in the middle of the ni-i-ight ...
The other day, I was driving home from (work? parents' house?) somewhere, and I heard a song on the radio that I had not heard in a very long time. In case you're wondering, it was Billy Joel's "River of Dreams" or whatever the heck that thing is called. This was never a particular favorite of mine, but I remember that the summer after it came out, it was EVERYWHERE. I could not escape it. I believe I had it stuck in my head for the entire week my family and I were on vacation. I can't remember exactly where we were that year, but it was on a lake (or system of lakes) that my Dad kept saying was very choppy and rough in the middle, so we pretty much stayed near the edges when we were out on the boat. That was the vacation that my brother and I spent mainly in the "entertainment building" that had a pool table and a jukebox. When I wasn't humming the Billy Joel song, my brother and I put some quarters in the jukebox and jumped around to Kris Kross' "Jump." It was fun.
So I began thinking about these random songs and how they remind me of vacations. I thought about another vacation (one of the many spent on Lost Land Lake near Hayward, Wisconsin), and how I'd had a mix tape with me that year that contained the Gin Blossoms' "Till I Hear it From You" and a song by Blues Traveler. I remember listening to the Gin Blossoms song over and over again while drooling over the cute boys in the teeny-bopper magazines (not that the two necessarily mesh well together). The next Christmas I asked for the Empire Records soundtrack specifically because that song was on it. I was a bit disappointed in myself, though, that I couldn't remember which Blues Traveler song was on that tape. I wonder if I still have it ...
But yeah. The radio? That day it was tuned in straight to my brain while I was driving home from where ever I was, because after the Billy Joel song ended, the next song to come on was ... wanna guess? Yep. Gin Blossoms "Till I Hear it From You." No kidding.
