This week's prompt via-Sometimes Sweet...
We all have songs that really mean something to us. Often just hearing it can take us right back to that place and we are able to re-experience the memory associated with the song. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but either way music has the ability to really draw things out of us and evoke deep emotion. Choose a song that has a particular meaning to you. Tell the story of the memory associated with the song, sharing as much detail as you can. Take us there; let us experience it with you.
This is kind of hard thing for me to write. There is so much music that I love down to my very soul. Songs that evoke such emotion I had no idea I even had within me. Starting with the first music I ever bought to the song that will forever bring me to tears every time I hear it. Those are tales for another day. Today I will actually share with you a collection of songs, an entire album, that was one of the first that has forever had an impact on me.
I got Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as a birthday gift from my best friend Dana (and her parents) in 5th grade. We both loved the Smashing Pumpkins and this was their latest release. I was too young to have a job and my parents would never have paid the $25 price tag for this double album, no matter how much I wanted it. Joy over took me when I unwrapped it and I was almost brought to tears as I held it n my hands. That night we listened to my copy of Mellon Collie while eating snacks and poured over the album's liner notes, anxious to decode and memorize each song. The inside cover still has a Flammin' Hot Cheetos thumb print, as I was too eager to even wipe my hand off before diving into Billy Corgan's poetry.
I soon lost in the musical diversity of this album. The high are filled with cherub-esque harps and subtle coos, the lows with blaring guitar riffs and screams. There was an intimacy I felt when listening to this album and I absorbed every song. Galapogos is still a song very near and dear to my heart. In a way it's a little strange to look and back and think that as an 12 year old I cried to this song. Muzzle felt like it written specifically about me but in such a way that I could never express. Lily (My One and Only) and By Starlight showed me how imperfect and unfair love can be but made me want it anyway. Farewell & Goodnight lulled me to sleep every night for quite a few months.. A poster very similar to this still from their Tonight Tonight video hung on my wall for years.
When drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was kicked out of/left the band after a drug incident with a touring keyboardist we were devastated. I scoured the newspaper for any info (as there was no internet), when I finally found an article I clipped it out and carried it around with me for I'm not sure how long, constantly rereading it. Dana and I held a sort of wake for the band, the fallen keyboardist and Jimmy's misfortune. We listened to all their albums in the dark with only candles lit while we painted our nails black in mourning.
Feelings run deep in an adolescent girl and I clung to the misunderstanding and sadness held between the lines of these songs. I identified with them on some level and still carry them inside of me to this day. Even over a decade later I still regard this as one of my favorite albums. Listening to these songs and feeling the memories they stir up is a constant remainder of what an effect music has had on me.
-Marsha
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