Memory's a funny thing. Especially romantic memory.
The first time I heard this song was two days after the first time I fell in love. Everywhere I went, I sang its earnest chorus "And you are always on my mind" in my head, thinking about the one I was in love with. In the shower staring at a bottle of hair conditioner, I sang, "You are always on my mind". On the subway, trying to ignore a potential fistfight about to break out, I sang, "You are always on my mind". In the supermarket produce section, holding the perfect shape of a lemon in my hand, I sang, "You are always on my mind". I was giddy and happy and the song understood. "Hey!" the song said, "Hey!" Will Oldman sang, "I got a new partner now!"
But jacket weather set in and things grew colder and we broke up and I was miserable and I stored the CD away on a top shelf with other memorabilia of that love who's happy power was really freakin' painful for me to think about now.
Things weren't always so bleak and I got me a new love and some years later, when I listened to the song again, I noticed something about the lyrics I hadn't before. See, in reality, the song isn't joyous at all. Will Oldman is singing about a past love, a love who is always on his mind when all the time he is seeing another girl, a different girl from the one always on his mind. He can't be with that girl. He has a new partner now. What I thought was a song about new joy was a song about nostalgic loss.
I didn't see how it was possible that I had suppressed that true meaning for as long as I had, considering how often I sang the song and how much it meant to me at the time. I knew the lyrics like the back of my hand and when I listen to music I dredge up all I can get from the lyrics like I'm a devout scribe interpreting the bible.
One of the beauties of pop songs is that they take on the flavour of your life at the time you listened to them and carry that flavour on to whenever you listen to the song again, while meanwhile you're morphing and changing and discarding what songs you don't want to remember that you loved and making mixed Cd's for long cartrips of the songs you do you do want to remember. This song is weird in that IT seemed to be the one that was morphing the next time I heard it and not me, like it was a person that had changed over time that I was encountering again.
Besides which, what a fucking lovely song it is.

Of all the releases on spains siesta label i especially hold "Memory La" by Greece`s Constantin Veis closest to me. Constantin veis who along with his brother sang and wrote songs in 80´s group The Fantastic Something. A kind of Simon & Garfunkel for the the indie/twee generation. On Memory La he continues in the simon & garfunkel style but throws in a more singer songwriter vibe along with bits of jimmy and burt. Crystal clear acoustic guitars and a wistful melody dominates "people and places" that removes this listener looking out on the mediterrean sea with a glass of ouzo in your right hand.

This unique song, unique to the whole body of work by the obscure Asylum Party, unique in every sense... If anybody ever wanted to create the sound of pure nostalgia in itself, this is the closest anyone ever got. I wonder what other people feel when listening to this song. I get utterly and hopelessly nostalgic, even though I don't know what for. It's not that I'm particularly old and know many times and eras, it's not that I have to dig particularly deep into my memory to get to that one dark part that's so irrevocably gone it makes one's heart ache and break. I don't know what it reminds me of, if of anything at all. It seems to be simply the soundtrack of some good times, times much better than the one you're stuck in right now, the soundtrack of reverie and the painful awareness that nothing will be the same again. I sometimes think it reminds me of beautiful summers I've known, the heat and sun that burnt my eyes, but then it seems just as fitting for a summer night at an open fire or an autumn window blurred with falling rain. The initial beats sound as if they could lead to anything, they even sound deceptively cheerful until the first melancholic screech of a guitar... "Feeling that hole that is just my soul..." Yeah, that must be it!

Having grown up treasuring the memory of Linda Ronstadt's "Heart Like A Wheel" era version (ah, those AM radio school bus days of childhood), I was nothing short of amazed to find out that not only was it a cover, but a shockingly inferior one at that (picture that - a shoddy Linda Ronstadt cover!). This original from 1963 finds Dionne's little sister (she of the more soulful chops in the family) strutting her stuff in a Lieber/Stoller production that apparently sank without a trace, but my oh my, what a revelation.

What can I say! I always imagined there would be a vocal version of this classic Santo and Johnny instrumental, but I had never located one until I found this recording. This track remained unreleased until the mid-1980s, was recorded in March 1965.

I can't deny that much of the appeal of this song for me lies in the novelty factor of hearing lyrics sung to this classic tune. If you're interested, the lyrics go something like this:

Sleep walk, instead of dreaming I
Sleep walk, cause I lost you and
Now what I am I to do;
Can't believe that we're through
(I don't care how much you tell me)

Sleep talk, cause I miss you I
Sleep talk, while the memory of you lingers like a song;
Darling I was so wrong
(but I'll be right some day)

Night
Fills me my lonelyness;
I see your face
Spinning through my brain

I know
I miss you so
I still love you
And it drives me insane

Sleep walk, every night I just
Sleep walk; and when
You walk inside the door,
I will sleepwalk no more

If you're having trouble imagining how these words would fit to the tune, I think the Supremes did too; this may explain why the track remained unreleased. Don't get me wrong - the overall sound is very cool, and the verses work quite well. But I think the tune is so well-known that they didn't feel they could change a note, and so some of the vocals are a bit laboured.

