February 23, 2000

Music fine tunes our memories

By GARRETT LEIVA
Herald editor
       Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years" came on the radio the other day and I instinctively flinched. It is not that Donald Fagan's voice makes me cringe, it just makes me think of flying #2 pencils.
      Music has always had a lasting and profound affect on my temporal lobe. Faces fade, names self-erase, but a song comes on the radio and memories come in crystal clear megahertzs. A signal so strong it lights up my cerebral stereo button.
      That is why Steely Dan makes me flinch - it reminds me of riding the school bus. While sitting on bubble gum and stepping in petrified bananas peels is traumatic in its own right, getting hit in the eye by a far flung pencil sticks with you; even if it was the eraser end.
      There is other music that conjures up the behemoth spirit of bus 75-3: ELO, Supertramp, Steve Miller and all eight and a half minutes of Don McLean's "American Pie" (which only made the bus ride seem longer). It wasn't until my teens that I realized "American Pie," along with Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" offered a crossed-leg disc jockey valuable minutes away from the dials.
      While some classic rock relieves gaseous tension, the Doobie Brothers created it.
      Ten years ago, my friend and I were driving home from a Doobie Brothers concert at Pine Knob. It was late, we were tired, the radio was static, so we started singing. Right around the third chorus of "China Grove," and ten miles from home, the truck sputtered. We fell silent and so did the out-of-gas engine.
      Stupefied, we stared at the fuel gauge, trying to will it back to the quarter mark. Lacking any real powers of concentration, we decided to walk. Fortunately, happenstance had brought the vehicle to rest four miles from my future in-laws' house. Unfortunately, it was two o'clock in the morning and we reeked of second-hand Doobie Brothers concert.
      Looking back, I'm not sure who was happier to see us: the family dog impersonating a rabid Hound of the Baskerville or my would-be father-in-law in his boxer shorts. At least neither of them bit us and the latter did give us a ride home.
      Even to this day if I'm in the car and "Jesus is Just All Right with Me" comes on, I pray the fuel gauge is working.
      While certain music memories are sweet - dancing to Satchmo's bubbly voice on your wedding day - others get on your auditory nerves. Which is why I believe that Muzak is the whole note work of Mephistopheles.
      Now there was a time when hearing the white bread stylings of Muzak made me laugh. Walking down a grocery store aisle listening to an elevator music cover of the Rolling Stone's "Paint it Black" would crack me up.
      Picking up a price stamper changed my tune.
      Several years ago, I spent 18 months stocking shelves in a grocery store. Working the third-shift, my body adjusted to lunch breaks at midnight and going to sleep after sunrise. My mind, however, could never get past the Muzak. Nothing drains your life-force faster than putting up canned corn at 4 a.m. to the Muzak version of the instrumental "Popcorn."
      Music has been called that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty. Sour notes or sweet refrains, music has a way of sticking in your temporal lobe; which is better than either end of a #2 pencil.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 and e-mail at gleiva(at)gtherald.com.