I’m going through and rating the songs on my iPhone and I got to remembering interesting times when a song came on that fit the moment well. One of my favorites:
My parents offered to let me borrow their motor home for a trip north with friends. I was about 24 or so at the time. Anyway, after my Dad got done showing me around the thing, I got into the seat, buckled in and put a CD in the radio. Just as my Dad got out and was about to close the door, Highway to Hell by AC/DC came on loudly.
I knew that was the album I wanted, and knew that song was first, but I had intended to skip forward to the track Touch Too Much (loved that song back then).
It was funny as my Dad gave me a funny look and said to have fun for the weekend.
The other time was after seeing the first Fast and the Furious in the theater with a friend. In case you haven’t seen it, it had lots of loud music and fast cars (duh!). Anyway, I was driving a Subaru Impreza at the time that I had put a lot of work into (and that would have fit well in the movie). We both get in the car and I start the engine and on comes Shiny Happy People by R.E.M.
Compared to the music we had been hearing throughout the movie, this song was the total opposite as far as mood was concerned. We both just started laughing our asses off.
I remember one day when my brother and I were about ten and eleven years old, respectively, and we thought J. Geils’ Centerfold was the best song ever. We were singing it over and over until Mom just couldn’t take it anymore. She switched on the radio and cranked it up…of course, it was Centerfold. But she was cool enough to let us listen to it anyway.
About 10 years ago I was obsessed with Foghat’s “Slow Ride” for some reason. I was JUST about to call the classic rock station to request it, when it came on the radio.
I was at a really low point in my life and was strongly considering suicide. I was driving around and was deep enough in a depression that I might well have driven into a wall or something. Jumper by Third Eye Blind came on the radio and the lyrics really resonated with me, so I stopped, had a good cry and chose to get through the problems. It may sound melodramatic, but I believe that song at that moment kept me from making a rash and permanent choice.
Two years ago I was laid off rather abruptly from my job of 22 years. Came in one morning, a big meeting was suddenly called and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I was out of a job. My whole unit was given just a couple of hours to pack up our personal belongings and hit the road.
As I was pulling out of the parking lot of the business that I had been coming to every work day for so many years, I reached over and turned on the radio.
What was playing? Gloria Gaynor - “I Will Survive”.
I was planning to move back to NYC, where I grew up but had been gone 10+ years. I was driving in to look for an apartment. As I crossed the midpoint of the span of the Verazanno Bridge, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” by Bon Jovi came on the radio.
Seriously, it was obviously the crane shot in my movie.
It’s about 3:30pm, hot summer day. My new love and I had been out to the beach in Rhode Island for the day and were heading back to his home to wash off the sand and…well…you know…hope his damn kids were far, far afield
We stopped for dinner at this bizarre little roadside place, an A-Frame with a guy’s name in rural North Eastern CT. They advertise some kind of special pie experience = they had an entire list of pies available, at least 29, all of which have a bulb that is illuminated if the pie in question is available. We’re the only ones there. The pie chart blinks merrily, the only sound in the place is dishwashers talking in the back…
A series of rapid ticks, violins, escalating slowly, bringing everyone to the height of anticipation….slowly…rising….ohhh yeahh tic tic tic tic tic…baby baby baby….
OOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh oh baby…. right on……….
The cascading love moan of Barry White fills the weird little diner place. I realize that this moment is the very moment that Tarantino has wet dreams about, and* it’s my life*. I swear you got it together baby….
Ah, miss? Can we get this pie to go?
A totally perfect life soundtrack moment if there ever was one.
When I was 17 I legally emancipated. Not an easy choice, but something I had to do. As I left the courthouse and climbed into the car, George Michael’s Freedom '90 came on the radio.
All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t belong to me yea yea
It’s been my theme song ever since.
About three years ago my husband and I moved from Michigan to New Jersey. We piled everything in the back of a moving truck and hit the road, the future a complete mystery. Right when we got past the Pennsylvania border, our moving truck broke down on the freeway. As we waited for the mechanic:
*
…We gotta hold on to what we got
It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not
We’ve got each other, and that’s enough for now.
