This songs matters to me, because: (your explanation here)

Thanks for providing the outlet for inspiration.

 

I'm damn ashamed I missed this the first time around, especially because it really hits home with me. I went through some shit in my earlier life, the type of shit most of us go through -- hanging with the wrong crowd, doing stuff we probably shouldn't, dating women we definitely shouldn't -- and it feels like there was a soundtrack to most of it.

I guess more than anything, I associate certain songs, artists or albums with certain people. Anytime I hear David Bowie, I think of Aaron Brown, one of the sundry characters I worked with for a short time during those seven years at the record store, which spanned the 3 1/2 years during which I "took a semester off" and the four years it took me to earn my degree. All the folks from the record store have their songs -- anything by Pulp or Suede will suffice for Joel, the manager; Matt comes to mind when I hear Spacehog; any real punk stuff (U.S. Bombs, Rancid, etc.) bring to mind Paul B., who first taught me there are two kinds of skinheads (and one of 'em ain't bad).

But there are others that hold deeper meaning. Sometimes it's just a moment that jumps to mind, like when I hear "Fire Water Burn" by the Bloodhound Gang (which thankfully isn't that often) I can't help but think back to what feels like another life, riding around campus at my first college, high as a kite, windows down and that song blasting from my shitty Chevy Cavalier. Other times, it's a seemingly inconsequential memory that leads to a cascade: Any time I hear "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals, I think of "Adventures in Babysitting," which makes me think of going to my natural father's place after the divorce, which makes me desperately want to hug my mom, my sister, and especially my dad (because being a dad has nothing to do with sperm).

"Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind takes me back to whatever summer that was ('97? '98? Must have been '98.) Riding around in that same shitty Cavalier, finally had my shit together, that song was the anthem for the summer, and even though it had nothing to do with what was going on in my life, it became the theme song for me turning my life around.

Anything of Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation" will send me careening down I-70 in the camper on the back of my dad's pickup. The landscape never changing as we passed through western Kansas, then did it all over again through eastern Colorado, and the music playing in my ears was just as static. I must have brought only one tape on that trip, because I'm certain I listened to "Permanent Vacation" at least 30 times through. When we finally saw the mountains, it was all worth it.

There are so, so many more where those came from. I could literally do this forever, but I have things to do, new memories to make. And a soundtrack to record in my head.

There is, of course, a song about exactly what this thread is about. It's called "Certain Songs" by The Hold Steady. "Certain songs, they get so scratched into our souls ..." Ain't that the truth.

 

I missed the chance to participate the first time. I'm a believer in the power of music to evoke memory. But for the most part, my memories have been pedestrian, trite, not really worth dredging up. Oh, sure, there's been a couple of watermark events that have songs that go with them, but in the grand scheme, no gamechangers.

That changed on Nov. 11, when I was told they were closing down my newspaper. We had music playing almost constantly in the office, either through the XM or someone's iPod. So while other significant events had one, maybe two songs that bring it back a little, this has, at last count, 25 songs that thrust all the memories into the forefront of my consciousness, a CBS News Special Report blitzing through The Price is Right or Guiding Light.

Very few of them have even tangical lyrical significance. Some of them are downright uplifting and peppy ("Let Me In" by Hot Hot Heat in particular). Others happened to pop into my mind in the minutes after the announcement, songs that had played recently that tickled the back of my brain. All produce the same impact: visions of my former co-workers, the office, the process, the stuff that I've been -- holy shit -- nearly a month removed from now.

But there's one trigger song. And again, it has precious little to do with the moment except for proximity. "Sometime Around Midnight" by The Airborne Toxic Event has very little to do with the loss of friends and a beloved job -- unless they're manifest in the form of a hot ex-girlfriend you see at the bar. And yet: Get about 30 seconds or so into it (or right around the start of the radio edit) and the guitars kick in, and everything comes crashing down around me. Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I'm back in the office, joking with the people around me, in the best spot I've been in, in the best spot I'll ever be, and it simultaneously makes me smile and shatters my heart.

Which I do gladly. I'd much rather cut myself a thousand times emotionally to milk out those few remaining drops of precious remembrance than let the wound scab and heal, leaving me neither the high emotion nor the low to put me back there. Once you stop feeling the pain, that's when you start really getting hurt.

And, as it turns out, there IS a lyric from the song that describes the process:
And so there’s a change, in your emotions.
And all these memories come rushing
like feral waves to your mind.

None of which has a damn thing to do with some douchebag checking out his hot ex-girlfriend at the bar.

 

Bumped. for FT's eloquent elegy.

 

Thanks Fen.

 

This one's a little different for me, but hearing the song I'm writing about triggered a very awkward period for me while driving.

Most of you know that my mother and I did not have a good relationship for nearly 20 years. It was bad enough where I was actively searching divorce law to see if I could legally divorce myself from her. Things really came to a head on my 20th birthday, and I essentially decided I wanted nothing to do with her ever again at that point.

During the long years of estrangement, one of the songs that would make me think of my mother was Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me. The song, written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin in 1991, came out around the time that my mother all but shoved me onto a Greyhound bus down to live with my father.

There were other songs for me to think about my mother when I was really in an angry mood and was thinking of referring to her by every name in the book that wasn't her own. I've mentioned some of them on this thread.

A few weeks ago, my mother and I finally rebuilt years of lost connections and enjoyed each other's company. I haven't called her a whole lot, but now I feel as though I can call her. I can talk to her. I can finally think of her not as a mortal enemy, but as my mother.

While driving on the Beltway going somewhere I don't even remember because it wasn't that important, I Can't Make You Love Me came on the radio. I immediately hit one of the other pre-set stations to get the song off my radio, but then I decided, "no, I want to hear this song." Even though I knew hearing a song that suddenly didn't have the same meaning for me that it did just a few months ago would be incredibly odd. I decided for some reason that listening to the song would be a way of closing that chapter of my life. And, in a very odd way, it was.