Friday Night it was late…

Music can transcend time and place. It can make us feel more than we ever thought we could. It can make us laugh, make us cry, and every host of emotion in between. For me there are some songs that speak to me about a time and place even though I never heard the song while having the time/place experience. It’s just that sometimes the words are so evocative of something I’ve lived that the song takes me there. Today’s first track meets those criteria.

I’m talkin’ about a lifetime plan…

Years ago, long before Matt and I were an official couple we used to get together randomly for weekends in either New York or in Boston. I like to tell people we were pseudo dating for the three years before we decided to make the leap into a defined relationship. Before that we were just “friends” but our nomadic personalities were so perfectly matched there was no chance we weren’t going to be together…eventually.

Hurry don’t be late…

I was a traveler back then too. These were the days before 9/11 when I could pack up a tiny overnight bag and fly down to North Carolina for a weekend leaving only thirty minutes before a flight to get through security and get on the plane. If I left work at lunchtime on a Friday I’d be in Raleigh by dinnertime, have a whole weekend to chill, and be home before the clock struck ten on Sunday night.

I can hardly wait…

When I went to see Matt in New York it was the same story with my drop-of-a-hat travel enthusiasm except most of the time I jumped on Amtrak to get there since it was cheaper and easier than flying.

A couple times I took the train all the way to New York and Matt met me somewhere either on Long Island or otherwise but the majority of the time we met somewhere in the middle. And that somewhere was New London, Connecticut. About halfway (give or take) for both of us to travel it was the perfect spot to meet up. Not to mention it was always far less crowded and insane than the New York train stops.

The only thing with New London is that it is a popular launching point for other places that travelers can get to via ferry, train, or car so the town is full of people in transition.

Once I was headed out to Fisher’s Island to visit the vacation home of my sister’s then serious boyfriend and I took the train into New London to connect with the Fisher’s ferry. Matt took another ferry out to New London from The City to meet me for dinner before I hopped on my ferry to Fisher’s. I tried desperately to convince him to call in sick the next day and come over with me but he said he couldn’t. Instead we just got some food and hung out for a while.

I said to myself ‘when we’re old’…

The town didn’t have too many options back then for places to eat but we both loved Thai food so we ambled on into Bangkok City, the restaurant choice on State Street. It wasn’t anything too fancy – dated carpet and furniture with lots of kitschy “western friendly” décor – but we were hungry and there were hours before either of our boats departed. I got the Tom Ka Kai and Matt got a beef satay for our appetizers. The food was delicious otherwise I never would have remembered what either of us had because we didn’t stop yapping each other’s ear off all afternoon.

Who knows what we talked about. It didn’t matter. We were spending some time together, in each other’s space and smile. We were figuring out that we were falling in love.

We’ll go dancin’ in the dark, walkin’ through the park…

After our meal we decided to walk off some calories and I wanted to smoke a little weed before getting on the ferry. So we headed up the block to the corner of Union where there was a small park with a couple of benches. After the short walk there we plunked down on the park bench and continued to talk like no words would ever be enough.

After a short while and a couple hits from my pipe, the Fisher’s ferry was in dock and ready for passengers. But we weren’t done talking. We weren’t done spending time together even though the schedule was telling us we had to be. There was family waiting for me on the other side and I was very likely in roaming mode on my cell phone back then so there was no way to call and cancel. Matt and I hugged our goodbyes and both took the correct ferry to our individual destinations.

But we weren’t done. Not by a long shot.

Not too long after that we officially got together, engaged, and married. For the first handful of years after we got married we made a special point to go back to New London, sans train and sans pot, every year on our anniversary to have a fantastic Thai meal at our favorite little spot. It was still the perfect place for conversation…

And reminiscing…

May’s Month of Music

Reminiscing – Little River Band (iTunes first track)

(Re) Run Back in Time

As soon as today’s song started playing I knew this post was going to be a re-run. The album Ten by Pearl Jam came out in the summer of 1991, just after I graduated high school and long before I started college. Though if I’d gone away to college that fall like most of my friends had I’m sure I would have taken a shine to the album a lot sooner. I was still shedding myself of my pop princess roots and hadn’t yet jumped into the grunge pool.