On the way to take the Bar exam, “Vindicated” by Jimmy Eat World was the first song that came on, and just like that, I knew I’d pass, and all my fear was gone.
Crossing the bridge to leave Huntington, WV (the town in which I’d spent the first 11 years of my life) for the last time after my Grandfather’s funeral, “Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town” was playing. “I just want to scream, ‘Hello! My God, it’s been so long, never dreamed you’d return.’ But now here you are, and here I am. Hearts and thoughts, they fade away.”
A few years ago during a beautiful warm spring day I was alone in my car, waiting at a red light near a community college in Southern California. A gorgeous Latina, early twenties, long flowing dark brown hair steps into the crosswalk and walks right to left past the front of my car. Her cute summer dress was flowing with her body in the breeze, complimenting her amazing figure. This woman was truly stunning. She saw me smiling, smiled back and sauntered across the street.
Right as she stepped into the street, The Beastie Boys’ Shake Your Rump started playing on my stereo. She wasn’t aware the movement of her hips was timed perfectly to the beat. The whole scene from my perspective was sublime.
Long road trip, long day, very tired and foggy brained. I messed up a confusing exit and wound up headed the wrong way, but didn’t realize it until several miles down the road when Gordon Lightfoot’s Pride of Man sounded the warning:
Turn around, go back down, back the way you came.
Story #2
For reasons lost in the sands of time, a friend and I went to a very upscale mall somewhere around Cupertino CA. It was full of absolutely perfect people. They were perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed, perfectly behaved. There wasn’t a hair out of place nor a whisper of self-doubt. It was surreal.
When we returned to our car, we were immediately treated to Shiny Happy People. We laughed so hard that latte macchiato came out our noses.
it is a cheat I know but if you ride “rip ride rocket” at Universal Studios Orlando, you get to choose the music that accompanies you.
If you choose “sabotage” by the Beastie Boys the initial bass intro leads into to that famous “whhhhhaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhh!” halfway down the first hill.
About a year ago I was driving over the James Taylor bridge in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (where he grew up), listening to “Carolina on My Mind” on the radio.
A not-so-long time ago (2001) in a galaxy not-so-very far away, I got involved in a long distance relationship with a woman in South Africa (yeah, I know; note lectures here are off-topic). Well long story short our feelings didn’t survive the first face-to-face, and after a week we went our separate ways. I drove around the country, eventually reaching St. Lucia Bay on the southeast coast. As I was driving in, the song “Poem for Byzantium” was playing on my car CD player (the album had a bunch of African animals on it, and was an apropos soundtrack for my trip in general).
I hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics up to that point, but in a flash I realized that it was describing my current situation to a T:
*
Unbidden shadows of you formed yesterday
I ran away to a room here on the bay
Interrupted life again, another new beginning
Where the silence echoes you’re no longer with me*
(Umm, yeah…)
Through the darkness i would walk in the streets
Confessions never seemed to provide me with a release
Held me down and tried to cure me tried to give me reason
But nothing could separate this burdened mind from me
Yep, took a twilight walk on the streets of the picturesque little town…
Here and now, i feel that i’m embracing freedom
Even though i may be alone, but that’s ok
And looking out to a different sky will disengage me
Absence is never the answer, i know, but it serves as my shade
[I was really getting off on seeing all the southern stars and such, like the Eta Carinae nebula]
I do not seek and do not intend to find
A calmer ocean or a sun that will never be mine
Not only did I go swimming in the Indian Ocean for the first time later that day, that weekend they had a partial eclipse which I got to see during a whale tour. Note how this also alludes to the almost unconscious process involved here.
This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me either.
Swear this is true, driving home from a funeral after the blackest, rainiest, darkest day ever - the sun suddenly came out, almost blinding me. Turned on the radio, and “Spirit In The Sky” by Norman Greenbaum came on. I love that song and not only felt uplifted, but it was like a Sign From Above. (Now, if I’d heard “Hells Bells” or “Only The Good Die Young”, well, that would have been a totally different Sign :p.)
