Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
For tonight’s Medium Cool, give us a song and tell us your story – share the memory you associate with that song.
– Did you hear Bus Stop by The Hollies at your first 8th grade party?
– Were you jumping up and down on your dorm room bed, singing and dancing to Starman by David Bowie?
– When you hear the song Yesterday by the Beatles, what memories does it conjure up?
You get the idea. Tell us the song and the artist. If you can, include a link to the song. One song per comment, please, to make reading and replies easier.
(Not to worry if you’re on a phone or device where linking isn’t convenient.)
Programming reminder: Our discussion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X is coming up fast!
Since so many of us seem to have been influenced by The Autobiography of Malcolm X, let’s plan to talk about the book on Feb 12. That gives us about a month, in case anyone wants to re-read the book, read it for the first time, or listen to the audio version. For audio book peeps, The Autobiography of Malcom X is available on YouTube for free. The narrator seems good, too, which is always important to me!
Okay, here we go.
nonrev321
Moody Blues: “To our children children children” on MDA
Beatles “Yesterday” Buying a Beatles wig in Jr. Highschool and wearing it on the bus.
Omnes Omnibus
I am pulling this from a thread a couple of weeks ago. Years ago (1992), a friend and I were skiing in Davos (yeah, I know) and we went to the recommended club. The cheapest drink was an $8.00 US Budweiser. It was Eurotrash central. Stay for the the one beer and then went looking for anyplace else. Walking past a rundown dive bar looking place, we heard Radar Love playing so we figured what the fuck and went in. It was one of the best ski town bars I’ve been to. Just a block or two off the main street, but miles away in character. Good, cheap drinks (for Switzerland) and people who had come to ski and have fun rather than pose.
MagdaInBlack
Joni Mitchell ” Help Me” : summer on the beach with a transistor radio and Coppertone scent in the air
Eta: Beach being the local gravel pit repurposed as a swimmin’ hole.
Steve in the ATL
Bus stop=overrated and overplayed
Look Through Any Window=underrated and underplayed
scav
Simon & Garfinkel’s The Boxer — using earphones and during my senior year in HS. Last time I really heard stereophonic sound before I lost it to a brain(-stem) tumor.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I first heard I Saw Her Standing There in 7th-grade art class (early 1964). First time I ever heard a Beatles song. Someone had brought in the album Meet The Beatles and the art teacher was cool enough to play it while we worked on our art projects. The start of life-long Beatlemania (and I have to admit I was the perfect age for it).
Kristine
Petula Clark. “Downtown.” I’m five or six. We’re living in Buffalo. I remember movies, fish fries (loved), and Italian restaurants (did not love–the smells made me gag and we always had to leave*).
*this is no longer the case
WaterGirl
@scav: Yikes! That must have been terrifying. Glad you are still with us!
frosty
Slow dancing to Dave Clarke Five “Because” at the junior high dances. Also the last song the DJ played, “Thank You And Goodnight” by the Angels (I had to look that up just now).
Lots of other tunes too but these are the earliest ones that struck a chord (pun intended).
FastEdD
I’m recording a “Songs of Stephen Bruton” CD, mostly for my own amusement. This week I did all the tracks for “Too Many Memories” and all that was left was the piano tracks. Since I’m not that great a piano player it took all afternoon of hunt and peck but with enough tracks, I’ve got a piano solo! Don’t tell anybody! I don’t care if it takes all day, it is fun.
Omnes Omnibus
During my junior year in college, I studied in London for a while. One of the bits of entertainment laid on by the university was a booze cruise evening on the Thames. Every time I hear Careless Whisper (it was 1984 ffs), I remember dancing with a good friend who passed away far too young. We were both too hip to like the song, but it fit the circs.
I strongly associate music with memories, so I could do this all night.
caphilldcne
The Carpenters On Top of the World instantly summons my childhood in Shreveport.
I used to love Pink Floyd in high school.
I discovered Iggy Pop’s Search and Destroy in 1983 and never looked back. For a variety of reasons that song led me to explore music in a way I never had before eventually getting me into earlier and earlier music and finally into blues and old country.
alas I dont explore music that much anymore. Or go to live bands. Kind of sad actually.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope you do!
frosty
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Same era for me. I thought I Want To Hold Your Hand was lame. Then they followed it with She Loves You and I was hooked. I read that they wrote it in 10 minutes!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
Supertramp, “Goobye Stranger.” The family went to Hot Springs for a few days and that song was all over the radio.
WaterGirl
@frosty: The only words I remember to She Loves You are: She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.
raven
This version
Come mothers and fathers throughout the landAnd don’t criticize if you can’t understandYour sons and your daughters are beyond your commandYour old road is rapidly agin’, please get out of the new oneIf you can’t lend your hand for the times they are a-changin’
phein63
Led Zeppelin, The Rain Song. First time I did acid, must have been 1974, sitting in the wheelhouse of a towboat in drydock. Listened to this over and over and watched the clouds weave themselves in front of a full moon.
frosty
I’m with you there. So far I’ve been thinking about the early ones but there’s just as many memories for high school and college years and beyond. They start to fade in the 2000s because I haven’t listened to much new music at all in the last 15 years or so.
…other than discovering the Sarah Borges station on Pandora, which plays excellent music with female singers and reverb guitar, but oddly enough no Sara Borges. No memories associated with these.
Frankensteinbeck
Songs are integral to my writing inspiration. You Can Be A Cyborg When You’re Older was launched by the songs Darkside and Gasoline, for example. Usually it’s specifically a character or relationship link. Bring Me To Life is Coo and Jay’s song. Teach Me To Be Bad is why Penny Akk’s team is the Inscrutable Machine. The list could go on and on and on.
eclare
“Just Like Heaven” The Cure.
https://youtu.be/n3nPiBai66M
Played incessantly during a summer vacation at the beach with my two best girlfriends after sophomore year of college. So young, so optimistic, so carefree, world at our fingertips.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Ha! I could recite the lyrics from memory! In fact, here’s the start:
You think you’ve lost your love, but she told me yesterday
It’s you she’s thinking of, and she told me what to say,
She says she loves you (etc etc etc)
piratedan
Link
I was a young lad of 11 when I heard this and it spoke to me as if the sound was made JUST FOR ME. Crunchy fulsome guitars, heartfelt yearning (aka horniness) and longing in the vocal lead, the harmonies melded with the thumping rhythm sections of the bass and drums…. the song is a mash of everything, hard guitar riffs, soaring vocals, and incredibly suggestive lyrics that are too cool for school.
I give you Rasperries – Go All The Way
that was so hard to believe that was 1972
WaterGirl
@raven: Great song, do you associate that song with anything in particular?
scav
@WaterGirl: Terrifying? Oddly no. Before they found the tumor (which can at least be dealt with) they were thinking all sorts of permanent things like MS. And mine was benign whereas at the exact same time I had a HS friend being operated on for a cancerous brain tumor. And my father was in yet another hospital being operated on for cancer. So despite 3 months in essentially ICU, I was clearly rather the lucky one. Now, Mom had a rough time certainly.
brantl
Imagine, my John Lennon, the winter after my senior year in High School, and I couldn’t believe that he had gotten all of those sentiments in that short a song. And it was so clean, so clean.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: So interesting about music and your writing!
Omnes Omnibus
After my divorce, I compiled my Divorce Suite: 1. A Thousand Kisses Deep 2. Money Changes Everything 3. Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory. 4. What a Wonderful World.
The story should be self-explanatory.
