Oral History

I was so excited that my computer was finally hooked up again after being down for almost three weeks, so I could finally update my iPod. Along with all of the podcasts I was missing out on, I suddenly had the urge to buy music from my high school years. I don't know where the sudden taste for early 90s music came from but I went with it. Now strange floods of memories are hitting me whenever the songs play. Strange memories, weird points in my life, bad haircuts, awful outfit choices, they're all coming back to me and I just had the urge to share them with you.

18 and Life - Skid Row

It's 1990, my friend Jen and I spend every weekend at Golf Land, playing video games, eating at Subway, and irritating the patrons like no one but a 13-year old girl can. We're too cool for ourselves, even, and we're trying to look foxy in front of the (loser) guys who hang out there, too. (I say loser now, because looking back, they were a group of 18+ guys who hung out at Golf Land. Come on now! At least we were 13 and had to be dropped off by our parents. They had cars and could have gone somewhere else!) So I was wandering around the video game machines, I'm sure I smelled like Loves Baby Soft, when on the radio comes this guy singing this song - wait, is it a guy? That voice is pretty high. No, it must be a guy. "This song is AWESOME," I think to myself. I have to buy the tape! I go home and tune my radio to 107.3 WAAF and wait for them to play it again.

House of Pain - Faster Pussycat

The funniest thing about this memory is the thought, "I can't believe I did a project for English class on this song". They actually let me get away with that? I can't remember what the assignment was, but I loved this song so much that I remember illustrating a poster about the song with lyrics and blue flames. It rocked, I'm sure.

Ocean Size - Jane's Addiction

Probably sometime in 1991, I'm riding to school in my sister's 1981 silver Camero and this song is playing, not loudly enough for my taste, but it was a feat of patience on my sister's part that she actually let me play my tape in her car so I didn't complain. I think to myself, "god, I love Jane's Addiction. Who doesn't? I can't wait to have my OWN car with my OWN tape player so I can play Jane's Addiction all day every day as loud as it goes!"

This Love - Pantera

It's about 1993 and Luke convinces me to let him drive my car up to this spot above the highway in Willimantic where there's a lookout. It's over route 6 and I'm not sure exactly how we got there or if it was illegal, but we ended up way on top of the highway, looking down on all the cars. It was late at night and it felt like we were miles away from everything, we were so high up. We parked the car and cranked the stereo and this song came on, it was awesome. The sad part to this memory is that one of Luke's high school friends was in the car with us and a few weeks later he died in a drunk driving accident, so I can't hear this song without thinking of Dan. But it's still a great song that needs to be played loudly.

And one more memory, this one from elementary school and no, I didn't download the song from iTunes. But I'm thinking about it...

Elvira - The Oakridge Boys

When I turned eight, I had a birthday party at Skate Fantasy in Manchester (which is now, sadly, a Big Lots store). When you were the birthday girl at Skate Fantasy, you got to pick a song and have it played just for you. What song did I pick? That's right - Elvira. My heart was on fire, for Elvira. I think I was the only eight-year old who knew all of the words and I'm still amazed that they had it there to play, but play it they did and I skated and sang my little heart out. I also have a memory of sitting in the TV room at my parents' house and absolutely blasting this song on the record (yes, record) while I worked on a paint-by-numbers picture of a horse.

Well thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me. Does this give you any insight on the strange person I've grown up to be? From the Oakridge Boys to Pantera to Jack Johnson. Interesting.