Songs that marked your life

Started by dsanchez, February 05, 2018, 18:24:03

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dsanchez

Which are the songs that bring you the greatest memories?

Slowdive - When The Sun Hits
David Bowie -  I Can't Give Everything Away
David Bowie -  Sound & Vision
65DOS - Prisms
Cocteau Twins - Fifty-Fifty Clown
The Church - Hotel Womb
The Cure - The Big Hand
The Cure - Plainsong
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

PearlThompsonsBloodflower

Any songs from any of my fav bands tbh mate

Ulrich

Hm, I tend to agree with above comment (so you could just look at the list of fave bands I posted recently), but I will try and list a few special ones together with the memory:

Slowdive - Spanish Air (is a song which reminds me of being in the car of a friend, who sometimes took me along to the 'indie/dark wave' etc. disco at the "Cat Café" or to a concert - he played the song on his car stereo and I liked it so much, that I often asked him to put it on again when I got into his car... this must've been around 1994-'96)

The Cure - Untitled (the whole album often reminds me of the summer of '89, but this song in particular; I was hanging about with not much to do and rather melancholy at the time - school was over, love lost, what comes next?)

The Cure - Snakepit ("Well I'm out in a car and it's just full of stupid girls" is part of the lyrics - and this is exactly what it reminds me of!! :-D)

The Sound - Sense of purpose (will always remind me of the times around 1987, when I listened to this and lots of other new wave/(post-)punk/gothic music with some friends, while we were driving to or trying to find places where this kind of music was played... yeah we had some long journeys...)

TV Smith - Backstage Bob (this song is a "tribute" to a mate who sadly passed away in 2007, so will always remind me of him)

Cranes - Beautiful friend (reminds me of a special person - she was a close friend around 1995)

Calexico - Feast of Wire (this album awakens memories of the hot summer back in 2003)

David Gilmour - Faces Of Stone (again makes me think of a special person...)

As you can imagine, this list could go on and on (and on)! But I'll leave it with these for the moment.
(For the "songs I couldn't live without": don't get me started, could be another endless list!!)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

A selection:

Killing Joke - Love Like Blood
Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth
Kim Wilde - Never Trust a Stranger
The Cure - The Caterpillar
Yes - America
Billy Joel - My Life
Prince - Sign O' the Times
Justin Timberlake - Cry Me a River
Robin Beck - First Time
Neneh Cherry - Buffalo Stance
Janet Jackson - Got 'Til It's Gone
a-ha - Train of Thought
The Police - Bring On the Night
The Soundcarriers - Last Broadcast
Missy Elliott & Da Brat - Sock It 2 Me
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

PearlThompsonsBloodflower


Eres-Cafe Tacuba (Some Spanish song my girl dedicated to me, but I can't listen to it  :oops: :oops: ).


Just Like Heaven-The Cure (Song that got me into The Cure  :oops: :oops: )


Surrender-Cheap Trick (Started my love of Rock music actually n was my first favorite song)


Man On The Moon-R.E.M. (Makes me feel happy for some reason n it's my favorite song atm  :oops: :oops: )


Rio-Duran Duran (Started my whole love of 80's music, n DD were the first true 80's band I fell in love with)

SueC

Quote from: dsanchez on February 05, 2018, 18:24:03Which are the songs that bring you the greatest memories? Which songs would you couldn't life without?

Aw, this is hard, chiefly because there are so, so many songs I love.  I'm probably going to answer your second question mostly, because it's not necessarily about great memories for me - but I could make a separate list.


I'll just name some, and say why.  And by the time I finish this post, it will probably be loooooong, and minutes after I post it, I'll have thought of dozens more...

In no particular order...

The Cure - Plainsong - and Arvo Pärt - Tabula rasa, first section (same reason - completely electrifying and make me really aware how precious it is to be alive; I discussed this further in the Alternative Cure Essay link in the General section, and included in that a link to the Pärt piece for comparison) - and many many things by both these artists

Sinead O'Connor - You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart (goosebumps every time - I like a lot of her stuff, from all the different genres she's explored)

The Waterboys - Let It Happen (an anthem for both people in our household) - and lots of other stuff, especially Don't Bang The Drum, The Ladder, Church Not Made With Hands, Trumpets, Be My Enemy, The Stolen Child...I could go on and on... and Mike Scott has always kept his authenticity...

