…Now, the first of December was covered with snow So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frostin’ With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go …
James Taylor’s album Sweet Baby James was the soundtrack of 1970-71 the year I moved away from home to Arlington, Texas. And that verse especially-- “the first of December” – belongs to a time when my soon-to-be husband (and later ex-) and I would get into the big yellow Ford pickup and drive into downtown Dallas to see what we could do with no money. (Gas was about $.20/gal.)
Lord, the combination of optimism and cluelessness that we possessed …
That was fifty years ago. My cluelessness is gone, and alas, my optimism has become acceptance, even resignation.
I can remember the Sweet Baby James feeling, though, when I hear that song.
I meant to include in the OP: I’m not just asking about pop “songs.” It could be a classical piece, hymn, TV commercial jingle, any musical memory hot button.
Waking up in my off-campus house on a Sunday morning to find my housemate in a pool of blood after attempting suicide in his bed. He survived and is thriving today, but the time spent cleaning up all the blood that morning with my housemates in near silence has left that song indelibly etched on my brain.
Haven’t been able to listen to any James Taylor for 35 years now as he was the theme music to a fatal attraction relationship I had with the most beautiful, intellectual and mentally unstable woman I have ever known.
Jefferson Airplanes White Rabbit always takes me back to my freshman dorm room. That and Pink Floyds the Wall album that was just released.
My High School had a orientation slide show for incoming freshmen. The show used four slide projectors and a taped soundtrack of music and narration about the school through the years. It took 5 people to run the show (there were manual animations done with pieces of cardboard in front of each projector). The soundtrack / narration was really professional, although the whole show was created by students. I was one of the people who ran the show for a few orientation sessions.
There were two songs in the track - Argent’s Hold Your Head Up and Clapton’s Layla that immediately bring me back to that time whenever I hear them.
When I was in grad school at UW Milwaukee, I would often go to the Big Boy out by teh airport for my evening meal. I would stay there until three or four in the morning, writing translations and drinking coffee. The whole time, an eight-track would be playing Circle in the Sand, Heaven Is a Place on Earth, Tell Me Lies, and Everywhere, on an endless loop. If there were other songs, I don’t remember them, but these four immediately take me back to my booth in 1987–88. (I never did find out if there were any other cassettes behind the counter.)
Can’t listen to Chopin’s 3rd Etude any more - back in the 70s when mom took up piano again as a divorce distraction, that was the main thing she worked on after work at night. Endlessly. While I’m tryng to cry myself to sleep, and sometimes I’d even get up to protest - a miserable kid whining at a miserable parent trying to find even a sliver of respite. Shame, nice piece. Then she’d work on some Scott Joplin*, which was at least more upbeat, but then she’d go back to the dreaded too-elegaic-for-its-own-good Chopin piece again…
(sort of a Joplin = “The Entertainer” = The Sting = Redford/Newman sort of logical progression going on, there, with her, sorta, pretty sure)
*“Maple Leaf Rag” immediately brings me back - a slightly brighter memory.
After graduating from high school, I made the three and a half hour drive north (alone) to college the following summer for freshman orientation. This included registering for classes and getting a tour of the campus, along with a night’s stay in one of the dorm rooms.
I was listening to Jefferson Public Radio’s First Concert program on their Classics and News service. Just before the radio started to cut out as I entered the mountains, a classical piece featuring a prominent horn lead came on. It eventually faded into static.
The song was stuck in my head the rest of the weekend on campus, my first trip alone away from my parents and anyone else I knew. When I got back home, I looked up the radio program’s playlist and checked it against the time of day to find out what song it was. It was the first movement from Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 2. I can still see in my mind the particular curve on I-5 over the mountains whenever I hear that song.
Dan Gibson’s Celtic Awakening album reminds me of the summer of 2000, spent with my girlfriend in South Carolina. She bought the album for me as a birthday present during my senior year in high school, and we played it a lot during romantic moments that summer when we met for the first time in real-life. It’s a sexual awakening soundtrack to me.
When I was a kid, my friends and I would go to the local pool when we had enough spare cash. The year the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction came out, it was played over and over on the jukebox at the pool. Every time I hear the opening chords, I’m standing on the diving board about to jump…
‘Hold on Loosely’ from the band ‘38 Special’ was, or seemed to make for great wallpaper/background music for my friends and I at the local taverns we went to socialize, even if it was southern rock and we were in the northeast.
The Talking Heads’ album Little Creatures was the soundtrack to a realtionship that was bad for both of us, although we sure did try and loved each other.
I don’t avoid it, but I don’t go looking for it, either.
…Now, the first of December was covered with snow
