Can certain music place you in a certain time/stage in your life when you hear it?

[flvegan]

I ask this because...well, I keep a stereo on for the dogs. Right now, Sigue Sigue Sputnik is playing (obviously a retro/turn back the clock) show on the local rock station. Immediately, it took me back to college and my freshman year when "Flaunt It" (by the aforementioned SSS) was in heavy turntable rotation for me.

Next thing you know, I'll be hearing A Homeboy, A Hippie and a Funky Dred doing "Total Confusion" and I'll be needing an intervention.

So, what say you?

[Starbucks Anarchist]

1. Definitely.

Particularly music that takes me back to college.

[DBoon]

10. This was Patti Smith, Blondie, and Talking Heads for me

Nice to be in college when the first wave of punk/new wave hit.

We started out listening to Yes, and ended up listening to The Clash

[idgiehkt]

2. One Headlight by the Wallflowers

creates instant nostalgia in me, for college even though the song came out way after I left school.

[enigmatic]

3. absolutely

It's a conduit for me, certainly. Many songs or albums are like that with me.

[NanceGreggs]

4. Great thread idea, BTW ...

I'm obviously older than most here, but ...

I never hear "Summer Breeze" (Seals & Croft) on an oldies station without remembering being in New Haven in the fall of '72. My (first) husband and I had just moved there from Long Island, and it always reminds me of missing my friends back on the Island.

I found a quick cure, though -- wound up driving two-plus hours back to the Island two or three nights a week.

Our foray into suburban Connecticut life didn't last long ... we couldn't afford the driving expenses, and the wear-and-tear on the old VW Bug.

[sakabatou]

5. I haven't lived long enough

[LynzM]

6. Absolutely....

Those times range from early high school through... a couple summers ago, usually.

[Broken_Hero]

7. Of course,

a lot of differen't songs/groups bring back good/bad memories...

[LeftyMom]

8. I'd have to grow up first to have music remind me of my misspent youth.

:shrug:

[Mojambo]

9. Everytime I hear Alice in Chains I can taste a vodka collins. n/t

[DBoon]

11. Everytime I hear "Tales of Topographic Oceans"

I can taste a bong hit

[AlienGirl]

12. Can't listen to the song "Zak and Sara" by Ben Folds Five without nausea

It was on every day on the way to and from chemo/radiation.

Tucker

[Dangerously Amused]

13. When I went off to college in The Big City.

I moved into the dorm room early, and my roommate hadn't moved in yet. It was my second or third night there. It was very late, I was all alone and I couldn't sleep. It was the first time I was ever really homesick. And not the kind of homesick that you get when you're twelve and you've been away for two weeks at summer camp, but the kind of homesick you get when you realize for the first time that you can't ever "go home" again because it will never be the same; you're not a kid anymore.

I was sitting on my desk, staring out my dorm window looking down on the city lights with my radio playing softly in the background. Then the opening lines of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" came over the airway:

Looking out
Across the night-time
The city winks a sleepless eye...


That line, of that song, will put me back on the desktop looking at the city lights, and sink that same melancholy homesick feeling right in the pit of my stomach. Every time.

[wildhorses]

14. yes. i have to be very careful what i listen to and when i listen to

it. it breaks my heart to the point that i become comatose. used to be worse but, still bad to this day

[Blue-Jay]

15. My tastes are a little too diverse to place me in a time-period.

Or favored genre, for that matter.

[Zookeeper]

16. Yes! Most of my earliest memories have music attached to...

them. From the songs on my mom's car radio when I was four, to new music I listened to while working a project a year ago.

I'm not very nostalgic and mostly listen to new music and new bands. Some old Rock holds up OK for me, but some I can't listen to, like the Beatles. I just can't separate it from its time.

[slj0101]

17. Just today, I was listening to "Electric Ladyland" at work,

and it reminded me of the spring semester my Freshman year of college. No joke- I could almost smell the spring air, even though it's February and chilly.

[Kat45]

18. Oh yeah, absolutely!

I was just talking about that with a friend the other night. We were listening to music, and different songs were evoking memories of different times and places in my life. These went back to grammar school, junior high, high school, college, and other periods of life in adulthood.

[reyd reid reed]

19. Definitely.

Certain music makes me think of people and places and feelings...and it can get kind of touchy.

[driver8]

20. The Moody Blues take me back to my freshman year in college...

and remind me that my roommate only listened to the Moody Blues!! I cannot stand them to this day!

Joan Armatrading always takes me back to my senior year in college and hanging out at my girlfriend's apartment. We always ended up there after the bars had closed and Joan was always in the cassette deck.

"If You Leave Me Now" was my eighth grade girlfriend's favorite song...she broke my heart! I hate that f*cking song.

[Wapsie B]

21. Lots of Rock & Roll from the 70's

or Pop music from that time or earlier can definitely put me back in the day. Some good feelings, some not so good.
I remember going to a restaurant and hearing nothing but pop music from the early 60's played . Of course this was near a big retirement community in Fla.

[Rhythm]

22. "The Logical Song" drags me back to my best friend's den...

The summer i turned 13, i spent almost every day with the same group of kids: my best friend, her two sisters (both in high school), and her older sis's boyfriend. Some others came and went, but that was the core group of us... Most days consisted of the same routine: walking the railroad tracks to the store for pop and snacks, hiking around the pre-fab neighborhood that was being built across the highway, and hanging out in the den of my best friend's house, watching Battle of the Planets on their projection big-screen, and singing along with whatever came on the radio.

I didn't even really like Supertramp back then, but if i hear that one now, i turn it up a little.

[Mendocino]

23. Heart-Crazy On You

Summer of 76. I was working at Cedar point, the Ohio Amusemnet Park. Great Times!

[hellbound-liberal]

24. MOST music takes me back to another time in my life when I hear it.

It usually takes me back to the first time I heard the song or the people I was with when I heard it. I think my oldest musical memory is Downtown by Petula Clark which takes me back to childhood and riding the bus downtown with my mother. One of my strongest and most pleasant memories is Free Fallin' by Tom Petty which takes me back to the summer that I spent with my Dad in Reseda. For me, the sense of hearing is second only to the sense of smell in evoking strong memories of my past. Thanks for this post flvegan, it was a nice trip down memory lane!

[chknltl]

25. My brown eyed Girl always reminds me of my ex

She had green eyes though