Well, I remember it all very well lookin' back,
it was the summer I turned 18....
Mr. Schprock started a very intriguing thread on his blog called Time Portals, its basic question being: what triggers your memories? Sounds? Smells? Sights?
For me, there are some of each, but the strongest trigger is music. A few notes of a song can send me right back into the annals of yesteryear, some so vivd in my mind I feel as though I'm watching the movie play back, or standing in the room watching it happen. I'm in my dorm room sophomore year, dancing to "Fields of Gold" with the man who thought I was the one. Or singing "Hotel California" with the brothers as they learned to play guitar. Getting my first birthday dance to "My Baby Just Cares for Me"...and tearing down the streets of our small town in Dan's convertible screaming the theme to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
But I digress. The conversation in the comments made both an interesting observation and provided fodder for another topic, so rather than pollute schprock's comments with the conversation, I'll drag folks over here. The question is: What songs are hard for you to listen to, for personal associations one way or another. I'll start (after all, I can't really expect an answer if I'm not willing to give one, can I?)
In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel - I still can't listen to this one because it takes me straight back to a green wool plaid couch from the 70s where I got my first kiss (and second and third and 10th) from the one who got away, as three tracks were programmed on permanent repeat - In Your Eyes, Red Rain, and Mercy Street - but for some reason, IYE is the only one that still makes me cry.
Under the Milky Way by the Church -how ironic that the song to which I lost my virginity to that man could also be such a theme for the way the relationship ended... "Wish I knew what you were looking for...Might have known what you would find."
Ol' Rugged Cross and Amazing Grace - my grandfather's absolute favorite hymns. He wasn't a religious man, but he knew what he liked, and he knew what he believed. My mom and I were the only ones at the funeral who could sing the old songs (as he called them) but I don't think I'll ever hear them the same, at wedding or funeral or even a basic church service of some sort.
Anyone else?
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8 comments:
I don't have many songs that I can't listen to anymore, but there have been some that used to make me drift away from the group and sit in the shadows. Blue Bayou always reminded me of my home in Akron, the last place in my childhood that I was happy. I Was Only Joking by Rod Stewart -- I don't know why, but the pain was physical. This is a little gay, but Billy Ocean's Suddenly did the same, which came out when I was in college. Charlotte and Tina thought I was a goof. We were laying out in the sun outside our Dorm at Washington State when the song came on the radio, and I told them I needed a moment.
This came up in the comments to my post: in high school, I knew a kid named Bobby Perry who succumbed to Hodgkins Disease (or lymphoma). He had been sick a long, long time with many ups and downs. The pattern was, he'd be away from school for a couple of months at a time and then suddenly start showing up again and appearing relatively normal. You kind of forgot he wasn't supposed to live after a while, but, sure enough, one day he died. At the funeral home (which was packed), they had the coffin open with Bobby's head propped up in full view and he looked so angelic, which was ironic because back before he got Hodgkins Disease he was sort of a bully, one of the tough kids. His mother was in the front row crying and sobbing and sobbing and crying (someone told me they had to dope her up). At one point after the eulogy there was a pause, then you heard a needle being roughly placed on a scratchy record and The Beatles' song "Mother Nature's Son" filled the room a little too loudly with the treble turned up a bit too high. To this very day, any I time a hear that song, I'm immediately taken back to that sad moment.
When I was ten years old my parents and I were on a trip. I was sitting in the back seat singing Amazing Grace when my dad passed out at the wheel and wrecked are car into a ditch!
The smell of homemade pasta sauce always sends my mind back to when my grandfather would prop me up on the cabinet and teach me the secrets of great home cooking.
7th of November by Jeff Lang:
This cover of a Tom Waits tune is a bitter and tired lament to a partner who does not understand the protagonist. This ties up neatly with 2 different break ups that both occured on the same, untimely date. If I listen to, it goes on loudly and I scream out the words until i'm hoarse.
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
This Leonard Cohen cover still gives me goosebumps. An ex girlfriend (see above) turned me onto him and he sounds like an angel with broken wings on this track. I always think of her when I hear it. For all the wrong reasons.
S Club Party - S Club Seven
My friends and I used to play a game where we would take it in turns to pick a song to see who could best follow the previous choice. (geeky I know.) One day, the game got so pretentious with it's posturing audacity that my friend Patch decided enough was enough. He picked this tune to follow 'Hear my Train a Comin' by Jimi Hendrix - perhaps the finest piece of electric guitar work ever recorded. If you ever see the video or hear 'S Club Party' you may go some way towards understanding why I fell about laughing when my good friend unexpectedly put this on and danced around to it.
Heaven (Bryan Adams)
We had just moved to a new city and my family was still looking for a decent apartment. Meanwhile, we were put up at my aunt's place. That's the first time in my life I realized that living at someone else's place could be such a pain. You couldn't do a single thing without annoying my cousin! Anyways, probably the only thing that kept me sane was this new Bryan Adams audio tape I'd bought recently. I really liked Heaven, especially on those cool summer nights, sitting alone in the balcony.
You Could be Mine (GnR)
Okay, this one is just whacky. Nothing to do with the song's lyrics at all. I was in my senior year and in the process of interviewing with companies ... I qualified for an interview and as I was preparing for it during the last few hours I had left, this song was playing over and over in my head! Gave me quite the kick "Don't ask me where I've been. Just count your stars I'm home again". I got the job.
