I was listening to the '60's channel on XM the other day when a song came on that sent me back to one of the most perfect days of my life. I'm sure that this is a common occurrence and one of my favorite things about music. I've got a handful of these tune/pleasant memory connections and would like to hear about other folks who have a similar catalog of connections. Anyhow, here's the song I heard the other day and the memory it evoked:

"Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle.

It was 1966 and I was senior in high school in Tampa, Florida. My buddies and I had traveled across state during the night to Cocoa Beach for a day of surfing. It was just before sun-up when we paddled out at the Canaveral Pier. At the time, the folks who ran the Canaveral Pier concessions would play music over loudspeakers for the entertainment of the fishermen and people on the beach. The surf was perfect, 3'-4' and glassy, the water and air temperature about 85 degrees, the smell of the sea refreshing...just a perfect morning. Then, over the loudspeakers comes "Red Rubber Ball" just as I turn around to see a red orb rising above the ocean...I just sat there wrapped in the warmth of the moment in a state of indescribable bliss. Every time I hear "Red Rubber Ball" I stop what I'm doing and relive that perfect day that happened 40 years ago...a tune/memory treasure of mine.

I have a few other of these "treasures" but this one stands out.

Anyone else care to share any similar music/memory links?

Thomas

"Yellow River" by Christie...Heard it once thru the ADF on my dad's friend's Cessna 182 when I was flying/co-piloting...Another time I heard it when I was down at Pawley's Island in South Carolina...

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone..Bill Withers. 15yrs old, second girl-
friend, she was in LA for the summer only, then gone. But still one of the
best 4 months of my life. Sweet Jenn, oh man.

Love The One Your With - Stephen Stills

Man, I was with this cute babe, trying my best to get down her pants, and this song came on. Welp, that's all she wrote.

:)

"Friends" - Elton John...great movie as well...a

Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams.

My wife to be (from Germany) visited the States in July of that year to check out "our way of life". She liked it, & loved me.
We married in December of that year in a courthouse.
30 years later she passed on. I still have the memories.

Ron.

A Whiter Shade of Pale... brings back memories of my high school years, my band and a gorgeous girlfriend I should have married... dammit!

Rag Top Day - Jimmy Buffet. Senior year, my little red and white '64 Falcon - oh yeah....

1967, I cant get no satisfaction on a juke box at a friends garage, uncut. they wouldnt let Mick say "satisfaction" on the radio. all we could say was what in the hell does that mean? we were about 7 years old, but it was cool man.

Wow...so many songs and memories...the good, the bad and the ugly...

Two songs come to mind immediately, one with lyrics and one instrumental, both by Steve Hackett:

Hoping Love Will Last (from Please Don't Touch): an exquisite ballad with NO SCHMALTZ...the REAL deal...vocal by Randy Crawford...it just takes me back to circumstances in 1978...and it still applies today as it did back then.

A Cradle of Swans (from Cured): A nylon stringed classical guitar instrumental with a vivid image of a cradle of swans moving about on a pond and then scattering in flight. I always found great comfort in this piece when work in college in the 1970s was really pressing.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of pieces that do this for me...perhaps why music is so ever-present and why my interest in Vintage Equipment returned.

There are many songs that bring back good memories. Here is one of them.

The sky was a very bright blue and it was half filled with those cotton candy looking clouds. The colors of the surrounding country side was very intense. There were rice paddies on both sides of the highway and mountains in the far distance on both. For some reason things looked different[you might say "Peacefull"] than it had many times before on the same drive from Phu Cat AFB to the town of Qui Nhon in South Viet Nam. I was driving a duce and a half and was listening to Armed Forces Radio when the song "What A Day For A Daydream" by the Lovin' Spoonfull came on. For the some 2 minutes or so the song played I did in fact have a daydream of being home and away from the maddness of that place.

TankDonovan

"Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle.


Thomas


I was in sleep-away camp in NH when that song was a hit and it brings back fond memories too :)

On Wednesday I was listening to Dave Mason's Certified Live which was recorded in 76 and it brought back memories of seeing him at Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park that same year. The good thing is I can remember the concert . . . if you get my drift :smoke:

Hi Guys,

'Tis a wonderful thread! As far as I can recall my memories have always been linked to music. I bet it is the same for all of us.

1) Sittikuruvi Ennai Katipadu (O little sparrow, sing me a tune!)
I was 3 or 4 years old and still remember the Phillips tube radio that my mother tune in every morning. The DJ plays this song often and we have a lot of sparrows in that village. It brings back such memories of those carefree, innocent, sun-filled days ....

