On the Area 603 blog someone asked for people to compile a short list of songs they'd want to have on a tiny iPod for an endless summer. I wanted to pad my list with things like "Neon Meat Dream of a Octofish" by Captain Beefheart, but I decided to go the sincere route. Here's what occured to me to write, and some of the why behind each choice.
My Critical Summer Songs in Chronological Order of Psychological Imprint
1. God Only Knows, Beach Boys (My first-ever dance at a real boy/girl house party)
2. I Got a Line on You, Spirit (Best song ever to make an entrance to on the Ft. Walton Bch. teen nightclub scene)
3. Summer Breeze, Seals and Crofts (Moved to Tallahassee with my girlfriend and got dumped by her the first day there. This song played constantly that summer and there really was Confederate Jasmine in the air.)
4. Itchycoo Park, Small Faces (Early days of, uh, experimentation)
5. You Ain't Going Nowhere, The Byrds-Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Coming down)
6. Street Fighting Man, Rolling Stones (Growing up)
7. Band on the Run, Wings (That road trip to California in my brother's Dodge Dart Swinger)
8. Mambo Sun, T.Rex (That pagan summer at the farm in N.W. Florida)
9. Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen (Atlanta, my third Springsteen concert. The promise of the summer, the warning of the fall.)
10. Save it for a Rainy Day, The Jayhawks (This recent fave took me back to that first boy/girl dance party, older (much) and wiser (a bit)).
Can I start all over again? I'm sure I could come up with a few dozen more summer imprints.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Ten Summer Songs
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2 comments:
Man, this is going to be hard, but I'll think on it. Off the top of my head... there's some J. Geils Band in there, Supertramp, for sure. The Grateful Dead -- something like Brokedown Palace, maybe. Then a bunch of '80s junk, Men Without Hats, heavy metal anthems, I don't know. Journey's Faithfully was my first school dance song, followed by Prince's Purple Rain and Bon Jovi ballads... Ah, I can't come up with a list like this. I don't have focused enough musical tastes...
I don't know that I could do a whole list without thinking about it for a really long time. But the very first record I remember playing by myself was "Slip, Sliding Away" by Simon and Garfunkel. It's funny how as a child you really don't pay attention to the lyrics (at least the ones beyond the refrain) so if someone had asked the child me what that song was about I would have guessed it had something to do with driving on bald tires. At least that's always what I imagined when I heard it. And to some extent, I still do.
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