Sure Lurkalot
I’m going to riff off this a bit. I was the youngest of 4 and spent the Wonder bread years in NY in the 60’s. My parents had LPs and my eldest sister did too but my next oldest sister and I were into 45’s. Sam Goody was our favorite store. We had a little box player, boxes to hold the discs and tons of the plastic dohingies you popped in the middle. I, at 14 or so, having moved on to albums, gave my whole collection to my developmentally disabled first cousin. When he visited he would bring them. I would pull one from the stack, say the song and he would tell me the flip side song and the artist. Then he would clap and we would laugh and continue through the stack.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Oh, right, I had forgotten those!
Tehanu
@WaterGirl: The [Chad] Mitchell Trio, when John Denver was with them, did a beautiful cover of She Loves You, which they did when I saw them at the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the ’60s. I think I still have it on CD somewhere.
raven
@WaterGirl: Everything was just beginning.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: You didn’t include Alimony by Ry Cooder?
ETA: I don’t want six extra children; ain’t but two that look like me.
Josie
I was a sophomore at the University of Texas when Chubby Checker put out Let’s Do the Twist. Everyone went crazy trying to learn. We practiced in the dorm rooms in front of mirrors, using a towel to help us get it right. It was mandatory to know how to twist if you went out partying. We went to a nightclub called Charlie’s Playhouse that had a live band on the weekends and crowded the floor, everyone dancing like crazy. It was wonderful.
brantl
@WaterGirl: With a love like that, you know you should be glad.
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
A personal favorite: “Yes I Will.” Good guitar (solo at 1:40 and lurking in the background elsewhere.)
Oh, hell, one more: “Pay You Back with Interest.”
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck:
Several of my SF characters have their own songs. My bioengineered sociopathic assassin? Depeche Mode’s “World in My Eyes.” The doctor who turned my protag into a human-alien hybrid? “Time of the Season.”
The non-SF books have theme songs. Gideon‘s is “Train Song” by Vashti Bunyan. I heard it one afternoon on TV–it was used for an NFL ad of all things. Found it on iTunes, bought it, and played it on a loop for long stretches.
Omnes Omnibus
@frosty: No alimony. Split assets and split.
TheOtherHank
I had my first walkman and was rowing the lunch boat (iow, no paying passengers in my boat) for a 1-day whitewater trip down the South Fork of the American River. In a not too splashy section I listened to CCR, specifically, Green River. Hearing that song throws me back to hot summers on the water.
Ooh, another one. When I was guiding on the Rogue River in Oregon, taking my personal gear down to the ramp to rig before we met the passengers for a 5 day trip, I would crank my tape of X, Live at the Whiskey A Go Go. Happy times.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: It really does capture that feeling. I’m sure it was written just for you!
frosty
@raven: I think that’s the first song I learned on guitar, summer of ’69. Figuring out C Em and G.
Delk
In memory of Tom Verlaine. It’s 1992 and I just turned 30. Wasn’t supposed to make it to 25.Call Mr Lee
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus: Same.
I remember playing “radio fortune” in high school where you pushed the button to hear what song came on the radio (did anyone else do that, or were we weird?). I was playing with my good friend Jeff and got this:
https://youtu.be/5cvEVivHVsU
Luckily not yet.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Reading that brought tears to my eyes because it reminded me that I had made Quiver’s Playlist. The night my kitty soulmate had his blood transfusion and spent the better part of 10 hours heaving and puking and it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, and suddenly the idea popped into my head to try soothing music.
He started to puke less frequently and I added more songs and some calmed him more than others. I made a playlist for him, and that was the soundtrack for the final months with my sweet boy.
Gin & Tonic
Freshman year of college is indelibly associated with The Mothers, Live at the Fillmore East, June 6, 1971. Yeah, don’t ask.
WaterGirl
@brantl: Gl-ad.
Mr. Bemused Senior
There’s a lot of music in my head, but this brought back a childhood memory of the Peter, Paul and Mary album, Moving. I can still hear it.
Years later I used to sing Puff to my older daughter in her crib. Also Our House (CS&N) at bedtime.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Awww…
Steeplejack
“Yesterday.” Slow-dancing with Donna Winter or Weathers (can’t remember at this long remove) at a party in a darkened church basement. The song had just come out (fall of 1965), and whoever was running the record player repeated it many times. I remember Donna’s crinkly dress and the taste of her hairspray. Our romance was doomed before it started, because we went to different (inconvenient) schools. Alas, a ninth-grade tragedy.
Omnes Omnibus
Despite its recent resurgence due to Wednesday, I will always associate this song with sitting in a friend’s room in London and talking him out of getting an indy cab to go to Brixton to try to buy opium at around 3:00 am.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Amen.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
I love “Go All the Way.” Excellent guitar!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Most excellent advice.
realbtl
June 16, 1967. Graduate from high school and head up the coast to the Monterrey Pop Festival. No particular song but anything from any of the artists brings back that feeling of “These are my people.”
zhena gogolia
In That Thing You Do, they capture the excitement of everyone listening to the same song on their little transistor radios. My vivid memory is of sitting outside in the summer and listening to one Motown or Beatles masterpiece after another. The one that sticks in my mind is Mary Wells My Guy. The sound of summer.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah, Yoko Romo . . . Moment of silence.
dexwood
@Josie: Great story. I was 9 or 10 when The Twist was big. An older cousin, who lived on the same street, would frequently practice the latest dances with me and The Twist was definitely one. I learned a move or two. When The Beatles played the Baltimore Civic Center in 1964 she and her best friend had free tickets. I was so envious. She took pity on this 13 year old boy, said I could tag along but I had to buy my own ticket. Deal! Grass cutting money. It was my first rock and roll show.
Miki
I was nine (1964). Barely starting clarinet. My clarinet teacher loaned me a record of Robert Marcellus with the Cleveland Orchestra (George Szell) playing Mozart ‘s Clarinet Concerto. That interpretation informed my playing for the rest of my life.
https://youtu.be/3t01LMfMpp8
zhena gogolia
Also Beatles She’s a woman.
Doc H
Way back when, heading to the Inn-Square Men’s Bar (Nerdtown adjacent) to see The Neighborhoods: https://youtu.be/w5Mia0yvVmw . Or maybe Human Sexual Response in the MUB https://youtu.be/OGf_kQZCDJY . Unba unba unbelievable.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
First heard Roy Ayers – “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” during my first summer term at my alma mater. I can still feel the heat…
zhena gogolia
@dexwood: WOW
Steeplejack
@Tehanu:
The Chad Mitchell Trio, “She Loves You.”
Omnes Omnibus
Reaching back further in time, I associate this album with my dad and Saturday mornings. We would watch Saturday morning cartoons together and then something like this (Moody Blues, Country Joe and the Fish, etc.) would go on the stereo.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@zhena gogolia: ah yes, in Help on tape under Salisbury Plain.
eclare
I lived in ATL at the time, I think early nineties. My best friend at the time had her rich BF’s Benzo for the day, so we felt like we were the shit. Somehow we found ourselves driving by a large, loud forced birther protest on Peachtree St. Baby Got Back came on. We cranked that MF up all the way with the windows down and laughed. Childish? Pointless? Sure. I’d do it again
Link if somehow you haven’t heard the song
https://youtu.be/X53ZSxkQ3Ho
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: fab!
Sure Lurkalot
@Josie: Your memory reminds me of my sister when she was in high school and I was 8 or so. I idolized her and her music, friends and clothes. Your experience in college sounds so…cool.
I went to college in 1973 and by then it was (my) yellow and green platform shoes, Bowie posters on the wall and hash pipes. Ch-ch-ch-changes.
