Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.
- High Fidelity
There's a little bit of this in every song I hear. In backtracking through playlists and remembering in an instant where I was in my life - both physically and emotionally - when I heard it, when I got it and when I loved it.
Songs that remind me of old loves, friends that moved or passed on and places that existed for a while, but are now forgotten to the world, except for a few of us.
I heard Deer Tick's Ashamed for the first time as I drove my dad's minivan to Door County with my friend Santa controlling the radio. We were taking the day to retrieve his old bunk bed to be given to my sons as I prepared for a divorce they didn't know was coming.
"Wait! What was that lyric?" I shouted at one point, having been drawn in instantly by the opening line: "I am the boy your mother wanted you to meet..."
"I don't know, man," he said quietly. "Most of us don't listen to music like you do."
I've met enough people to know I'm not the only one. Simply, this is my exploration of all those songs that make me stop what I'm doing or the story I'm telling. These are the songs that make me listen and tell new stories and they always begin, "Oh my God... This song..."