Let it fade

#978 - Come Down :: Bush

"'Cause I don't want to come back down from this cloud,
it's taken me all this time to find out what I need."

Sometimes I think I enjoy the music from the '90's better now than I did back in the '90's, or perhaps my tastes have veered in different directions since then (or, as it seems, in various directions).

I remember this song as a background song, a soundtrack playing while I hungout with certain friends, or drove around Los Angeles with the radio on. I do not have any particular image, or memory, that comes to mind from those days when I hear this song. What I do have, though, is a newfound love of the song, and the lyrics, now.

It was recent that I heard the song again, and something about the lyrics (especially the quoted chorus above) that struck a chord with me. I have gotten to a time, or an age, or a chapter in my life where I really know myself and what I want in this life - and for once I feel very happy with the person I am, and the people I've chosen to have in my life. I guess, it just took a long time to get here, and this song strikes at that in some ways.

A re-discovered song from the '90's that resonates more with me today? Yeah, suppose that is why it made this list.

Played my favorite song

#979 - I Love Rock and Roll :: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

"So put another dime in the jukebox, baby."

Listening to this song, right now, as I write this causes me to realize that I may very well love this song even more today than I did when it first was released - and I loved it from the start, so very much.

This played all the time on the radio station I listened to in 1981. I was in junior high, and I listened to the radio feverishly everyday after school (and on my clip-on transistor radio that attached to my bicycle, when I rode around the neighborhood. This was a huge song at the roller rink, and I remember skating around those slick wood floors, singing-a-long with my friends.

This was also one of those songs that were often a part of slumber party-hairbrush as a microphone-concerts, and turn-it-up until your car speakers nearly blow freeway sing-a-longs.

I just turned it up here in my office, unplugging my headphones, and three of my co-workers started singing-a-long - loudly - dancing around, everyone saying at least once "damn, I love this song".

Honestly, it is just one of those songs.

Sometimes it frightens me

#980 - Suddenly Last Summer :: The Motels

“It happened forever,
for a short time.”

Some songs that I love have a story in my head that play along with them when I listen. Some of these in my head stories have existed for years, and though they may slightly evolve in images and imagined plot, the early visuals that came to mind originally still play a part.

This is one of those songs.

What I see play out in my head, I suppose, is my own version of the music’s video. Visions played out the way I see them whist singing along. A girl, not much past adolescence, at a bus station in some forgettable town. She is saying goodbye to something (not someone), possibly running away from someone (not something). The bus pulls away and she never sees someone chasing behind after, trying to stop her - and that was the one thing she wanted - for someone to stop her, ask her to stay.

I remember it being a bit jarring to see the actual video for the first time. The images seeming to conflict with how I saw the song, felt the lyrics, imagined it coming to life. I prefer the way it plays out in my head - just like I more than not prefer the way I imagine characters in a book I’m reading, and find myself disappointed when a film version casts the characters so differently.

I used to shoot you down

#981 - Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) :: Nancy Sinatra

“Seasons came and changed the time.
When I grew up, I called him mine.
He would always laugh and say,
‘remember when we used to play?’”

Yes, this is a cover song (which I’ve tried to step away from for this list - perhaps for a future list of favorite cover songs…), but this is the version that I know, and love.

During a Summer in my childhood I spent time visiting friends of my family in San Jose. My friend Laura, born two days before I was, had moved away with her family, but we’d all kept in touch, and these Summer visits happened back and forth for a few years.

I can’t recall exactly how old I was during this particular visit - 10 maybe - or a lot of what we did during the visit, except for afternoons spent in their swimming pool, and their nextdoor neighbor, Jean.

She was our mothers’ age, I think, but so different than anyone else we knew “that age” (pretty much other mothers). She was divorced (something we’d not yet encountered in our own family, yet), she drove a convertible, she had a black tiled swimming pool, she was loud, and she laughed and swore a lot.

She also had a room just for her stereo and record collection; a room she let us hangout in during that one Summer.

Nancy Sinatra’s album ‘How Does That Grab You?’ was one that we would play often, and this song was my favorite track on it. I remember lying back on the floor in that room, letting this song wash over me, making up stories of true love gone bad in my head. I think somewhere in those imaginings I pictured this song being sung by Jean herself, as she drove off into the night in her convertible, leaving her lost love behind her.

It made me very happy to hear this song play during the opening scenes of Kill Bill Volume 1.

Who do you think you are

#982 - Mr. Big Stuff :: Jean Knight

"I'd rather give my love to a poor guy that has a love that's true,
than to be fooled around and get hurt by you."

I've loved this song for as long as I can remember, and have so many memories of running around with a hairbrush microphone, as a little girl, singing to this song. My Aunt had the 45" and we'd play it in the Summer, when I'd stay at my Grandparents house, and dance around her room to it.

I also had these neighbors briefly (I think they only lived on our small cul de sac for a few months) who had this stereo in their garage. The two sister and I would crank the collection of 45"s we all had, and make-up dances to go along with them. It was always this song, and Please Mr. Postman, that we played the most.

This was the one I always chose.