Is there a song or band that, when you hear it, sends you right back into a memory or feeling of a particular time?
For me, it's the Unknown Pleasures album, along with a few other Joy Division/New Order tracks that put me right back in second semester of my sophomore year of college. I saw the film Control, and I was in a performance of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in 1989 Berlin, the soundtrack for which included Ceremony. Also a friend put Love Will Tear Us Apart on my birthday mix CD that year.
Tell me about your nostalgia songs, hubski!
Oh man, it'd probably have to be the entire album, Powerslave by Iron Maiden. I listened to that when I was about 12 or 13 for the first time and I got absolutely hooked on it.
There's also a bunch of REALLY OLD Hindi music like stuff from Sholay. I distinctly remember watching that film on VHS when I was really young and it stuck with me for a very long time.
Why? Why do you make me dig this up again? Pretty much a punch in the gut with nostalgia. Lots of memories with that game. I'm pretty sure a good half of my life has been eaten up by it. And what do I have now? Some memories, a couple screenshots, and a bunch of nostalgia.
Candlemass - Demon's Gate is forever fused with The Cresents in Hulme, Manchester - a much misunderstood, but still notoriously lawless community failure so infamous there's a whole web site dedicated to its history. So many crazy memories of that place. Charles Barry Crescent will always be bound tightly to my heart.
Man, I'd love to hear about your experience there sometime. Seems like a trip.
It was a weird, polarising place. Residents felt a strong sense of community - more than any other place I've lived and I've travelled to lots of places, worldwide. People who didn't live there would tell you its a no-go zone, full of violence. By the time I lived there - late 80s - it was an unofficial no-go area for the police who would only venture in when they were forced to. Like when someone had overdosed or the time one of the locals had an argument with his boyfriend and snapped, cutting off his head and hands, putting them in a plastic carrier bag and wandering for hours ending up at a police station in Salford. The people that lived there were mostly drop-outs without jobs subsisting on welfare, but there were still a few who had grown up and lived there. Since it attracted such a diverse crowd, you were just kind of accepted. Like Paul who dropped out of the Royal northern College of Music due to his mental illness who moved in and would busk outside the chip shop playing classical music on his Cello in the evenings. Such a surreal feeling to hear classical Cello music as you walk around one of the most notorious areas in the city. He'd visit from time to time rambling for hours on end, whether you were in the room with him or not. Mostly it became known for the drugs and parties towards the end of the 80s, people would set up makeshift recording studios. One was known as The Kitchen and they used to put on parties which became so popular they ended up knocking the walls down between flats to make more room. It became a big part of the underground dance music boom in Manchester - people from all over would brave Hulme to go there to avoid the more mainstream places like the Hacienda. Then there was Viraj Mendis from Sri Lanka who took sanctuary in the church for 2 years - eventually to be raided by the police to get deported causing a big demonstration where the local ran the police out - literally charging them away down the road, never to return because they just didn't care. The thing that sticks in my mind though is that people would really look out for each other (like Paul I mentioned) or one time when there was a series of rapes in the area and we'd organised patrols - those with big scary dogs would accompany single women and generally just walk around making their presence felt. It was full of really creative people too - the only place where almost anything you could imagine would be possible because the council had abandoned it - once they stopped collecting rent or maintaining the place there was nothing to stop you taking tools to remodel your flat.
That's really amazing. I'm always interested in the types of communities that happen in "lawless" or otherwise unregulated places. It seems to me like when people don't feel like there's someone else in charge or looking out for their well-being (or actively working against them), they tend to rely on each other more and protect each other more. Of course it can also lead to gangs and gang violence. Fascinating anyway!
I don't know anyone who upon hearing this isn't taken back to 2003. It was my first encounter with Linkin Park, a band I had only faintly heard of but I didn't like that type of music, but my friend burnt me a CD to show off his labels (we made it look like a lemon cut in half) and it became my absolute favourite CD I would listen to it all the time.
In 6th grade, I got an mp3 player for my birthday. I didn't know anything about music, so my friend gave me all his Linkin Park CDs. Their first three CDs (that includes the remix one) were the only thing I listened to, and I am pretty sure I still have all of the lyrics memorized.
I have a vivid memory of the first summer in Australia after The School of Rock came out... I was musically awakened! Every time I listen to Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin I am instantly transported to the summer of 2003. I'd just got my own room after sharing with siblings all my life prior, my band was hitting the big time and entering a swath of local Battle of the Bands, and life was good.
Can we not do the nostalgia thing on hubski? It's like shared experience for the stupid and stupidly sentimental. "You remember something?" "Yeah, I remember that too! It's like we're the same age! What are the odds?" They're pretty fucking good on the internet. Find a forum to discuss things from ten years ago.
Ok, but that's not really what this thread is. I'm asking about personal memories that happen to be tied to music. It's not about whether we all remember the summer of 2003. Some people are just sharing the music without anecdotes, which is also fine.
Summer between freshman and sophomore year, I got to be in a low-budget movie filmed at my high school. I was just a background extra in most scenes and occasionally a hand behind the camera, but it was an awesome experience. I was listening to Blink 182's Enema of the State that summer, so the album instantly brings me back to that summer.
That sounds like a great time! Can I ask what the movie was?
It was a teen comedy called "Fastball", about a high schooler's last day of school, so he'd got the prom to go to and a championship baseball game, which he's the pitcher for. The writer/director wrote a great book about it called No Budget Movie.
Hahaha, those chapter titles alone totally sold me. :D
“Scars show us where we have been, they do not dictate where we are going.” ― David Rossi "It is said that history repeats itself, but we are only doomed to relive our past if we fail to learn from it. The past is not a map to where you are going, it's a record of where you have been. Its purpose is not to drag you back through emotional muck, but to serve you best by reminding you of lessons learned so you can avoid them in the future." ― from React or Respond by Kimberly and Tom Goodwin