H.E.Wolf
“I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats, at the Orpheum in Boston MA, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1980. We all danced on the plush fold-down chair seats for most of the concert, which I am sure really delighted the Orpheum staff.
piratedan
@Steeplejack: while I adore both Bus Stop and Stop, Stop, Stop…. I was always more partial to I Can’t Let Go and I’m Alive.
I’m Alive always seemed like an “I’m Actually In Love” realization song. With the sing-song quality of I Can’t Let Go seems to represent the whirlwind sensation of lost relationship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN8KraEvsnc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVJ0jGC_0tU
Their lyrical song construction and harmonies are pretty impressive and they’re one of my favorite bands of the 60’s.
PAM Dirac
I distinctly remember the first time I became aware of pop radio was Roy Orbison “Pretty Woman”. WQAM in Miami I believe. First album was Beatles ’65. There’s very few specific incidents that I associate with a specific song. One of the few was in a negative sense. I lived in Maryland and started undergraduate in upstate NY, so there were some long drives with only the radio for tunes. On one of these drives the station I was listening to played the “Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl … ” and I couldn’t take it anymore. I found a classical station and thought that this was far more interesting than most of the schlock on pop radio. It led to a life long fascination with Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Charles Ives, and George Crumb, among others.
NotMax
A smattering which leapt to mind.
A Day in the Life
People Are Strange
On a Carousel
Glendale Train
Knight in Rusty Armor
(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay
Alice’s Restaurant
White Bird
Get Out of Here
Nature’s Way
Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast
Yes We Can Can
Me & Bobby McGee
Is That All There Is
Marathon*
Cannon Song**
A Little Priest***
.
*from “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris i”
** from “The Threepenny Opera”
**** from “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
.
raven
Petty’s “Learning to Fly” is a song and video about a kid doing acid for the first time. It’s a trippy video and, at about 3:00 minutes, they flash to Bobby Kennedy being held by Rosie Grier after being shot. That day just happened to be the first time I did acid.
dexwood
@zhena gogolia: Ticket set me back a whole 3 bucks. My cousin was the coolest.
eclare
@zhena gogolia: I remember being at a basement party in middle school at Will M’s house, just milling around. Then someone walked in with the latest from Michael Jackson, Thriller. The rest of the evening all of us just crowded that record player.
Sure Lurkalot
@dexwood: Wow, an innocent Almost Famous! My 1st concert was Diana Ross and the Supremes in 1969.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: Pretty Woman!
Oh my gosh, my first memory of Pretty Woman is sister teaching me to do this line dance to that song.
Steeplejack
@realbtl:
Eric Burdon and the Animals, “Monterey.”
NotMax
Would have sworn I included ’em above yet they’re not there.
Autobahn
Werewolves of London
.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@raven: how can I resist?
the Acid Song, Loudon Wainwright III
raven
@Steeplejack: Walls move, minds do too. . .
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Mary Wells, “My Guy.”
raven
@Mr. Bemused Senior: ding
eclare
@raven: Wow. That must have been stunning to see that clip in the video.
dexwood
@Sure Lurkalot: Couldn’t hear a thing given the poor sound and all the screaming, but, damn, what fucking fun.
raven
@eclare: It drove me and my music obsessed brother nuts for years. We searched and searched and, eventually, found a site that said it was just random!
frosty
@dexwood:
Damn! I had high school friends who went to that Baltimore Beatles show. I don’t know if I knew about it but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t even bother to ask my parents, I knew what the answer would be.
Amir Khalid
Bruce Springsteen’s 9/11 album, The Rising. I remember being moved to tears listening to it, less than a year after I watched the towers go down on live television.
PJ
@Delk: Television’s records were hard to find when I was in high school. One day, I came across a cassette of Adventure in the bargain bin of a local store. “Days” was the first song of theirs I figured out how to play. https://youtu.be/lZetdccVvBs
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: My sisters and I used to sing that together.
Overwritten by more recent memories of that song.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I was a Beatles fan from the beginning, and the hits were coming hard and fast in ’64-65. But I particularly remember the first time I heard “I Feel Fine.” That long, buzzy first note. I think the earth might have opened up. Still hits me.
ETA: With “She’s a Woman” on the B-side, that was one of the best 45s of all time!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
Papa Cisco introduced me to this one…
Grover Washington Jr., “Mister Magic.”
https://youtu.be/UbsbqkgzxWM
BC in Illinois
Summer of ’67, my friend Neil and I were working as camp counselors at the Rockville YMCA Day Camp (because we couldn’t find a paying job) (I spent the summer before that painting houses around Akron Ohio, and I didn’t want to do that again).
Anyway, we played guitars and sang together through high school and were the chief song leaders at the day camp, and one of the other counselors invited us to sing at a coffee house / youth center that she helped out at, and we said, sure. We had a repertoire of folk music, Simon and Garfunkel, Loving Spoonful, and Smothers Brothers songs that had gone over well on other occasions.
So we showed up at this youth center in Rockville, MD, and listened to the act that went before us. A pretty good garage band. The crowd hated them. (They wanted something heavier, maybe more of a Soul sound.) And Neil and I looked at each other and said, “If they are doing this to that band, and they’re pretty good, then what are they going to do to a couple of folk singers?”
We got up, did an abbreviated set for the one table of friends that were listening to us, and then did a full throated rendition of “Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron,” straight out of day camp. It was the folk singer version of giving the crowd the finger.
That song will always take me back to that night.
dexwood
@frosty: Do you remember the Buddy Dean show? A teen music and dance tv show locally produced in Baltimore? It was the inspiration for the teen dance show in Hairspray (thank you John Waters). The same cousin and her best friend were background dancers on the show.
James E Powell
@piratedan:
America’s premier power pop band. They got such great guitar sounds.
Ecstasy still does it for me.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I agree with this commenter: “This song makes me appreciate love and life.”
Steeplejack
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:
Roy Ayers, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.”
Omnes Omnibus
I remember doing a radio show with a friend and finding a single in the new records that had just come in. So we gave it a quick listen and then played it on show. I doubt anyone played this song in the US much before we did.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Me too.
A few early ones
The Beatles – Hey Jude road trips with my family when around 8, we’d all sing along to the chorus.
Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime Takes me straight back to school in summer ( it was a boarding school in the Yorkshire Dales and we did a lot of hill walking outside of class) and how hot sunny days last forever when you’re young. I can still see/feel the sun/smell the beautiful country & I still hate the song :-)
Deep Purple – Lazy ( The live version from Made in Japan) – the reason I learnt to play guitar, I wanted to be able to do that
Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing ( basically all the first album) – my first wife and I used to get very frisky to this
Billy Cobham – Spectrum — First time I heard it I thought of drumming in a whole new light. Made me realise drums were really, really an instrument
Otis Redding – Sitting on the Dock of the Bay – A gorgeous sunny afternoon sitting on a rooftop getting stoned with a friend looking down over Leeds. Just a very happy peaceful memory
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird ( live version) – working in the Packhorse pub in Leeds as a student. Happy memories but I hate this song with the heat of 10,000 suns. It was on the jukebox and was played constantly see also Laughing Len Cohen – Suzanne
Eno – Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy – an afternoon on mushrooms with friends making shapes out of clouds
DrDaveChemist
High school in Cleveland in the mid 70s, every Friday at 6:00 pm the DJ on WMMS would launch the weekend with a rant about finishing the work week that ended by playing Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. I especially remember putting on my marching band uniform for Friday night football games, knowing that my friends were doing the same at their homes. Our band had a reputation as the best in the region so the music connected us to each other. My best friends in high school were my band buddies, and when I went to college, the marching band there became my new best friends Even now, my best friends are my music people and not my professional peers (though now it’s choral singing and not marching band).
