Soundtrack to my life 3) the more recent memories edition
There are the songs we love and then there are the songs that have stories behind them. Songs that, if someone (Dear God, please not Michael Bay) makes a movie about you one day, will be on the soundtrack. These are some of my songs and some of my stories. In no particular order because I'm exhausted
Rascal Flatts – Life Is A Highway
When the movie Cars came out, it was immediately Ryen’s favorite. And to be fair, I liked the movie too. It had a decent soundtrack, a nice plot, the animation was solid and it was Pixar and Pixar rocks hard. So I got Ryen the soundtrack thinking that he’d listen to it for a few of the songs. I mean I like the James Taylor song on there, John Mayer’s cover of Route 66 was good (I still prefer Chuck Berry) and I can appreciate Randy Newman as long as it isn’t daily. But no, Ryen’s got one favorite song and I can never argue that the kid doesn’t have focus and dedication when it’s something he loves. You tell him to take time on his handwriting and he’ll bitch and whine and complain, you tell him to work on his book reports and spelling and he’ll be arguing with you about why he shouldn’t have to, but man when that kid loves a song, he loves a song. There was a period of time after he got that soundtrack where I’m sure he had just this one track on repeat played for a period of time that, in most civilization nations, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. And he loved it. I’m sure he’s still got it memorized to this day. Bonus points if you know who’s Mad Mad World album had the original version of Life is a Highway. Anybody?...Anybody? Tom Cochrane.
Faith Hill – Breathe
The year was 1999 and I was at USC working three part time jobs and trying to sustain a long distance relationship which, by the way kids, never work. I was getting ready for one of my jobs and had either MTV or VH1 on the TV so that there was background noise. I got a phone call and bless the gods of caller ID it was the girlfriend. So I take the call. Now we had been having a rough time as it was and things were progressively spiraling towards epic failure. On this particular call she told me she had cheated on me. That was the first time she told me she had slept with someone else. And I was pretty fucking devastated. Playing on the TV at that time was Faith Hill’s Breathe. I don’t know why in particular I remember that so vividly except that I always thought it was a wonderful song. Since that night I’ve never really ever had any positive associations with Faith Hill songs. There was this song she had while I was in high school where one of the lyrics was something about centrifugal motion…I remember that because I was a total fucking physics nerd. And I generally liked her music. It was country but not country enough that it sucked or required me to lose teeth and brain cells to appreciate. But ever since that night I’ve never been able to associate any Faith Hill song with anything good. I can hear this song on the radio and flash back to the moment in the conversation where there’s that apprehensive lull in the conversation. The “I need to tell you something…….” moment where you know that nothing possibly good can follow that line. Not as much anymore, time passes and old feelings of betrayal and anger fade into feelings of “thank fucking God that’s not my problem” but still there’s pain that I can recall whenever I hear the song. And it’s a lovely song but I still can’t stand it. Let that be a lesson to you kid(s), long distance never works and it will destroy otherwise reasonable country music for you too.
Marwood – One Mile
One of the speech kids I used to work with who still does speech in college occasionally has me read through some of his material and give feedback. Josh, this is the story of how your ADS got me a phone number date from the cute girl at the bank….who I ended up never calling again, because, like, oh my God the upward inflections, like constant use of the word “like” and like lack of…..just NO. But I digress. So I have this regular habit of cashing my expense checks. The cash goes into an account for Ryen less a couple of bucks for coffee or lunch or whatever that day. And I get into the regular habit of getting cash from the bank tellers and not the ATM because I don’t trust ATMs and regularly forget my PIN. Product Keys for MS Windows, those I have memorize. My four digit security PIN, who the hell can remember that? Again I digress. So there’s this girl who, I used to think worked at the bank but the more I think about it I guess we just had similar schedules. Or she hangs around in banks way too much. One day I’m walking to the little stand to fill out the slip so I can cash my check and there’s the girl, Andrea, with this “Barack the Vote!” t-shirt on. And in typical male fashion I was oblivious to anything else going on around me….except for the song currently playing on my MP3 player, which was Marwood’s One Mile. I’m humming along, “how is it that find myself, stumbling drunk on a Monday,” and the next my horrible vision picks up sight of a well stretched shirt. A day or two later, Josh asks me to look over his After Dinner Speech and there’s a reference in there comparing him to a political figure. I scratch it out and replace it with a comment like…”no try someone else, maybe Obama” inspired mostly by the fact that Andrea was entirely Baracking the shirt. So Josh comes up with some very good lines, and he’s got great timing so the speech does ridiculously well. It wins if I remember correctly. Fast forward some, I happen to be in the bank and Andrea is there and I mention to her that, “hey, your shirt helped a guy I know win a speech competition.” And of course she looks at me like I’m batshit insane, which, being honest, probably isn’t too far from the truth. But I go on to explain the story and manage to score her number. At the time I was in a relationship and oh like, my like, fucking god, like, this girl and her like, upward like, inflections. I would have purposely choked on a roll if we had to sit through an entire dinner together, but still, singing a Marwood song about being drunk on a monday, made my lack of any public shame even more pronounced and her shirt did help inspire a win. Worth it.
