What song(s) that you hear and immediately are flooded with memories or feelings…
Last edited Sun Dec 2, 2012, 03:07 AM - Edit history (1)
Some special song that takes you back to an important part of your life.
Pat Methane’s Last Train Home is mine.
Now I have been listening and playing music since I turned on my tiny sounding, static full little AM radio and heard The Beatles singing I Want to Hold Your Hand. I was around 5 years old and nothing ever reached out and grabbed me like that.
Until I first heard this song.
Laurie and I had just come home from seeing my mother in FLA. She was dying of cancer. I left to come back to Cleveland and I knew in my heart that I would not be seeing her again. But my brain said otherwise.
About two weeks after we landed in Cleveland, my stepfather called my sister to say that mom had taken a turn for the worst and she had been transferred out of the cancer ward and into the area where Terminal patients live out their last few days. This was back in 1990 and the word Hospice was really used.
My step father asked if I wanted to talk to my mother and I said no, I will speak with her when I get there, trying hard to wish my mother alive.
Laurie and I drove down from Cleveland to Ft Myers and made in 23 hours. The eight ball I bought along helped a lot, a slip and the last time I tangoed with the coke.
As we pulled into Punta Gorda that night, this song came on the radio, first time I heard it. I had to pull over. I was sobbing so hard and long that Laurie was really worried about me.
I knew I had given up the last chance to tell my mother I loved her because of some macho bullshit that I was still carrying around with me and I was full of regret..
The song touched something primal in me, setting off a whole bunch of emotions that I had suppressed for the last ten years or so. I had thrown off all my addictions and bad crap and was, in that moment, at the best place in my life up until then. I was strong, sure of myself and confident about our future.
Thinking back, the last time I saw my Mom she must have seen how life had fallen together for me. Out of the three of us, I was the one who was on shaky ground due to my troubles with booze, drugs and stuffing myself with unhealthy food.
When she drove with us to the airport just two weeks before I got that call, she just smiled and waved at me, all bundled up because the drugs she was taking made her cold even in the Florida summer.
Sorry I am going on about this but that thread about guitar solos brought back just how powerful a song can be...
BTW, Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow reminds me of the feelings I had when Bill Clinton was elected. That was their theme song.
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I felt like it was written for me
I was living in England - my dad, a Master Sergeant in the Air Force, had a breakdown and was taken away (he would be gone a year). My mum fell apart (an only child from a poor family, she had never driven a car or written a check, and now would be taking five kids back to who knows where in America). I remember telling a Major who came over that he would have to deal with "us". "Who?" he asked, confused. I said, me and my brother Glenn. We were 14 and 15 years old. Dad committed suicide in 1985 and Glenn died of alcoholism eight years ago.
Whenever I hear that song I remember it so vividly.
in California" always gets me, b/c I came out here to be a musician and it's raining cats and dogs right now 
ALBERT HAMMOND
"It Never Rains In Southern California"
Got on board a westbound 747
Didn't think before deciding what to do
Ooh, that talk of opportunities
TV breaks and movies
Rang true
Sure rang true
Seems it never rains in southern California
Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California
But girl don't they warn ya
It pours, man it pours
Out of work, I'm out of my head
Out of self respect, I'm out of bread
I'm underloved, I'm underfed, I wanna go home
It never rains in California
But girl don't they warn ya
It pours, man it pours
[Instrumental Interlude]
Will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it
Had offers but didn't know which one to take
Please don't tell 'em how you found me
Don't tell 'em how you found me
Gimme a break, give me a break
Seems it never rains in southern California
Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California
But girl don't they warn ya
It pours, man it pours
School was cancelled for several days because of the snow. We were tuned to the cable weather channel (which basically showed weather gauges with background music provided by a local FM station, which often played Sweet Caroline) for weather updates. Anyway, during that time, I went with my mother on foot to a grocery store about a mile from my house. On our way back, as we struggled to carry the groceries (which were in paper sacks), an elderly lady saw us and offered to lend us her cart to carry the groceries back to our house. We gladly accepted her offer. Later, when I took the cart back to the lady, we chatted for a long time about this and that. I think she was happy to talk to someone, as she lived alone. It wasn't too long after that that I saw her name in the Obituaries section of the local newspaper.