Sometime over the following eighteen months I started listening to the album and in June of 1993 when I moved in with Keith on Williams Street it became a regular album in our (widely varied musical taste) rotation.

There are very few songs on Ten that don’t remind me of this time in my life at my place on Williams Street – the poo brown wall-to-wall carpet, the tub that always backed up, the cool little niche where Keith had his desk, our hand-me-down living room furniture, the party where Michelle sang and that Keith tape recorded the entire night (which I still have somewhere, believe it!), those flowered curtains in the kitchen. But I’ve already written a pretty great post about those days.

Just click on over to Williams Street for the full story.

May’s Month of Music

Jeremy – Pearl Jam (Pandora first track)

Kids Wanna Rock

There are a few moments in my life I can look back on and just smile at the luck, timing, and synchronicity of it all. Winning tickets from my favorite radio station to see Bryan Adams in 1987 is way at the top of the list.

I’ve referenced this story before but I knew I wrote a longer piece about this event so I had a look through all my old posts. I admit, I was going to phone in a re-run for today’s post. But I couldn’t find the story anywhere. Which was weird because I knew I wrote it. I spent lots of time searching tags but to no avail. Finally I thought, maybe it’s not on the blog but somewhere else? But where?

Have you ever had that happen? You know you wrote something but when you go looking for it the thing just doesn’t seem to exist anywhere other than your head? So I did a search through my files and turns out I wasn’t crazy. I had written about it before. In a paper for school. My upper level English class got to read about my fun win before you guys, sorry. So because I wrote an A+ version the first time I’m just going to run the story in its entirety here. Please note it’s kind of long (1500-ish words). Also please note I’m including a lot of school related stuff to the original post date.

Enjoy!

Thinking About Our Younger Years

By Jennifer Shon

ENG: 325 Intermediate Composition

Week 2 final paper

Ashford University

August 29, 2011

“In 1987 I was fourteen years old and like many teenage girls I had a burning love affair with pop music.  That year, just before I entered high school, my mom had managed to save enough to purchase her first home.  My parents had gotten divorced seven years prior and my sister and I lived very frugally with our mom.  Without much extra to go around, my sister and I turned to music as our most frequent source of entertainment.  There were only a few popular radio stations in Boston at the time and one of them was the seemingly everlasting Kiss 108. 

When I was a teenager Kiss would play all the top 40 hits and back then those hits were relatively light on hip-hop, heavy on pop and hair bands.  Bryan Adams was a staple of the station; not an hour went by without hearing “Run to You” or “Summer of ‘69”.  I wasn’t alive yet in the year 1969, I also didn’t have a clue what the six-string was that he sang about, but none of that mattered.  He just rocked.  His album Reckless topped the charts in the United States and I’d been a fan since his second album, Cuts like a Knife; in the back of my mind I was always humming “na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.”  I heard that he was coming to play close to Boston, in Worcester, but there was no way I would be buying tickets without a job and my penny-pinching family certainly wouldn’t be taking my sister and I to the show.  Feeling defeat, I would turn the crackling speakers of my stereo way up every time his songs played and visualized dancing in the front row as he belted out his gravelly vocals. 

Most days after school I was either, doing sports, or trying to get out of going home to do homework by hanging out with my friends.  As freshmen none of us were driving yet and, as geeks, none of us hung out with the cool upperclassmen that had wheels.  Nearing the end of the school year, gymnastics was over, and I was feeling particularly lazy one spring afternoon so instead of walking to the center after classes I decided to just go home.  My mom worked until five o’clock and my sister was still in afterschool care so I was bound to have the house all to myself.  I was looking forward to turning up the radio, singing into my curling iron and writing in my journal.

Upon entering the front door I was greeted with the peeling wallpaper that came with the house.  It was an unusually warm day and the house was quite musty.  Humidity hung inside our little 800 square foot ranch house and forced dust to plume upward with each step across our pea soup colored carpet.  Some of that dust had probably been trapped in that carpet since my parents bought it in the early 70’s when they got married.  As I headed for my bedroom I wondered why they didn’t each get half of it in the divorce.

