Every album - even every song - in my collection evokes a memory; music is my life's scrapbook, as it is for most people. Some songs have stronger memories attached than others. The obvious ones are tunes that remind me of emotional moments in my life; 0heartbreak, happiness, milestones. But there are also those albums that, for w
hatever reason, lodged themselves in my brain, hanging onto a memory that seems rather insignificant in retrospect.
Dire Straits is one of those albums. Upon hearing the very first note
Down to the Waterline, I will be immediately transported to:
Winter, 1978. I'm 16 years old. My bedroom is in the front of the house, looking out onto the street. I have a wooden desk - it's a real classroom desk my uncle brought me from some school he was renovating. There are all kinds of names and designs carved into the wood by many a hand. My desk is right in front of the window. I'm a nosy kid. I like to see what's going on outside my door, especially if I've been forced by my parents to stay in my room because of some perceived wrong I have committed. The windows are covered with Venetian blinds. Not the little, bitty mini-blinds of today, but the old, three inch, comes-in-white-only- aluminum blinds that ended up misshapen from me constantly bending the slats to see what's going on in the world of the un-grounded.
I'm studying for a social studies exam by copying all of my class notes onto loose leaf paper. It's the only way I can study and remember the facts - forced repetition. It's dark out, but not quite night. It's 6pm-during-winter dark. Tonight I have my blinds closed because it's snowing and I know that if I start to stare at the falling snow, I will become hypnotized by the way the flakes swirl under the street lights and I really, really need to study for this test.
I can hear them laughing outside. I hear car tires crunching through the fresh, packed snow and then a
skritching, which is the sound that winter boots make when being dragged against snow. My friends were skitching, right outside my window, while I was being held captive by the intricacies of early Greek civilization.
So I turn up the radio to drown out their fun. I'm listening to WNEW FM (102.7), the premiere rock station in the world.
Sultans of Swing comes on. I stare morosely at my social studies textbook while singing along. I take a peek or two out the window, bending the blinds back just a bit so no one can see me spying. I watch the snow fall, I watch my next door neighbor grab hold of the bumper of a car, I watch the neighbor's Christmas lights come on and the whole scene is so winter wonderland, so perfectly choreographed that I, being a 16 year old female, instantly feel a wave of self pity wash over me.
Sultans of Swing plays on and the music itself feels isolating and stark; a perfect match for my sudden bleak mood.
I push the school work aside and drag the Olivetti over and I type out a piece of over-the-top, morbid, morose poetry.
And that is my history with this album; it reminds me of snow, of winter's beauty, of Greek history and awful teenage poetry. I swear that when I hear this song, I can smell the polish on the desk and hear that skritching sound of boots on snow.
Favorite song:
Down to the WaterlineDire Straits wiki
I went to about 50 Dead shows all through high school. I enjoyed the shows, but I didn't immerse myself in them the way my friends did. Yes, I got stoned or dropped acid and grooved with the band for the first few songs. It was all well and good until they broke out into Morning Dew and you knew there was a 700 minute space jam coming. I tried to get into the whole "dance like a crazed banshee in the aisle" thing, but there wasn't enough acid in the world to keep me from falling asleep during those jams.
