The MUSIC RUINED thread had me thinking about a time when a song was ruined for me NOT through the fault of an ex/roommate/spouse. The song and the period in mind also have a strong association with another concurrent happenstance that now tie the two together. So I propose we tell stories of how a song or artist brings up a strong association with something significant, awful, awesome or just plain routine.

For example:

In 1989 I was working as a prep cook in a sandwich and salad shop in the local downtown mall. Music was always playing, either piped in from the mall or else the shop had its own system (I can’t remember the specifics). Either way, we could not shut it off or pick our own music. The big hit of the day was “Love Shack” and it seemed to get played every couple of hours for weeks and weeks. If that wasn’t enough to ruin the B-52s for me, this was around the same time I accidentally sliced off a few millimetres of the tip of my left middle finger while chopping red cabbage. So anytime I hear “Love Shack” my finger gets tingly.

Another example:

The first time I heard Mission of Burma is when a friend lended me his copy of Vs. in 1986, the same time I was heavily addicted to Blueberry Pop Tarts. Now the two are intertwined forever.

At the Drive In - In/Casino/Out is forever associated with driving my old Volvo station wagon through the snow like the winter in highschool when I was obsessed with it.

Music as an emotional time capsule is magical to me but my tendency to circle back to albums robs a lot of things of their potential nostalgia. I almost should leave something powerful for a decade so I can dig it up later and time travel.

losthighway wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:38 am Music as an emotional time capsule is magical to me but my tendency to circle back to albums robs a lot of things of their potential nostalgia.

Yeah this is me for the most part, and I don't see it as a bad thing. After all, one would hope to grow with the music they like. I can think of several things that I liked all along but didn't truly understand until much later.

However, I dusted off Bluetip's Dischord 101 the first summer of the pandemic. I listened to the shit out of that album my last year of high school and then for whatever reason, forgot about it entirely. Hearing it again made those 20-something years in between disappear, to the point of being a little uncomfortable. I listened to it a few more times then put it away again for the most part. I've never felt nostalgic quite like that before. It's also possible that first summer of quarantine isolation brought out 'the feels'.

I have many of these; some are general, some are very specific, some are completely random.

Was driving to work this morning (only the seventh or eighth time going into the office since the beginning of the pandemic) and "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows" played randomly on my iPhone playlist. All of the sudden, I thought of high school.

I was listening to London Calling a lot while in the process of purchasing my first home in 2006. Anything off of that album reminds me of that home and the city it's in, particularly "Death or Glory". This one is very specific: when I hear that song, I remember vividly driving down the Amstutz Expressway with the windows down on my Honda Civic on a nice, early summer day, with Lake Michigan in view, singing along with the song at the top of my lungs.

I was listening to Tusk a lot while moving out of my first home and when my first pet beagle died in 2015. A lot of that album reminds me of those things, particularly "Beautiful Child".

I think it's inevitable that this will happen when music is such a big part of one's life.

Check Your Head was my soundtrack to the summer of 1993. I was 12 years old. I borrowed the cassette from the library, made a copy of it, then listened to it every time I mowed the lawn. I smell exhaust fumes and fresh cut grass when I hear that album now.

My first real job was working at the bookstore at a community college I was attending in Summer/Fall of 1984. As anyone who has worked at one of these places knows, it can be a hellish fucking nightmare dealing with people trying to sell back their books for more than pennies on the dollar, get the books for their new courses before they sell out, and wait out the lines as seemingly every person enrolled descends upon the bookstore at the beginning of term, this to a soundtrack of the same vapid, soul-eroding Top Forty songs played 6-8 times per shift (Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean excepted from that classification, of course).

To this day, I can identify any song that appeared on the U.S. Top Forty from June-December 1984, and I instantly flash back to people telling me I was robbing them for only offering five bucks for a used Clerical Record Keeping textbook originally purchased for $75 because a new edition had been issued to include all of the groundbreaking advances in CRK from the previous six months, or asking me where the Business Law textbooks are...while leaning on a stack of Business Law textbooks.

iembalm wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 2:08 pmonly offering five bucks for a used Clerical Record Keeping textbook originally purchased for $75, because a new edition had been issued to include all of the groundbreaking advances in CRK from the previous six months

I lolled. Plus ça change.

Not my opinion, but a friend and I had a similar discussion a long time ago and I never forgot her saying something along the lines of:

"Whenever a Paul McCartney song comes on, I can't help but strongly associate it with terrible, hacky songwriting."

iembalm wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 2:08 pm a soundtrack of the same vapid, soul-eroding Top Forty songs played 6-8 times per shift

I used to work in a warehouse shelving books during the summer, and I'd have to endure the same thing. I particularly remember Destiny's Child's 'Independent Women' and Westlife's 'Swear It Again' - which I always referred to as that awful 'I'm never gonna say goodbye/Cause I never wanna see you cry' song.

Nate Dort wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:34 am Check Your Head was my soundtrack to the summer of 1993. I was 12 years old. I borrowed the cassette from the library, made a copy of it, then listened to it every time I mowed the lawn. I smell exhaust fumes and fresh cut grass when I hear that album now.

Every time I hear that record I am transported back to Tom Flynn’s house in SF, April of 1992, my bandmates and I gathered around his stereo as we listen to the CD that I bought that afternoon at a record store in Berkeley.