A while ago, I wrote about the association that “Allison Road” by the Gin Blossoms has in my mind – with working serial all-nighters, back in 1995, trying to get a contract writing job finished on time. I hear the song? I feel my eyes crackle with fatigue, the funk of bad coffee on the back of my tongue, my fingertips chilled from the drafty room I used as an office.

I got to thinking; I have a bunch of those:

• Glycerine, Bush: I always associate this song with driving in blizzards; for whatever reason, the first 100 or so times I heard it, I was…well, driving through blizzards. To this day, I hear the song (or see the video), I feel…cold, and in danger.
• Nights In White Satin, Moody Blues: This one is high school. Sitting up at 2 in the morning. Terribly lovelorn. Sitting out at Shale Beach at Jamestown Reservoir, staring at the sky with KFYR in the background, thinking this year was gonna be my year. I can feel the humidity, the dank evening breeze with the faint whiff of cattle manure, when I hear it.
• Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes: When I hear this song – which, I hasten to add, I hated then as I hate it now –  I still recall the exact weather (cloudy, chilly, humid, starting to drizzle) as I drove up Seventh Street in Jamestown, to the alley behind my parents’ house. 
• Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits: I first heard this song on the weekend of a German Club trip to Bemidji. I got lost (although not badly, and not for long) in the woods while cross-country skiing. I always associated this song with being frozen, fighting off panic, and warming up with a quart of cocoa afterward.
• Shout, Tears for Fears: Driving in my first rush hour on 494, in 1985, right after I moved here. To a guy who’d spent his whole driving live in North Dakota, it felt like I’d driven into the Indy 500 by accident. I still smell the burning oil and feel the incipient panic when that song comes on.
• In A Big Country, Big Country: It was late fall, almost early winter, if 1983.  I walked up the fire escape at my dorm and walked in.  It was a Friday night.  I’d gotten out of play practice early.  I had a date.  The dorm, like the guy’s floors on most dorms on Friday nights (back in those days when co-ed dorms still separated genders by floor), was awash in testosterone and optimism which, along with the song and the warm air on the chilly night, smacked me in the face as I opened the door.  And, with that propulsive beat and those skirling, martial guitars in the background, so was I.
• The Wait, The Pretenders: Driving from Carrington to Jamestown at 100+mph, playing it on a cassette boombox plugged into the cigarette lighter. I can feel the wind and smell the late-summer prairie and everything whenever I hear those chiming opening chords.

I’m sure I could come up with more…

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 5:42 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.