Of Tom Petty, Thomas Dolby, and Tommy Shaw

What is it about certain events that so lodge in your mind that you can instantly recall everything about that moment for decades later? Not the traumatic events, like losing a loved one, or the spectacular events, like watching your college team win a national championship. I mean otherwise completely forgettable events that your brain decides to indelibly etch on your cortex?

I've always been a music nut, so I've heard approximately eleventy-brazilian songs in my life. (Estimate obtained by painstaking guesswork; margin of error = plus/minus .5 eleventy.) Why, back in the eighties, I must have logged 100,000 listens of Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero" alone, thanks to the people who WOULD. NOT. QUIT. PLAYING. IT. in the Enterprise State Junior College student center juke box. To this day, when I heard that opening guitar riff, my left eye starts twitching.

And the vast majority of those song listenings has been as forgotten as "Pink Lady and Jeff" or Coy and Vance, the scab Dukes on "Dukes of Hazzard." But last night, while working on scanning up some retro badness for TOB (The Other Blog), my computer served up the MP3 of Tom Petty's "Refugee" in my wireless headphones. Instantly, I was reminded of the Thursday night I stayed home from band practice (whether it was during Mr. Pinyan's or Mr. Bolich's reign as band director at Samson High School, I can't rightly recall). No excuses, just flat-out played band hooky, which was odd, considering how much I loved band, but sometimes, you've just got to be a rebel, I reckon. I watched "Buck Rogers" on NBC--oh, what Erin Gray did to my flaming adolescent hormones, then went outside to...I don't know, really. It's not like there was a lot to do on the family farm in Hacoda, Alabama, on a Thursday night, or any other time, for that matter.

But for some reason, I ended up outside, rocking the $20 speakers and FM converter in my '74 LTD to Petty's "Refugee." And that's an event that my brain decided needed to be filed between "tying your shoelaces" and "not biting your tongue when you eat." I suspect that when I'm old and gray (yesterday, in other words), I'll still be able to recall that night.

The PC jukebox also served up "Blue Collar Man," by Styx. (That's where the Tommy Shaw part of the post title comes in, in case you didn't know. The news that Styx is playing Birmingham's City Stages music festival, without a single original member, is particularly disgusting for me, a longtime Styxphile.) Even though "Pieces of Eight," the LP that contained "Blue Collar Man," wasn't that great an album, I vividly remember buying the LP in the record shop (my son, in a few years: "What's a 'record shop,' Daddy?") located in the underground section of Northside Mall in Dothan, then staring at that album for what seemed like hours while my mother shopped. And the woman on the album was middle-aged, so it's not like I was ogling Erin Gray.

Also, if I never again hear "Renegade," from that album, I'll die a happier man.

Finally, I'll never hear Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" without thinking of the time I helped (kinda; Robin was a technical genius on such matters, so I pretty much just stood around) my friend Robin Powell install some new, supremely bad Bose speakers in his classic Camaro, then shook the south Alabama ground with "Science," from the cassette "The Golden Age of Wireless." I recently linked up with Robin on Facebook after too many years of non-contact, and he tells me that he remembers that day, too. He also says that his daughters looked at him like he was growing an antler out of his forehead when he told them what a cool song that was. Is. Cool song that is, dangit.

Jacob's only 10 months old, so I doubt he's formed any kind of musical memories like that, but I'm sure they'll come. You can already tell that he likes some Dr. Seuss books better than others, however. "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" is good, but "Green Eggs and Ham" and "Hop On Pop" really tickle his innards. "Ham" is even better when Daddy gets to emote to the heavens while reading it, and also reads certain sections like John Moschitta. (In case you missed it, I coined a new word yesterday: Seussphonia. The inability to speak in anything but rhymes after prolonged periods of reading Dr. Seuss aloud.)

So he's already formed some opinions, and his tastes are being shaped. I just hope when he's my age and reminiscing on his blog, he doesn't post, "I remember the first time I heard 'Poker Face' and 'Right Round.'"

Forgot to add this: Here's "Refugee," in memory of that long-ago Thursday night.