I’ve never needed much sophisticated equipment to listen to music. The closest I ever had to a stereo was the year in college my roommate and I put our respective clock-radios at opposite ends of our dorm room and tuned them to the same station.
High end audio equipment is a lot pricier these days than it was in the late 1970s, but that hasn’t impacted me. That’s because I can listen to just about any song(s) I’ve heard previously inside my head. The only problem: these inner concerts are rarely planned ones. The tunes I hear begin indiscriminately, often prompted by some random stimulus I see or otherwise sense nearby. With rare exceptions, I cannot control which melody, if any, will be playing at a given moment.
Whenever I hear someone snap their fingers, “The Addams Family” theme invariably commences inside my head. References to Kansas or George Orwell start Dan Hartman singing, “I Can Dream About You,” since it was near the top of the charts during a memorable week I spent in Wichita in 1984. And when someone tells me something in confidence, The Go-Go’s “Our Lips are Sealed” begins playing, although no one hears it but me.
Sometimes my brain plays a random song for no apparent reason, like last week, when I started hearing “I’m Sorry,” one of John Denver’s signature country-pop ballads of the mid-1970’s. Denver died at age 53 when the plane he was flying plunged into Monterey Bay, off California’s central coast.
That brought to mind John F. Kennedy Jr., Thurman Munson, and Amelia Earhart, all of whom died young while flying airplanes. But since my inner playlist doesn’t include any dirges, the thought of all those prematurely dead pilots conjured the uplifting, “Fly,” by the Kelly Parker Band.
Later my thoughts returned to Mr. Denver, which got me thinking of other accomplished individuals who share their last name with a major American city, like Ralph Boston, the 1960 Olympic gold medalist who was the first man to long jump over 27 feet; Reggie Cleveland, who pitched for four major league baseball teams in the 1970s; and Martin St. Louis, the coach of the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadiens. Also in that category: Whitney Houston, Rick Springfield, Tracy Austin, Joaquin Phoenix, Mitch Richmond, Oscar Charleston, and Johnny Knoxville, not to mention fictional characters Oscar Madison, Stella Dallas and Nathan Detroit. I don’t count any famous Lincolns, Washingtons, or Jacksons though, since those last names belonged to famous people before becoming cities, but…..just the thought of them brought on Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.”
It’s great having the ability to hear music I like on my internal stereo without infringing on those around me, and for free. It’s too bad I can’t control which song on my personal Hit Parade is playing at any particular moment, although some things are all but certain. For example, if I’m driving late at night, sooner or later the Commodores’ version of “Night Shift” will start playing in my head. Any time I pass a YMCA the Village People will begin performing, and during loud electrical storms Jay Ferguson’s “Thunder Island” invariably comes back to me. And once the storm concludes my now-calmed inner stereo often transitions to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers co-crooning “Islands in the Stream.”
I still don’t know why “I’m Sorry” came to mind last week, though. Could I have been subconsciously mourning all those people who died in plane crashes? Or maybe I was just remorseful about not knowing why John Denver begins randomly singing inside my head every so often.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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