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
LOL. That’s certainly an interesting take on the song.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
I came of age in the 80s and I do have some memories linked to songs from that era but this story is about Caravan by Van Morrison. Was my Junior year in college and I was taking an Environmental Economics course. I drove down from Springfield, OH to the little hippie village of Yellow Springs to interview this guy who was instrumental in getting the Little Miami river it’s wild and scenic river designation. I borrowed my new girlfriends’s car – at that point we were head over heels for each other, graduation was still well over a year away, college was great and life was full of contentment.
I put Van Morrison’s Moondance in the tape deck and headed out of town. The fall colors were peaking so the drive was gorgeous. Something about that album just clicked with the situation – the warm acoustic instrumentation, Van’s warm vocals, it all worked perfectly for my mood and the atmosphere. I still can’t go through an autumn with listening to that album at least once.
eclare
@Steeplejack: I would submit Immigrant Song with Hey Hey What Can I Do? as the B-side.
https://youtu.be/RlNhD0oS5pk
https://youtu.be/epX8Th4aiM
ETA I saw Robert Plant and Allison Kraus in an amphitheater on the MS River here. They did a version of The Immigrant Song that was haunting.
Delk
@PJ: I met Richard Lloyd and Matthew Sweet. I asked Richard if I could see his hands, lol.
piratedan
@James E Powell: as a Raspberries fan, I’ve often heard the following phrase about them… “often imitated, never acknowledged”. To be fair, musicians steal from each other all the time and rearrange the formula in whatever way suits them, and as always, I find music to be subjective, you like what you like and anytime you find music that touches you, well that’s a good thing.
Matt McIrvin
I’d been thinking They Might Be Giants was a band I might be interested in checking out some more, for a while, but it was the moment I belatedly heard “I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die” on our college radio station, in the furnished apartment where I was living my senior year after getting kicked off campus by the room lottery, that made me ride-or-die for the band.
This ridiculous, grim yet peppy accordion-fueled joke song that sounded like a three-way collision between Spike Jones and “It’s A Small World After All” and some kind of cynical death poetry, titled with an inversion of The Who’s most famous line, and it sounded like it was recorded in somebody’s bathroom. And that’s the same band that did “Ana Ng” and “Don’t Let’s Start?” Yeah, I was a fan from that instant. And Flood dropped just a few days later.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Steeplejack: Yes!! There it is!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: When I saw the woman who sings at the start of that video I realized that is how I picture your -ex. An updated version of that, of course.
Spanish Moss
I discovered Pink Floyd (and marijuana) my senior year of high school. I can remember listening to “Welcome to the Machine” at my best friend’s house, full volume, high as kites. Her parents were away, and we were supposed to pick up some European exchange students at the airport. We forgot. The students took a cab and arrived at the house to find two high school girls dancing on the dining room table. They thought it was funny and joined us. What an introduction to America!
Pappenheimer
Don’t know about songs, but Rite of Spring will always yank me back to a darkened movie theatre with “Fantasia” playing on the screen and a beautiful, dark-haired music major in the seat beside me, exchanging kisses with me.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: At first I thought, Oh, no, but it grew on me.
piratedan
@Matt McIrvin: Obviously it spoke to the Birdhouse in your soul :-)
NotoriousJRT
@Steeplejack: “I Feel Fine” sparks a memory for me: singing along while lying on the deck in the rear window of our car while I waited with my dad to pick up my mother from work. It is a very happy, boppy tune. “I’m so glad that she’s my little girl. She’s so glad, she’s tellin’ all the world.”
Also recall sitting in the kitchen with my father listening to “Eleanor Rigby” and asking what it meant that she was “buried along with her name.”
eclare
@zhena gogolia: Lovely Day by Bill Withers does that for me. I chose it as the first song to be played after my ex and I got married, but even though that divorce got ugly, I still love it.
https://youtu.be/bEeaS6fuUoA
schrodingers_cat
Music from Hindi movies was the sound track of my childhood. Hindi movies (along with regional and Hollywood movies to a lesser extent) were the pop culture.
YouTube makes accessing those movies and songs easier.
This is from Shri 420 (Mr. 420). Possibly one of the most romantic songs in Hindi cinema from 1955. Heard for the first time at my grandmother’s house. My parents were small children when then this movie was released. So that should tell you something about the staying power of these melodies. Don’t know how popular these still are in India.
Pyar Hua, Ekrar hua, pyar se phir kyun darta hai dil (fell in love, other person said yes, but why is the heart still afraid of love.)
Raj Kapoor’s character is quite obviously inspired by Chaplin.
Video jukebox for Shri 420
*section 420 in the Indian Penal Code deals with Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
I love the Hollies. They and the Animals are my two underrated British invasion groups.
The Animals, “Don’t Bring Me Down.” Eric Burdon had one of the great white blues voices. Although this video is overdubbed, the Animals were notable for actually playing when they did TV shows instead of faking it.
ETA: Just remembered that Linda Ronstadt did a couple of great covers of Hollies songs. “I Can’t Let Go.”
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
When was ostensibly running the college radio station managed to wangle permission to debut the newest Todd Rundgren album in advance of any other outlet. Had an entire week’s jump before it was officially released.
What showed up was an LP in a plain white sleeve, generic black on white printing on the record label. The handwritten word “TEST” could clearly be seen pressed into the vinyl within the dead space between the last track and the label.
Omnes Omnibus
My niece went to Lollapalooza this past summer, and I asked her to text me who she was seeing and what she liked. I’d suggested some bands that she might want to check out. I very pleased when she texted that she had become a huge Wombats fan. A day later, she lost her phone so I heard nothing more.
kalakal
The Eagles – Journey of the Sorceror – Laughing hysterically at the radio broadcasts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – it was the theme music
Also by the Eagles – One of These Nights –-dancing with one of my dearest friends at university discos – we had an on-off thing for years. I fancied her rotten – ahh Lurve, play that song and I can still see her when we were both 19
James E Powell
Winter 1973-1974, first year out of high school, starting to act like an adult. Hitting night clubs instead of local bars. Listening to a lot of Roxy Music, especially the Stranded album. Changed my look from something like Shaggy from Scooby Doo to as close to Bryan Ferry as I could get.
My song was “Street Life” and I did my best to live it.
Weekend starts Friday soon after eight
Your jet black magic helps you celebrate
You may be stranded if you stick around
And that’s really something.
And it really was.
AliceBlue
I’m 23 years old. New Year’s eve party, 1976. A girl puts on a record by a group she calls “the Raymones.” I’m the only one in the place really listening–who is this? What is this?? I’m transfixed and obsessed. And then Joey Ramone is singing “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” and it’s like he’s singing it to me. Hey little girl/I wanna be your boyfriend. Sweet little girl/I wanna be your boyfriend.
I bought the album the next day. I’ve been happily married for 37 years but Joey will always Be My Boyfriend.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
LOL.
eclare
@piratedan: Hahaha…saw TMBG live in ATL. Some place in Little Five Points, I can’t remember the name.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Nope. Blond curls and blue eyes.
p.a.
REM’s Night swimming.
Grew up near a poolshop that had 3 above ground and 1 in ground demo that they kept filled in the summer. Rear property line of undeveloped lots. Kept a crappy skimmer along the fence line, would hop the fence at night & have a blast. Couldn’t use the in-ground as it was in front by the street & cops could see.
