We all have some songs that, as soon as we hear them, they kick us back to a certain time/place. Through some connection, we come to associate the song with an event. Here are a few of mine. 

Only the Lonely– The Motels 
When I was probably 19, my best friend Gerard and I headed up to SF for a weekend vacation. While I was there, or maybe on the way, I heard The Motels’ Only the Lonely.  

The Motels was not what you’d call a “long-lasting act”. They were here and gone out of the public eye within a few years. It’s likely, unless you were alive in the early 80’s, you’d probably never heard of them. But they had a few hits: Suddenly Last Summer and Only the Lonely around that time and the second one was the song that has lodged in my memory, forever connected with that trip. I used to think of the trip every time I heard the song but to be honest, I never hear the song anymore so I’m not reminded very often. But I do still remember it and the specific trip it’s associated with.  

That was the first trip I took apart from my family, so it was somewhat special in itself. Neither my friend or I had any real money to work with, so we stayed in a cheap motel up in SF, ate sparingly at cheap places and just enjoyed the sense of freedom. I got kind of pissed at him on the drive home until he said something that made me laugh, and then all was forgotten. I lost track of Gerard, some years later well into adulthood, when he moved up to San Jose for work. We got together sometime in the early 2000’s, but I lost track of him after that. He’s not the type to have a computer, or be on social media, so I was unable to find him. Even he is now on facebook, I’m not sure it would really be very fruitful to find him again. Too much water under the bridge has passed and lives have moved on.  

But anyway, the song has stuck with me as being tied to that specific trip.