45RPM: Both Hands Ani DiFranco

Where I match a song to specific memory

 It was perhaps inevitable that I would come across Ani DiFranco's music in college.  It was the 90s, it was a women's college, there were a bunch of girls from everywhere in the states, so DiFranco and I were fated to meet.  In this case, she showed up on a soundtrack of  a play my friend had written.  Our college was small and fostered the belief that we could do anything.  So when two women said, "Let's each write and produce a one-act and then direct it" that's exactly what happened.  Well, nearly.  The other women didn't write her own one-act, but she directed an already written one.  My friend wrote and directed, because that's the kind of woman she was.

I was enchanted by this friend: she was from Canada and had a father in the Air Force, so she had lived many different places.  She was intelligent and a strong feminist, and with a long-time boyfriend.  Strangely, she seemed just as interested in me.  Her play was the first time I saw the words of a person I knew come to life, and realized with a jolt how much of their own lives writers use in their work.  This song always reminds me of her, not only because it was used in the one-act, but also because after we left school, she disappeared, not answering the letters I wrote to her.  It turned out she had, without telling me, applied for the same full-ride scholarship to a transfer college and got it, leaving me high and dry.  I heard about her coup from a friend.  We never spoke after college.

Power Ballads. A Blog Post.

My recent viewing of Rock of Ages got me thinking about the power ballad.  Here are some things the power ballad and their videos all have in common:

• They show the band (mostly) but often have a side story or theme with actors, or sexy ladies
• They are nearly all sung much higher than my range (What did all the bass singers in the 80s do?)
• The band members almost always have very awesome clothing (with Damn Yankees being the exception)
• There are usually a multitude of shots of sexy women, either models/actresses hired, or snippets of crowd shots
• The lyrics are sometimes quite excellent in their banality
• And, as I write this, not a single one of these videos has a commercial playing before you can view it

And so I bring you this retrospective of my favorites:
And I hope you understand the way I spin the word "favorites" to mean something like: at one time I desperately loved these songs and so I still feel a strong affection for them, even if now I find some of them a little silly.

To view, click the links, or, if the site lets you, you can watch the embedded videos.

Patience
Guns & Roses
"The record company made Guns & Roses write 'Patience'," said boyfriend #2 with a steely glint of admiration in his voice, "because the crowds were getting too out of control and they wanted the band to play something to calm them down."
I have no idea if this is true or not, but I prefer this song to "November Rain" which has also has its merits.
Watch for:

• Axl having to read the lyrics to this song while they are filming the video
• Slash more interested in a snake than the many scantily clad women at his bedside
• Panning over the sound guys, who look normal-80s and not rock-star-80s
• The disappearing hotel hallway people
• Axl's pants
• The smashing of the neon phone
• Axl watching himself singing "Welcome to the Jungle" while looking a bit morose
• The "ah" at the end of the song

Heaven
Warrant
Watch this and look for:

• Jani Lane's headband
• Moving Polaroids of the band with names--perhaps J.K. Rowling saw this video?
• Much footage of the band playing live
• Hot woman serving as photographer
• Excellence in lyrics: how I love the way you move/and the sparkle in your eyes/there's a color deep inside them/ like blue suburban skies
• I'm also noticing that the lead guitarist is much better looking than the singer.
• Riding of motorcycle through empty stadium
• Classic 80s double guitar
• All-white outfits with their names on the jacket sleeves (!!!!!)
• Jani Lane shaking the mother finger for emphasis in one spot
• Fireworks on stage
• Many candid shots of fans
• Band posing in towels, with their long hair twisted up
• Sexy wink.
• "Yeah" ending

I Remember You
Skid Row
Their other ballad "18 and Life" is also good, but more sad-sad than sad-romance-ballad sad.
Look for:

• Many shots of the band looking solitary, despite the fact they are playing the song together
• Narrative of sad homeless man walking alone and staring at photos
• Excellence in Lyrics: "All the tears you cry, they call my name"
• Shots of a classic 80s 12-string guitar
• Bass player singing along
• A bridge
• Really, there are many more excellence in lyrics moments in this song
• Sad homeless man dropping pictures on the ground and in the homeless guy fire in the garbage can

