This song reminds me of when I visited my (now ex) girlfriend in California for two weeks. Back then things were great, the visit went wonderful, and life only looked up.
What’s the story behind yours? Where’s it remind you of?
A song that reminds me of “a place”.
Why no better place than here.
You know I love you Idle.
So here I go:
Songs :
and:
I know we dick around with each other. But we still love each other and isn’t that what dicks are for?
I love you my brother!
Don’t abandon me!
So I guess the “story” of me and this place is, is, I love this place, and I love you peeps.
May you love your puppies and kittens forever.
I love you.
Don’t forget to water your couch.
When I was in my late-20’s, I visited Kennywood Park with my ex and her boy. We had all-day passes and enough money to buy whatever junk food that amusement parks are known for - many funnel cake, cheese fries and corn dogs met their demise that day. We played games, rode the coasters and the Log-Jammer to get nice and soaked and cooled off. Beautiful sunny day.
We rounded a corner and found a section I didn’t know about. I hadn’t been to Kennywood in about 10 years, and this new area was called, “Lost Kennywood”. It featured older-style (but wonderfully, lovingly cared-for) rides in a retro atmosphere. The heat was geting to me a bit, so I let the ex and her boy run off to ride the Pittsburg (sic) Plunge, while I waited by the rails, watching them. I stood in the splash zone, drinking a large, overpriced lemonade to hydrate myself on this hot summer day, taking this moment of quiet inaction to contemplate and appreciate the day.
I was enjoying the outing a great deal, and as I stood there, drinking in the cold, sweet lemonade and the atmosphere, Simon and Garfunkel’s, “America” came over the loudspeakers. I wasn’t familiar with the tune at the time, and I immediately loved it. And now this beautiful song always reminds me of a near-perfect day.
I’ve never been to Scotland, but I grew up in a place that was settled by the Scots because its landscape reminded them of home, so had a Scottish element to a lot of its social activities.
My Dad used to occasionally gamble on horse races, and we had a track local to us that had a big Races event every New Year’s Day, and amongst the sideshows there would always be a Pipe Band playing classic bagpipe tunes. And now they always remind me of those days out with the family.
I still love listening to the drumming.
Master and Slave by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies is forever tied to the one time I visited the United States all those years ago, together with my dad—not just because that’s where I bought the album, but also because of some of the lyrics, which seemed oddly appropriate to what seemed to my sensibilities a deeply contradictory country—full of the most beautiful landscapes, but with people just locked behind their car’s steering wheels all the time, and so on.
But I can still see the stars
through these red, white, and blue prison bars!
The Beatles’ Back in the USSR. Brighton, England. August 1976.
ABBA’s Fernando. Brechin, Scotland. April 1976.
ABBA’s Dancing Queen. Southwest England. September 1976.
It was a good year for me! :o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4F-sDqF2Q
I feel like I’m cheating on this one, because it does remind me of… West Virginia. My mother grew up there, most of our family vacations were spent there. Even though I didn’t grow up there, whenever I’m in the mountains, I feel like I have ‘come home’.
Lots of good memories.
And again I say “all of them?” 
Is everyone else having as hard a time as I singling one out?
I’m going to go with one that’s been with me a long time - Little River Band’s Reminiscing. It has always had an extremely strong association with one of my most beloved childhood places - Magic Mountain (now Six Flags) in Valencia, CA. I don’t really know why (and it has nothing to do with the “walking through the park” line).It was a hit song during my childhood so maybe it was playing over the loudspeaker one time when I was there, or maybe I heard it on the car radio on the way up there. I would have heard many songs both there and on the car radio so I’m not sure what made that one stick but it’s been that way for over 40 years(gawd I’m old).
“I Want to Go Back to Cartagena” Jimmy Buffett reminds me of my honeymoon. My husband and I went to down to Key West and had dinner in Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, and they had Jimmy Buffett music videos playing on a screen. Most of the songs kind of blended together, but I really liked this one and downloaded it later.
Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time reminds me of Lima, Peru It was literally played on the radio every 15 minutes the entire time I was there.
“My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder
The Elks Club pool in my home town. It was a mid-college summer and I was lifeguarding. The club played music at the pool, but only had one mix tape on endless loop. For some reason, it was this song that stuck with me and to this day epitomizes those long, sunny, mostly lazy, summer days around the pool, punctuated with splashing and the laughter of children.
“Every Summer Night” by the Pat Metheny Group
It reminds me of all the Friday nights in the summers of 2002 and 2003 my family and I would go and hang out at Triangle Town Center in Raleigh, NC. I swear the tune was played over the speaker system every single time we were there.
I can’t help but think of my college days in the Chicago area when I hear this.
Lake Shore Drive
It was on the radio all the time in the 80s. I wonder if it is still played now?
In the spring of 1964, I left home for NYC, and arrived with no job, no references, no friends and only $17 in my pocket. The first evening, I just wandered around midtown, and wound up at Rockefeller Center. The lights and the fountains and the architecture were enchanting, and the tinny monaural loudspeakers were playing Movement 3 of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. Though I’ve heard that music hundreds of times since, I often think of that first time in Rockefeller Center, with the excitement, the warm breeze, and the music competing with the tinkling of the fountains.
I walked into an empty bar in Reykjavik around 6pm, and a woman working there was sweeping up a broken mirror. I asked what happened, and she said a drunk guy was upset they wouldn’t serve him more beer. So, he through a chair and broke a mirror on his way out. This was the song playing in the background.
The first time I heard this I was staying in a castle in the Loire Valley for a month. It always reminds me of that very good time.
I love this song! It makes me so happy to see you mention it!
The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel: Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer (Audio) - YouTube
The place: driving Highway 101 from Santa Barbara (college) to San Francisco (home).
Their old tunes like that (and like The Sound of Silence, the first song, here: - YouTube) bring me back to when my sister, 1 year younger, and I both attended UCSB. On the long 6-hr drives home, usually on a Friday night, we’d sing along to some tapes. She is very musical, and while I enjoy singing I can just carry a tune. She help me nail the Paul Simon parts and we’d sing their older works in harmony.
Good times, even though some of their older songs can be corny (e.g., from their Wednesday Morning, 3A.M. album).
If an ice rink counts as a “certain place”:
In 75 when I was 10, learning to skate during general skating time - music always blaring - “Black Dog” I’ll always associate with the still-palpable euphoria of learning the pivot when maintaining your pace as you switch from forwards to backwards skating.
If not:
A buncha places, all throughout B.C., during the first of four family summer car vacations (again - '75, remaining three summers down the 3 western states). Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” was on the radio then, and this Beatles family definitely took note of and enjoyed it the several times we heard it. Good sunny summer shit.
aside: can’t figure out why we heard that tune so much, considering it was released about four years previously. It was almost like it was still on playlists? Naw, that couldn’t be…oh well.