Sometimes a record or a given song gets imprinted with life. There's like a permanent stamp on it, something that sends me back to a moment in life. Everyone must be familiar with this phenomenon - yesterday my wife told me that for her, some songs associate with smells and tastes. She always had a better sense of smell and taste than I do.
I'd like to share some songs I have strong associations with. If you have similar examples, I'd love to see you post them in the comments.
Paradise Lost - Enchantment (from Draconian Times): this brings me back to the gig at Tavastia in Christmas 2004 (I think). It was a great show. I also recall many scenes from my teenage years; Draconian Times has been with me since its release in 1995. (Damn! That's eleven years already!)
Garbage - Version 2.0: the whole record brings to mind my long-gone pet dog, Piki. He was a miniature schnauzer. Especially the track The Trick Is To Keep Breathing really hits me to this day. I wasn't living with my parents anymore - I think it was 1998 or 1999. I visited my parents to say my good-byes to Piki. My mother, a veterinarian, had decided to put him to sleep the next day - he was just so old and tired. Returning to my wife-to-be later in the evening, I borrowed the album from my sister and listened to it on the road. I was overwhelmed with grief, and the album really got inside my head from that single listen-through.
James Dean Bradfield - An English Gentleman (from The Great Western): I first listened to this album the same evening in summer 2006 when I heard that two of my best friends were going to move away - yes, one of the events which also sparked this blog. I have a feeling that the song will bring me back to this still continuing phase of self-growth, which I believe is going to be a great time of change for me.
Alphaville - Forever Young: This is something I rather wouldn't mention, but I'm going to anyway. I succumbed to junior high peer pressure and hosted a house party when I was fourteen or fifteen years old (1992/1993). It was a disaster: my parents' just renovated house was a wreck. The next morning, floating somewhere between surrealism, being hung over and despair, awaiting for my parents to return home, I remember this song playing on the stereo. That was one of the few days I wish never dawned. It was also the last time I drank apple wine (eugh!).
The Cure - Burn (from The Crow OST): The movie is one of my all-time favorites and the scene in which this song plays does come to mind everytime I hear this, but I also get a warm memory of the best times from my (goth) teenage years (around 1994-1997).
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2 comments:
There indeed are some songs/albums that revive certain memories, flashbacks, mental images, what ever.
To my great surprise one such album is 2unlimited’s No Limits! (Sure go ahead and laugh you musical puritan ;) )
The title song (and first track), No Limits and the fifth track Maximum Overdrive brings up vivid memories of me playing one of the best Amiga games: Syndicate. Four cyborg agents dressed in black trench coats and armed with miniguns meting out the corporate message. Man that was a great game. (Oh blimey! I got it on my Amiga Classics collection, woo-eee!)
The second track Tribal Dance brings up memories of a winter vacation held in Salla ski resort, since there I first saw the music video of the song. Oh and it reminds me of a girl I went through the whole schooling system (ages 7-18) and from whom I first got a cassette copy of this album.
The third, eight, thirteenth and fourteenth tracks (Mysterious, Kiss Me Bliss Me, Where Are You Now and Shelter For A Rainy Day) are songs that I probably will forever associate to a that one certain special girl I was secretly in love more or less through high school (classes 7-9) and senior high (yläaste and lukio, since they do not accurately correspond to the English and American terms. Ages 13 – 18 anyways.
Fourth track Faces I associate yet again to a girl. A good friend of mine this time, to whom I did have a little crush too, nothing serious though. We spent couple of weeks together at summer senior high (kesälukio) and really seemed to be on the same wavelength. I actually still have a paper note in my wallet which has her picture, address and phone number. After all these 10+ years I am sure they are not valid anymore. Heck the area codes have changed here in Finland since then…
Sixth, seventh, ninth and eleventh tracks (The Power Age, Break The Chain, Throw The Groove Down, Let The Beat Control Your Body) are the songs that I boosted up my defiance of my folks, well dad mostly. They made me grave for freedom and independence from home.
The tenth and twelfth tracks (R.U.O.K. and Invite Me To Trance) remind me of my suicidal period of youth. Invite Me To Trance actually still gets me very sad, now that is playing on the background…
Onwards! From the Top Gun OST there are couple of tracks that remind me of summer and driving, well actually my brother drove, to Ju-Jutsu training and of hot and beautiful summer all together. These songs are: Danger Zone and Playing With The Boys by Kenny Loggins, Mighty Wings by Cheap Trick and Hot Summer Nights by Miami Sound Machine (which reminds me of couple of summers spent in Turku too) and Through The Fire by Larry Greene. Still listening to this sound track I feel like 16-year-old kid who is excited about going to dojo…
Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are by Nirvana conjures up vivid memories of small road trips I made with a classmate and third cousin of mine. We were very good friends back then and had loads of fun just driving around. I remember very clearly the dashboard of his black, small Toyota Corolla hatchback.
The whole Oceanborn album from Nightwish equals a student apartment of my best friend in Kajaani and long sessions of playing HârnMaster PnP RPG to me. That very album was just about every time (but not all time) the soundtrack of our gaming sessions. It is quite impossible to seclude any single tracks to any single occasions. Oceanborn = HârnMaster, that’s it. Still I tend to listen to that album when I do any Hârn related stuff.
And another whole album I associate to something specific is Chonologie by Jean Michel Jarre. Actually there are two things that come to my mind from this album. First and foremost it seems to be the images of space that float around my head when I listen to this. And the second is a rogue like game Omega which is very dear to me.
There you, a long, long list, sorry about that. Hope you have the patience to read it through.
I never could get Omega. I recall dying of thirst or hunger over and over and over again. Maybe I was too young to understand it - but I was playing Nethack effortlessly at the time.
Might warrant a re-visit, then. But these days the only Roguelike-gaming I do with any frequency is Dweller on the phone.
Now that you mention gaming and music, I associate Manowar with playing AD&D in a friend's cozy basement lounge when I was in junior high ("yläaste").
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