High Enough
Damn Yankees
Look for:

• Opening plot that works in the band's name
• Good gum chewing by the lead female in the story
• Good gum chewing by Ted Nugent.  
• Also sunglasses
• Lead singer's haircut, which was much like mine my senior year of high school
• Slowest running from the police ever
• Ted Nugent kicking down a door
• Ted Nugent playing the guitar solo while being shot at by the police
• Shirtless drummer
• Apparently being the getaway driver leads one to the gas chamber in some states?
• Ted Nugent as gum chewing priest

(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection
Nelson
Look for:

• Disinterested twin brothers in backstage-like black and white setting
• Harmony!!--not a usual feature of 80s Rock
• Sudden transition to big set, in full color
• Girl in bikini on set 
• One brother in torn jeans, one brother in over-the knee red boots.  Maybe those are chaps?
• Same set, but clothing change for verse two
• Interesting botanical setting, but with foofy material on the ceiling
• Brothers who play guitar leaving the guitar solo to yet another guitarist?
• Expressive hand gestures that don't involve playing music, yet music is still playing?
• A LOT of twin brothers singing directly into the camera
• Snow coming from the ground?  Not sure what that fluffy stuff is.
• End with just twins playing guitar back in the backstage-like setting

Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Poison
I won't lie.  I still love this song, it's probably a top-10 from the 80s.  I probably love it partially because Bret Michaels sings in my range, something that was quite rare for the time period.  But the video, I have to say, is a bit disturbing.  At some point in his writing, Chuck Klosterman pointed out how this video is a "sobering examination of Poison's alcoholism" and he's not wrong.
Look for:

• Sad and sighing Bret Michaels
• Sad and sighing scantily clad woman
• Shots of the band onstage
• Many rather disturbing clips of the band in states of inebriation
• Band hi-jinks
• Smashing of guitar on stage
• Wet drummer in slow-mo
• Fan biting lip
• Bret Michaels on a pole

Love Song
Tesla
I think this one holds up rather well, though I have to sing along an octave lower
Look for:

• Day in the life of a concert from empty through setup, fan arrival and the concert itself
• Band on the bus looking mellow
• Band in rehearsal
• White pants with black footprints on them (!)
• Crowd shots, including attractive women singing along
• Classic 80s double guitar
• High kick by lead singer
• Girl sitting on boyfriend's shoulders
• Many devil signs by the crowd
• Playing while smoking
• Headbands on the lead singer and the drummer
• Airplane writing the word LOVE

When the Children Cry
White Lion
This was actually painful to both watch and listen to. It has not held up well. At all.
Look for:

• Opening stills of the band
• Lead singer looking sad and serious
• Guitarist on playground, sitting on merry-go-round
• Very serious message about being born into a world where "man is killing man, and no one knows why"
• Picture of little child
• All the band looking sad and serious
• Despite all the serious, some quick cuts to band in concert
• Excellence in lyrics: "no more presidents/one united world/under god"
• Interesting geometrical shirt worn by guitarist during solo
• Many shots of children looking serious
• Excellence in lyrics: "when the children fight/let them know it ain't right"

Living in Sin
Bon Jovi
I loved this album and liked this song a lot--enough to transcribe it into a journal.  But watching the video now!  Yow!  It seems fairly racy for my then-eighth-grade self.  O! MTV.  Such promises you made to us about romance. That said, the "kids" in this video look like they are in their early 20s, too old for their parents to be so interfering.
Look for:

