Musical Memories

Why are the songs that remind us of significant and happy times in our life never fitting, appropriate or grand enough?

For instance, by all rights, a Johann Sebastian Bach processional should remind me of October 25, 2003, the day I got married. After all, that was what the organist was playing in the church that evening. But no. While facing the audience with my new wife, I was humming "Amsterdam" by Guster. This is a fine pop song, just short of a really good pop song. But the song is about a guy who's throwing away all of his girlfriend's stuff after she leaves him, presumably to go smoke hash in Holland's most decadent city. So "Amsterdam" is the song that is forever attached to my wedding memory.

There are a couple of songs that remind me of 1996, a particularly good time in my life. That year I was living in this really cool duplex in Fort Worth, was in love with a woman and was leaving a bad newspaper job behind for a much better one. Yet the two songs that always take me back to this time are Tupac's "California Love" and Spacehog's "In the Meantime."

So wrong.