I am going to be trying out a new posting “series.” I have been casting around for some kind of inspiration to help drive blogging on a regular basis. After listening to “Happiest Days of our Lives” by Wil Wheaton and hearing his descriptions of specific memories centered around music, I was reminded about how certain songs that I listen to have a very specific memory attached to them. Since there are a lot of songs in my music library that are like that, I felt that there was a lot of material ripe for the picking. I will start writing down my “Music Memories” and hopefully this will become a regular feature.

Most of my adult life I have had one particular band or artist that I would classify as my “favorite.” While I have diverse musical tastes and diverse things I want to listen to from day to day and hour to hour, there is usually one band/artist that is the primary source of my musical satisfaction. My favorite band at the time usually results in certain behaviors: going to several concerts, being a musical completist (gathering all album releases from the band, and maybe some rarities/12 inch singles/etc); learning to play some songs on my guitar. By the way my spell checker insists completist isn’t spelled correctly, but I just searched the OED online and there it is, so go to hell Microsoft Word. Also by the way remember 12 inch singles? I don’t know that they necessarily went beyond a collector’s novelty, but I remember there was a very specific period of time that everyone I knew who was into “New Wave” music (before there was such a thing as “Alternative Music”) had at least several 12 inch singles. They were usually just exercises in extended musical interludes that didn’t really add an awful lot to songs. Sometimes they weren’t even worked on by the bands. My favorite 12 inch single that I ever came across was owned by my friend Karen, and was a blue vinyl 12 inch single of Bela Lugosi’s Dead . You can’t really classify “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” as your typical 12 inch single though, as the song on the album was 9:37 long – you needed a 12 inch single just to fit the song on it.

R.E.M. was the first band in my life that qualified as “favorite.” My memory is a little foggy, but I had either received “Life’s Rich Pageant” as a gift or purchased it for myself after “Superman” became a popular song on the ultra-cool radio station I listened to growing up, CFNY. For a couple years in high school they jockeyed with The Smiths and The Dead Kennedys for top position on my favorites list. They got pushed over the top when, after releasing the “Green” album, R.E.M. announced a tour and I purchased my first tickets to an arena concert (I was a little late to the concert game – I think it was due to a bad experience I had trying to buy Frankie Goes to Hollywood tickets in the 10th grade.) In preparation for that experience I decided that I needed to go out and get the rest of the R.E.M. albums that I didn’t own up to that point, one of which was “Fables of the Reconstruction.” I really enjoyed every R.E.M. album for its different characteristics, and I enjoyed “Fable’s” lushness and depth. To me it felt when the band took their writing and recording to a new level, fleshing out their sound and meshing with their producer. The songs did an excellent job of creating a story in my mind – with “Driver 8″ I had this image of a tired worker who felt like his way of life was slipping away from him forever. It seemed melancholy, defiant and celebratory all at the same time.

“Driver 8″ was one of the R.E.M. songs I taught myself to play by ear on the guitar. Back before I had regular internet access, doing this was a pretty tedious trial and error process. It occasionally included an embarrassing realization sometime after I thought I learned the song when I discovered through one way or another that I had been playing the song wrong for several months. The verse and chorus structure were relatively easy to learn and play. The intro and post-chorus riffs were a little hard for a while, and I still struggle with them at points. Overall though I enjoyed playing the song and it joined my regular rotation of songs that I would play for friends. When I would hang out with my friends I would often bring my guitar along, and at some point in the evening bring the guitar out and play for the assembled audience.

My friend Mike rented a house in Woodbridge that was adjacent to railway tracks. It was the first place Mike lived with his future wife. It had supposedly been a crack den for a time, or at least had been abandoned for a period of time before being bought by its owner. Even after it was rented by Mike a lot of paint and work needed to be put into it. Mike really enjoyed hosting people at the house, and a tradition got started where on any given night you could go over to the house and it was almost guaranteed that some people would be there. There would be beer, music and tons of laughs. We were a lot younger then, and today I can’t imagine working a full day at work and then having people over every night until 11 or midnight. Mike created a wonderful environment though – it was warm and inviting and all of us who were trying to find our way after high school could get together to pretend it was a simpler time. Mike has always had a big heart and wanted people around him to be happy, and the nights at his place were a concrete demonstration of that.

The house had a bit of property, surprisingly large for a rental house. One night Mike decided to build a fire out in the backyard near the railway tracks. We sat around drinking beer, laughing, telling stories we’d told a bunch of times before, and eventually I started playing the guitar. In the course of playing I started playing “Driver 8,” and wouldn’t you know it around about the first chorus a freight train started racing by. Everyone thought it was hilarious (even though the likelihood of a train coming by at that time of night was pretty good), and one person even said that I had conjured the train with my song.

When I hear “Driver 8″ I am reminded of that particular night, and of the time when I had a lot less worries than I do now.