(Megan S. asks where specific songs fit into your personal narrative.)
Remember that episode of M*A*S*H where a scent triggers Hawkeye to fall down the rabbit hole of unresolved pain from earlier in his life? Sound can do that too, especially songs.
Sometimes hearing a song can bring you back to a period in your life, a scene or even a specific incident. Often, the two are so intertwined it is impossible to revisit a memory without its soundtrack, or hear a song without your embedded storyboard. Lots of times, we have no control over the music or the situation; they all come together, merging, in the making of a memory.
For instance, Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” was playing in the not-so-fast car I had caught a ride in going back to college in 1987. Whenever I hear that song, my mind’s eye is flooded with the Hudson River valley in the fall, whirring past the windows as I sat in a car of a woman I barely knew heading back to a college where I didn’t fit in, feeling a little scared. The Blow Monkeys? Bam — I am on my first date with my summer ’86 boyfriend in his kitchen experimenting with Midori, being nervous and feeling the breeze go through his house as the sun was going down.
Megan seeks your read on lyrics of your life!
“La-Di-Da-Di”? Sitting with my girlfriend Gia in her white Rabbit as she blasted out the rhymes all the while oblivious that the carload of boys next to us were totally dying with laughter.
So where do some songs take you when you hear them? What is playing in the background when you wander back in time?
— Megan S.
o megs, honey, you KNOW i agree with you on this one. big time.
i have a lot of them… but my favorite sonic memory is triggered by lisa gerrard. her voice immediately takes me to when henry was first born and the night i brought him home from the hospital. he and i sat in our rocking chair, in the half light of the summer evening. npr had an episode of “the world cafe” where the album “the mirror pool” was the highlight. so there i was, nursing my baby, listening to her voice as she sang and was interviewed and i felt so… connected to my son, my life, counting his fingers and toes, drinking him in. feeling the gravity of life changing… becoming a mother, being totally responsible for another persons life, and loving him in a way i had never loved anyone before, ever. it’s funny, but to this day whenever henry or i hear her voice we stop and smile. when we saw “the whale rider” it was just one big schmoopy hug fest for us. yeah, lisa gerrard. she’s my henry sonic connection.
Songs? BOTH side of the Television Personalities “Mummy You’re Not Watching Me” and the Times “Pop Goes Art” throw me immediately into the solipsism of my 17-19th years. Delusional, optimistic and intensely unrequited -- a romantic.
I don’t think that I gave much expression to how personal and shy I was. It did not negate or contradict being an exhibitionist and extrovert. There was some complimentary dynamic between an inner and outer life, that gave energy to both aspects. This is probably as true today, with less vigor -- and foolishness -- than I’d had on the cusp of my twenties.
These were the records I listened to privately, over and over again, in the early eighties -- slipping into “Low” and “Station to Station”, “Forever Changes” then back to these.
The topic was about a single single song -- but I have these in sequence, where the songs are inseparable. Each track plays note-for-note in my recollection and leads, without effort or concentration, to the next one in inevitable sequence. The entire miasma and aether of my psychological adolescence can be recalled by a brief listening.
Delightfully, I can recall this and experience it -- but I don’t have to inhabit it. As our friend Cricket observed on a different thread, some time back: “I’m glad those times happened and I’m glad they stopped happening.”
(amen on the book always in the bag… always.)
jeremiah, i always saw your duality. shy, kind, a well-timed witticism, and your flamboyance. it is what makes you still stand out in my mind as a character in the play which i, too, am glad happened, and am glad is in our pasts. i like who we have become. at least i like the little bits i know of now.
carol king and elton john are my mom to me. especially “pearl” and “madman across the water”.
Hasn’t this topic been beat to death ?
>>Hasn’t this topic been beat to death ?
Lou: What topic? Which songs you associate with specific scenes from your personal history — and the personal history they evoke? I don’t think we’ve ever tackled it that way.
It is a blog about music and personal history, so you’d kind of think we would’ve gotten to it … But no, I don’t remember a thread on this.
I had four cassette tapes I can remember in my folks’ pickup truck when it was new. (It’s now very old, and Jason Brownell and I thought it was going to shake to bits on the ride down to the Casbah Jan. 30!)
They were “The Slider,” “Funhouse,” “Swordfishtrombones” and “O Superman.” I remember all of them were in the original jewel cases … I don’t remember buying any of them. I was not a big owner of cassettes, and I don’t recall the process by which these four tapes became part of the car. I’ll stand by ’em all, but I can’t say they’re my ultimate playlist or anything.
But they were pretty much a soundtrack in there throughout 1985 and 1986. And I totally associate driving at night with those four albums.
