Vivid memories. Everyone has them. Good memories and bad memories. They are with you always. Sometimes all it takes to have them be real again is a smell or a glimpse of something innocuous.
I don’t know about you, but music brings images and memories flooding back to me. A certain song is heard and I am right there again. Or, I can replay an event over again in my mind.
Working in radio for many years pretty well deadened me to music. It was my job and the last thing I wanted to do was listen to a cd. Only recently have I begun to enjoy listening to music after a long absence.
Of all the formats of music at the various stations I worked for there were always songs that signify my experience there. I hear “Love at The Five and Dime” by Kathy Mattea, I am back at KPLS, a county station I worked at. Sade and k.d. lang bring back memories of another station. There are many others.
Of all the music, however, the songs I like best go back to the acid rock days, probably due to my being a teenager then. I hear songs from that era and feel peaceful for a change.
When you listen to a song you can picture driving down the road or going to the beach or even an ambulance ride. I play the Moody Blues and I am driving to high school in my convertible. I listen to the Carpenters and I am driving in Poulsbo, Washington hearing of Karen Carpenter’s death on the radio.
When MTV first came on the scene, people were furious. True, a great many really enjoyed the videos but the controversy came over substituting the video for your memory of music over an experience. That is still a very valid complaint. But video, it’s a different kind of memory now. You can have both. It is not either or. I fondly remember a country music video to a pleasant memory.
Sometimes it enhances the experience. Only in a couple of songs does the video replace the musical memory for me. Now it is what television does with contemporary music that makes memories. At least for me.
I first noticed the connection with a Tampax commercial years ago. “Time of the Season” by The Zombies was the music bed for the commercial. Now, anytime I hear that song playing I remember the images in that commercial.
Gary Jules covered a song called “Mad World” that has been used for background in reflection moments on numerous TV shows. But to me it will always be associated to one episode of “Without a Trace”. I hear the song on the radio and that scene replays in my mind.
By the way, a Stevie Wonder song brings back an ambulance ride for me.
My strongest memory associated to a song is “Centerfield” by John Fogerty. And it was in the form of a music video. The playoffs of the radio station softball teams in San Francisco was taped by a TV station. We spent an entire day in the hot sun having our team lose. What came later is one of my fondest memories. They had edited down the footage and came up with a great music video.
I hear that song play and I not only see the video in my mind but the game as well.
I have lots of memories over my years. To me music is my trigger. What brings back memories for you?