You probably have a song/band/album that is so firmly entrenched in your memory that whenever you hear it you are instantly taken back to a specific time or place whenever you hear it. I've got a few.

Ray Lynch - Deep Breakfast
I have a few songs from this album in my library because they always bring up good memories from my childhood. My parents bought this album on cassette and it was one of the few we took with us to Venezuela, where we lived for four months in late 1985. I can still picture the little boom box we took with us, too. (Hey, I found some pictures of it online!)

Yanni (DON'T LAUGH AT ME)
My uncle gave my dad a Yanni mix tape and he played it at home occasionally, but what really made Yanni stick in my memory was that we brought it on a 1991 road trip from Southern California to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. You can imagine how many times I heard that tape during the drive. The melodic orchestral style really fit the landscape well, though. I do not have any of Yanni's music in my library. Make of that what you will.

Days of the New
Their first studio album, in particular, takes me back to the living room of the house I rented in college, with the dingy off-white couch arranged diagonally across the room from the TV and sound system, all on an equally-but-perhaps-more dingy brown carpet. Ken (kcarlile) and I lived together then, and he had these speakers he'd upgraded with Radio Shack-sourced components attached to some ancient Marantz receiver. We played this album often, and loudly.

EDIT: Last minute addition.

How could I forget Yes - Union
My sister had this tape (which she dubbed off our uncle's CD) in her gray Mazda for many months (along with They Might Be Giant's Flood -- but that album's so ubiquitous it isn't associated with any particular memory). She was a senior when I was a freshman in high school, and she often gave me a ride to school.

So, tell me what's on your instamemory music list.

This 1960's Magnavox portable stereo was my first audio unit. Probably the album I remember the most playing on this was the Beatles, "Magical Mystery Tour".

WOW! Too many to even accurately remember. BUT, the first thing that popped into my head was the first Crosby, Stills, and Nash album. Takes me instantly back to Vietnam. Still love that album.

Jack, do you have a favorite album from the War of 1812?

I'm not sure I have many that I would care to divulge.

We chose the jazz standard Time After Time by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne to be sung at our wedding by Julie's roommate, who was in the Choir of the West. It was a lovely moment, and I treasure that memory.

I spent a lot of time listening to Led Zeppelin III when I was a freshman in college. My (still close) friends across the hall had speakers that were hopelessly too big for a dorm room. It rains a lot in Washington, and we would sit in the grey afternoon light, smelling the leaves and the rain from outside, and revel in the sounds of Jimmy's fingers on the strings. The music wasn't new, but a deepened exploration of it was new and revelatory to us. Regrettably, I have fewer moments of discovery, now.

20-some years ago, a dear friend (my kids' "Uncle Kevin" despite no blood connection) was in a sometimes-working rock band. In this iteration, he sang and played sax, with some other very talented musician/friends. They reinterpreted and rearranged many songs to suit their style, some of which I quite preferred over the originals. I cannot hear Fool for Your Stockings without thinking that it needs a sax solo. And one more guitar solo.

Anything from the first two Tragically Hip albums takes me back to a bouncy, sweating, frantic show at Seattle's tiny Offramp Cafe. It may be my favorite rock and roll memory.

Frick, I'm old. I mean, not like Jack or anything, but still. Thanks a lot, Peter. You'll pay for this.

Amazing album!! I need to put it on my list to re-acquire. Déjà Vu brings back a lot of memories (also happens to be the first album I owned). It inspired my love of music and convinced me to pick up the guitar. Helpless was the most powerful song to me.

I think Deja Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) is generally considered to be the better album and I love that one too. But, Crosby, Stills & Nash was the first one I heard and I have a greater affection for it.

Way back in high school, I went on vacation with my best friend and his family to spend a couple weeks on a houseboat on Lake Powell (yes, where they filmed parts of "Planet of the Apes"). It was summer and warm so us kids slept outside on top of the houseboat which offered a supremely awesome view of the night sky and the "billions and billions of stars" that would occasionally wink out due to bats flying overhead and obscuring bits and pieces.

Every morning, as the sun came up, without fail, my best friend's grandfather would wake us up by blasting Zamfir's "The Lonely Shepherd" over the top deck loudspeakers. We moaned and groaned over such uncool music, but inside, secretly, I dug it and thought it was pretty cool. And very apropos music to watch the sun come up over the lake.

The Cranberries, with their second album, No Need to Argue, were pretty much my musical awakening. Sure, I listened to music before, but not so much for myself, where I would really seek it out. I couldn't get enough.

Cake always makes me think of driving somewhere, since they really can't be topped for singing along to in a vehicle.

My sister listened to a lot of George Michael's Faith at once point, and that was at a point that I was playing a lot of Dragon Warrior for the NES, so I always associate the two.

I didn't listen to The Proclaimers much until I heard their song, "Over and Done With," in Wes Anderson's first movie, Bottle Rocket. It makes me think of going to Crazy Mike's to rent movies, which isn't around anymore, and which I don't do anymore. Video rental stores are on the way to becoming a strange idea. Anyway, I'm sure there are a ton of songs that everyone can think of which are used to great effect in the movies or TV shows they've seen. How about the great use of XTC's "No Language In Our Lungs" in Freaks and Geeks, which is another piece of entertainment that shaped me.

Johnny Horton makes me think of my dad's inability to sing. Great music, so my dad shouldn't be singing along and ruining it. Oh, wow, I guess today is the anniversary of his death.

