Like most people, I attach songs to certain times in my life. Sometimes it’s a totally random relationship, just something that happened to be playing on the radio at the time while I was doing something else. Other times the song itself has specific meaning attached to it, either through lyrics or because of who first introduced me to it. These are the songs I listen to whenever I want to relive the emotions I attach to them, and will be the songs that I listen to long after what passes as contemporary music is old and stodgy.

The Offspring - “Come Out and Play” reminds me of freshman football. There were three groups of guys on the team: the suburban white kids, the black kids and the redneck kids. We all wanted to listen to different music while lifting in the tiny, cramped, superheated mockery of a weight room that we used at Oviedo High School. The radio constantly switched from rock to rap to country and back. This was The Offspring’s first radio track and it was played at least twice an hour for a few months it seemed. I learned the words to it while lifting weights as a high school freshman, and I’ve yet to forget them.

Green Day - “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” reminds me of high school. Like just about every other class that graduated in 1998, this was our senior song. I don’t miss high school at all, but there are days that I wish I could go back there, perhaps to change some things. But those days pass.

Shades Apart - “Valentine” conjures up the memory of sitting in the passenger seat of Jordan’s old white Prelude, waiting to make a left turn into Borders. The air conditioning didn’t work, or at least didn’t work well, and it was the middle of the summer after we graduated high school. I have no idea why it reminds me of this.

Seven Mary Three - “Each Little Mystery” reminds me of Lauren, the girl that caused quite a bit of drama in my life during my freshman year of college. In retrospect, I appreciate being taught the lessons I was taught then instead of later in life, when the stakes would be higher, but it was more than a little unpleasant at the time Dave Matthew’s Band was playing at the Ice Palace in Tampa just a few weeks after (or before, I don’t remember) her birthday, and I bought a pair of tickets.

During the drive down I-4, she organized all of my CDs by color (no small feat, considering the size of my collection even then). She pulled out their Orange Avenue album and put it in the beat up old Discman that served as my car CD player, skipping to “Each Little Mystery” and playing it three or four times. She told me it was her favorite song, though she was afraid that if her father ever found out he’d be furious because they say fuck near the end of the first verse.

The last time I saw her, sometime last year, we ate lunch at Wackadoos in the Union and she wanted a Fat-Ass burger but made me order it because she didn’t want to curse. She was really funny like that.

Placebo - “Without You I’m Nothing” reminds me of Molly, whom I was more than a little infatuated with during my first couple of years in college (save for the time I was infatuated with Lauren, above). She is a couple of years older than I am, and while we enjoyed each other’s company she didn’t like me like that. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t, and got blind-sided as usual.

Anyway, she liked Placebo a lot, so I endeavored to learn anything about them I could. I bought what was at the time their latest album. I listened to it religiously for a few months, learning the lyrics. I fucking hate it. Looking back, it was really pathetic.

The Barenaked Ladies - “When You Dream” reminds me of Baishan, a little town in northeastern China that I inhabited for about two months in 2001. I bought Stunt, like everyone else, for “One Week,” and once I got tired of that one song I put away the CD and never really listened to it again.

For some reason I started listening to it again in China. “When You Dream” is the last track on the album, and would normally be the last song I heard before sleeping (because the CD player I had didn’t have an auto-cycle function). It makes me think about long nights alone, so bored and lonely I could have torn my eyes out with a stick. It also reminds me of some great parties and good friends and living only a few hundred meters away from a liquor store. Good times, good times.

Blümchen - “Rosa Wolke” reminds me of tearing ass down I-4, heading towards Daytona in the middle of the night, with the windows down and the radio blaring. I was headed to the beach, to watch the waves without the distraction of a million tourists and asshole high school kids. I stopped somewhere around Deland, decided it was stupid and turned around.

Blümchen also reminds me of why I started learning German in the first place, and why I should continue sometime in the near future.

…

There are more, of course. Many more, some that I’ll only think about when the song happens to appear on my play list. I’m just glad that I have these hooks to hang memories on, because otherwise I fear I would lose them, especially the ones that are mundane.

Posted by John on Monday, May 12th, 2003 at 10:50 pm.