Thank you.
cosmicdust :-)

"Rings" by Cimmaron

"Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison for no particular reason except it always makes me feel good

Wedding day---1981. At the reception; the band equipped with drums, electric guitars, bass, piano and horn section at the ready to accomodate any song request. Before hire, I had auditioned them and knew they were exceptional.
I had only one requirement of them: Learn and master "Ring of Fire". They did...and done Johnny proud!
Hell, even the Babcia's and Dziadzia's were on the dance floor a whirlin' and a twirlin'!

How Can I Be Sure by the Young Rascals. I have memories of a girl named Terri in a yellow dress with black polka-dots. :drool:

Most of the old songs that put a smile to my face seems to be centered around old girl/women friends.

Witchy Woman - Eagles
Best of My Love - Eagles
Harbor Lights - Boz Scaggs
Year Of The Cat - Al Stewart
Tonights the Night - Rod Stewart
Memories - Barbara Streisand
Catherine - Earl Klugh
Everybody Wants You - Billy Squire
December - George Winston

Then there are the ones that remind me of running wild with the guys.

Listen To The Music - Doobie Brothers
Running with the Pack - Bad Company
La Grange - ZZ Top
Dreams I'll Never See - Molly Hatchet
Ain't Talking About Love - Van Halen

Kinda interesting too how the music is gender specific.

Some really good examples. Thanks for sharing.

Here's another one of mine...

"You can get it if you really want" by Jimmy Cliff.

It was the late 1970's and I had developed a liking for reggae music so I decided to visit Jamaica on vacation. I chose the small village of Negril on the SW coast because I had read that it had been "discovered"/"founded" by hippies during the 1960's who were instrumental in instituting several constraints (e.g., no buildings higher than the highest palm tree) against the rampant development that was going on in some parts of Jamaica. So my female friend and I were sitting on the beach at sundown just as many of the open-air beach bars were beginning to open. As the night wore on, the air was balmy and caressing, the stars were incredibly bright, and the air was filled with music from the bars. The one song I distinctly remember is Jimmy Cliff's "You can get it if you really want" being played by one of the bands. My female friend and I looked at each other and made our way back to our room and "got what we really wanted." Truly a night to remember. And my "female friend" later became my wife (and still is).

I never hear the song on the radio but I've found myself playing the album ("The Harder They Come") every few months since then. Whenever I play it, my wife and I look at each other and smile...

Hi, everyone. I am a new member. I favor vintage Sansui---had a few and still do.

Re pleasant memories:

1) Bus Stop--The Hollies--when I was in my early 20's--so romantic!
2) Aqualung--Jethro Tull--Viet Nam. I believe it was my only cassette. I played it on my Sanyo cassette player/recorder over and over.

F

Whenever I hear "Green River" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, it takes me back to the days when I was driving a 1967 Firebird convertible, 400 cubic inches, four speed, my very first car stereo (remember Learjet 8-tracks?), and a hot redhead in the passenger seat...for some reason I especially like it when John Fogerty says "barefoot girls dancing in the moonlight." "Green River" always makes me smile!

King Crimson - Book of Saturday.
I was 15, she was 16 and well, you know...

I started answering this, and realized there are too many songs, with too many memories tied up with them, to even begin to list them all. To mention a few:

"Baby Elephant Walk" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky". These came on the car radio when my Mom took me shopping in New York as a three-year-old. I liked them so much I started bouncing up and down as hard as I could on the car seat in rhythm with the music, hitting my head on the ceiling of the car and really bugging my Mom in the process. Don't know why (who can understand a three-year-old mind past the age of four?), but that was a great moment in a great day, to me! My tastes in music have changed since then, but those songs still bring a smile to my face, just remembering how I felt that day.

A bunch of rock songs from the sixties... I'll skip the details on those, hehe, but they are powerful memories, some good, some not so good.

"Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" - Mid teens: my then-best friends and I in a souped-up car with a million candlepower in headlights (illegal, but who cared at that age?) zipping along freeways through forests across Northern Arizona in the middle of the night at 90 mph, singing along to this, cranked way up to drown out the roar of the engine... one of those teenage bonding things, and what a rush of power from all that noise, speed. light and sound!

The Theme from "Shaft". I attended the NAU Music camp one summer as a teenager, and played the bass clarinet in an orchestral arrangement of this. By far not my favorite song, but every time I hear it, it takes me back to that wonderful summer at that camp, and all the associated memories.

"The Road to Cairo" from a compilation album by Brian Auger and Judy Driscoll (1976). This seldom-heard European release kept me company as a teenage exchange student on my own for the first time in Germany. Whenever I'd get homesick or tired from struggling with the language, I'd crank this up and it would mellow me out. Took me over twenty years to find it again as a download, and I'm still looking for the album.

