six songs - part 3: the song that takes you back

Q3: What song takes you back to your childhood.

My favorite musical memories from childhood are of times when I was sitting shotgun in my big sister's little red Mazda. No a/c, so she'd roll down the windows and end up getting a tan on her left arm from resting it on the door... and I'd get a lighter tan on my right arm from copying her whenever I was along for the ride. She used to take me to a park by an ice cream shop, where I remember reenacting those "BRAIN FREEEEEEZE!!!" Slurpee commercials and collapsing into giggles. Other times we'd go to the waterfront with a loaf of bread and feed ducks. She's 12 years older than me, and way more upbeat than I am, and I just thought she was sooo cool and fun.

Listening to Huey Lewis and the News is what I remember most of all. I think she had Hard at Play and Sports. If I had to pick one song that takes me back the most, it'd be "Heart and Soul".

Unlike my other favorite Huey Lewis songs, I haven't listened to it much since then, so it really helps jog my memory of what things were like at the time I was listening to it a lot. I doubt I ever saw the video as a kid, but I knew I wanted to grow up and be like the woman in that song. Or like the woman in Bonnie Raitt's "Nobody's Girl". Terrible, brainwashing children like that, haha. We're poisoned before we even begin.

I don't know why Huey Lewis has such a bad rap, though. Sure, the lyrics aren't the deepest... but that shit'll turn your frown upside down.

 goddammit, i don't even.

I remember, too, the songs my father sung around the house. I didn't know who Bob Dylan was, but sometimes my dad would get this far-off look in his eyes and sing:

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets coming out of my ears
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand
You got all the love honey baby
I can stand.

He usually only ever sang the first stanza. And even if he was smiling, I'd know he wasn't happy at all.