Livin' in a Powderkeg...

Do you have those songs? Those songs that, when you hear them, they take you back to a specific place? A specific time in your life? Where you can see a scene spread out before you, like you are really there, right then, living it all over again?



"Free Fallin'" When I was a senior in high school, Tom Petty came out with this one. I can see the video, I can hear the words. When I listen to the song, I immediately think of Beth Walsh and my physics class. I can't remember the name of my teacher but I do remember that Beth was the only person in that class I was really friends with. That's what happens when you are in advanced classes your entire school career and then, for your senior year? You realize that you don't have to kill yourself anymore, that you already got into your safety school and that the likelihood of getting off the waitlist at the big school probably isn't going to happen. So no AP Physics for me! We studied free fall in class. This song was in heavy rotation at WMMS and now, every time I hear it, I think of being in a sweaty classroom, surrounded by the smell of chalk and broken eggs, all while demonstrating the art of free fall.



"Smokin' in the Boys Room" 8th Grade. Algebra. Mr...something with a Z. Hated him. Hated Algebra. I was in there with a bunch of 9th graders who seemed sooooo much older than me. One girl had peroxided hair and bright blue eyeshadow. She looked like the blonde sister on "Too Close for Comfort." She'd go up to the teacher and ask for a hall pass to the bathroom every day. And every time, the guys would start singing "Smokin' in the Boys Room." Because that's what she was going to go do. I never said they were creative.



"Ohio" When I was in college, we had a bar. And we went to the bar every Friday eveninig. I would get there first, because I worked across the street. We would sit in the same booth every time and always had the same waitress. She loved us, mainly because we didn't realize that those tips we'd put on our charge cards were going to haunt us for the next 10 years. There was a great jukebox, filled with all kinds of stuff and we each had our favorites. I had a playlist: "Come to My Window," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Mr. Jones," and "Ohio." Four for a dollar. I'd play "Ohio" when Bo and Markus were there and we'd yell out the chorus as loud as we could. I can smell the smell of that place every time I hear the song.



"Come On, Come On" I don't even remember how I first heard this song, or bought the Mary Chapin Carpenter cd. But I remember listening to this album over and over when I was in college, particularly when sitting out on the deck of the house I lived in senior year. I'd sit out there with a beer, waiting for people to come over so we could walk to the bar together, watching people walk through the pools of light thrown by the street lamps in the cool blue of the falling night, the fireflies just starting to wink on and off.



"Bookends" When I was a kid, I was in a fairly prestigious children's choir in the South. We'd travel in the summer. And I remember being on a bus and listening to Simon and Garfunkle's Greatest Hits. And, in particular, listening to this song, over and over. I can smell the bus, right now, just thinking about it. Oh yeah, that was the trip when I got food poisoning. I'm going to stop smelling the bus now.



"Jealous" Oh my God. Is there anything worse than an infatuated teenage girl? A guy with whom I was obsessed put this song on a tape he made for me and I was convinced, convinced, he was using it to tell me, in apparent musical code, that he really loved me and would totally tell me all about it if he wasn't so...jealous? I don't know. It made sense at the time. And the thing I think of? When I hear this song? Is telling my best friend at the time all about my delusion. She must have thought I was batshit crazy. And she wasn't wrong.



"Dancing Queen" I worked at a bar where this was on the jukebox. I heard it seven times a night, easily. The song makes me want to kill people. I hear it is on John McCain's top ten. There you go.



"Big Log" I heard this song when driving through the desert southwest. I was walking through an empty town filled with white adobe buildings. I think I wore turquoise. With big silver hoop earrings. I met a man there. A man with long, curly hair. He looks like Robert Plant. He is Robert Plant. Oh, wait, that's the video. Nevermind. However, I do recall "Ship of Fools" with fondness because of my horrible crush on one of the dumber guys I've ever met while I was a junior in high school. Oh, Mr. Plant, why do you make me feel so foolish?



"Total Eclipse of the Heart" I went to school in Vermont but interned in D.C. for a semester. I remember driving back to the northlands for a visit with my roommate. We'd surf radio channels for good stations. And then we lit upon this masterpiece. And WAILED! Nothing better than the windows rolled down, the radio turned all the way up and two girls with a good sense of pitch riding down the highway.



If you'll excuse me, I have to go visit iTunes.