Memories in the Corner of My Mind (Part 1)

While driving home from the office late tonight, "The Freshman" by The Verve Pipe was playing on the radio and I started thinking of the past for two reasons.
1) The song speaks of the naivety of youth, consequences and accountability.
2) I strongly associate music with events or periods in my life.

Generally speaking, everyone associates a type or style of music to a time period or era and then ties that a stage of their life. I tend to take that a step further, and perhaps most people do, by associating specific songs to specific events, trials or emotional impacts in my life.

Thankfully, I wasn't alive during the Disco craze but I do have serious regrets about owning Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell 2" album though I have no shame regarding the MC Hammer or Ace of Base albums.

There is either a specific song or specific album tied to the memory of every girl I hopelessly pined for throughout middle school and high school.
There's a theme song to each great adventure or trip with friends.
Better than Ezra's "Good" directly associates to spending three weeks at a gifted and talented summer camp and finally meeting new people and making friends without past stigmas or bullies holding me back.
Duncan Sheik's "In the Absence of Sun" marked the end of high school (the day after the senior "lock in" over night activity actually) and absolutely cuts to the realization that I'd never actually taken the risk and told someone how I felt about her and that the opportunity was now gone.
The band Cake kept me grooving through late night studying and projects as I finished the last semester of college at Boise State.
There's a Bad Religion album for the day I was laid off from my job at URS in 2009.
Rammstein's "Du Hast" marks visiting Bryan Tipton and other friends in Powell, WY during my sophomore year of college but Rammstein's "Mein Herz brennt" represents motorcycle rides between Idaho City and Lowman, ID.
The list goes on...

Its rather amazing how a certain song can bring back such vivid memories or even just the simple associations. Occasionally, the lyrics relate to event or emotion but more often, its just something I happened to be listening to when those memories were made.