Knew several families with pools, but that was way more fun; boys, girls, no adult supervision.
That song really brought back those memories.
The Up and Up
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for mentioning They Might Be Giants. I was tempted to post something …
I had a penpal who tried to see every TMBG concert whenever they had a tour. Before the pandemic I volunteered at a winery and They Might Be Giants songs were a major percentage of the work party playlist.
Ana Ng
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEjutUbgpH8
WaterGirl
@AliceBlue: Was that really 1976? Oh my god, so long ago. How can that be?
kalakal
I will always associate Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl with my second wife
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I have you with medium brown hair, which was wrong, too, as I recall.
I won’t even tell you how I picture Baud!
geg6
Doobie Brothers Black Water. When I was in high school, we were alllowed to smoke in one restroom and a certain place outside the building. We most certainly did not smoke just cigarettes in either. Anyway, a group of us (usually about 8 of us) would sit around in the bathroom, with awesome acoustics, and work out the harmonies of that song in that smoky restroom. We sounded wonderful!
WaterGirl
@kalakal: Someone used to call me their brown-eyed girl, but I can’t recall who it was. Sad.
WaterGirl
@kalakal:
Dare I ask what wife you are on now? :-) She must be pretty great if you moved to FL for her.Okay, scratching that out in case it came out wrong. My mom always said they don’t tease you if they don’t like you. You’re one of my favorite commenters, and I don’t want to risk offending you.
Craig
Laying on the roof of my college house with my drummer listening to Hendrix ‘1983’ while on acid. Really mind-blowing. My buddy would go on to play with Jeffrey Pinkus from Butthole Surfers. Then he’d move back to Virginia and become a investment councilor, then he and his wife became conservative christians. He became a youth pastor and had tattoo removal. Then he got busted for embezzling $500,000 in retirement funds from old ladies and went to Federal prison for 5 years. Needless to say we’re not friends, but that song reminds me him.
piratedan
@Steeplejack: I have to admit, I don’t have the Animals as high as others might, but there were soooooo many good bands its really hard to say which is best, I mean I have faves from the DC5, the Honeycombs (Have I The Right) to The Mindbenders (It’s getting harder all the time) and The Equals (Baby Come Back) that feel like lightning in a bottle but have such a FEEL to them.
some great music that feels like a Sidney Poitier film soundtrack :-)
eclare
@James E Powell: My Friday afternoon song in college was FM by Steely Dan. I went to UT in Knoxville, my first serious BF was at Vandy. As soon as we reunited, we would play that song, and then, magic.
https://youtu.be/HV3zWSawJiw
raven
@eclare: Variety?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: No, that’s pretty on point. It always seems darker in pictures.
eclare
@raven: Yes! Thank you.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Point taken. My experience of Led Zeppelin was all on LPs, not 45s.
MagdaInBlack
@geg6: My memories of “Black Water” also involve “not just cigarettes.” 😊
raven
@eclare: Saw some great shows there. Richard Thompson and Cassandra Wilson come to mind.
AliceBlue
@WaterGirl: Unreal isn’t it? It might have been 1977–it’s hard to remember. Still a long time ago.
billcinsd
@Doc H: The Neighborhoods were great. Dave Minehan is probably a rock god in a different universe
eclare
@p.a.: Oh I love that song. Nights spent listening to it with my BF. The melody is beautiful. Thank you for reminding me.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: Black Water. That’s a Cub Scout jumble sale in Geneva, IL, for me. Right about the time the song played, IL Gov. Dan Walker came in and introduced himself. He stuck his hand out to everyone, and said, “Hi, I’m Dan Walker.”
DesertFriar
The 4 songs that resonated with me the most in the 60’s:
I Fought the Law – Bobby Fuller 4
Walk Away Renee – Left Banke
Avenging Annie – Andy Pratt
Just Like a Woman – Manfred Mann
Kelly
@TheOtherHank: My fellow boaters knew I was having a great day when I’d sing Loggins & Messina “Watching the River Run” while rowing the flat sections
“When we’re together we’ve got a lot”
kalakal
@WaterGirl: 3, and I have to say I’m rather fond of her :-)*. I can’t hear Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 without thinking of her, she really, really loves that piece and it also one of my absolute favourites
* British understatement ( just in case she reads this) 😀
ETA Just saw your scratch out, no offense taken, quite the reverse. I agree with your mom 😀😀😀
Matt McIrvin
@The Up and Up: Last year TMBG finally went back on tour after a long pandemic hiatus, later than a lot of bands because they were being very very cautious… aaaand after their very first gig in New York, John Flansburgh’s car got hit by a drunk driver and he broke several ribs. After a few months to recuperate, they went back on tour again and I saw them in Portsmouth, NH. That was maybe the second-best show of theirs I’ve ever seen, though John F. naturally didn’t jump around the stage quite as much as he used to. The last encore was “Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal,” amazing.
On Facebook they kept begging people to mask up at their shows, and it was extraordinary what an asshole magnet that request was. Flans was kind of stunned by the phenomenon.
eclare
@Craig: That is quite the story arc.
zhena gogolia
@DesertFriar: Walk Away Renee is one of the most beautiful songs ever.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Baud appears like ambassador Kosh of Babylon 5, differently to every ogler.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: Yes it is
Steeplejack
This thread is making me think of a music-related memory I wrote about a couple of years ago, related to Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.”
Matt McIrvin
@DesertFriar: Just heard The Clash’s cover of “I Fought The Law” on the radio today and was thinking how much that song slapped.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: Without pants?
/ducks.
AliceBlue
@DesertFriar: I love Walk Away Renee. Reminds me of a boy I had a crush on in high school.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I was just taken aback at how it started. Unexpected.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: My brother-in-law was best man at his friend’s wedding, and he got in a lot of trouble when, toward the beginning of his speech, he talked about the bride as his friend’s “third wife”.
Oh my gosh, I was not there, but I heard the stories.
Steeplejack
@NotoriousJRT:
And just great guitar all the way through (“I Feel Fine”)!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Way too slow for me. I finally skipped ahead to see if it picked up the pace, and it didn’t, so I baled.
eclare
@raven: I saw Cassandra Wilson there! I love her version of The Weight.
https://youtu.be/x26I1EHGgmI
Strangely I found her because one of the instructors at my gym, Athletic Club Northeast at the time, played it as a “cool down” song after a class.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: Lol! That’s the definition of awkward. My sympathies with the bride, how awful for her.
Kate
I remember being in the dorm on a Saturday afternoon and hearing someone play Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”. To this day when I hear that big guitar riff I get the feeling of all the possibilities of the upcoming Saturday night.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: Yeah, it was not good.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
I think I remember that same place. I saw the BoDeans there. Great show!
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I was in the wedding of a friend whose first wedding I also had been in about five years earlier (first wife was a law school class mate of ours who died of breast cancer less than a year after they married).* II had to carefully talk around the first marriage during my toast (“good friends through the best and worst times…).
*I was in my first Jewish wedding and a pallbearer in my first Jewish funeral all in the space space of a year. Fuck cancer.
Matt McIrvin
There was a period at my junior high school around 1980 or ’81 when, for some reason I can’t fathom, they gave some students the choice of a song to play over the lunchroom PA. And what they chose to play was AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long“, every single day. And this was allowed to continue for a remarkably long time.
Good song but I associate it with school lunchroom pizza to this day.
kalakal
I will always link Come on Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners with serious cardio workouts at parties as a young man and whenever I see a particularly egregious quiff I think of A Flock of Seagulls
Barbara
@Steve in the ATL: Hey Carrie Anne what’s your game now can anybody play?