Sinéad O'Connor makes me think of listening to music on headphones, since she recommends using them to listen to her album, Universal Mother, in its liner notes. I also went to bed listening to I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got quite a few times with my headphones on.

Björk really made me appreciate music videos. She's had such a high quantity of memorable music videos. I remember my nephew, when he was much, much younger, dancing along to her moves in "Big Time Sensuality."

Weezer makes me think of mix tapes. I made mix tapes of a lot of artists, but the cover I made for the one that was all Weezer songs sticks out in my mind, for some reason. What a hassle that technology was compared to how easily music is shared now, but of course I remember it fondly.

Anyway, that's some of mine.

Kiss my grits you whippersnapper.

The GoGo's - We Got The Beat / Our Lips are Sealed
No other song(s) take me to a hot summer day at the beach (in the 80's), than these two. I was in my teens with no worries, a beautiful girlfriend, a great car, and my entire life ahead of me. I smile everytime.

AC/DC - Back in Black
The first album that I bought with my own "earned" money. Prior to this, music was gifted to me either directly, or via gift certificates. Also the first album that turned me on to hard rock, and AC/DC in general. Oh, and it broke 3 years of constant Disco that my parents played through the family "Hi-fi". Not the exact one, but close.

Sultans of Swing always reminds me of sitting in the drafting room attached to the woodshop in High School listening to the little FM radio we had sitting on the counter.

Thanks for that Ray Lynch - Deep Breakfast post.
I played the heck out of it when first released (and still have it on vinyl somewhere).

Good one! Reminds me of Wreck Beach in Vancouver.

Lunatic Fringe - Red Rider, takes me back to an out of town basketball tournament in high school

Crazy Train - Ozzy, we listened to this one in our 'area' in the univerity hall way.

And there are a good dozen or more songs that make me think of my wife throughout our years together.

Oooh, weddings. I have some songs from mine that I remember.

My wife and I danced to Tupelo Honey at our wedding reception. The song is so good it didn't matter we can't dance so well.

Also, earlier that day at the ceremony, my brother played piano while my sister sang Mary Chapin Carpenter's version of Grow Old Along With Me.

Also, as the DJ was preparing to announce our arrival at the reception, I asked him to play The Who's Baba O'Riley. It set the tone for the rest of the night.

I have to say I'm reminded of that day whenever I hear these songs.

Gordon Lightfoot music reminds me of heading up to cottage country in Northern Ontario in my 1980 Gran Prix, older Elton John reminds me of that car too. Bob Seger "Night Moves" reminds me of cruising down Yonge St in my '69 Fastback on Saturday nights and his album "Against the Wind" reminds me of pumping gas at the Texaco after school.

OK, I've loved the idea of this thread but hadn't been able to make time to write.

Steely Dan's Aja is the most memorable...umm...memory. I was a teenager and at my friend's house in NJ. It was the only time I had taken any real amounts of hallucinogenics and as I sat there with a viewpoint of a Fisheye lens from an upper corner of the room and watching colors coming out of the speakers, Aja was on "repeat" on his turntable for hours. Aja is, coincidentally, one of my favorite albums, but I think that's more for it's "vibe" than the fact that the album always brings me back to that experience.

The Cure's Disintegration always brings me back to driving through the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of NH. The grand, long, repeating opening segments of their songs fit the trip perfectly.

The Pretenders' Learning to Crawl was played an awful lot in my Datsun 210. I had some 6X9s mounted in pre-built cabinets and a 50 WPC (likely 10, really) booster amp and I used to crank that all the time....via a cassette I made from the album.

Kiss Alive, Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo and any old Aerosmith album would bring me right back to my old room when I was a teen.

Was that, like, a budget version of the 240z?

More like comparing a Pinto to a Mustang.

The 210 was Datsun's answer to the Corolla

Funny you should mention the pinto...


Compared to the Pinto-Mustang, that datsun is one sexy beast!

Did you put slicks on it Mark?

He put an oil slick in his driveway wid it.

Katrina and the Waves - Walking on Sunshine. Makes me think of waterskiing at sunrise on the Colorado River...

There are so many. I'd either have to keep coming back to this thread as I keep remembering them or just give up now. However, One big turning point for me, in that I instantly learned to love hard rock and "the sound of electric guitars", was when I was only 7 and my Uncle bought me Kiss, "Destroyer" for Christmas. Like most adults, he hated them but he knew all the kids were into the whole makeup, demon & blood thing.

It began with that realy low volume background noise of a guy leaving his kitchen and getting in his car and you could barely hear the car radio. I remembered thinking that the album must be somehow broken and 'of course' I kept turning it up to see if what I was hearing was supposed to be that way. Then the Real guitar kicks in with a simple but low volume - building to VERY loud and very dramatic opening riff. It nearly knocked me off my feet and to this day, if the song comes on unexpectedly on the radio, I get chills and smile.

I had Destroyer, but I don't remember that...

Maybe there were different version but that is definately how "Detroit Rock City" began. I swallowed my pride and bought it as a CD a bunch of years ago. It still starts the same.

I've bought some CDs of music I liked when I was a teen. I may not like it as much as I did, but they're often cheap and it's fun to hear some of this stuff that I haven't heard in .... ahem... 35 years or so!

Jack and Ray will be at your door shortly to drag you off with them toward the light.