Good Vibrations
It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Connecticut. I have a beer in my hand. My kids are happily playing. Mark is on the deck with a better quality beer than the light dreck I am drinking. And a song just came on Sirius satellite radio that launched me back many years.
In 1988, I worked in sales promotions. I had a number of clients in the record industry. I created promotional item campaigns to help launch new releases. So this song, that is playing on my Bose radio, was about to hit and MCA records called on me. There was nothing I couldn't dream up, source and produce. I was quite good at my job.
The song? Sylvester, You Make Me Feel Mighty Real. Usually I came up with the promo item ideas for the client. Not this time. MCA knew just what they wanted. Vibrators (the real deal, not this personal neck massager bullcrap) also known as dildos - with the logo printed on the side no less. I found the "product" (no telling you how easy THAT was) and the screen printer who could work on plastic. The hang up? Couldn't find FDA approved inks that would adhere to plastic. I kid you not. No one wanted to risk using a plastisol peepee.
Well, You Make Me Feel Might Real is over. Listen! It's Blondie's RAPTURE playing! Reminds me of drinking creamsicles in Faneuil Hall in some upstairs bar/dance club with a boyfriend and a boy friend.
Music takes me all over my life. Good times. (Like a Prayer by Madonna in the little red Jetta with Gen and Sharona in Newport.) Sad times. (How Great Thou Art at Dave Palmers funeral, a 44 year old friend who left 3 kids behind.) Love times (Love Cat by the Cure, Mark's and my wedding song.) Pissed off times. (I'm Gonna Run To You, by Bryan Adams that always made me grit my teeth over a cheating boyfriend.)
How about you - got a song that takes you somewhere??
Welcome! Come to Boston to meet Kat Cavicchio in my new e-book House of Cards available through Amazon on Kindle and supported devices!
21 comments:
I had a song for you, then another, and another. In the end, I had so many I made a whole post, here:
http://jerobison.blogspot.com/2007/05/music-of-your-life.html
The song "We are Family" by Sister Sledge. My Sheila and me and dance with us and sing "I got all my sisters with me..."
Tommy died last year (complications from bipolar disorder...) Everytime I hear that song I laugh...and cry.
What I meant to say was "My brother Tommy used to grab my sister Sheila and me and dance with us and sing..." Sorry for the agregious typo!
Life is definately a soundtrack for me! Several years back an old boy friend sent me a tape he made called Life is a sound track and it blew me away, pretty much hit upon every year and major memory of High School. David wasn't thrilled, but I still have it, and still like to pull it out because I like where it takes me. College songs were Rolling Stones like Under my Thumb or Greatful Dead I will Survive and of course Prince Purple Rain. More mellow, after graduation and into graduate school, but for just about every period in my life, I have the songs. That is why I love my satalite radio so much, it can pretty much take me any place I want to go. The ride in to work is sure an interesting one some days! GREAT TOPIC, I can see why John could make a whole post called Music of your life. By the way, Happy Mother's Day!
Oh Yeah. This is an acting term; we call it Sense Memory.
It takes me back to 8th grade, grinding against George V. (well, as much as you can"grind" in 8th grade at a Catholic school. Sort like suggestively "mush" nether regions. Okay. Maybe I was just THINKING about his nether regions). He wore macrame shoes with a clear heel, a Hawaiian shirt, and high-waisted drape slacks.
I wore Candie's nude slides, a white polyester dress a la Karen Gorney in Saturday Night Fever.
"Always and Forever". Uh huh. Always.
Oh Drama! You mean Steve Spadoni! I danced with him in 8th grade and haven't thought of him since 1978! LOL! I had on lace up the ankle espadrilles (which are all the rage again) and a floral dress with a pucker top I was CERTAIN gave me a chest. Not so much.... Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven. No mushing. I didn't know from mushing. I too was in Catholic school in 8th grade. MercyMount Country Day School in Cumberland RI. Sense Memory. I'll remember that.
Oh my goodness, Stairway to Heaven was the song that played at the junior high dance where I finally got to dance with the boy I liked and then another girl cut in.... Devastating....
And Prince reminds of some things, too.... :)
I'm not sure how I made it through life before Sirius Radio.