LOTS of songs from college days, some from live concerts (Santana, George Benson, many more) and often what happened after the concerts... and many more, mostly associated with women... (Aah, those days! sigh...).

A couple Chinese songs from the first year or two here in Hong Kong, but only a few. Don't know their English titles (assuming they have any).

Alas, I can't think of a song released in the last twenty years that really does much to me in terms of feelings or nostalgia. Maybe that's why I like vintage audio gear, too? Call me a dinosaur... :scratch2:

"Slow Ride"-Foghat. Blasting down the backroads near Waldorf, Maryland w/a college buddy one night in the early spring of '76. WAY too much beer, going too fast, but, By God, we were young & invincible. Man, I wish somebody could bottle that feeling you have when you're 20, so you could take a slug of it when you're (nearly) 50 & remember how damn good it was to be 20...

Too many to list, but great thread. Nothing seems to evoke/provoke intense rushes of fond memories like music.

I'd have to add that scent also pours in the memories intensely.

Ahhhh, nothing like a little synesthesia to get yer noodle workin'

In my case, I'm lucky if I recognize a song.

Oh, yeah, hey, I've heard that one before...wait, wait...this is the good bit...comin' up...wait for it...there it goes...yeah! Just one more, just one more...

Denise Williams-Let's Hear it for the Boy. My first real girlfriend used to sing it to me when it came on the radio. We also used to sing Crocodile Rock together when it came on the radio. Of course it was short lived and I believe she started to sing Janice Joplin's Down on Me to an ex-friend of mine. Funny she never sang that to me?

Whew!!! I get dizzy just trying to narrow it down. Rocky Top(Osbourne Bros) because I saw it performed live when I was 10 at a festival. Whipping Post(Allmann Bros) was first concert on a date. Whammer Jammer(J. Geils), so many shows so many good times, some fuzzier than others. Great thread!! Brings back a rush of memories.

I was in sleep-away camp in NH when that song was a hit and it brings back fond memories too :)

On Wednesday I was listening to Dave Mason's Certified Live which was recorded in 76 and it brought back memories of seeing him at Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park that same year. The good thing is I can remember the concert . . . if you get my drift :smoke:

"Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrcle reminds me of another pop confection that's plumb wonderful to listen to: "Over and Over" by the Dave Clark Five.

Phil Collin's, In The Air Tonight always reminds me of my teen years and going rollerskating at an outdoor rink right by the lake. The summer that song came out we went every weekend. We skated, and hung out, and met cute boys. Although they played lots of music, it's that one song that always triggers those memories. I guess it must have been something "in the air". :D

Happy Birthday works for me.

I'd love just once to see you in the nude..Beach Boyz
Tiny Dancer..Elton
Gold and Rose..Jimi
Captain of her heart..Double

Freezeframe - J Giels
Frrebird (live) - Lynard Skynard
Nights in White Satin - Moody Blues (one of THE slow dance tunes of my youth)
Anything off the Seger Live Bullet album

"Wonderful, Wonderful !"-Johnny Mathis, 1957. Mathis turned down a shot at being in the 1956 Olympics-he was a sprinter at USC, IIRC-to record this song, & thus began a brilliant career.

Not a big fan but back when Robert Palmer released "Bad Case Of Loving You" the song was all you seemed to hear for one hot summer, somewhere in the late 70's when I was kind of coming of age. First kisses, copping a feel, sneaking through girls windows or basements (at their invitation), staring at the poster of Blondie long enough to halucinate her nipples. Kids stuff, but still good times.

Someone will likely call me a perv but I think it is just the truth. We all did such things at one time or another. Its part of growing up. OK maybe not hallucinate Blondies nipples, but the rest I would call normal. My present girlfriend told me that a teenage girl that she knows says that at her school you commonly see girls making out or holding hands with other girls. Same with the guys. No need for a hall monitor any more if things are THAT far out of control. I told my girlfriend that the girl may have seen something along those lines hanging around the social misfits (and she does) but I doubt that it is some everyday thing. Of course I got some backlash in defense of the teen. "well I don't know why she would have a reason to lie about it".

Did I SAY that she lied????

I often wonder if all men get a load of crap back from their women when they give an opinion. Thats a whole thread probably.......:(

Here's anudder one that will bring a smile to yr face if you are of A Certain Age...Namely 49, like Yrs Trly..."Castles in the Air", by Don McLean, off his "Tapestry" album. Think this was right B4 he hit the big-time w/"American Pie"...Pretty, pleasant song...nowhere near as Portentious as "American Pie", or as sad as "Vincent"...just a nice little song. Re-released in '81 at a slower tempo as sort of a country song, the '71 faster version works better to me, anyhow...