Listened to the whole album in some friend’s house (some friend who unlike us had a stereo) when I was 8 or 9 and loved the every song forever, but especially Carrie Anne.
FelonyGovt
So many. Some I won’t divulge. 😀
Fire and Rain by James Taylor. My freshman year in college, sitting in someone’s dorm room (I was a commuter student), pleasantly stoned and feeling very grown up.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I have no doubt that you navigated it perfectly in your speech.
That is very sad. Just awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: Cardio workout at parties? I got your song right here. Yeah, 13 minutes of early ’80s funk.
raven
@eclare: Stunningly good.
eclare
I moved to London in 1996 with my then BF. We both worked in tax, and we got jobs in accounting firms doing expat work. After a few months, things were not going well, and I was very lonely while he assimilated easily.
One Sunday morning I walked around a residential area alone, deserted at nine am, and someone was blasting Hopelessly Devoted To You. It was gray, and the song hit me hard. I moved back to ATL a few months later.
https://youtu.be/r-3NvDp28U4
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I got yarmulkes though.
Craig
Had an appointment to look at an apartment in SF in 93. Woman opened the door and the world stopped, for both of us. Had never had that kind of Thunderstruck moment before. When she invited me in Bowie’s Moonage Daydream was playing in the kitchen. We lived with each other as platonic friends for a year with verying tensions. Her boyfriend was nice enough, but annoying. She moved to NYC. A year or so later I got the chance to go to the US premier of Pulp Fiction. I wrote her a letter and asked if I could crash on her couch, and if she wanted to go to the premiere party. Dressed up, fancy party at Lincoln Center. Late night. Wake up, not on her couch. Bowie is in the CD player in her room. We had a great bi coastal relationship for a couple years. Didn’t work out. When Bowie died we hadn’t spoken in years, but we met up for a glass of wine.
Mr. Bemused Senior
One more memory: the first gift I gave Bemused Senior (Mrs.) was Randy Newman’s album, Little Criminals. She was a short person. We soon went to see him live in Sacramento.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
I think the Animals suffer because there was a tendency to dismiss them with “Oh, yeah, ‘House of the Rising Sun.'” Oh, well.
And their geeky bass player, Chas Chandler, went on to be Jimi Hendrix’s producer.
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus: Saw them in ATL too! Another great workout song, Rock Lobster. When that was played in high school, everyone crammed the dance floor.
https://youtu.be/n4QSYx4wVQg
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve got psychosomatic lactic acid build up in my legs just listening to that
Matt McIrvin
In my freshman year of college there was this asshole who lived across the hall from me who had a tape that had half of the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill followed immediately, for some reason known only to God, by Kansas’s “Carry On My Wayward Son.” And he’d blast this tape at full volume at like 6 in the morning before he went to football practice or something, and then complain that we were making noise while he was trying to sleep in the middle of the afternoon. Real sociopath. It made me resent the Beasties to a perhaps unfair degree. I hated those fucking guys.
Anyway, here’s “Brass Monkey.”
eclare
@kalakal: Oh gawd. My first name is Eileen, and that song came out while I was in high school. I hate that song with the heat of one thousand suns.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: That’s sweet.
eclare
@Steeplejack: Awww, that is touching.
billcinsd
For me it was seeing the video for Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U@ recorded at their Red Rocks concert. I saw this video at a bar owned by a friend of A friend of mine. That bar had a big screen and was the first bar i town to show MTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9IXvMcEtRw
pajaro
The songs I remember from two of the happiest days of my life: Fields of Gray, by Bruce Hornsby was the song my daughter and I danced to at her wedding; five years later, Don’t Stop Believing was the song where I played air guitar in front of my son’s friends at his wedding. Bliss.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I assume you still have them?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Never know when you might need one.
WaterGirl
@Craig: What a lovely story, thanks for sharing it.
Tony G
“My Favorite Things” by the John Coltrane Quartet — heard one day on NYC non-commercial radio station WBAI when I was 15 years old, a few years after Coltrane had died. I had never heard of Coltrane, and I’d never heard anything like that before. Like many teenagers in that era I was into Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, etc. (I still am.). To the degree that I thought about jazz, I figured that it was represented by the Glenn Miller records that my mother loved. Hearing Coltrane was like opening a door to a whole type of music that I hadn’t known about. I’m glad I heard that song that day.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: When I was about 30, I used to bicycle a fair amount. One night, I dreamt that I was on a 30-mile bike ride, and when I woke up in the morning I could barely walk.
I just have been flexing my legs in my sleep as if I were peddling.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: That’ll get you moving, alright.
billcinsd
Another song I associate with a certain time is REO Speedwagon “Riding the Storm Out” — for away football games in HS, we always played Riding the Storm Out when we hit the city limits
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Lord, there was a bowling alley in Atlanta that used to do “Rock ’n’ Bowl” late Friday or Saturday night. Stayed open later than usual, turned off all the lights except over the pins and at the service counter and the bar, and they had a DJ play that funk: Cameo, Dazz Band, Parliament, Chic, Patrice Rushen, etc. The bowling was almost incidental to the drinking, dancing and mingling. It was awesome.
Dazz Band, “Let It Whip.”
WaterGirl
@pajaro: Wonderful memories.
kalakal
@Steeplejack: The video to Cameo’s Word Up! is the most (US) 80’s thing ever
https://youtu.be/MZjAantupsA
kalakal
@WaterGirl: Wow! That’s really something, did you cycle the full 30 miles in your dream?
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: And the first person you see in it is Geordie LaForge himself, LeVar Burton!!
WaterGirl
@kalakal: I have no idea, but it sure felt like it the next day!
Steeplejack
@kalakal:
Indubitably!
kalakal
I can’t hear The Blue Danube* without seeing spaceships
* or Also Sprach Zarathustra without seeing a big black monolith and going Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: So it is! Never picked up on that
eclare
@kalakal: Can anyone not see and hear that?
Mr. Bemused Senior
@kalakal: Yeah. Then there’s the California Raisins take on it…
Two Thousand Some (starts 14:10)
Craig
@kalakal: I can’t hear Ride of the Valkyries without hearing helicopters, and machine guns.
eclare
@Craig: In the movie Birth of a Nation, the scenes of the KKK riding in were set to that.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Craig: for me the definitive Ring is Anna Russel’s analysis.
AliceBlue
@eclare: I went through the same thing with “Alice’s Restaurant” (but I like the song).
kalakal
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Never seen that before – thanks
@Craig: Oh my word yes, that and The End at the beginning of the film with the burning forest and the helicopters
On the other hand there’s always this
https://youtu.be/YIBRmqQzEcA
And I can never hear Springsteen’s Fire without laughing my head off seeing this
https://youtu.be/1vT-VaMXsAw
Nancy
Steve Marriott and Humble Pie “You’re so Good for Me,” gave me a glimpse of the possibility of love. I was young enough to be entranced. Still love the song.
Central Planning
My friend Angelo introduced me to Billy Joel in 5th grade with the Glass Houses album, and specifically You May Be Right. We and a few other friends made pretend we were playing instruments and singing the song at the 5th grade talent show. Too bad there’s no video of that.
James E Powell
@eclare:
Steely Dan – the Aja album & the FM soundtrack – were a major part of the soundtrack of my freshman year at Ohio State. That music always brings back memories of one of the really really great years of my life.