Rascal Flatts – Life Is A Highway
When the movie Cars came out, it was immediately Ryen’s favorite. And to be fair, I liked the movie too. It had a decent soundtrack, a nice plot, the animation was solid and it was Pixar and Pixar rocks hard. So I got Ryen the soundtrack thinking that he’d listen to it for a few of the songs. I mean I like the James Taylor song on there, John Mayer’s cover of Route 66 was good (I still prefer Chuck Berry) and I can appreciate Randy Newman as long as it isn’t daily. But no, Ryen’s got one favorite song and I can never argue that the kid doesn’t have focus and dedication when it’s something he loves. You tell him to take time on his handwriting and he’ll bitch and whine and complain, you tell him to work on his book reports and spelling and he’ll be arguing with you about why he shouldn’t have to, but man when that kid loves a song, he loves a song. There was a period of time after he got that soundtrack where I’m sure he had just this one track on repeat played for a period of time that, in most civilization nations, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. And he loved it. I’m sure he’s still got it memorized to this day. Bonus points if you know who’s Mad Mad World album had the original version of Life is a Highway. Anybody?...Anybody? Tom Cochrane.
Faith Hill – Breathe
The year was 1999 and I was at USC working three part time jobs and trying to sustain a long distance relationship which, by the way kids, never work. I was getting ready for one of my jobs and had either MTV or VH1 on the TV so that there was background noise. I got a phone call and bless the gods of caller ID it was the girlfriend. So I take the call. Now we had been having a rough time as it was and things were progressively spiraling towards epic failure. On this particular call she told me she had cheated on me. That was the first time she told me she had slept with someone else. And I was pretty fucking devastated. Playing on the TV at that time was Faith Hill’s Breathe. I don’t know why in particular I remember that so vividly except that I always thought it was a wonderful song. Since that night I’ve never really ever had any positive associations with Faith Hill songs. There was this song she had while I was in high school where one of the lyrics was something about centrifugal motion…I remember that because I was a total fucking physics nerd. And I generally liked her music. It was country but not country enough that it sucked or required me to lose teeth and brain cells to appreciate. But ever since that night I’ve never been able to associate any Faith Hill song with anything good. I can hear this song on the radio and flash back to the moment in the conversation where there’s that apprehensive lull in the conversation. The “I need to tell you something…….” moment where you know that nothing possibly good can follow that line. Not as much anymore, time passes and old feelings of betrayal and anger fade into feelings of “thank fucking God that’s not my problem” but still there’s pain that I can recall whenever I hear the song. And it’s a lovely song but I still can’t stand it. Let that be a lesson to you kid(s), long distance never works and it will destroy otherwise reasonable country music for you too.
Marwood – One Mile
One of the speech kids I used to work with who still does speech in college occasionally has me read through some of his material and give feedback. Josh, this is the story of how your ADS got me a phone number date from the cute girl at the bank….who I ended up never calling again, because, like, oh my God the upward inflections, like constant use of the word “like” and like lack of…..just NO. But I digress. So I have this regular habit of cashing my expense checks. The cash goes into an account for Ryen less a couple of bucks for coffee or lunch or whatever that day. And I get into the regular habit of getting cash from the bank tellers and not the ATM because I don’t trust ATMs and regularly forget my PIN. Product Keys for MS Windows, those I have memorize. My four digit security PIN, who the hell can remember that? Again I digress. So there’s this girl who, I used to think worked at the bank but the more I think about it I guess we just had similar schedules. Or she hangs around in banks way too much. One day I’m walking to the little stand to fill out the slip so I can cash my check and there’s the girl, Andrea, with this “Barack the Vote!” t-shirt on. And in typical male fashion I was oblivious to anything else going on around me….except for the song currently playing on my MP3 player, which was Marwood’s One Mile. I’m humming along, “how is it that find myself, stumbling drunk on a Monday,” and the next my horrible vision picks up sight of a well stretched shirt. A day or two later, Josh asks me to look over his After Dinner Speech and there’s a reference in there comparing him to a political figure. I scratch it out and replace it with a comment like…”no try someone else, maybe Obama” inspired mostly by the fact that Andrea was entirely Baracking the shirt. So Josh comes up with some very good lines, and he’s got great timing so the speech does ridiculously well. It wins if I remember correctly. Fast forward some, I happen to be in the bank and Andrea is there and I mention to her that, “hey, your shirt helped a guy I know win a speech competition.” And of course she looks at me like I’m batshit insane, which, being honest, probably isn’t too far from the truth. But I go on to explain the story and manage to score her number. At the time I was in a relationship and oh like, my like, fucking god, like, this girl and her like, upward like, inflections. I would have purposely choked on a roll if we had to sit through an entire dinner together, but still, singing a Marwood song about being drunk on a monday, made my lack of any public shame even more pronounced and her shirt did help inspire a win. Worth it.
posted by rpalmeira | 6:56 PM
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