I tossed my school bag onto my bed and it immediately sank into the sea of laundry and blankets that my mom likely picked up off the floor that morning after I had left for school.  I frowned because the pile was so high I could barely see the top of the posters of Sean Astin I had hanging on the wall.  I shoved the blankets and questionably clean acid washed jeans down near the end of my bed and grabbed my dual-cassette boom box as I headed for the kitchen.  The radio was always set to Kiss 108 so I didn’t have to turn the dial; I clicked it to “FM” on my way to the fridge.

I heard Wang Chung begging everyone to have fun and opened the door to the fridge not expecting to find much that wasn’t at least a week old and starting to get fuzzy.  With a sigh I grabbed a box of crackers and started toward the sofa when the DJ’s voice came in at the end of the song “Caller ten wins a pair of tickets to see Bryan Adams at the Centrum.”  The crackers landed on the kitchen table as, in one smooth motion, I flung myself at the phone.  Faster than a tween can send a text message, I dialed the station.  Busy.  Hang up.  Dial again.  Busy.  Hang up.  Dial again.  Ringing!  I briefly considered that maybe they’d gotten their caller and killed the lines but my heart jumped into my throat when I heard “Kiss 108 who’s this?”

With that rapidly beating vital organ half blocking my windpipe, I stammered to utter my own name to the voice on the other end of the line.  I knew that voice well.  It was the voice of the afternoon DJ; the same voice I just heard asking for caller ten.  In one more beat of my heart I realized that I was caller ten.  I managed to swallow my heart back down into my chest as he confirmed my utter disbelief by saying “You’ve just won two tickets to see Bryan Adams!”  My immediate reaction was to yell “SHUT UP!” and the DJ just said “No.”  I thought we both laughed but I’m pretty sure I managed to squeal instead.  After five seconds of banter that felt like an hour to me, he asked “What station gives you the best tickets?”  With an overly excited, resounding reply of “Kiss 108!!” I knew I would hear myself on the radio in mere moments.  He asked me to hold to give my info and reality set in. 

I couldn’t believe it.  I won something.  On the radio.  I had never won anything in my entire life and I won tickets to see my favorite singer.  Tickets I had been dying for.  Tickets I knew we couldn’t afford to buy.  I couldn’t wait for my sister to get home so I could tell her the news!  As I gave my address to the woman who picked up the line my excitement to tell everyone I knew grew bigger than my bangs.  But when I hung up the phone I suddenly panicked – how would I even get to Worcester?  My sister was obviously going with me to the show but it wasn’t like an eleven year old had any better access to a car than I did. 

By the time I got around to calling my dad I was running out of options but he said he’d be more than willing to take us.  My fluorescent orange, size seven Keds left the floor at least five times while I jumped around for joy.  When my sister arrived home the two of us sprang around the house like Tigger as we hugged and screamed in decibels too high for even a dog to hear.  After living with two girls for so long I think it was safe to assume my mom had long before lost all her hearing.  She congratulated me on the win and I could tell she was a little relieved when I told her how we were getting to and from the show.

It was excruciating to wait for the tickets to arrive in the mail and even more excruciating to have to wait almost a month for the show itself, but the day finally arrived and my dad wasn’t a second late picking us up.  After selecting my nicest, oversized, cable knit sweater, ankle zip jeans with the little denim bow on the back, and ghetto-gold hoops I applied a half a can of AquaNet to my wall of hair and we hugged our smiling mom goodbye.  The forty minute ride to Worcester was the only thing separating my sister and me from the stage.  When we got there, my dad, worried we might get lost coming out, forced us to repeat the location of the parking spot at least five times.  After hearing the first note come blasting out of Bryan Adams’ guitar the only thing either of us remembered was song lyrics. 

My dad sat in that parking lot the entire three hours of the show waiting for my sister and me to emerge.  I can only imagine how bored he must have been without so much as a book to keep himself entertained.  But as my sister has reminded me, there were countless times our mom had to endure our hormone induced, megaphone like lungs so it was his turn.  We spent the entire car ride back screaming at each other due to concert induced deafness and teenage excitement.  He hardly seemed to notice and that was good because there was nothing quite as awesome to me at age fourteen than winning those tickets and going to the show.  That night, truly was, Heaven.”

May’s Month of Music

I’ll Always be Right There – Bryan Adams (iTunes first track)