Nostalgia

The Way Music Takes Me Back

Late one Saturday night in 1991 at around 10:00 pm, three school buses full of band geeks pulled up to a McDonald’s parking lot in Middle Of Nowhere, Illinois. There were still at least two more hours to drive and dinner simply couldn’t be delayed any longer. Most of them hadn’t eaten in several hours, and the excitement of filling themselves full of junk food overtook the sheer exhaustion they were all feeling from that day’s marching competition. The bus doors opened, and two hundred teenagers stampeded into the parking lot toward the unsuspecting establishment, which was completely understaffed to serve this many people this late at night and with only about thirty seconds notice.

But one kid stayed back. He watched his two best friends, his girlfriend, and all his fellow drumline members sprint to the restaurant, ecstatic to have a break from the confines of the buses, but suddenly none of them even existed. Something had caught his eye: a neon record store sign just a short walk away. He had $10 left in his pocket for dinner, but he also had an unhealthy obsession with Rush (a girl had once broken up with him because of it), and his parents had not yet had the time that week to drive him to the mall to purchase Roll The Bones, their new album that had just been released a few days prior. Was there a chance that record store was open? He didn’t have time or money to both go to the record store and get dinner, but he was willing to spend the rest of the bus ride home with an empty stomach if it resulted in a shiny new Rush album.

The gamble paid off. The record store was open, and the 14 year old aspiring percussionist enjoyed the remaining two hours of the bus ride home playing Roll The Bones on repeat on his Walkman. He also spent all the next day listening to it over and over, still amazed at the luck he’d had the night before, not minding the scolding he had gotten from his parents for using his dinner money for a new cassette. It was only the music that mattered………

Just this morning, as I do every morning, I was using my 5:15 am drive to the train station to decide what music I was going to listen to on my hour long trek into the city. Unlike in 1991, listening to Rush does not consume my very being anymore, but today, for some reason, I wanted to hear Ghost Of A Chance from that very album I bought almost exactly 22 years ago. I got on the train, paid my parking, quickly checked Twitter, and then popped in my earbuds. I found the track, hit play, and immediately started reliving the story of the night I first heard it on that smelly bus full of kids hopped up on hormones and burger grease. I hadn’t even thought about that night since high school, but here I was in a similar, but opposite, situation. A cold autumn morning, a train full of obnoxious people, an uncomfortable seat that I was going to be stuck in for over an hour, and the desire to block out all the noise and just listen to music. It finally hit me that Roll The Bones was the obvious choice to start my day, and I did not regret my decision.

Over the next hour on my trip to work, I not only remembered that night, but several other things that happened during that time in my life, both good and bad. Again, these were all things that I hadn’t thought about in years, but just the right music at just the right time brought it all back in a flood. It was overwhelming to say the least, and when I got to my destination and killed the audio on my iPhone, it felt like I had suddenly travelled in time back to the real world.

This may all sound like hyperbole. It even sounds a little crazy when I read it back to myself, but this truly is the effect that music has always had on me. Whenever I hear a track from Thriller, I always think of the day my dad drove me to Sears to buy it with the pennies I had gotten out of my piggy bank. (I believe I only had about a dollar, so my dad covered the difference.) Whenever I hear a track from Faith No More’s The Real Thing, I think of the summer my best friend and I had a summer job together and listened to that album over and over again, every single day. It turns out that having a job with my best friend was not the greatest idea I ever had; we were both eventually fired doing way too much goofing around and way too little working. The list goes on and on, and I won’t bore you with more examples, but there are hundreds more, maybe even thousands more.

Though that night in the McDonald’s parking lot feels like it happened to a completely different person in a completely different lifetime, I still have something in common with that kid: I am completely and hopelessly obsessed with music. When I discover new music that affects me in a profound way, I don’t just listen to it for a couple of days. I listen to it for several weeks. I listen to it to the point where my wife wants to strangle me and my kids beg me to play something else. I will then walk away from it for a few days, only to become re-obsessed with it after I realize I haven’t heard it in awhile, and the cycle starts all over again.

There is, however, one big difference between myself and that kid from the bus. I now have the resources to obtain a significantly larger amount of music. By the time I was about 11 years old, I had grown tired of top 40 radio, so the only new music I was interested in had to be purchased at the record store. I rarely had enough money to do that, so I had to scrimp and save every penny I could find to make it happen. Copying from friends didn’t count—my craving was not satisfied until I had genuine copy of the tape or CD with the real album art and liner notes. The feeling of ripping open that cellophane wrapper and listening to new music while I read the lyrics was indescribable, and buying a new album was always a major life event.

These days, it’s not as special, and it’s not necessarily just because I’m an adult now, but rather that new music is always instantly accessible. Most new music is a click or a tap away, even if it’s by the most obscure of artists. Granted, I don’t have printed liner notes or artwork anymore, but that’s a small tradeoff for having every song I own in my pocket at all times. After all, moments like this morning may not have happened without that kind of access.

Fortunately, the most important part has not changed. The music I’m listening to now is affecting me permanently. One day, 22 years from now, I’m going to want to hear The Asteroids Galaxy Tour’s Fruit album, and I’m going to think back fondly to the first time I ever heard a song I really liked and purchased it right then and there from an iPhone. Maybe I’ll put on some Frank Zappa and drift back to the days when I lived in an old shabby apartment with my college roommates. Or maybe I’ll be compelled to put on Porcupine Tree’s Stupid Dream and think back to the time it literally brought me to tears while driving along a busy highway in Chicago.

In that one way, I have not grown up at all. Sometimes, when I find just the right music at just the right moment, whether it’s something I’ve had for years, or something I just found, the whole world melts away and becomes unimportant. It’s just me and the music, just like on that bus ride home 22 years ago. Whatever I’m doing at that moment, no matter how insignificant it is, becomes a fond memory that I will remember for a long time. It’s almost like listening to good music creates a scrapbook in my mind. I hope this is a trait I pass along to my children, and I hope it’s something that other people experience as well. I’m fairly certain that’s the whole point anyway, and I’m pretty sure that everyone has at least that one album that immediately takes them back to the old days. If that’s not the case for you, don’t feel bad. You either just haven’t found it yet, or maybe you’re listening to it right now.