83, $3.23, and $3.49 respectively for regular, mid-grade, and premium.  

So filling up with 15 gallons of Marathon mid-grade would have cost me $48.45 – quite a bit more than I would have paid for Shell gas if I had applied my grocery-store discount.

If I mixed my own 89 octane at the Marathon pump by buying ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, I would have paid only $45.75 – still almost 8% more than what I would have to pay at the Shell station.

So did I go to the Shell station and fill up my car with a mixture of regular and premium? 

No way, José!

What I did instead was to go to the Shell station and buy ten gallons of premium, which cost $2.21 a gallon with my grocery store discount.

Then I drove a few blocks to the Marathon station and bought five gallons of premium at $3.49 a gallon.

The total cost?  $22.10 plus $17.45 for a total of $39.55 – that’s an additional savings of  6.1%.

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Some of you may think all this is waaaaay too much trouble.  You’ll prefer to just fill up your tank with 89 octane mid-grade rather than mixing your own by purchasing regular and premium separately at the same station – much less going to two different stations.

Either you’re made of money, or your parents didn’t grow up during the Depression – neither of which is true for me.

There’s one other thing.  I’m as big a fan of free-market capitalism as you’ll ever meet, but I get a nice warm feeling inside when I figure out a way to stick it to a big business – even when only a few dollars are involved.

So screw you, Shell Oil (which had $284 billion in total revenues in 2024)!  

And up yours, Marathon Petroleum (which brought in $138 billion in that year)!  

2 or 3 lines (with total revenues of under $100 last year) is bending you over in the prison shower and having its way with both of you – and I’m telling all my loyal readers how to do the same!

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Click here to listen to Cheap Trick’s somewhat creepy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School,” which was released in 1977 on the band’s eponymous debut album.  (Somehow that album failed to crack the Billboard 200 album chart.)

Click here to buy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School” from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Heroes and Villains" (1967)

I’ve been in this town so long

So long to the city

The day after Brian Wilson died, a group of Washington Post arts and entertainment writers put together a list of their 14 favorite Wilson songs.

That list includes “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline, No” – which would probably be the four records I’d choose for the Beach Boys’ Mt. Rushmore if there were such a thing.  (Kudos to the writer who picked “Caroline, No” – I think it’s very underappreciated.)

Brian Wilson in 1961

But some of their other selections are real head-scratchers.  

Take “Barbara Ann.”  (Please!)  “Barbara Ann” is a lot of fun to sing along with after a night of binge drinking.  But if you play it when you’re sober, it loses its appeal after about 30 seconds.  Also, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . which should have disqualified it from consideration.

“Sloop John B” should have been given the title “Sloop John B-Side.”  It has a certain loosey-goosey charm, but there’s really no there there.  Once again, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . so why would you include it on a list titled “14 essential Brian Wilson songs”?

Finally, there’s “This Whole World,” which was released on the Sunflower album in 1970.  Like a lot of Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds songs, it’s distinctive and interesting.  But in the final analysis, it doesn’t really work – the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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What Brian Wilson songs that weren’t included on the Post’s list are on my MUCH BETTER favorites list?

The most puzzling omission from the Post list is “I Get Around,” which is the quintessential Beach Boys pre-Pet Sounds single.  And it sounds just as fresh today as it did in 1964.

“Let Him Run Wild” – which was the B-side of “California Girls” – was almost as perfectly conceived and executed as “I Get Around,” but the moods of the two records couldn’t be more different.  While “I Get Around” is about cool guys doing cool guy stuff, “Let Him Run Wild” is about uncool guys with hopeless crushes on girls who are waaaaay out of their league.  (Guess which of those groups I was a member of when I was in high school?)

I’d fill out the rest of my list with additional Pet Sounds selections.  (The Post’s list includes four tracks from Pet Sounds, but that’s not nearly enough.)  

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I talk a lot about Pet Sounds – which is far and away the greatest pop music album ever.  

Brian Wilson in 1977

[Sgt. Pepper?  Are you freakin’ kidding me?  Sgt. Pepper has “A Day in the Life” – the best Beatles song ever – and a few other winners.  But there are several very weak tracks on that album – especially “When I’m Sixty-Four” (Paul McCartney at his most annoying) and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (John Lennon at his most so-full-of-sh*t-that-his-eyes-are-brown).]

If I had to pick just one additional Pet Sounds track to add to the Post’s list, it would be “Here Today.”  

But I don’t have to pick just one.  So I’m also going to include “You Still Believe in Me,” “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting for the Day,” and “I Know There’s an Answer.”

Don’t worry – I didn’t forget “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”  Like “In My Room” – which is included on the Post’s list – that song is a cri de coeur from deep within Brian Wilson’s troubled mind.  But while the singer of “In My Room” will likely outgrow his teenage angst some day, the singer of “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” is a mature adult who has come to realize that his fear and anxiety will be with him for the rest of his life.

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One final note.

I’m probably doing Wilson a disservice by not including any of his post-1966 songs on my favorites list.

Brian Wilson in 2017

But I never bought any of the Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds records.  And while I’m sure there are some good songs on those albums, I can’t imagine that any of them are good enough to displace any of the songs on my list.

Feel free to try to make me change my mind – as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have no problem admitting it when I’m wrong about something.  (The last time that happened was in 1982.)

*     *     *     *     *

I decided to feature “Heroes and Villains” today even though it didn’t make my favorites list.  

It’s a real tour de force record – in some ways, it beats “Good Vibrations” at its own game.  But in the final analysis, there’s a little too much sound and fury in “Heroes and Villains.”  And while that sound and fury doesn’t signify nothing, it doesn’t signify as much as “Good Vibrations.”  

To put it another way, “Heroes and Villains” is analogous to witnessing a dog delivering a sermon – the fact that it’s a dog speaking is so remarkable that you tend to overlook the fact that the points he makes aren’t all that persuasive.

Click here to listen to the version of “Heroes and Villains” that was released in 1967 on the Smiley Smile LP.  (There are a number of longer versions, one of which was released on the 2004 Brian Wilson Presents Smile album.)

Click here to buy “Heroes and Villains” from Amazon.