Music that makes you remember
I think everyone has at least one song that really conjures some sort of memory inside of him or her. I’ve believed for a long time that the best songs – or the best use of songs – stay with you forever and continue to produce this imagery.
The wonders of randomness tonight played three songs on my iPod that reminded me of unique times of my life. I’ve been wanting to write something about songs that produce vivid imagery in my mind, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
The first category of these kinds of songs is film music. Film music has a special role – it’s often secondary to the movie itself. A good song or score, though, stands on its own but may force you to replay the scene of the movie in your head while you listen. There’s no better example of this to me than “Lexington Hotel, Room 1432″ by Thomas Newman, featured on the Road to Perdition soundtrack. Newman’s composition follows Tom Hanks’s character as he, well, goes to see a guy about a thing. Also in this category is “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” by Annie Lennox (from Medusa, which itself has many very good tracks). This song provides the background to, well, Kevin Spacey seeing Mena Suvari about a thing in American Beauty.
Even more powerful than film music are the songs that remind you of certain places, events, or periods. My list is lengthy for this category. “Another Night” by Real McCoy (from Another Night) always reminds me of the bus ride home in middle school; bus 7 was the first place I ever really heard pop music. I remember the driver, the kids, and everything when I hear that song. Kosheen’s “Hide U” (off Resist) always reminds me of Becky and the wonderful, long X-Power days back at ASAP Media Services in college (there was a good chance it would be playing if you walked into the main development room).
And then there are the concerts. I vividly remember pulling into a parking lot outside of the FleetBoston Pavilion with Amber and hearing Ben Folds playing “The Boy with the Arab Strap” on the piano and hearing Guster sing “All the Way Up to Heaven” (off Lost and Gone Forever, easily one of the best albums ever). It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, and we both listened intently as we heard the voices of Ryan Miller and Adam Gardner singing to the music.
Bumstock. Headstart’s “Can’t Wait” (from Headstart!) brings me back to the preparation process in 2004: creating the site, doing the meetings, doing photography. No song brings back a memory more than Eve 6’s “Leech” (from Eve 6). With my camera around my neck and weary from a long day’s work, I remember looking at Erin, seeing the widest smile I’d ever seen her wear, and then looking back up at the stage and screaming “sucking on my brain, you’re the teacher, I’m the student” with a few thousand of our closest friends.
Finally, there’s the group of songs that reminds me of my friends. These mean the most to me. There’s Nickel Creek’s “The Lighthouse’s Tale” (from Nickel Creek), one of the saddest but most beautiful songs in the world; Tom Lehrer’s “Wehrner Von Braun” (That Was the Year That Was) and his “once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department”; Guster’s “Come Downstairs & Say Hello” (Keep It Together), which makes me smile and think of having three or four cats tiptoeing around me; and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits), one of my favorite Dylan songs and the first song my Dad taught me on the keyboard.
So I have a wide range of musical tastes. Yeah. Who says that’s a bad thing?