• Voice over by Jon Bon Jovi
• Couple having sex in motel room (though just hinting at it in a PG way)
• Couple on beach with waves crashing over them
• Jon and Richie singing into the same microphone
• Sex in car (we've moved to PG-13 sex)
• Jon snapping with a cute smile
• Catholic scenes of communion followed with the juxtaposition of man's finger in woman's mouth
• Disgruntled look at parents by main male actor
• More sex in motel 
• Parents sleeping in twin beds with dad looking sad
• Jon looking sad while singing and crossing himself
• Couple being discovered in motel room by parents, who are very angry
• Sad glances by couple as they are separated by parents
• Couple anticipating the hand-on-window scene in Titanic (perhaps James Cameron watched this video?)
• Girl in couple running off with hot guy in couple, leaving her parents angry and in the house

Love Bites
Def Leppard
I may have slow-danced to this song at a junior high dance.  Or I may have wished I was slow dancing to this song at a junior high dance.
Look for:

• Girl on mattress reading magazine, but really lolling about in a sexy way
• Lead singer in silhouette/half light
• Sexy girl looking at the landscape while wearing gloves
• Sighting of guitarist
• Jean jacket with pin
• Various band members singing up into the microphones.  Why did they not lower them?
• Woman in red dress walking
• Sexy gloved woman removing sunglasses while sitting by water
• Singer and guitarist singing into same microphone
• Woman running up spiral staircase to nowhere
• Other various sexy women looking at the camera
• Distorted final line: "if you've got love in your sights/Watch out: love bites"

Home Sweet Home

Motley Crue

There is no embedded video for this song because Motley Crue's "Official Video" for this song is from 1991 and has black and white stills and old photos and that was not what I was looking for.  It was only by googling "Where is the original version of Motley Crue's Home Sweet Home?" that I found a link.  But there it was, just as I remembered it, in all its trashy glory.
Look for:

• Tour bus driving
• Stage being set
• Band taking the stage, but not before kissing all the posters of hot girls
• Fireworks
• Drummer spinning sticks
• Decorative scarf on microphone
• Jumping off risers on stage
• White chaps
• Pointing up when singing "up in lights"
• Fans jumping on stage
• Fans being carried off stage
• Fan flashing the camera
• Various things being swung around on stage
• Drummer singing along to guitar solo
• Iconic playing of piano riff at the end
• Band taking a bow
• Band walking off stage indicating they are number one
• Tour bus that says "Rockin & Rollin"

Angel

Aerosmith

This is another favorite.  It has all the elements of a classic power ballad.  And so many fun details, I had to pause the video so I could type them all.

Look for:

• Band on stage, and due to video magic also in several different rooms and landscapes.  Joe Perry is partial to the desert.
• Stephen Tyler singing on the moon, but no! It's reflection of Stephen Tyler in Stephen Tyler's own pupil (!!!!)
• Breaking down a wall when singing "break the walls between us"
• Opening a trap door to look into another room where Stephen Tyler is singing
• Floaty sexy angel
• Stephen Tyler as lonely detective-type person
• Sexy lady in silhouette while dancing naked
• Who disappears when Stephen Tyler pulls down the sheet!
• Stephen Tyler writhing and singing in bed while singing "sleeping in this bed alone"
• Stephen Tyler reaching for sexy floaty angel
• Joe Perry without a shirt
• Floaty angel in concert
• Floaty angel touching Stephen Tyler in a certain "area"
• Stephen Tyler in two very good outfits. One white and sparkly, one grey with tails and stripes.
• Stretching out the two syllable word "angel" into 8 or 9 syllables
• Band (except drummer) all singing on one mike
• Stephen Tyler spitting something at us

45RPM: 59th St. Bridge Song

Where I match a song to a specific memory

Sometimes I fall in love with a song, associate that song with a person and then because that song is imprinted on the person, I have a special place in my heart for that person.  I think the first time this happened with with Simon and Garfunkel's "59th St. Bridge Song", also known as "Feeling Groovy"

I had never heard it until a talent show in fifth or sixth grade.  But B., a boy who was (and is) a really good singer, wanted to sing it for the show and he recruited four or five other girls to sing it with him.  I was not one of them, though I wanted to be.  I loved a lot about this song, the nonsense melody ending in "feelin' Groovy", I loved how simple it was, and sweet.  The group even did some choreography to fit the singing and it looked great.  When I hear this song today, or sing it myself, I can still picture some of the choreography.

