and Words
Gypsy, sittin’ lookin’ pretty
The broken rose with laughin’ eyes
You’re a mystery, always runnin’ wild
Like a child without a home
You’re always searching, searching for a feeling
That it’s easy come and easy go
Oh, I’m sorry but it’s true
You’re bringin’ on the heartache
Takin’ all the best of me
Oh, can’t you see?
You got the best of me
Whoa, can’t you see?
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I was riding the 545 express bus one morning on the way to the office from Seattle. I listened to music on my Zune HD. Browsing through the music, I turned to a playlist of ‘Everything I had liked’ and started it. I continued to listen to music on my pair of Etymotic headphones which drown out most outside noise. I looked quietly out the window while we passed different landmarks in the city. The playlist, currently on shuffle mode, starts to play the next song. In this case, it was Def Leppard’s “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”.
Def Leppard’s “High ‘n’ Dry” was probably the first album that defined my own musical tastes. Back in the 80’s this tune was certainly familiar, and it got some airplay on the radio, but few people really knew who this band was before the release of “Pyromania”.
I vividly remember listening to this album endlessly; I wore out several cassette tapes. Being a child of the 80’s, I also enjoyed watching their videos on MTV. In this case, they were all concert clips, like so many were in the early days. Every video shot from this album had all the band members in the same outfits on the same stage.
It was gritty; it was perfect.
Allow me to take you on a little tangent.
In high school I had aspirations to be a writer; this grew from my having developed a fondness for reading science-fiction and fantasy. There was a part of me who wanted to enrich the lives of others in the same way that Heinlein and Eddings had enriched mine. I was enamored with the idea of sparking such imagination in the mind of the reader. Though upon graduating, I did the practical decision and went into engineering at the University of Miami.
Years later I kept an online journal. I read many other journals and compared to theirs mine was merely in its infancy. Still I wrote. I found it to be therapeutic. Writing allowed me to reflect upon my thoughts, my conversations, and my exchanges with people. It allowed me to scratch that writer’s itch.
This is, in fact, how I met my wife; she performed a simple web search about the Seattle weather and found my page.
Unfortunately, as I wrote about the places that I went and friends with whom I spent time and the conversations that we had, I found that I was growing more uncomfortable writing with this much detail. This information was not strictly mine to share. Could I be so glib about their privacy? Privacy is one of the most frequently debated topics among online journalers. I stopped writing.
As I listened to Def Leppard, it was at this very moment when I realized that I found a means to write again. The birth of an idea. I would not write about recent conversations and events, but distantly removed ones… memories triggered by music. I remember reading somewhere that smell was the sense that triggered the most vivid memories; for me, this happens most frequently with music.
And so this site, Songs from a Memory was born. Though nothing is ever that simple. I had both the means to write and even a name (and thus a registered domain name), but in my mind I debated the mechanics of how it should work, and I sat on my ass for years.
It has been registered for ten years and it was dormant… with a promise of greatness, and only a mental ‘coming soon’ sign mocking me.
Recently a friend who had been reading my posts in Facebook encouraged me to keep a blog to express my ideas. While I know that he’s referring to an entirely different kind of writing, I just happened to have this domain already registered, so off I went to learn about web hosting, WordPress, and keeping a blog.
Don’t worry, the other blog is coming. My aspiration is to continue to write in both, with different voices and different topics. We’ll see how it goes.
Now back to Def Leppard…
On most days, this song would take me back to moments in high school. Today it would be different; today it reminds me of something else. It reminds me of:
Yes, as in the movie. Early on I was fascinated with Def Leppard and read about them in magazines (before the internet was a thing), and distinctly remember that they were from Sheffield (England). ‘Sheffield’ was merely a word. The name of a location, and I had no convenient means to learn what it was like. I simply filed it away in my mind.
“The Full Monty” was set in Sheffield. I recognized the name when the movie started. It is the town with the failed steel factory and the unemployed workers. It fascinated me to finally see images of that town… the origins of Def Leppard. Though to be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to be so… plain. Naturally, I don’t know what it’s like to be in a rock band, though I have a few friends who are musicians.
So as the movie unfolds, I can’t help but to imagine the likes of Joe Elliot and Steve Clark or other band members having their own conversation as they walk down the same streets. The very streets where the idea of “what should unemployed steel workers do to earn money?” Strip of course.
Did any of the band members work in that steel factory? The one where they held the auditions for the members of the troupe? It’s been many years since I’ve watched the film and only have vague recollections of the auditions. I do remember the reactions to the one member (pun absolutely intended) of the group who may not have been able to dance but was otherwise ‘gifted’.
The band members were in their teens when the band first started in 1977. Did they also steal (shoplift) out of the same department store as the movie? Did any of them work in the same department store?
I wondered if they ever occupied the same space. Did the likes of Rick Allen file for unemployment in the same office? The one where they collectively did pelvic thrusts to the tune of Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’?
I’m sure that the answers to my questions are considerably more boring than the narrative in my head, so I’m not entire convinced that I want a definitive response from the members of Def Leppard.
Still wouldn’t you be similarly tickled any of the above were true?