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
And she'd be proud of you. 
For me, '60s and early '70s Classic Rock are evocative of "my" era generally, but some naturally have specific associations. 'Gloria' by Them and Wilson Pickett's 'In the Midnight Hour' bring back carefree high school times driving aound the San Fernando Valley and cruising Van Nuys Blvd. with my best friend, Jerry.
'Sugar Shack' by Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs brings back every JHS and HS dance I ever went to, because it was always played at LEAST two or three times.
'Sugar Shack' also evokes memories of heading to Hollywood and hanging out at the 'counterculture' coffeehouses there. I had to laugh at this observation about Hollywood's coffeehouses by an anthropology professor:
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/coffeehouse1/comparison.html
The Fifth Estate was probably the most well-known coffeehouse, but a less well-known favorite of mine was a place across the street from Hollywood HS called The Epicurean. It was the ground floor of a converted 2-story house, and the top floor was a piano teacher's studio.
The Epicurean was run by Smitty, an African American former IRS agent who said he got tired of working for the Man, chasing people down over tax bills. One of the hangout's main attractions was Leah, who served the coffees and cappuccinos and probably was aware that all of us were in love with her. When I think of 'Sugar Shack,' I sill think of Leah...
My list of songs evoking the Vietnam War is way too long to post, but a top favorite when I was in-country was 'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place' by Eric Burdon and the Animals.
I ended up back in an Army hospital in San Francisco, and a bunch of us patients went to see a new movie, M*A*S*H, when it came out. Its most memorable song was 'Suicide is Painless,' written by Johnny Mandel with lyrics by Mike Altman, the director's 14-year-old son. We came out of the movie totally jazzed and loving the irreverence of the gang at the 4077th.
During all my time in VN and in the hospital, most of my pay accumulated in a Soldiers Deposit account. I'd nearly died and I didn't expect to live a long time after that, so I bought a new car--a 1970 Jaguar E-Type roadster, red with a black leather convertible top--for $6,100 cash. And, as I tooled around in the Jag, the song that always seemed to be playing on the radio was CCR's 'Up Around the Bend.' I loved it!
When I put a Quad 8-Track player in the Jag, one song I loved playing was Quincy Jones' 'Soul Saga (Song of the Buffalo Soldier'), both because it seemed perfectly engineered for Quad, with the sound traveling around the 4 speakers, and because it reminded me of the modern day "Buffalo Soldiers" who served with me in Vietnam.
After all these years, I'm surprised that I'm still here. But instead of ending with something like 'Still Crazy After all These Years,' I'll go with the song that I had them play in the church at the end of my wedding...'Joy to the World' by three Dog Night...
(And it's always a pleasure to "bump into" you here. LL. I still remember when we first "met" on that thread... The rest of this post is the kind of stuff that I think you are intimately familiar with. )
All kinds of things can trigger our memories and emotions--even, as the OP notes, things that may have been psychologically suppressed for a long time.
Without being consciously aware of what I was doing, after I lost my Mom I began making peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches again--even cutting them just the way Mom did when I was a little boy and she was making my bag lunches for school. (Subsequently re-creating Mom's recipe for Hamburger Soup was more of a conscious effort, both as a comfort to me and a remembrance of, and tribute to, her.)
I lost my Dad way back in HS, but it was only many years later, when I caught a whiff of some stranger's Old Spice Aftershave, that I suddenly experienced flashbacks of my Dad. He was an Old Spice guy.
But the most profound experience of this kind that I had came some years after Vietnam. (I know you've heard this before, but I'll re-tell it here.)