B. has grown up to be an outstanding guy.  And I will always remember him as a 12-year-old boy singing, "slow down, you move too fast."

45RPM: Runaway Train, Soul Asylum

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

My brother is two years younger than me and we inhabited different worlds for most of our growing up.  I was books, he was sports.  I was rules he was push.  I was lonely, he was surrounded.  I was nerdy, he was popular.  I was struggle, he was ease.  By the time we had both settled into attending the same high school (he a sophomore, I a senior) we had our routines down and our orbits really only crossed at the dinner table and on vacations as well as a random day now and then when we did something together.

Except for a few standouts, most of his friends have melded into one friend amalgam.  They were of the same time, the kind of hippy, kind of athletic popular kids, who did much more socially than I ever did in high school.  Our age difference seemed vast at that time, and I always felt a combination of bemused at their childish/grownup antics and kind of inferior to their social status.  I mostly left them alone, though we weren't unfriendly to each other.

Some of them sought me out, for whatever reason.  I found a journal entry that described a party my brother hosted while my parents were out of town (the exact kind of party, in fact, that kept my parents from leaving town for nearly all of my high school experience) where two of his friends found me in my room and chatted me up.  I even printed out and saved what they wrote when they were messing around on my word processor.  They cracked me up, even twenty years later.

I have a clear memory of one friend--name lost to time--encountering me on the stairs as I was leaving for work.  He gripped the Soul Asylum album Grave Dancer's Union in his hand and was giddy with delight over something.  "Look!" he said to me, pointing to the CD cover.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soul_Asylum_Grave_Dancer%27s_Union.jpg

"Butt." he indicated the naked girl on the right.

"Butt" he indicated the naked girl on the left.

"No butt." all that was left was the girl in the middle.

I smiled and nodded and continued on my way, confused as always by my brother's friends.  And I think of that encounter every time I think of this song.

45RPM: Romeo & Juliet (Indigo Girls and Dire Straits)

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

 The Indigo Girls "Rites of Passage" came out when I was refusing to get over my first boyfriend breaking up with me.  This song was the last song on side one of the cassette, and the amount of power and hurt in Amy Ray's voice sent me quickly unfolding the lyrics sheet in the case to read the words along with her.  There was only a title and songwriters' names and no lyrics.  Blast!  It was a cover!  No matter, through repeated play, I had them down in no time and could belt them out right along with Ms. Ray.  It was an excellent song for encapsulating my scab-picking-of-the-broken-heart mental state, and I loved it.  At one point it was playing when my friend April was around.  "Hey, this is Dire Straits.  My parents have the album."  So then I knew who wrote it.  But I never heard the original until...

...I was leaving for college early that morning.  To be more precise, my entire family was leaving to drive me to college several states away.  I had spent the last few days/weeks/an entire year saying goodbye to people, packing, sorting things, planning.  I served my last two weeks at Pizza Hut, an ex-boyfriend stopped by to give me a good-luck card, I dreaded leaving my cat.  It was incredibly early--possibly even five o'clock in the morning--and I stumbled awake and into the bathroom, flipped on the radio and went about my getting ready duties for the last time as a regular resident of the house.  And there, right in the middle of washing my face, I realized the song I was hearing, the song with the simple guitar accompaniment and the quiet lyrics, was Dire Straights "Romeo and Juliet."  Mark Knopfler's song was a sadder, more accepting version of loss and it fit perfectly with the many goodbyes I had just given.  To this day, I love both versions for different reasons.

45RPM: Only the Good Die Young

Where I match a song to a specific memory

Boston is a bar town.  I realize the case could be made for many other cities being "a bar town" but Boston has the Irish heritage, a compact and walkable city, a ton of colleges and--if I have to pull out the big guns--the city is the setting for the longest-running TV series ever to take place in a bar.  So take that, other bar towns.

