Connected by a Thread

Sometimes something, some tiny piece of a song will remind you of another song, and that song will, in turn, remind you of another song or another artist, who will remind you of a different group or musician all together, and before you know it, you’re following this tiny thread that belongs to you and only you, a thread that says so much about the life you’ve lived, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen and done and felt.

That’s the fun thing about music.

This first song, Paris, Texas, by Tim Hill did just that for me. It reminded me of a song and an artist that I had entirely forgotten about, Bad As They Seem by Hayden.

Listening to Bad As They Seem reminded me of a cross country trip that I took when I was 19. There were four of us, and we all brought our own set of cassettes to play while driving. One of the albums in the car was the Hayden album with this song on it.

Remembering that trip, and the cassettes in particular, because we ended up throwing most of them away when our car broke down in Rapid Falls, Montana, made me think of a week that I later spent in Seattle sitting on sidewalks all day with squatter kids that had names like Tumbleweed, Bug, and Bear. Though unrelated in time and space, those kids and their lifestyles, and so much of the way I felt about life at that time, reminds of song number three, Lua by Bright Eyes; a song that I first heard years after this trip and instantly fell in love with via a strange, nostalgic sense of connection.

Happy Three Tunes Tuesday everyone. Enjoy the music!