PS: I assume most of us would agree music associated with romantic situations is extremely memorable. I don’t want to share the songs or the circumstances, so I’ll leave it at that! (“I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.”)
lou, we’ve never talked about it in quite this way. and i love that megan wrote her thoughts on the subject and was willing to share. don’t like the topic? move right along.
megan, i had another one…
i love it when you call me big poppa…
Everytime I hear Hotel California I become violently ill
When I hear , who wears short shorts? I am Caligula
must be the warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air.
(i know it’s been asked before… but what the hell is a colita?)
>>must be the warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air.
Or colitis.
>>(i know it’s been asked before… but what the hell is a colita?)
“Colita” is Spanish for “little tail.” It may refer to a tushy, and “colitas” is also a euphemism for marijuana buds.
For the record, “Hotel California” makes me want to break stuff.
the warm smell of ass.
I always thought it was the “warm smell of carnitas…” basically, it was a warm platter of pork that put the guy around the bend.
Speaking of not-so-super associations … These songs were force-fed me via FM radio the entire summer of 1984 as I toiled in a sweltering warehouse assembling pregnancy tests: John Waite’s “Missing You” and Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
Both these songs make me hot, itchy and irritable, but they undeniably evoke a specific scene in my life.
“Pressure Drop,” whether Toots’s or the Clash cover, makes me think of Patrick Works whenever I hear it- -- and I have no idea why this should be so…
“Shotgun” by Jr. Walker and The All-Stars never fails to remind me of Pat.
eric!!! me, too. him and his awesome dance to that. forever pat and shotgun.
warm smell of carnitas! haha!
i was in greece with karl and we heard that song and i think we DID break stuff.
I have always held the Eagles responsible for punk rock!!
OK…Court and Spark, first love..in a kingdom by the sea…probably 14 years old at the time. Famous Blue Raincoat…my older brothers…intro to drugs. Dark Side of the Moon…before all the shit hit the fan…driving around on a piece of ground in my hometown.
After that…Iggy, Bowie…especially Low…Lou Reed…Berlin…clash, Pistols…the beginning of the end.
From that point on basically Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Monk, Coltrane…you get it……..fine wine.
Great thread!!
“Don’t Fear the Reaper” always reminds me of wearing my Wallabee’s with the gummy soles, and vans with heart shaped bubble windows, smoked up from bong sessions.
I was too young to know what was really going on inside -- are those longhaired, bell-bottomed boys are having a campfire in their car?
Should I offer them some marshmallows?
Don’t know if these count, but there are a bunch of songs I used to sing with my folks in the car when I was small … Leadbelly, buncha old union songs … “Rock Island Line” always makes me think of riding in our blue Dodge Dart with the big patch of fiberglass on the door.
I think that music gets hardwired to our emotions.
“riding in our blue Dodge Dart with the big patch of fiberglass on the door.” MAN… those were the days…no seat belts even!! We used to ride around in the back of pick-up trucks in lawn chairs….on I-95!!!
We got to get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do, we got to get out of this place, girl theres a better place for me and you. that song by Eric Burdon and the animals, was sung by my three older sisters in my Dad’s chrysler, every time we drove by the Leroy L. Wood School in Fairhaven Ma. I don’t know why/
That so many of these memories take place in or around cars just confirms, to me, the foundational place of automobiles in our collective psyche (as Ray posted earlier), especially the riding around in them, with the windows down, singing along to the music on the radio.
Anyone out there know when radios became standard in cars?
Nikola Tesla invented what is now the car radio in 1895, they became standard in 1929, in which case Fats Waller’s pre-punk classic Aint Misbehavin, could be heard blaring from the cars of Al Capone and friends.
“Oh Yeah” from Roxy Music’s Flesh and Blood album reminds me of every love I ever lost…
violin
>violin
Paul Carrack…
“You need another lover like you need a hole in your head.”
reminds me of 1989
my mother died this week. and she was crazy about so very much music. having sung in operas from san diego to washington d.c. i find that i can’t listen to any arias just yet… but i have been going back to a truly happy time for us, 1976. the 70’s in general, actually. my all time best memory is of being 8 and driving through the grapevine on our way to visit her best friend in cotati. we listened to the radio as best we could. everyone was in love with elton john in those days, so i can hear the crackle of philadelphia freedom and i am there again, dolphin shorts and crazy tee shirt, my mom in a caftan, driving north in the sun.
I am so very sorry Ava…
bruce
May God Bless and watch over Her. Ava, your memory is quite lovely and vivid, I can picture your Mother and You and hear Elton, thankyou for sharing.
Oh, Ava, I am so sorry.