When my wife was a nurse at UCLA hospital, we went to a Saturday afternoon party for medical staff at somebody's place in Westwood. I was sitting on the couch when suddenly, from behind me, I heard the sound of a Laugh Box. Tears started pouring down my face, which scared the hell out of me because I had no idea why that was happening.
It was only when I slipped into the bathroom to wash my face that it started coming back to me. Joe Rufty and the fucking Laugh Box.
The day Joe Rufty got hit by machine gun fire and was down with a sucking chest wound nearby, and ground fire was too intense for the Medevac chopper to get in.
I had 36 men in my Infantry platoon, and they volunteered--unanimously--to rappel into the firefight in what certainly would have been a suicidal attempt to take the pressure off so Joe could be extracted. HQ turned us down, and we couldn't have saved Joe anyway.
About a month earlier I'd spent Christmas Day, 1969, on a hilltop out in the jungle with Joe and his platoon. When a chopper delivered supplies and mail, Joe got a package from home with a bottle of whiskey, home-made chocolate chip cookies---and a Laugh Box.
Joe shared the cookies, and the whiskey--making sure everybody got a taste, but only a taste--in case we got some action. As we played cards in a poncho hooch out in the jungle on what Joe's men would come to remember as 'Christmas Hill', every so often someone would hit the button on the laugh box, and we'd all crack up.
Christmas was otherwise uneventful, though we had numerous engagements in the following weeks. During that time, Joe and I had to coordinate by radio, and he would often activate the laugh box over the radio, giving all of us a laugh and a brief respite from the war.
The laugh box, the selflessness of those good, good men I was privileged to serve with, and being so close by yet unable to help Joe (when I knew he would have been there for me if I was down), combined to make Joe's loss more impactful for me than the day I was wounded nine days after Joe died.
It only added to that impact when I found Joe's family 20 years later--and learned he'd been named after an uncle who was KIA at Anzio in WWII.
R.I.P. Mom and Dad, and Joe Hearne Rufty, Panel 14W, line 80. 
by Led Zeppelin -- for reasons that if I elaborated would get me kicked off this board. Robin Trower's entire "Bridge of Sighs" album for the same reason except, it's longer. 
Every time I hear either one of them I think, "Oh yeah . . . "
An old girlfriend introduced me to this song. I thought I was up on S&G, but somehow I'd missed this gem. The relationship is long gone, but the song remains one of my favorites! 
You can't bullshit a Valley Boy.
It was a magic, mysterious night, the mystery night of the newly found exhilaration of freedom that is only felt by teenagers, and a bunch of us were hanging out at a small storage building that had been converted for (usually illegal) adventures common in 1967.
I was laying outside the building, in the grass, staring up at the moon and stars, and then heard Grace Slick "When the truth is found, to be lies" exploding out of the open front door of the building. That was the moment I knew for sure what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and then immediately set about doing it.
Crosby, Stills and Nash: Southern Cross. The lyrics, the rhythm, all of it speaks to me...
Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge over Troubled Water. This song held me up when I was troubled over anything...
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Yours is a great story, Chris. I know without question how proud your mom would be of you now...
and "Daybreak' by him...
"So let it shine, shine, shine..all around the world!" 
This song used to play on the jukebox in the pub I used to hang out in with my friends, back in Germany. I saw the guy who would become my husband there for the first time and decided he was the one. It took me a while to convince him, but 28 years later he's still the one
My cousin gave me an old turntable and a bunch of random records and this was the only one I liked. It takes me back to being 12-14. My family lived just across from the Pacific Coast Highway from the beach. I loved the school I went to, I had discovered girls and begun meeting people who have become life-long friends. High school was less fun, we moved back inland and my parents started (needlessly) kicking my ass through school. My high school was a wasteland of low-ambition racist white trash bullies and naive hippie administrators who went about tackling the problem in the least effective ways imaginable.
