Dienstag (Tuesday).
Nothing out of the ordinary today.

Stray Toaster of the Day: It’s been noted that the most memory-related sense is the sense of smell. I won’t argue that point, but that’s not where I was going with this. Instead, I am going to talk about the sense of hearing… and more specifically music and how it the memories that it can evoke. If you came here for the “Smell and Memory” lecture, that has been moved to Lecture Room #4 (down the hall, turn left, second door on the right). Now, carrying on…

  • I was listening to the radio a couple of days ago when “Lightning Crashes” came on. They even played the first verse!¹ This is one of two songs that reminds me of my friend Dave, in North Carolina; the other is “Blister in the Sun,” by the Violent Femmes. Dave’s a drummer/percussionist. From time to time, we would sit around and play these songs – Dave on drums or whatever tabletop was available, me on guitar or bass. One of us would start and the other would join in.
  • Whenever I hear Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative,” I think of my freshman year at Purdue. Just starting college, 16 years old, FAR from home… it became my theme song. That’s both a little scary and funny, in retrospect.
  • I have mentioned how Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu (Opus 66)” reminds me of hearing my mother playing it on our piano at home.
  • “Dude Looks Like a Lady” also reminds me of my freshman year at Purdue. A guy in our residence hall dressed up in drag for Hallowe’en. His mistake: He walked past our radio station… and, through the haze of years past, I think that he may have actually come into the station. From that point forward, whenever we played that song, it was dedicated to him. Fortunately (for us), he took it in good humor.
  • When I hear “The Battle of Who Could Care Less,” the CD version, I remember listening to Peter’s (ex-roommate/co-worker) copy at work. The line “…why don’t we pitch it to the Franklin fucking Mint…” came up. To that point, I had only heard the radio version. This was more than a little unexpected. I stopped keying, my jaw dropped and I sat there, staring at Peter. His response: “I thought you’d get a kick out of that.”
  • Anything by Bill Withers, Ray Charles or The Coasters reminds me of riding in the car with my dad, listening to the oldies station.
  • EMF’s “Unbelievable” and Animotion’s “Obsession” bring back memories of a band that friends of mine were in. It would have been nice if they could have remained cohesive enough to get more of a following than just family and friends.
  • “Jam On It,” by Newcleus… One year at summer camp, we were doing workshops in electronic music. Yes, I went to a computer camp… but that was also where I learned how to do trapeze work. Go figure. For our end-of-workshop project, we… um…. wrote a song whose bass line was suspiciously (translation: COMPLETELY) similar to “Jam on It.”

I think that I’ll leave it with those, otherwise this could turn into Rob’s Music-a-Go-Go… and that could be scary. Very scary, indeed. If anyone would like to comment and add some of their own music/memory combinations, please do.

Peace.

¹ Click here to see my why I am so shocked/amazed/pleased by this.