Capercaillie - Breisleach (it's so, so beautiful, like a lot of their songs; Karen Matheson's voice is like a gift to humanity)

Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly (so soaring...)

The Cure - Where The Birds Always Sing (I'm mentioning this especially when I could mention dozens because that's the song - I'm a more recent Cure appreciator - that made me realise that this band had some deep thinking going on; and at the time of my life when I heard it, at the start of my 40s, it dealt with some difficult stuff I had to deal with, and this sort of new paradigm I was realising I had to accept in how I was looking at the universe, and the song was very consoling at the same time somehow)

Suzanne Vega - Small Blue Thing, Solitude Standing, Marlena On The Wall, I'll Never Be Your Maggie May etc etc etc - there really isn't a song of hers I don't like...

The Church - Under The Milky Way; Icehouse - Great Southern Land; Yothu Yindi - Treaty, The Warumpi Band - My Island Home, and also Christine Anu's lovely cover of the same; Goanna - Solid Rock; Paul Kelly - Bicentenary; The Warumpi Band again - Blackfella, Whitefella (because our National Anthem is such unmitigated crap, written by a stuffed shirt; and these musicians all wrote things that profoundly give you a sense of Australia, without all the whitewash - I consider these the REAL Australian anthems)

Big Country - Fields of Fire (the ultimate wake-up song), Chance (very sad, and musically gorgeous), Eiledon (shoots you into the stratosphere) - I like a lot of their stuff, it's very evocative

U2 - Into The Heart (one of my favourite ever quasi-instrumentals...as a teenager, this track was my real introduction to how emotionally powerful and raw music could be...and I loved all their early albums; got ambivalent when they got too mega and I started to feel like Bono was no longer inhabiting the same universe as most other people, which of course isn't entirely his fault and is why Mike Scott went into hiding every time things got too hot for The Waterboys...), Seconds, Running To Standstill, etc etc from the early period; I do actually really like Lady With The Spinning Head even though I generally dislike dance music, and various other bits from their more postmodern era; and Songs Of Innocence as an album, because it's an album that spoke very personally to me because of a really tough childhood... the only other album that has spoken so personally to me 40+ is Bloodflowers...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Ship Song (fabulous lyrically and musically... I know that's not a proper argument, but don't want to write paragraphs...)

The Smiths - How Soon Is Now (I know Morrissey is an ass, but this song really affected me in my teens, and I still think it's amazing - not all good songs in this world come from nice people...)

The Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (...very astute)

The Stranglers - Golden Brown (that unusual rhythm; the audacity of bringing a harpsichord into a post-punk band)

Jackson Browne - Lives In The Balance (tells it how it is), quite a bit of his earlier stuff

Neil Young - World On A String (really spoke to me in my 20s), bits and pieces all over the place

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Couldn't Stand The Weather (something about the guitar playing...)

John Mellencamp - Justice and Independence 1985 (excellent metaphor - I have a lot of time for this guy; he painted the backdrop to broadacre agriculture in America and Australia like no other)

Kate Miller-Heidke - Politics In Space (very funny... I like quite a bit of her material... check her out if you've never heard of her; she's a real imp, and she can sing...)

The Audreys - Long Ride (lovely Adelaide band)

Hothouse Flowers (not to be judged by their popular songs) - Isn't It Amazing (because it's so soaring), and pretty much anything their lead singer does in Gaelic (because of what the songs mean and because Liam O'Maonlai is a really incredible singer, plus he plays the didgeridoo!)