There is a bar for everyone in Boston.  You've got your posh bar, your intellectual bar, your hip bar, your sports bar, your college bar, your dance music club bar, your local band bar, your neighborhood bar, your punk rock bar, your dive.  I'm sure I'm forgetting a few categories.  But let me tell you, in any of the bars in Boston that played music, this song was beloved at the turn of the millennium.  I can't tell you how many times I was chatting with friends over a beer on a Friday or Saturday night and felt the transformation.  Before Billy Joel gets through the first line, "Come out Virginia, don't even wait," a cheer of joy went up from the women in the crowd.  I think it had to do with  the vast numbers of (possibly formerly) Catholic (definitely formerly) Girls in the crowd--Joel's next line is "you Catholic girls start much too late"--but I think it also has to do with being out with friends and being reminded of that not-quite-appropriate guy who wants you to experience things you haven't yet experienced, but wouldn't mind doing.  There's a gleeful freedom in this song that just beckons.

Second place in the beloved Boston bar songs at the turn of the millennium:  "Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners.  It has one of the most honest lyrics every sung by a man:  Come on Eileen, I swear on my knees/at this moment, you mean everything.

45RPM: Laid by James

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

I lose songs sometimes.  I will hear them once or twice, think, "that song is awesome, what is it?" and then, poof, it is gone.  If I have no snippits of lyrics there is no way to find the song again and I have to wait until it comes to me.

This song came back to me in a bar in Medford, Massachusetts.  I came to be in said bar because of a guy who I met working for Whole Foods.  He was short and charming.  The Boston Metro Area is chock full of short, and charming guys, thanks to the combined immigrant past of the Irish and Italian.  The guy's hair line was receding at an alarming rate for his age, he wasn't much to look at, but man, could he flirt.  He was also a musician--guitar player--and the son of Italian immigrants which meant he had a classic Italian name that rolled off the tongue.  We will say it was something like Donatello Gribiasi.  At the point I came to be sitting in the bar with him, we had both quit Whole Foods, but I called him up to see if he wanted to go out before I moved away.  He did, and that's how we came to be sitting together bar when this song came back to me.  "Who is this?" I exclaimed as the song amped up. Donatello Gribiasi, being a musician, knew the title and the artist and, just like that, I had the song again.

45RPM: Wagon Wheel

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

I first heard this song at a friend's singing party and experienced that weird feeling I get when everyone is singing along to an awesome song I've not heard before.  It was forgotten in the crush of songs that night but found again in a tiny Hawaiian restaurant in a mountain town in Colorado.

We had traveled to the cool breezes of the summer mountains to see my boyfriend's brother get married.  It was a fun wedding on a ranch where we rode horses and every morning ate a good breakfast.  Our last night there we drove into town to see (follow this chain if you can) my boyfriend's mother's partner's son Jon play a set at local restaurant.  I'd met the player in question at a different family wedding and found him full of good humor and easy conversation.  That he also lived in Colorado and played the guitar was a revelation for this trip.  It was sunset when we arrived and as the light faded we sang along as Jon played many songs I know.  His set lasted longer than we did and as we packed up to leave he launched into this song.  We walked to our car, we could still hear his singing drifting across a creek that ran through town.  I sang along with the chorus, "Rock me mama like a wagon wheel," but the next line was interrupted when John spotted us across the way, "Rock me mama--goodbye Dad!" he called mid-line.  We laughed as we found our car and sped off into the night.

45RPM: "Dreams to Remember" "Breathe,"

Where I match the song to a specific memory

In a corner of my living room are two objects that hold what remain of my once-extensive cassette tape collection.  The sliding drawer fake-wood holders contain several cassingles (the inferior replacement for the 45RPM record) and the many mix tapes I can't bear to part with. Most of the tapes I made myself, culling songs from friends collections, dubbing them from my own tapes and even, when desperate, recording them off of the radio.  A few are from friends who also specialized in the magic of mix tapes.  Two of them are from boyfriend #4.  He was the only one of my boyfriends who ever made me mix tapes* and they were good, mostly because his taste in music was more sophisticated than my own.  There's a bit too much Frank Zappa, it's true, but there are some real gems on those tapes, two of which are above and still hit me just the way they did when I first hear them:  straight in the gut, weakening the knees.

