I’d say that was the genesis of this post but the truth is that after twelve hours of sleep and a recovery from the medicinal atmosphere of the amphitheater I forgot all about the conversation until last week when I was going through my CD dresser, ( yes, I have such a thing ) and found myself spending a fair amount of time simply looking at album covers and reminiscing. The Forrest Gump soundtrack in particular, with music from the different eras of his life, got me wondering what the soundtrack to my life would sound like. This playlist changed a lot since I first started scratching this one out, and would probably change again if I wrote this next week, but I think is a pretty good representation. These are songs that aren’t necessarily my favorites, in many cases aren’t even good, but each one represents a scene, a chapter in my life.
Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me Mock if you must, but if you are around my age and live near here, you spent your Friday nights at Great Skate and this song was on regular rotation. I could have gone with an actual Michael Jackson song instead of a one-hit wonder rip off, but this song always reminds me of a geeky pre-teen flying around the rink.
Extreme – Hole Hearted I think that I’ve told this story here before, but in the early 90’s one of my friends was looking for some help writing a love note to a girl he was courting. I had recently purchased this album but “More Than Words” hadn’t hit yet and this song was still a ways away from being released as a single. It was about six months later when both he and the lady in question realized that everything he had written, with my assistance, were lyrics to this song. I include it here because all these years later I still find it hilarious.
Ozzy Osbourne – No More Tears It was a few years and probably a few girls later when that same buddy and myself spent a night drinking beer and proclaiming that we were done letting women dictate our actions. Whether that is indicative of youthful folly, the beers in question or just our general stupidity I’m not sure, but that oath turned out to be broken by both of us many times over – despite him engraving his Zippo with this song title as a reminder.
Vince Gill – I Still Believe In You The first time I got engaged I was eighteen years old and after several break ups we were married at twenty two. We were also divorced at twenty two. This is the song that was playing the night I confronted her about her infidelity, an irony that has always stuck with me for some reason. Over twenty years later I hold no ill feelings towards her, we were kids at the time, but still detest this song.
Meredith Brooks – Bitch My twenties coincided with the cover band explosion of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Early in the week we’d check to see what bands were playing at what bars and decide where Thursday through Sunday would be spent. No matter what the band or venue they always sang this one and the women in the place would go nuts.
Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff The heat was unbearable, the toilets unusable, and of course the riots and fires kind of sucked, but Woodstock 99 was still an unbelievably cool experience with three days of nonstop music and 400,000 mostly cool people. This picture was taken on the last night about a half hour before everything went to hell. If you look closely at the stage you can see the bare ass of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Photo by Jeremy Barnes
Lil Jon, Ludacris and Usher – Lovers and Friends I’d yet to fully mature when this song came out but was over thirty and dating my current wife. I’ll never understand what made me think that this was a good song to drunkenly croon to her on her voice mail at one o’clock in the morning but luckily for me she found it amusing. It wasn’t the last time that she had to endure my idiocy but it probably was the first.
Taylor Swift – Fifteen Eventually I did smarten up, at least somewhat. One of Kayla’s presents for Christmas 2011 was tickets for her and I to attend her first concert, a show that I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoyed more than anticipated. I’m also not ashamed to admit that my eyes got a little moist as she and about 10,000 other young girls sang this song at the top of their lungs and I thought about how hard the teenage years that she was only a few years away from can be. I wish that my prescience had proven wrong.
Photo by Jeremy Barnes
Aaron Lewis – Zoe Jane Written for his first daughter, the linked video for this one is Aaron performing this song for his wife. When Alaina was a baby I spent many a long night in a rocking chair singing this song to her and wondering if her crying wasn’t actually from my efforts. I changed the words to “sweet Lana Shay” to make them fit the melody but she never seemed to have any confusion about what her name actually was.
Aaron Lewis – Vicious Circles Nobody that knows me will be surprised to see Aaron Lewis appear twice on this hypothetical album. I’m a lot more open in these pages than I am in the real world, but the story behind this one is going to stay with me for now. My wife and I have seen this performed live twice this year and I was a puddle for both.
“Yet We Still Remain.”
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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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