Deacon Blues is probably my favorite, but ask me next week and it might be Josie. Sadly, I never learned to work the saxophone.
barbequebob
Summer of 1965, 12 years old in NYC, everywhere you went the soundscape was a driving, fuzz bass, “I can’t get NO, No Satisfaction”
kalakal
@eclare: Steely Dan is a band where if you ask me to name my favourite track I’ll name 10 and keep adding
eclare
@kalakal: Same! Peg, Aja, Deacon Blues, Time Out of Mind, My Old School…
Tony G
@Steeplejack: The Animals were a great band, but like a lot of sixties bands they didn’t last very long before breaking up. (The Rolling Stones, on the other hand, will probably still be playing “Jumping’ Jack Flash” a thousand years from now.)
JohnC
Moving across the country between 9th and 10th grades, finding a new buddy the first day in home room, being introduced to Dungeons and Dragons (just when the first hardcover books came out), going to his basement to play, listening to tunes. He showed me these when they were new. (Yes, Roundabout was a few years old by then, but it was new to me).
The B-52s (debut album – full of wonders, but here’s one): Planet Claire
Fragile (Yes): Roundabout
Flash and the Pan: Hey St. Peter
Steeplejack
@Tony G:
The Rolling Stones have been a Rolling Stones tribute band for 30 years.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
“Don’t Take Me Alive.”
“Agents of the law, luckless pedestrians . . .”
eclare
@Steeplejack: Hahaha…
kalakal
@eclare: Bodhisattva, Royal Scam, Dirty work, Rikki don’t lose that number, Kid Charlemagne…
The Up and Up
@kalakal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.G.Y._(What_a_Beautiful_World)
Half of Steely Dan. The song has permanent spot the Supermarket playlist. At least a few stores I’ve patronized. YMMV.
Steeplejack
@The Up and Up:
The Nightfly is a great album.
kalakal
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I love New Frontier
@The Up and Up: Great track, definitely a cut above our local supermarket fare
piratedan
@JohnC: I was in college when the B-52’s were still touring the mid-atlantic university circuit before they made it big on Saturday Night Live.
It was a great explosion in music as college radio actually had an impact from endless renditions of Barry Manilow, Bee Gee and disco by playing something different.
We got to see the B-52’w, REM, Bad Brains, 4 out of 5 Doctors, the dB’s, Pylon from the SE scene. The underground music scene was a real thing, with NYC, LA, Milwaukee, SE US all making contributions with bands playing their own thing to straight ahead rock and Power Pop. I remember it fondly.
Honus
@Steve in the ATL: ok, so where do you rate Carrie Ann?
James E Powell
@DrDaveChemist:
Murray Saul, the Get Down man.
Kid Leo was playing a pre-release recording of the single “Born to Run” that was officially unauthorized, but unofficially considered a good thing by Bruce.
H.E.Wolf
Same here. “…the first woman he’s ever met who isn’t his aunt!”
Groucho48
So many songs, so many memories. Guess the most interesting was when a couple of carloads of us headed down to DC from Buffalo, to protest at Nixon’s inauguration. We had a 4 panel mural we had pained. We left Buffalo around 11 PM. As we got down to the southeast Pennsylvania area, we noticed the roads were getting more and more crowded. Almost all people our age with lots of out of state license plates. Everyone was honking and waving. A DJ on pretty much the only non-religious station that we could get went into a bit of a spiel on people heading to DC and said he was dedicating the next song to us. Riders on the Storm came on. The memory of all the cars driving through the night with the song blasting out still sends shivers down my spine.
Honus
@James E Powell: back in the day in the eastern Ohio/western Pa/northern WV region Youngstown/Cleveland was considered the music capital of the world the Raspberries the best band, and Wally Bryson the most sought after guitarist. And that included Joe Walsh at the time. If you’ve never heard it give It’s Cold Outside by The Choir a listen. Danny Klawon with Wally on guitar. Eric Carmen wanted to be in the band, but didn’t make the cut.
piratedan
@Honus: can concur, It’s Cold Outside is an awesome tune, its one of those songs that should have been bigger than it was, but by then smaller labels were starting to be crowded out it seems. I believe that Jim Bonfanti and Dave Smalley were also in the Choir, you just replace the Klawon Bros with EC and you have the original Raspberries.
Ajabu
I always hit the nearly dead threads but here goes: I’m a definitely old musician and in my youth was captivated by R&B. Hearing “Crazy for You” by the Heartbeats with an opening chord on Vibes is definitely what made me become a Vibraphonist. Funny thing is that 20 years later I played an opening Vibe chord when I recorded “We Both Deserve Each Other’s Love” with LTD. In the interim, I had become a jazz musician at the perfect time. When I was in college, I was able to hear every major jazz musician working in clubs, and was mentored by some Giants! Good times, great memories!
Steeplejack
@Ajabu:
The Heartbeats, “Crazy for You.”
James E Powell
@Honus:
Cleveland is my home town; I grew up listening to all those bands. Boston Mills, Padua High School. Never made it to the Chesterland Hullabaloo, though I did hear about it.
Do you remember the Damnation of Adam Blessing? Still my favorite version of Morning Dew.
Honus
@piratedan: and they all still live in the area. Wally Bryson is a HS special ed teacher in Cleveland these days (probably retired by now). I think Jim Bonfanti is an electrical contractor. Hell, even Eric moved back to Cleveland a few years ago.
Honus
@James E Powell: Yes, and also B. E. Taylor, Stevie Acker and LAW, and Freeport, the best band in Youngstown. Wild Cherry was a little later and from closer by in Steubenville (actually Mingo Junction) and were a great straight forward rock band. They knocked out Play that Funky Music as joke one session and of course it became a huge hit and defined them.
prostratedragon
Not one of her very greatest, or my favorites, or anything, but Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me” helped me through an extremely bad weekend one late January when it came out.
James E Powell
@Honus:
There was a really good club in Sharon that I can’t remember the name of right now. It was usually worth the long drive home.
NotMax
@James E Powell
Found it amusing that the last exit heading west on I-80 in both Pennsylvania and in Ohio was for Sharon.
UncleEbeneezer
Sorry I’m so late to this thread. About twenty years ago I started to move on from being primarily a rock listener/player to start exploring jazz. This was the song that first clued me in to how cool jazz can be, and that it doesn’t have to be swing. I’ve discovered tons of great artists who have inspired my own playing, but probably none more than Brad Mehldau. He does lots of amazing Beatles, Radiohead, Nick Drake etc. covers but his original song When It Rains off his album “Largo” is still one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard and one of the best opening tracks for any album…in any genre…ever. His virtuoso playing still blows me away every time I listen.
UncleEbeneezer
More recently, I was poking around on YouTube and for some reason remembered how much I always loved Au Clare De Lune as a child. To me it is just the perfect sad song. So just for shits and giggles I wondered if any jazz artists have ever taken a go at it and found this incredible version by Kamasi Washington who quickly became one of my favorite artists. I’ve been obsessed with his work for the past 7 years.
lowtechcyclist
So many songs are attached to particular moments of my life, I doubt I could begin to name them all. But I’ll go with just one, the first song I ever fell in love with: Elusive Butterfly by Bob Lind.
You might wake up some morning / to the sound of something moving past your window in the wind…
It was January/February 1966, and I was laid up in bed for weeks with the flu. I was not quite 12, and my parents put a radio in my room, and it was the first time I listened to a lot of pop music. I remember a lot of transient songs from those weeks, but nearly six decades later, this is the one I’ll still find myself singing (badly, of course!) at random moments. Such a wonderfully evocative song.
NotMax
Heh. Street scene establishing shot in Germany on the TV screen. One shop’s sign, in fancy script typeface, reads Jerkstrand’s.