Boyfriend #4 was a summer thing between freshman and sophomore years of college.  He didn't want to do the long-distance thing, so we broke up when I went back to school and he moved on to a woman named after a mountain in California, or--as I preferred to think of it--a brand of soda.  That was rough on me, and I pined a bit, listening to the songs he had given me on a fairly regular basis.  It occurs to me now that these two songs are perfect breakup songs, and I delight in how the object of my affection supplied me with the musical sustenance to get over him, right from the beginning of our relationship.



*Current boyfriend made me a mix CD at the beginning of our relationship, but in my mind, the mix CD is a completely different beast.

45RPM: "Misunderstood" by Wilco.

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

I did well in college, but had a terrible transition to full-fledged adulthood.  There were so many missteps in the years after college; bad job choices, bad "boy" (and "bad boy") choices, bad substance intake choices, bad mental health in general.  This album, "Being There" hit me just right during that time, and this song probably best captures the sturm und drang of that period.  At the time, I worked for Whole Foods and was house-sitting for a coworker.  I could walk to his house from work, which was much better than the hour train ride it usually took me to get home.  One night after work, I had yet another crappy encounter with one of my not-good boy choices, walked home in the Cambridge darkness, ranting all the way, and blew in the house full of fury. Slamming this into the CD player helped, but not as much as moving across town--which I would do later that month--or moving across the country, which wouldn't happen for a few years, but was on the horizon.

45RPM: TMBG Birdhouse in Your Soul.

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

Theme from Flood

   

Birdhouse in Your Soul

 

There are periods of respite in the high school band schedule.  One of them is the point before winter break after the holiday concert is done.  It was senior year Drum Corps and we were counting down to the break.  In the fall semester, Drum Corps had their own class, separate from the rest of the band, so the drummers could work on their very important drum things.  Secretly, I always thought it was because it was easier to work with the rest of the band when the drummers weren’t always rat-a-tat-tating away on their drums, because they never shut up.  But no matter! It was nearly break and we had an entire class of nothing to do.  We brought in music and played it while we gossiped, did homework and played cards.  At one point during the hour, someone changed the music and the glorious intro of Flood played, followed swiftly by the opening notes of the "Birdhouse in Your Soul."  Soon the syncopated rhythms and odd tonal qualities that are They Might Be Giants were filling the room.  Our band director paused in what he was doing, and his eyebrows wrinkled together, listening.  “Who is this?” he asked incredulously, befuddled and amused once again at the quirky nature of the adolescents he was charged to shepherd through life.  We laughed, delighted to introduce him to the magic of They Might Be Giants.

45RPM: Cathy's Clown

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

 I grew up singing.  Not in a choir, or formally, but just whenever. Around the house, walking down the street, driving, in the shower, doing the dishes, all of those are good times for a song. Whenever a song hits me, I usually sing it.  One of the best compliments I ever received was a friend who mused, "I always thought musicals were unreal, all those people bursting into song at every moment.  Then I met you."  My singing voice isn't particularly good, but it's fairly on pitch, plus I can remember a lot of words and I'm very enthusiastic.  My friends in high school were wonderful in so many ways, but I think my favorite thing about them was that they too burst into song at random moments.  One sunny afternoon we were just sitting around downstairs when suddenly Cindy started beating out a rhythm on her leg.  Enough of us recognized it as the intro to "Cathy's Clown" and we hit our first note and were off and running.  "Don't want your luh-uh-uh-uh-ove, any-more..."  We sang through the song, with Cindy taking a guitar arpeggio here and there.  Our rendition was good enough to bring my mother from the laundry room, smiling at our crazy youthful theatrics.  We were smiling too.

