Most of my favorite memories have a soundtrack. Road trips with my parents: any and all Jim Croce, Anne Murray, Simon and Garfunkel, or The Beach Boys albums. The hit 1982 album, Mousercise, kept my sister and I dancing with the cousins all night long in someone’s rec-room during an adult party. When I was very little I used to fall asleep to the pop-light station and as a 5 year old could belt out such classics from Christopher Cross, Reo Speedwagon, and Billy Joel. Solo summer train trips at the age of 12 to visit my Grandma was scored with “True Blue”, the next summer “Like a Prayer” (a nod to my maturing tastes). A vacation to Southern California that featured Disneyland and two freshly purchased Monkee’s albums (tapes) that could not be found in Walla Walla (unless one had the gumption to ask Jim McGuinn of Hot Poop Records to special order things, which my 12-year-old self could not). Christmas revelry wouldn’t have been complete without Bing Crosby or off-key carols belted out in the car on the way to Grandpa’s. There was a summer family reunion a few years back on the 4th of July with a mandatory patriotic sing-a-long (I will spare the vocalists the video I have). I remember being with an entire bus full of teenage girls going to a NKOTB concert in Tacoma (from Walla Walla) and predictably screeching out their entire anthology (thus far) on the way up. I remember Larry softly singing Keith Sweat’s “Twisted” to our newborn baby during a midnight feeding, much to my surprise and delight. I remember Mötley Crüe's “Dr. Feelgood” being blared way too loudly from a jerry-rigged amp in a certain boy’s VW bug while on a secret thrill ride to Spokane, which ended up only being as far as 20 minutes out of town until the car broke down. I remember hearing a song dedicated to me by my 7th grade paramour-”Keep your Hands to Yourself” by the Georgia Satellites-a song I do not particularly care for, but one that will forever be intertwined with my memory of that boy and that moment in time.
Songs older than 10 or 15 years trigger a memory of some kind for me...not always good ones, or legal ones for that matter. Any “experimenting” I did involved music, dances, concerts (oh...the concerts) hanging out in moody teenage solitude alone in my room. These moments evoke less specific memories for me now, because it’s how I spent so much of my time, escaping the inescapable pain from traumas real and perceived. To crawl inside the beautiful sadness numbed me to the ugly reality of the world beyond the headphones. This was the time of The Cure, The Smiths, R.E.M...to name a few.
Music is no less important to me now. I get a rush the first time I hear a song I love. It’s like a first kiss. Nostalgia has it’s place, but so does the thrill of discovering something new. I have very specific memories of hearing favorite songs for the first time, a list that is too long and personal for a blog post.
It’s for all these reasons and more that music inspires me and leaves me with a constant soundtrack running in my mind as my memories dance together. All of my favorite memories have a soundtrack.
Songs older than 10 or 15 years trigger a memory of some kind for me...not always good ones, or legal ones for that matter. Any “experimenting” I did involved music, dances, concerts (oh...the concerts) hanging out in moody teenage solitude alone in my room. These moments evoke less specific memories for me now, because it’s how I spent so much of my time, escaping the inescapable pain from traumas real and perceived. To crawl inside the beautiful sadness numbed me to the ugly reality of the world beyond the headphones. This was the time of The Cure, The Smiths, R.E.M...to name a few.
Music is no less important to me now. I get a rush the first time I hear a song I love. It’s like a first kiss. Nostalgia has it’s place, but so does the thrill of discovering something new. I have very specific memories of hearing favorite songs for the first time, a list that is too long and personal for a blog post.
It’s for all these reasons and more that music inspires me and leaves me with a constant soundtrack running in my mind as my memories dance together. All of my favorite memories have a soundtrack.
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