Generation Gap?

Yesterday afternoon, the not-so-live DJ on the 60s radio station on Sirius played the song “Dizzy.” And my mind immediately began broadcasting an interior monologue that went something like this: “The singer of “Dizzy” is Tommy Roe, who also had a hit with “Sweet Little Sheila” —“you’ll know her if you see her; blue eyes and a pony tail. Her cheeks are rosy. . .”

That is just the way my mind works, pumping out song titles and lyrics and artists without my consciously trying to prime the pump. And sometimes I don’t even need to hear the song being played to go into my musical mind meld. I’m a kind of human juke box for 60s rock n’ roll or American Songbook standards—everything from John and Paul to George and Ira. I sometimes worry that song lyrics are occupying at least 60-70% of my useable brain space. Which may explain why so many other more important data have slipped away. There is just not enough room available for math formulas or philosophical ideas I learned in high school and in college because Little Anthony and the Imperials is crowding them out. And “let me tell you that it hurts so bad.”

No, I’m not really in pain or even seriously worried. I am just mystified by how my personal history is so tied to the songs that keep running through my mind. For example, Little Anthony’s “Hurts So Bad” was played at the graduation party I attended in June 1966 with my friend Fay, who graduated from high school a year ahead of me. It was a fun party that happened more than 50 years ago, but just hearing that song on the radio today can make that night come back to me so vividly. No other memory trigger is as strong as a song is for me.

And I thought I was unique in my tying personal history to song lyrics until my 36-year-old daughter Amanda and I went for a ride together a few weeks ago, and I turned to the Sirius 90s station for her. It’s the station I sometimes find the radio tuned to after she has borrowed my car. As we listened, she started singing along, clearly remembering songs that were not part of MY personal soundtrack. Then she said, “I know almost every one of the songs they play on this station, and I can remember just where I was when I heard most of them.”

So I’m not the only one, I thought. Horrors! I had passed this malady on to her. There is no generation gap here! Is she doomed to a life where Weezer and Savage Garden songs crowd out Excel spreadsheet formulas and important teachings of Deepak Chopra?  

I might have continued to worry about Amanda’s fate, but then Sarah McLachlan’s song “Angel” began to play on then radio, and we both said in unison, “That’s the song from the ASPCA commercial with the dogs with sad eyes.”

And together with Sarah we sang:

You're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here.

It was a bonding moment and one worth keeping stored in both of our overcrowded memory banks.