45RPM: Mr. Brownstone

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

My parents bought me a car to drive about a year after I got my driver's license.  It wasn't fancy, a Mustang II with an AM radio and a penchant for leaking oil and breaking down.  When my brother got his license, my parents upgraded us to a green '79 Mustang with tires too big for the wheel wells.  They would scrape every time we went over a big bump or a dip.  For a period of time, it had no radio.  This was more maddening than only being restricted to the AM band, but some good came out of it.  Before everyone had their licenses, we all piled in the cars of the few who could drive in order to get from here to there.  We were smashed together, chattering all the way, laughing and gossiping.  In other cars, music was the background or the foreground of our ride, but in my car we filled the silence ourselves.  Driving a dark road to somewhere one night we fell silent until Eric burst into the opening notes of Gun's and Roses Mr. Brownstone.  We were all GnR fans, and knew every word, so we rode into the night, our drug-free bodies singing with great gusto about addition and touring and a life that nearly all of us would never lead.

45RPM: Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

In my mid-twenties I lived in my version of Shangri-La:  a five bedroom house with two bathrooms and four other female roommates. One of my roommates was dating one of our neighbors, a late-20s PhD who spent his days doing some sort of scientific research I didn't understand.  He lived alone, but his younger brother was often over and we saw a lot of the two of them. We called them the James Brothers.  His brother, in the fashion of younger brothers the world over, was the hipper, freer James Brother, working in a job I don't remember, but more importantly, painting his car with chalkboard paint and playing the guitar here and there.  He was pretty darn attractive, and even more so when he played his guitar for us in our house.   One evening he launched in to the song "Hallelujah" and I knew from the first verse this was a song that needed to become a part of me.  After he finished playing and we clapped I made inquires.  The younger James brother lent me his Jeff Buckley tape so I could spend the next few weeks rewinding and hitting play. Much like the experience of my twenties, the song is both simple and complex, hopeful and melancholy, wrapping angry words in a poetry that hits an incredible range of emotions.  I've heard other versions, but I come back to Jeff Buckley,* because the fact that  he was a talented artist who died too soon adds yet another layer to what is already a complex and beautiful song.

*Although I shut off the song when he gets to his "general wailing" part at the end.

45RPM: Oh what a beautiful morning.

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

One summer, I worked the night shift two days per week at a budget motel.  There were a lot of "betweens" that summer.  I was between colleges and boyfriends, my parents were poised between marriage and divorce and my brother was between residences.  I loved and hated the night shift.  It was fun being on my own, the only one awake among hundreds of sleeping motel guests.  I loved that I was an official "creature of the night".  But it was exhausting, pushing myself all the way to 6:00 a.m., and sleeping during the day was a challenge.  There also wasn't much to do in the middle of the night after all the grumpy traveling families had checked in and were tucked away in their beds, and all the truckers had wandered from their endless conversations in the lobby to their slumber.  I listened to cassette tapes to keep me company and every morning at 4:30 I would take a "security walk" around the parking lot. It was really just an excuse to get out of the office before people turned out to complain about the toast bar.  By 4:30 the dawn had broken and the clear Boise sky was melting into blue.  No matter how tired I was, no matter how boring the night had been, it was always a beautiful morning and I sang this song aloud as I ambled through the lot.  Oh what a beautiful day.

ps.  Hugh Jackman! He's the man! He's rather broad, but you have to picture him much further away from you, up on stage.