The Fight Club theme song - because it tells much of it like it is

Bob Geldof - The End Of The World (hahahaha!), The Great Song Of Indifference (ditto), quite a bit of his Vegetarians Of Love stuff

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion (both versions - noisy one strips paint off walls very effectively, acoustic one is so beautifully sung), Zero, etc

Mary Jane Lamond -  Dòmhnall mac 'ic Iain (Cape Breton tradition, completely mesmeric combination of vocal and percussion, I can listen to it on repeat for hours and it doesn't let me go)

Nathalie MacMaster (same tradition; fiddler) - Reel Beatrice (for its sheer vivaciousness), The Drunker Piper (energy squared and a great guest vocalist), Tullochgorum (because breathtaking)

Jenny Thomas (Australian folk violinist, did fiddle on the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack) - Sweet Tooth (just gorgeous...), Botany Bay (a re-interpreted version I first heard driving across the Australian outback, and I had major goosebumps), lots of her stuff

The Countess Cathleen jig from the Riverdance soundtrack (an example of music being able to express emotions we don't even have words for; this piece made me take up violin as an adult learner in my late 20s - great fun, and I do really good ambulance sirens! ;) )

Alasdair Fraser - Common Ground, and anything of his with bagpipes in it

...this is just off the top of my head, and I know there's loads more...

...and I've not even started on classical really...

...ah, music... where would we be without it... in the caves, grunting I think...
SueC is time travelling

PearlThompsonsBloodflower

Positivity-Suede
Pure-Lightning Seeds
1, 2, 3, 4-Plain White T's
Orange Crush-R.E.M.
Surrender-Cheap Trick
Rio-Duran Duran

Tbh screw that Spanish song I don't like it anymore sorry.

Ulrich

Wow, impressive list, SueC!  :smth023

Have you read Mike Scott's autobiography "Adentures of a Waterboy"? Highly recommended!
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on July 28, 2019, 10:15:59Wow, impressive list, SueC!  :smth023

Have you read Mike Scott's autobiography "Adentures of a Waterboy"? Highly recommended!

I'm in the middle of reading it at the moment! :)

I've got an honest admission to make:  When I got to the bit where he was having cocaine, I was rolling my eyes and going, "Him too?  What is it with these people?"  I mean, that was on the back of reading the A Perfect Dream coffee table book that Brett bought me for Christmas, where I was going, "A cocaine budget???" and my husband said, "Well, look at it this way:  It's admirable from an organisational perspective."  :angel

I have parked Mike Scott for a while and am having a Jane Austen binge at the moment.  Northanger Abbey is hilarious.  And nobody in it is taking cocaine... :rofl

I'll get back to Mr Scott soon.  It's a bit of cognitive dissonance for me probably because all the self-identified hard-core recreational drug users (opiates, amphetamines etc) we know personally are off their faces and appear to be running on very low numbers of remaining neurons.  One in the neighbourhood who takes everything under the sun by his own admission thinks the government is tracking his movements via his phone and is convinced he can make weather events by concentrating his mind.  He also scares people when he goes on psychotic rampages - we've had to ferry backpackers back to town because of it.  Probably to an extent it's like with alcohol - brings out what's already latent in a person anyway - happy drunk vs violent, abusive drunk etc - and if you start with a low number of brain cells from the beginning, then blowing them off will have a comparatively greater effect.

Woosh!  Off-topic again... ;)
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Oh well, I can't even remember that part of the book (well I knew he'd taken some drugs, before I read it, from old interviews etc.)! It's about seven years ago when I read it.

I guess in the 1980s within the music biz cocaine was like coffee. So I wouldn't give much thought about those kind of "drug stories".

To get back on topic: the Waterboys album "A Rock in the weary land" will always remind me of those times in the year 2000 (when it was released). It wasn't an easy time (some friendships ended or cooled down), but I still managed to enjoy myself (got to see some of my fave bands, incl. The Cure - and The Waterboys in Frankfurt Nov. 2000!)...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Oh, I missed this reply originally!  I'm officially jealous, @Ulrich - I've never seen either of them live. :1f62d:  And may never either.   :'‑(

Brett has seen The Cure live - back when he lived in Perth.  And we missed a show they did here in, was it 2016? - because we were so busy building our house we didn't even know they were playing.   :1f62d:

I'll stop watering the forum now.  Good thing we have good concert films.  :)

Rock In The Weary Land is a lovely album. I really have to laugh at Dumbing Down The World, as an educator much of my life. ;)  It's nice when something like that can become personally significant (and consoling about the sadder things in life) - and isn't it funny how it tends to become a soundtrack to your own life?

