sounds like teen spirit

i was listening to pink floyd's 'pulse' cd last night, perhaps because founding member syd barrett recently passed away, or maybe because it provided a nice background as i was beginning to clean my room. their live performance of 'dark side of the moon' still sounds wonderful, and the sound drifts me back to high school, when i would stay up late at nights in my stylish gray room in the basement, not sure what it really meant to have a girlfriend but liking the excitement all the same as my hamster ran frantically in his cage. the cd sounds like those middle years of high school.
i like that.

this made me wonder about other cds and their emotional associations.
early beatles music very easily takes me back to the cold winter of 95-96, when, despite having repeatedly told my dad that i would never like his dumb old-man music, my first girlfriend was a beatles fan and i fell in love with the music as i did with her.

r.e.m.'s 'life's rich pageant' will always echo that summer morning when our dog tasha died, because that was the tape i listened to that day as i did my paper route and pondered death.

spacehog's 'resident alien' carries with it the last day of our sophomore year; the songs are a generic snapshot of the 'alternative' music movement of that time, and with it the quasi-grunge styles of school; there was talk of a group of people going to see 'dragonheart' that night, the big draw being a movie where one of the main characters was a cg dragon--that was really impressive at the time.
i think me and jon went to go see 'contact' instead.

the trainspotting soundtrack is synonymous with the night driving escapades of my final years in moorhead, when jon and i would go out driving, hoping to find somewhere to hang out, until we realized that driving was not in search of a destination, but the journey itself was the reward. we would get off work at the grocery store around 11 and head out on the fargo-moorhead area, exploring downtown broadway and the back country roads. with a stack
of cds, nothing existed outside of the car as we sang along or let the music provide a background to our discussions of high school, life, girls, and philosophy. that will always be one of my favorite experiences, and the 'trainspotting' soundtrack was my favorite cd.

i look over my cd collection and see numerous cds that i have loved at one point or another, but it seems that those with the most affixed memories all came during high school, particularly around my sophomore year. that i find intriguing. i was 16, getting my driver's license and
my dater's license. so many experiences opened up before me; mobility opened the door to association with the upper classmen, and with that new people, thoughts, lifestyles, adventures, and our hangout spot, atomic coffee. [i wonder if those crazy 'brainwash' drinks had anything to do with this....]

as a missionary in japan, we were taught that the use of music during drastically increases the amount of information recalled from a lesson or experience.