Hey, how you feelin’?
Are you still the same, don’t you realize the things we did
We did were all for real, not a dream
I just can’t believe they’ve all faded out 
Of view…

-Jeff Lynne

I have always loved music. With the exception of rap and country (sorry rap and country fans!!) I can deal with any type of music. For  me, it all depends on the mood I’m in. I have bands that I will listen to when I am happy, sad, pissed off, tired or just in a neutral frame of mind. With that said, although I have had this happen before, today I experienced an influx of memories from when I was in high school that was incredibly powerful while listening to Sirius XM radio’s Classic Rewind station.

Classic rewind is described as being a “classic rock radio station…which centers on the Mid 1970’s and 1980’s. The channel is often billed as classic rock from the cassette era, from where the channel’s title is derived.” This is the music that I grew up on, that I listened to during the turbulent, maddening and now fading years of high school. Music that helped me through the good times as well as the bad. Music that kept me occupied as I ran, hiked and explored the cosmos, trying my best to enter the realm of the psychonaut. Music that I still listen to today.

So this morning, as a light rain began falling and I passed from one town to another in a semi comatose state, ELO’s Telephone Line came on the radio. I know, it’s a pretty obscure song, but I have an incredibly vivid memory of standing on my front porch in the fall of ’79, waiting with a couple of friends for my sisters boyfriend to return from the deli with a few six packs of Budweiser. He did come back, but without the cherished Buds. Instead, he arrived with Heinekens!!! For me and my friends, we had won the lottery! It was a glorious night.

This memory has stayed with me over the years. Although I hadn’t thought of it in quite a long time, this morning, for whatever reason, it returned with a vengeance and bombarded my senses in a brilliance that I hadn’t seen before. The changing leaves, the smell of fall…and most of all, the smell of the Heine’s, was all too real. It brought me back to time when I had zero responsibility. As Lester Burnham says in American Beauty, “…I had my whole life ahead of me.”

The trip down memory lane, in this case, was an excellent one.

Anyone out there have a similar experience?