OOOOOh. Led Zepplin. Physical Graffitti. Making out in 10th grade. After smoking a skunk doob. Ed W. Lots of pimples, but hey, he had a Jeep.
And Jess....I'm sure we think of the same things when we think of Prince. Hallowed be his name. Mmmmm. Late eighties.
Travis, I hear you! I have a BRAND NEW GORGEOUS minivan in my garage. Haven't touched it in one week. I still have my old gorgeous minivan until the leasing people pick it up and I kept the insurance and am driving it. WHY? My Sirius is in it! LOL! My new minivan has factory GPS and so you have to have the deal install the satellite. WEDNESDAY is the day. Then I'll drive the new one. 75? Love it. 22? Love it. 100? All freaking day! :)
I just listen to old stuff, so the iPod is good enough for me.
I have to get more adapters, though, to move it from car to car.
Happy Mothers' Day Kim. Happy Mother's Day to A Triumphant Mother!!
Might I suggest Brooklyn Beer. It is light enough and for splurging they make a great chocolate stout. Full disclosure:We own a miniscule portion of that company. So small we could easily drink our assets but so far we have not at least I don't think so.
Here the ocean is gleaming and so are the moms.
Well the Beatles always make me think of my dad, the Smiths remind me of 6th form, DODGY fashion and Teresa, Dr and the Medics just makes me cringe - memories of a fashion period of life best left alone!! The Cure (who hail from my home twon!) always remind me of dancing with my husband when we were young just going out...
I think the upturn in behaviour has been as a direct result of the girls not having to deal with sensory overload all the time. Here there are fewer people, less industry, planes and more space and peace and quiet. went back for a visit to see new nephew and got a real shock - the NOISE was unbeleiveable! Yet when we lived there I didn't notice it.
"Ain't Nobody" by Chaka Khan. When I hear it on the radio I have to stop whatever I'm doing and belt it out: Ain't nobody (nobody) that can make. me. feel. this. way.
"So wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully p'wetty" great song that. I played in a covers band for over sixteen years and songs got over analysed to the nth degree resulting in me being unabled to find any of those particular song moments but being able to tell you the chords or the key of any. Although, I think I had moments with Sweet Child O' Mine and November Rain but they're best not aired in public, and any allegiance to Frankie Goes To Hollywood is strongly denied. I still love "Yes Sir, I can Boogie (sung with strong foreign accent)" by Bacarra.
Maggie May, Rod Stewart, always makes me think of working on my high school yearbook. That, and Only Women Bleed. Then there's Una Paloma Blanca, which brings back all the feelings I had during the "yearbook wars" in my senior year, laughing and singing along with Convoy with my best friend just a few months before he died, exactly 31 years ago tonight... I could go on and on...
I'm not in Love - 10 CC
I wasn't in love, I just wanted to make out. What fun to be 17, free, and have three boyfriends.
LOL!
I'm always posting so late these days -- can't wait to finish promoting this book so life can get back to normal!
Anything by Bryan Adams; John Cougar; Rod Stewart -- these days, Nora Jones. :)
Kim, this reminded me of a Manic Mom post in August. If this isn't too obnoxious, I copied it here. (You know me, and you can always delete with no offense--it's kind of long)... Here is it...
SOUNDS. SMELLS. SONGS...
I don’t know if I’m ever able to shut my brain off. It’s always running. Rolodexing events and feelings and smells and ideas and things I have to do, and I hope they’re filed correctly so when it comes time to do the things, to tell the stories, to remember to pick up the drycleaning, that these post-its in my brain will surface and tell me what to do.
I fall asleep at night thinking about writing, what will I say next, who will listen, will anyone care? Why do I do this? Why can’t I just enjoy the here and now and live in the moment more often and not have a mind that won’t quit.
I went for a morning jalk or wog or jolk, or whatever you want to call a more-walk, half-jog thing to do with your legs. It’s the most beautiful day out. My shoes crunch over the gravel, I smile at a baby bunny, a squirrel, a bird. I sidestep a pile of animal poop with some sort of non-digested berries in it. It’s still too cool for the flies though.
