It’s pretty amazing how some songs put a timestamp on your life.
For me there are a few songs from when my daughter was young that elicit certain memories, but I think that is pretty normal. There is an emotional connection to those tunes that burns them into my heart. I’ve talked about that in a previous column.
But some songs take me back to a time in my life that wasn’t particularly memorable for any reason. Just snapshots in time where the song itself is really the central figure.
Some of the hazier connections to songs go all the way back to when I was very young. I can remember listening to Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” over and over again when I was little. I know I was very young for a bevy of reasons. First, Google tells me the song was released in 1975, when I was three years old. But even without Google I can put a tack in the timeline of my life because I remember listening to the song on 8-track tape and I recall jumping up and down on my parents bed while I listened to it. Much past the age of 6, my density leaping on my parent’s bed would have killed it.
I can remember my parents listening to “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers numerous times on an old console record player. That was music for the family.
Around that same time I remember being able to purchase the first two 45 rpm singles of my own, “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” by the Eurythmics and “Down Under” by Men at Work. I’m sure my parents were none too fond of my taste in radio hits and having to surrender use of the console hi-fi was done begrudgingly. They were also not pleased when I dipped my toe into the arena of heavy metal, with the purchase of Quiet Riot’s “Mental Health” album.
For Christmas in 1983 I received my very own vessel into high quality music, with a Fisher stereo record player for my room. I know it was the Christmas of ‘83 because “Mental Health” came out in March of 1983. I also received a very nice set of headphones that Christmas.
That old Fisher also brought my ears into the new age of recording with not one, but two cassette tape decks. We weren’t rich, but having dual tape decks in those days made you feel like a Kennedy. I remember “Synchronicity” by the Police was the first cassette I ever bought.
No trip through early 80s music is complete without Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album. I owned it on vinyl and still have it to this day. I listened to that album over and over with my lights out at night, sweating mightily into those oversized headphones. I would fall asleep to that album, but would always wake up at Vincent Price’s long, creepy laugh at the end of the title track. I can hear that extended, echoing laugh right now.
Once I got into middle school, my musical memories went mobile. I can recall walking along sidewalks on a Friday playing the soundtrack to Footloose on my boombox as I prepared to go see the movie uptown later that night.
Another boombox tune that was burned into my brain was “Heavens on Fire” by Kiss. That particular tune was played religiously by a teammate on the bus on the way to basketball games in seventh grade.
The “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack occupied space in my brain, not because I liked it, but because my mother purchased the tape in Myrtle Beach on vacation and made my family listen to it for the entire 10 hour drive home. It was not the time of my life, but it was a small price to pay as we would watch her suffer the Milli Vanilli shame a year later.
I remember a certain obscene 2 Live Crew song because someone stuck the tape in the player in the football locker room between a two-a-day session while the coach was out of the room. He returned, but some tame lyrics were on at that particular time. Our good luck didn’t hold, as a foul chorus roared from the speakers as he addressed the team. He never stopped talking, turned, ejected the tape, dropped it to the floor from chest high and smashed it with his heel.
I have an ingrained memory of listening to “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys as I drove to help decorate our homecoming float in Raymond Road barn my junior year.
Any song from Def Leppard’s Hysteria album takes me back to a stinky football bus headed to away games my senior year. At that point Sony Walkmans had become a thing, so I didn’t have to subject anyone else to my musical whims.
Most of the songs that hold that nostalgic attachment for me are from middle and high school. I think the reason for that is that music meant more to me back then because it was harder to come by.
If you wanted to hear a song you had to catch it on the radio or be lucky enough to see the video on MTV. There were no streaming services or download platforms to deliver the music at a moment’s notice.
Even purchasing an album required a trip to a store and if the music was too new or obscure for Kmart you would need to find a way to get to Columbus. And then, even if you were old enough to drive, there was the issue of money.
I can probably remember what music I owned because there wasn’t much of it. I did not own an limitless Apple Music playlist – I had a pleather briefcase that held 30 cassette tapes.
For me, the romance and remembrance of music in the 80s was a product of its scarcity.
–Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune.