Music Memories

Sometimes getting through the day can be pretty tough for me because I have unnecessary stress thrown my way at work by people whom I find to be incompetent with their time management and leadership skills, which I suppose I don’t really need to talk about, but it does cause me to have ridiculous headaches and fatigue that I wouldn’t normally possess. Exercise, sex, smoking, drinking, and bad eating habits are some things that people use to relieve stress, but the one thing that I do to relieve my stress is to get lost in my music. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine going one day without my tunes because I think it would drive me utterly insane.

I spend a lot of time thinking about music and how great and diverse it really is and how it’s one thing that I have that no one can take away from me. I can run to music for anything, especially since I’m irascible and I can use calming music to work its majestic melodies to calm me down. Over time I’ve realized how music not only helps me set the mood for whatever setting I happen to be in, but it also triggers memories hidden beneath the endless maze and madness that is my mind. Wow, that’s funny that I mention that it triggers memories because for me it not only triggers a memory, but it gives me some sort of out of body experience thinking back on that memory as if I were standing at a distance watching the memory replay with such vivid detail that’s it’s almost scary. I have heard people say that it’s the sense of smell that can trigger a memory better than anything else, and although I agree, I’d say sound takes that number one spot in my book. I suppose I can list one memory that I always go back to when I hear the song Digital bath by the Deftones (great group to listen to).

It was nearing summer of my ninth grade year; I want to say it was 2000; my buddy Tyler and I use to obsess over music and what each other liked. Every day it was something new, if it wasn’t us bobbing our heads to Nelly, it was taking turns singing as Fred Durst and Jonathan Davis in the “All in the Family” song. We also spent a lot of time getting each other to listen to this new group we found and it became somewhat of an addiction. Maybe music was our addiction, but it beats having us do drugs right? Heck we could have been some weirdo kids that walked to the gas station in the rain with a paper bag on our heads so we didn’t get our perfect hair wet on an evening that just so happened to be prom night and the high school kids all drove by laughing at us. Okay so that did happen, only it was just me and Tyler was so irate walking next to a moron wearing a paper sack on his head like he was headed to a Detroit Lions game. He messed up my hair pretty good as a direct result of his distaste.

Crazy hair phases aside, I can remember always having something to listen to when I was with Tyler that would make us both just get lost in the endless rhythms and lyrics of whatever it was we were listening to. I remember this one time, and this story is off topic, that I had crashed at Tyler’s house on a Saturday night, meaning that we’d be woken up early to go to church. We were idiots who thought it would be cool to obliterate a twelve pack of Mountain Dew in one night, needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep. Church was a destination that we despised going to because it hindered us from getting the extra hours of sleep that we were hoping to accumulate. Around eight in the morning Tyler’s dad bursts through the door to see that Tyler and had fallen asleep in the same bed to which he utters one of his cliché lines.

“Wake up faggots, it’s time for church.”

Naturally, instead of waking right up, we just ignored the call of duty and fell back asleep. Not even ten minutes later his dad comes back down with the radio, plugs it in and blasts the only Native American radio station I’ve ever heard. The repeated “thud thud thud” of the drum accompanied by the intangible chants of the vocalists was one of the most vexing things to have roaring through your ears with only four hours of sleep in the bank. It’s actually pretty funny because this music, annoying as it is, would remind me of when I was in elementary school and we’d attend an assembly that would feature members of a local tribe who would come out all dressed up in their brown deer skin robes with colored feathers in their hair to perform the song and dance live. They were pretty neat to watch because this person’s heritage and history was being performed through music as they danced around in a circle as if they were performing some rain calling ritual.

Anyway, back to my original memory. One day I was hanging out with Tyler after he had purchased the new Deftones album that had the song, “Changes” on it. Like usual, we listened to the album the whole time I was there, especially that one song which got stuck in my head. My new obsession with this new band and their crazy sound made it so I wound up purchasing the album myself. Summer had finally come and it was always a joyous time because being a young noob with no responsibilities whatsoever, I got to sleep in every day. Around eight or so in the morning, the sun would start shining through my wooden blinds and wake me up long enough to hit the play button on my stereo, roll over, scratch my ass, and fall back asleep. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I always seemed to wake up to the soft cadence of the drums in the song “Digital Bath”, and I would lie there, face down in my pillow, vibing to the soft music as it flowed through my veins until it was over. From there, sleep would pull me back into my subliminal teenage dream world.

I tend to reminisce everyday when I hear a song that was powerful enough to trigger a certain memory. Heck the song doesn’t need to be powerful enough to trigger a memory; it just had to occur at a memorable moment in my life. Perhaps one of my favorite memories is triggered by the song “Smells like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. Oh boy, brace yourself for another story.

I’m not too certain of the facts, but Nirvana made it huge with their greatest hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1991. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school when I really became a fan of them, well considering it was the first time I heard of them. Actually, it’s kind of funny, I thought that it was the first time I heard of them but after watching the music video for Smells like Teen Spirit, I realized that I had seen it before when I was much younger. I had seen the video on MTV, that was when they still played music videos. I don’t think I could have ever forgotten the way that weird janitor was hanging onto his mop, rocking back and forth like he was having some sort of weird seizure in slow motion. Heck I can still remember the news when Kurt Cobain died, of course I don’t remember understanding what was going on because I had no idea who he was at that time.