Then I cross over to the place where my mind reels. It’s this one spot where every time I get to it, I stop exhaling and just inhale because the scent is just one that I want to ingest and have forever. It’s maybe baby’s breath, probably not though, mixed with some weeds, there’s nothing there to indicate a floral scent, yet every single time I walk by that spot, it’s there. It’s the kind of smell that if I could, I would grab a Yankee Candle representative and take them there.
“See, right here. Stop. Smell. Keep smelling! Can you make that into a candle?”
That’s what I want. Not cantaloupe or cotton linen or laundry detergent smells, although those are nice. I want that smell that can’t even be described it smells so luscious. It’s the kind of smell where, if I wasn’t afraid of bugs, non-digested animal poop, and itchy-scratchy things on the ground, I might lie down and make a snow angel right there, inhaling, and inhaling, and inhaling.
So, can you see my mind never stops, because this is not actually what my post was going to be. I wanted to write about music and the impact it has on all of us. How it can turn our mood from sad to happy, and from happy to sad. How it can rocketship us into another era, another time zone, just by the beat and the words and the person singing it. I’ve written about how Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy makes me think of Diva, and how I love the line from Counting Crows about being feathered by the moonlight, walking along the hillside, with the summer ‘neath the sunshine… I’m listening to it right now. It just gets me. I don’t know why. A Murder of One.
Do you remember being in high school, or wherever you were at the time, and hearing Phil Collin’s In the Air Tonight, and pounding on the dashboard along with the drum solo? Do you remember hanging on friends your senior year in high school, buzzed and happy at an impromptu “my-parents-just-went-out-of-town” party, promising never to lose touch, while Stand By Me played loud on the boom box? Or old U2 like War—Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bad, A Sort of Homecoming? Violent Femmes where you’d scream at the top of your lungs, “Why can’t I get, just one more!?” Or kissing your first boyfriend upstairs at a party, in some unknown bedroom, messing up the comforter while Phil Collin’s Take Me Home played from the downstairs, where kids were pretending to be adults, drinking from stolen six-packs or bottles of whatever they could find that didn’t look like parents would miss from the liquor cabinet.
Don’t you wish sometimes you could rewind, go back to that moment, be with those people, feel the music? You can. Just close your eyes and listen to the music. That’s all you have to do, and you’ll be right back there, with those people who meant the most to you at that time, with the memories of what it was like, the fun you had, how a song could just turn your mood into something new?
Yep. Wow. I’m so thankful that I can have these memories, that I can have these smells, that I still have friends I’ve experienced these moments with, that I can call up my highschool friends, my college roommates and say, “Remember when we’d sit in the dorm room and blast The Outfield? Or remember when we were in that stinky basement, standing on top of the crooked coffee table, warm cups of crap keg beer in our hands, spilling on top of others but no one cared, and we’d be singing, Shook Me All Night Long, or 38 Special, Hold on Loosely?” I can call my friend Tamara anytime Groove is in the Heart is on, no matter if I’m at a bar, and it’s 1 a.m. I can just call her, shout into the phone, “Do you hear it!? It’s our song! LISTEN!” And then she’ll listen as I attempt to sing along with DeLite, at a bar, miles and miles away from her, yet she’s right there, listening to me singing it along with the DJ at the bar, and she knows, she knows that that’s something we share.
Or like when I listen to James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful and I think every time I hear the first line, “My life is Brilliant,” I really do think, yes, my life really is brilliant.
And man, isn’t that stuff just so, so cool? Music. Smells. Life.
There is nothing that sends me back in time faster than a song....
Pre-teen songs...Knock Three Times, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, Seasons in the Sun, Billy Don't be a Hero, Afternoon Delight, Kung Foo Fighting, Cherokee People, The Night Chicago Died, Shadow Dancing (Andy Gibb) and S A T U R D A Y (Bay City Rollers) oh and then there was Sean Cassidy
Teen songs...Suicide Blonde, I Don't Like Mondays, I Want to be Sedated, What I Like About You, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Trapped, Tunnel of Love, Little Red Corvette, Our Lips are Sealed (so many!)
That was a nice escape....now back to reality
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