45RPM: Brown-Eyed Girl

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

My first job was in a tiny restaurant where they served good food and lots of it.  I worked Saturdays, alternating waiting tables with washing dishes.  My companion in work was a boy my own age, S.  We were acquaintances, people with things in common who never really became close friends, though I liked him.  He was smart and funny and a good conversationalist. In fact, at the end of high school, I surveyed the scene and decided that of all our classmates, he would be the one I would marry, if I had to marry someone.  Partway through our acquaintance on the job, he decided to reject who he had been and he foraged a new self, changing his name, quitting wrestling, getting rid of the music he was leaving behind.  Instead, he starting going by his middle name K., focused more on the art he created and he pledged his musical troth to Mudhoney and other bands we were then calling “Alt.”  To me, the reinvention seemed unnecessary, as he seemed the same as he ever was, but he said things were much better this way.  His devotion to his new alternative way of life was so complete I was surprised one day that he commented how much he liked Van Morrison’s  song "Brown Eyed Girl."  The song was played in heavy rotation at the time, thanks to being featured in movies and it was impossible to escape if the radio was set to the oldies station--they played it seemingly ever hour.  It seemed so run-of-the-mill for my very unique coworker that I forever linked the two of them together.

45RPM: Jump

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

I was in eighth grade and had just discovered music the year before.  And when I say, "discovered music" I mean music that people were releasing just then, the music that would become "my" music.  Until mid-seventh grade, aside from an infatuation with Michael Jackson and a flirtation with Huey Lewis and the News, I preferred music from the oldies stations which were, at that time, playing music from the late 50s and early 60s.  But when I decided I did like modern music, I took to it like a duck to water and formed strong opinions about a lot of things.  I came home one day after school to find my brother watching this video, which at that point was about four years old.

"I just figured out who Eddie Van Halen is," my twelve-year-old brother announced.

"He's the lead singer." I, the music expert announced.

"Nope.  That's David Lee Roth.  Eddie Van Halen is the guitarist."

Huh.  Outsmarted by an elementary school student, I filed that information away: "note to self, Van Halen is named for the guitarist, not the singer."  Of course, by 1988, David Lee Roth wasn't even the leader singer of Van Halen anymore.  But I would find that out on another day.

45RPM "The Darkening of the Light" Concrete Blonde

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

Most of my music tastes in high school ran to hair metal bands, but Concrete Blonde was the one group I listened to that could be considered "college radio material."*  I have  a lot of memories of Concrete Blonde, but for some reason, I associate this song with two girls whose names have been lost to time.  They were a year older than me.  Both of them were drama chicks, so I found them somewhat annoying in that hyper drama chick way.  But they also seemed incredibly sophisticated, girls who drank coffee in coffee shops, who had read Gurtrude Stein and possibly understood her, who had figured out how to drink at parties without getting drunk.  As seniors, they edited the high school's literary magazine and probably went to colleges like Oberlin, or Brown.  At least they seemed as if they did.  One was somewhat tall and willowy, with long brown hair.  Once she wore a dancer's leotard to school with a long broomstick skirt.  The leotard exposed her long, thin back almost to her waist and had me wondering if I could pull off such a style.  The other one was a similar height, with curly hair and small eyes that seemed to be narrowed as if she was constantly processing the happenings around her.  I think she must have sung this song at a talent show.  I wonder what's become of them both?


*College radio.  It was a phrase used a lot when I was in high school, but I never hear it now. Why is that?

45RPM: (Everything I do) I do it for you. Bryan Adams

Welcome to a new feature.  Here I will feature a song from my past and the specific memory or person I associate with it.  My goal is to be descriptive and brief, summing things up in one, and only one, paragraph. My goal also might be to torture you with songs from my past.  We shall see.

I hate this song for a variety of reasons: it was overplayed, it's schmaltzy, the title begins with a parenthetical statement, it's an example of Bryan Adams at the end of his fame, not the lean, hungry rocker he was in the 80s.  But I didn't always hate this song.  When it first came out, I liked it for its subservient, romantic lyrics and I think the piano chords at the beginning suckered me in.  But I spent too much time with it--there was no escaping it for a good six months, both on MTV and the radio--and by the time they finally stopped playing it I absolutely loathed it.  I associate it with my first boyfriend, probably because it was the love song for the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, that lackluster Kevin Costner effort I loved because I was sixteen and didn't know any better.  We must have seen it together on a date .  But it occurs to me now that my trajectory with the song mirrors our relationship trajectory:  I liked him, there was infatuation, too much time together, and when it was all over I hated him.