Anyway, it was football season of my junior year and I had purchased the album, “Nevermind”, which had “Smells like Teen Spirit” on it. This song quickly became my favorite because I just loved the way the guitar sounded and how it blended so well with Kurt Cobain’s raspy yet soothing voice. Typically, before a game started and during the road trips to get to the football game, I would listen to the song over and over. No seriously, I played that song on one of those old CD player contraptions that had an option to repeat the same song. I literally pressed repeat and listened to that same song time after time after time and not once, not even to this day, have I gotten tired of the song. Holy cow, does anyone here remember CD players? How about tape players? I remember my old walkman, that thing went with me everywhere. It was a bulky yellow hunk of garbage that wouldn’t fit into any of my jeans pockets without making it look like I stuffed a sock in my underwear. It was also pretty annoying because if you came across a song you didn’t feel like listening to, you would have fast forward the tape and hope to land on the right spot. The rewind button was there in case you went too far and more often than not you’d catch the ending of the song prior to the one you want. If you didn’t have your cassette tape memorized, you sucked at life. Could you imagine doing that to listen to the same song multiple times in a row? Oh and how about my favorite, when your batteries began to die on your tape player, the songs would get all slow motion sounding like some crazy action movie where the actor screams, “Nooooooooo,” as he jumps on the active grenade. Is there a movie out there where that happens? Eh, who cares? It’s a great memory for music right there, but it makes me want to talk about CD players and how crappy those were too. I had the largest carrier to transport thirty plus CDs with me wherever I went and I couldn’t fit all of my music in there. On top of that, the CD player itself was so bulky that it was such a burden to carry around, and lord forbid you’re on the road and you hit a bump that pops the CD out of place causing it to get scratched so bad it was no longer able to be used. Fortunately technology is in our side and MP3 players have saved the day.

So I know I got way off track there, but I’m back now. Try to imagine what I was doing by listening to this song on repeat, close your eyes and picture this. Just kidding, keep reading. I’m sitting on an overcrowded cheese box (yellow school bus), that smelled like teenage funk, next to my buddy Bryan. It’s not too comfortable to sit in this beat up hunk of metal for five hours one way (we went both ways in one day) and trying to find a decent position to sleep. It was hard enough due to my claustrophobia yet alone listening to all the laughter and chattering from the rest of the team making piss and fart jokes, and the stench of people actually farting. I would, however, manage to fall asleep while lying in a position that only a pretzel would find cozy and I used “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to drown out all the ambient noise on the bus. Oddly enough, this was the best sleep I’ve ever had.

Now that I’m talking about this one particular bus ride that happened to be taking us to Riverton which is across the state, I do have a story about our ride home. Now typically on our bus rides people would bring their own snacks to munch on while we sat in boredom for what seemed like an eternity. I liked bringing beef jerky and Gatorade while my buddy Harry would bring that and much more. On this trip Harry decided to bring parmesan Cheez-itz, a tasty treat that we snacked on the entire trip there. After we finished the game (we won), the coaches ordered us a bunch of disgusting sandwiches from Arby’s. I honestly can’t stand that place but I had to eat it because I was pretty hungry and five hours on an empty stomach while being smooshed onto our tiny bus would have made The English Patient a bearable movie to watch in comparison, and that flick was torture. Shorty after the bus took off on its way home one of the seniors went flying from his seat to the trash can like a monkey from tree to tree, and threw up all that he had consumed that day causing a mild chain reaction of people hurling. Ironically, someone must have had some of Harry’s parmesan Cheez-itz because that’s all we could smell for the entire five hour trip home, only they smelled like someone threw them up. Gross. I stay far away from that flavor of cheese its now because of how terrible that stench was. When we got home well after one AM, I ran to my car to find that someone smashed my driver’s side window out and stole my history book. What kind of person breaks into someone’s car to steal their history book when I had a nice stereo and hundreds of CDs sitting in plain view? That’s a mystery that has gone unanswered but I’m betting it was the seizure janitor.

In all honesty there is nothing like music, nothing that can even compare to its power to set the mood for people. Listen to hard rock when you’re mad or working out, romantic music when you’re trying to get your girly friend into the mood, alternative rock when you want to mellow out, and even grunge when you want to hear art turned music. I don’t just love music because it brings back memories or because the way it can match my mood, but I love the lyricism as well. I see music as being poetry in motion for the most part and it really takes every component to make it so. Powerful lyrics pouring out the lead singer’s mouth accompanied by the talented guitar and bass players and drum beats is still something I can’t get enough of. Listening to Pink Floyd, Breaking Benjamin, The Eagles, and many more (I could go on forever), is my favorite thing to do because I don’t just hear it, I feel it (that’s what she said).

I hope you made it to the end. I’m so tired tonight and I could write so much more. I suppose I’ll have to save it for another post. I want you to stay tuned because I’m currently writing a short story that I think you may like. I’ll be posting it chapter by chapter so please read it and tell me what you think. Crap, now I have to edit this so it doesn’t look like some eight year old wrote it.