For me, if I really like a song, I'll often remember where I first heard it, or the time around that anyway, for the rest of my life.   One happy example, when we went on our first driving / walking tour of Tasmania in '07, we found the hire car actually had a CD player and went and bought a stack of CDs to listen to while driving.  We bought a lot of acoustic stuff because that suits driving and conversation better.  So Brett got some John Williams (Cavatina etc) and other things, and I got a Sharon Shannon CD, and all those things now have Tasmanian landscapes associated with them in our heads. We first put the Sharon Shannon CD on in Huonville at the start of going around the peninsula there, and when we put on that CD now we still see all of that in front of us, and all the fun place names there like Upper Woodstock, Cygnet, Eggs and Bacon Bay, Charlotte Cove, Verona Sands, Flowerpot, Snug and Electrona...

(If you think those names are outlandish, Tasmania also has Dootown, Lower Crackpot, Paradise and Nowhere Else...)

SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on August 05, 2019, 03:14:40For me, if I really like a song, I'll often remember where I first heard it, or the time around that anyway, for the rest of my life.

Sometimes happens to me too. First Waterboys song I heard was "How long will I love you?" on the radio in my car one morning (must've been late 1990 or early '91). I liked it, but didn't know the band name or anything and thought I might never hear it again... However, as fate would have it, a few weeks later a mate played me his Waterboys album and I said "I heard this song on the radio!"...  :happy
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

chemicaloverload

I've been reading peoples responses to this and I like the answers that come with them. I'm going to do my best to do this in a chronological order. It starts with...

The kids aren't alright- The Offspring; from the first album I ever bought with my own money. I remember it so well and this was the album that would define me for years to come.

Wait and Bleed- Slipknot; so the early teenage angst continues

User Friendly- Marilyn Manson; hello sexual expression and self awareness!

The Cure- Friday I'm in Love; this was a song me and my sister would play every friday night before we went out. We would pull this up full blast, I'd have a fag hanging out the side of my mouth, a drink in my hand, she would have a wine glass full of who knows what and we would dance away in her big room. Its not one of my favourite songs, but it has its place.

Kinky Afro- The Happy Mondays; this was me shaking off the goth and loosening my ties to the subculture

I wanna be adored- The Stone Roses; the bass line of this song gets me every time and the lyrics hit home.

24 hour party people- The Happy Mondays; the ultimate party tune. Cue me and John banging this one out at 5am while everyone lay crashed out, at every single party because we are 24 hour party people :D

There is a light that never goes out- The Smiths; this was a period in my life where I had been stunted for many years and this was me getting back out of it, spinning spooks around on my computer chair as I sung this to her.

Curtain Call- The Damned; the ever dramatic curtain call, a gift from a force of nature

The same deep water as you- The Cure; I was instructed to learn this off by heart for a cold winter night for a place where not many people go, but we did and lord, what a night it was. This song is one I still well up to.

The Figurehead- The Cure; this song is a constant for me still. I put it on for every single mood, I still feel every single instrument, every single word.

Video Games- Lana Del Rey- this has meaning because its attached to a moment which is a lovely moment and one I won't forget.

And there is many more and there will be many more to come yet. Life's not done with me yet.



Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves

dsanchez

Quote from: dsanchez on February 05, 2018, 18:24:03Which are the songs that bring you the greatest memories?
Slowdive - When The Sun Hits
I remember getting Slowdive's "Souvlaki" taped in a Sony Metal Cassette. I was probably around 17 years old (mid 90's). It was a Saturday afternoon and I was in my room at my parents and I played that tape and laid on the bed. I fell asleep, but at some point there was this distinctive melody that woke me up and this singer saying "Sweet thing I watch you..." the drums breaking like waves in the ocean. I then sat on the bed and fully paid attention to this song and realized this is one of the most beautiful things I ever heard in my life. I rewind the tape and listen to it again. Nearly 25 years after listening to it for the first time, this song is still at the top of my list.
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo