As I post I'm laying in bed, listening to The Ray Hamilton Orchestra's A New Recording of Theme Songs from James Bond which, anecdotally, is one of the rarest CDs ever because the intertubes seem to know nothing about it.

Anyway, as the arrangement "Nobody Does It Better" plays I'm immediately reminded of junior year of high school -- The Accursed '99, as I remember it -- winter, specifically -- where this was the de facto listening choice for my old Discman when going to Port basketball pep band performances. The warmth of the practice rooms, sitting on the floor listening to music while Andy, Aaron, and Kate sat around and cracked wise -- presumably, my memory is not that solid -- before venturing out for a half of pep banding and returning after halftime, to then call it an eve and go home in the cold, this album is that memory. Just hearing "From Russia With Love" brings me back, although it is odd recollection; I feel angles -- everything is above me from the floor -- and orange mixed with florescent, and the music itself is a nearly-tactile representation of those friends, at that moment, with all those strange 1999 thoughts flowing through my head anew.

Music does this to me often; Bush's Sixteen Stone is, since around The Accursed '99, the anthem of my pre-Port Washington life, although it occasionally comes attached with similar memories from Port, and Project Majestic Mix: A Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu is decidedly one very specifc cold winter during the MSOE years where I played it incessantly. The fact that it was my first real dedicated exposure to video game remixing has kept it a favorite for me all these years.

Countless other examples exist: Ayumi Hamasaki's early library (a couple CDs of which are on accidentally-long-term borrow from Terry [congratulations on the marriage stuff, by the by, if you ever read this]) is invariably tied to the middle of my MSOE years, Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction is pure high school sophomore/junior year angst and Weird Al's Bad Hair Day pure high school sophomore/junior year jolly, Xenogears Light is the album of first moving out and living on my own... so much music, so many textured memories. Going deaf would be hell.