Everybody is free to wear Sunscreen (Baz Luhrman)
A few months into my first job out of college, I realized that the job wasn't taking me anywhere ... it was very dull and I was probably losing my skills faster than I had gained them. I had to revise my initial plan of starting a PhD after 2 years of job ex, and apply right away. I was hopelessly behind schedule as far as GRE plans went and then the tedious process of applying to Grad school. This line kept me going -- "The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself."
Okay, I haven't read Schprock's yet, and I apologize, Claire, if this gets long, but you've kicked me in the head with this one.
"Amazing Grace" - I am not a religious man. When I was around age 30 my mother died (I guess this one's a gimme, huh?). The family discussed the songs to be played at her Catholic church service on the day of her funeral and the youngest of my sisters - still older than I - said that "Amazing Grace" was Mom's favorite hymn. I hadn't known it until that day. On the day of the funeral the 80-something organist elbowed out the tune, and another old woman, in the pew behind us, started crowing the lyrics above the murmur of the rest of the crowd. I mean, it was so bad I was about to accuse her of trying to foul the memory of my mother. Moments before I moved to answer the urge, the same sister, who has sung at many of her friends' weddings, swallowed the lump in her throat and struggled to be heard. That it's a religious old song held no sway with me. This was my mother's favorite, so it was important to me. Choked with tears and barely able to talk, I looked at my sister and blurted, "Sing it, Sis!" (only I said her real name).
She ramped up her soprano voice and drowned out Ol' Buzzsaw behind us, and I just sat there and cried. To this day that song triggers that memory and does me in.
Chopped Parsley - this one has a dual effect. My paternal grandmother used to live with us when I was a very young boy. She had worked part-time in the kitchen at a banquet hall just over on the next block from our house. There was always this odd smell about her. It wasn't B.O. or C.O. or anything like that. It was a somewhat pleasant smell that, after her death when I was age 7, I noticed on other old women, and I had simply assumed it was an "old woman" smell.
Flash forward to the day of my mother's funeral again. My father had committed himself to making for his friends' annual Super Bowl party his mother's signature recipe, a great Italian dish he seemed to be able to make to perfection. He normally made it every year with my mother, but due to the circumstances a mere four days before the Super Bowl, his friends were more than understanding, and had accepted there would be none of that great dish at that year's party. However, my father told them they were full of shit if they thought he wasn't still going to make it for them.
My brothers and I decided to spend a couple of days with him, and we agreed to help him make the dish. After the last guests left the reception, my brothers and I accompanied my father to his house and we began to make the dish. My father assigned me to chopping the parsley, which I did, though I had no experience doing so. It seemed like there was eight pounds of parsley in the bag, and, at my level of knife skill, it took forever. When I was done my hands had completely absorbed the aroma of the parsley, and it was the same as the smell I remembered on my grandmother. Parsley! It stayed on my hands through several washings and over a couple of days. Now whenever I smell chopped parsley, I am reminded of both my mother and my paternal grandmother.
"I Love You" - this 1980 song, by Climax Blues Band, popped up on my radar as one of those, holy-crap-I-haven't-heard-that-song-in-20-years songs as it poured out of the ceiling speakers at a White Castle restaurant one day. I had an idea for a surprise for my wife, and it involved this song, which took me forever to find, and I had to buy a 2-CD "Greatest Hits" album just to get the song. I listened to it again for the very first time, and I sang along with the lyrics printed in the anthology book that came in the set. I got to the line near the very end of the song: "If ever a man had it all, it would have to be me/Oo, I love you." And I choked. If there is only one simple, brief line to could describe perfectly how I feel about Mrs. Farrago, this is it. I can sing along smoothly with that entire song...until I get to that line. CHOKE!
"Jöga" - This Björk song, from her "Post" album, I believe (Chloe could correct me), is a very simple arrangement of voice and, at most, string quartet. But the harmonies are so haunting, the strings so lonely, her voice so untamed, that it always brings chills. I had the opportunity to see Björk live at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago as she did an acoustic tour of her music. She performed "Jöga" live with a 35-odd piece orchestra. It was the first time I was ever moved to tears by music based on its sound alone. The words simply do not exist in my vocabulary to even adequately describe the perfection that floated out from that stage on that night. The only other piece of music to affect me that way is a traditional arrangement of Samuel Barber's "Adagio For Strings."
"Phantom of the Opera" - a friend who's pounded the boards for years, and appeared in the Chicago cast and traveling casts of "Phantom" for several years, anounced one day that he was going to substitute in a minor role at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway! I had that weekend free, so I took the Mrs. to NYC to see the show. I had never seen it before, and, I must admit, I was a little disappointed that it was an opera itself, despite that it was in English and fairly easy to follow. Near the end, as the Phantom realizes he's losing the woman he loves to another man, sings from the rafters. The actor who had the role deserves every minute he spends on the professional stage. As he sang, there was so much pain in his voice that it nearly rivaled the pain in his lyrics. When his voice cracked - most certainly at the point where he intended for it to crack - it sounded so sincere and sad that I couldn't stop the tears from coming down. I can't even DESCRIBE the moment to someone without choking up. The same goes for "Jöga."
Okay, Claire, you'll never ask me for comments to your blog again!
Ultra, I *love* Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah! I get a hollow ache whenever I hear it. As for the effect YOU described...that would be "Shag Tobacco" by Gavin Friday.
Farrago, First off, comment anytime, any length. I love hearing other people's stories...I used to be able to sing most of Phantom - but that was back when I took voice lessons. I haven't tried it in years, so who knows if I can still reach the notes.
Dave, I should have known that would be your answer!
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