;)
Dirk Reinecke
The song that I would like to suggest is Johhny Clegg & Savuka “Spirit of the Great Heart” that was used in the movie Jock of the Bushveld.
https://youtu.be/qjVqGpfSKOA
Jock of the Bushveld is the great South Africa dog story, the equivalent of Seaman (from the Lewis and Clarke expidition).
In many ways the story is very ironic, in that Sir Percy Fitzpatrick was a very notable man in his time, but is today chiefly remembered for the story he told to his children about his dog.
One of the other things that he is know for is being the proposer of the two minutes of silence on Armistice day.
Jock of the Bushveld was one of the stories my parents read to me to help me sleep.
lowtechcyclist
@Dirk Reinecke:
I’m unfamiliar with both the story and the movie, but Johnny Clegg & Savuka…yeah. Their Shadow Man album in particular. Sorry Clegg’s no longer with us, and still pissed that I only found out about his farewell tour a month or two after he’d finished the US part of the tour. I’d have loved to hear them live.
Wanderer
Really fun thread. Love reading everyone’s stories. I listen to many musical genres. One of the most striking songs I have ever heard is Estade/Summer by Shirley Horn. I heard it for the first time on a cold winter’s day and was immediately warmer.
ljdramone
@AliceBlue: In 1979 I was in college and the Ramones played Irvine Auditorium at UPenn (the still-in-their-punk-phase Go-Gos opened.) I was sold.
Saw them every chance I got, maybe 35-40 times. Last time in 1995 during their “Adios Amigos” tour.
Best show? Circa 1983, visiting my college GF in NYC. We decided to be ironic tourists and go on the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan. At the end of the tour we heard loud music from a nearby pier. Only time I ever saw the Ramones play in daylight.
BamaLib
Summer 1982, between high school and college. Worked at an amusement park and had fallen in love – hard – with a girl for the first time. Seemed like every time I walked through the picnic area the loudspeakers were playing “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey.
I know it’s so cliched it nauseates some people, but there is no song that so powerfully evokes a time in my life. And it was a great time in my life, full of joy and possibility.
Steve in the ATL
@Honus: @Barbara: Carrie Ann is a great song, and not nearly as overplayed as Bus Stop. Bus Stop is a fine song, it’s just been overdone.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I do have sort of a British Invasion memory…it was some summer in the mid-’80s and I was with my friend Doug and his parents at Grand Haven beach for the day. We’re headed back to the car and we happened to be walking by a baseball field with bleachers around it and a sign announcing a free concert, the headliners of which were the Monkees. Now, the Monkees were not a British Invasion band, obviously but they were invented by American television to capitalize on the British Invasion wave. It wasn’t just them, though, as Herman’s Hermits (definitely British Invasion if one of the lesser lights) were on the bill too, along with Gary Puckett and the Union Gap band and The Grass Roots. So we decided to stop and stay for the concert because Doug’s parents listened to the “oldies” station nonstop, which meant they were fans and we knew all the songs by spending enough time in their proximity. The Monkees came out lip synching and then faked getting out of synch with the song as an inside joke on the rumor that they couldn’t really play their instruments before launching into actually playing their instruments.
Shana
@Omnes Omnibus: there are a bunch of early dBs songs that are great breakup songs
Steve in the ATL
@Shana: dB’s were criminally underrated, as I have posted her many times
@eclare: I don’t believe in having one favorite song–depends on the time, the mood, the circumstances, etc.–but if my RWNJ sister put one of her dozens of guns to my head and forced me to pick one, it would be “Just Like Heaven”
ETA: I assume this thread isn’t dead since J R in WV hasn’t posted yet!
Shana
@Omnes Omnibus: there are a bunch of early dBs songs that are great breakup songs
@DesertFriar: Marshall Crenshaw has a beautiful cover of Walk Away Renee
Mr. Bemused Senior
@UncleEbeneezer: oh yes, Brad Mehldau! His She’s Leaving Home is wonderful. Many others.
Subsole
Ahhhhhh….delicious thread necromancy…
Right after my parents split, and I mean like the first day of my life with only one parent in the house, I went out and got in the truck with dad, and he put on a CD and took me to school.
It was some band I had never heard of, singing songs about Second Hand News and Dreams and Going Your Own Way. I had never heard anything like it before.
I listened to that thing on repeat for, like, weeks. Got me through the first few weeks and introduced me to all sorts of fascinating music. Also turned into something that my Dad and I bonded over.
I started borrowing all of his CDs. Discovered Steely Dan that way, who are hands down one of my top 3 favorite bands.
Shana
@piratedan: The Vertebrats a great late 70s early 80s Champaign-Urbana band used to cover that song. Great song
lowtechcyclist
Since this is the Thread That Wouldn’t Die:
@Steve in the ATL:
Can’t say I’ve heard either one of them on the radio (or in stores or wherever) in >50 years, but I’ll admit I’ve rarely listened to ‘oldies’ stations. Both of them are good songs. In summer camp, there was always a radio playing over by the archery range, and I always remember hearing ‘Carrie Ann’ over that radio.
(Stopped listening to ‘classic rock’ stations about 15 years ago too, because there were too many songs that they’d played into the ground. Funny how songs that are strictly in one genre or the other now would be played on the same radio station back then.)
@eclare:
We need a separate thread for songs one loves or hates because one’s name is in them. I’m gonna guess ‘867-5309’ wins the latter category by a nose over ‘Come On Eileen’ and ‘Brandy.’
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Short people are just the same as you and I.
@FelonyGovt:
UCM Coffeehouse off Route 1 south of Alexandria, fall of 1970. Played by whoever had a guitar, and sung by whoever wanted to join in.
Was months before I heard the James Taylor recording (but I am quite fond of the Sweet Baby James album.)
@piratedan:
I didn’t hear “Birdhouse” until waaay after it came out, 2006 to be precise. I heard it sometime that spring on WRNR, Annapolis’ alternative station, thought ‘nice quirky song’ but forgot about it. Until I heard it again maybe six months later, and all of a sudden, not to put too fine a point on it, I couldn’t get enough of it. That was my introduction to TMBG.
@WaterGirl:
Ouch! Glad that’s never happened to me.
@kalakal:
I’ll agree that 2001: A Space Odyssey has totally captured Also Sprach Zarathustra. (Remember when 2001 was The Future?)
But my main memory of Blue Danube is waltzing the kiddo (who was less than 2 years old then) around the living room to its music in the first months after we first brought him home from Russia.
Steve in the ATL
@Subsole:
did he happen to tell you where the name “Steely Dan” came from?
WaterGirl
@JohnC:
I had totally forgotten about that.
WaterGirl
@The Up and Up: I haven’t thought about Steely Dan for years, maybe decades. I loved them.
WaterGirl
I never hear City of Blinding Light without tearing up – it was the soundtrack to my time in Iowa in 2007-2008 working for the Obama campaign, that song playing at every event.
That song is seared in my heart. All that passion, all that hope. Bittersweet.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist:
That was a big song for me, and I had forgotten all about it until I saw your comment.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: Maybe one of these days you will find it in your heart to forgive me for leading with that song for this post! :-)
WaterGirl
@Subsole: Your memory has me in tears. Great album, too.
WaterGirl
@Shana: What band?
edit: A new record for me! 7 comments at the end of the thread.
Personal best!
lowtechcyclist
You just thought it was the end of the thread.
Mark
Snoopy v the Red Baron.
I’m not too sophisticated.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: I would thank you for that, but then I would be the last comment again
@Mark: That was a fun song when we were young. No memory to go with it?