Still, a great track, which seems to hold up to repeated listens!

�Maxwell�s Silver Hammer� is my least favourite Beatles� song, and my nomination for Paul McCartney�s worst, most annoying composition ever (it�s a jaunty number about a homicidal maniac with a hammer in case you�re suffering from post-trauma memory loss since you last heard it). But anyway, that�s a debate that could just run and run (I�ll leave it to the BBC to compile the public�s top 100). Here�s not the place. But, BUT, this is musicaltaste.com, and there is one moment of utter sublimity, in that misery of a song, a moment of incredible transcendent beauty. That very last chord. The final chord is indescribable wonder (it�s a D I think). Every time I hear that I just feel like the dark clouds of evil have lifted, the ring has been destroyed, and everything is gonna be alright for me and the hobbits. I remember having a really vicious fight with my first wife and �Maxwell�s Silver Hammer� came on the radio and when we heard that final chord we just stopped, looked at one another and we both knew that from then on everything would be alright forever.

This track also comes from "The Very Best Of John Barry" and is the main titles from the soundtrack of the film "Follow Me" starring Mia Farrow, Topol and Michael Jayston and directed by Carol Reed in 1971. The soundtrack has only been offically released in Japan for some reason but a version can be found on the Polydor CD "The Very Best of John Barry" which in itself is a compilation of two John Barry Polydor albums released in the 70s (one of which is the fantastic "The Concert John Barry"). The track is a lush string led theme in a minor key with the Polydor version including a mandolin leading the main melody along. The film I saw many years ago and my memory of it is very vague, but I do remember enjoying it and the music really stuck with me (being directed by Carol Reed who gave us "The Third Man" means it must have had something going for it!). The soundtrack is also available as a 500 limited edition bootleg (Dark Son Records DSRJB71-01A) and includes the vocal version heard at the end credits. Like a lot of Barry's 60s output the soundtrack consists of the main theme repeated in various different styles with the exception of one or two tracks (like "The Knack" and "The Ipcress File").

The innocent punky charm of Teenage Kicks was a distant memory by the time this yearning gentle beatbox ballad was recorded ,a sad summer song to lost love and playground nostalgia with a beguiling maturity not often assciated with The Undertones .

It makes me think of being a kid in my hometown...again, the music itself doesn't really have anything 'great' about it...it's more the message and the feeling that the song gives me than anything specific about the song...I guess it's a memory association thing.

A moment of silence, (and/or eardrum-shredding noise), please folks, for the memory of the late, great Mr. John Balance of Coil who passed earlier this month. This track is one of my favorite �songs� by this organization, the title track from their sardonic exploration of club culture in the early 1990�s. Coil were never an �industrial� band � though they could create tracks of brutal, grinding sound. They were always too musical, too playful, too smart. On this tune � and there is a really catchy tune here � Balance does his best Christopher Lee impression, growling/singing of love as sickness, mixing quotes from William Blake and Roy Orbison, over a backing track that sounds like H. P. Lovercaft does Esquivel. Brilliant stuff from a brilliant man, who will be missed.

And now we're grown up orphans,
That never knew their names,
We don't belong to no one,
That's a shame

Said to be about the singer's past. His parents died when he was young.

Beautiful, uplifting synth-crossed acoustic sound with their typical hint of sinister mood lingering throughout. Streaming trumpet, whirling keyboard and delicate vocals singing of a hit and miss existence. "Take a walk in the park, take a valium pill/Read the letter you got from the memory girl/But it takes more than this to make sense of the day/Yeah it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste." This and "Electronic Renaissance" are my two favorites by this group, and incidentally stand apart in sound from everything else they've created. Do your ears a favor and hear it...

Like children's music with break-beatish percussion, melodious and warm with a haunting ending. Elements of Aphex Twin, Autechre. I like how the ending keeps you wanting more. Each of the band's four members was in their late teens when the record was released.

'The Events Leading up to the Collapse of Detective Dullight' is not a song but a narrative story, and it’s funny as hell. The off-kilter character voices of the already brilliant stream-of-consciousness plot are cartoonish enough for their own Saturday morning series. When the detectives start their investigation nothing makes sense. There’s Jell-O, serenading butterflies, file cabinets, murder, catacombs, and all the seasonings for a hilarious dream. I am usually brought to tears when Detective Slots reads from his revered exercise in free verse titled ‘The Cause of Gauze’. I will supply you with a sample:
"Oh, the cause of gauze. The Manuels have fondled many memories from my lap though each memory has its own lap and swimmers swim laps. Even swimmers have laps however and while in that condition many require a delicate gauze."
If you hear this without purchasing the actual album, 'Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimisical Verse,' then you are being cheated. The dreams of this band are as colorful as the illustrations they provide us in their album sleeves. The 'Where's Waldo' pictorial representations enrich the listening experience by engaging us in a journey deep into the frying-pan brains of these madmen. In fact, this is a perfect introduction into a very strange world of psychedelicado. Think the Beach Boy's 'Smile.' The reaction of my friends after hearing this have been harmoniously the same, 'they have to be on drugs.' The truth is Of Montreal are not on drugs, they are drugs.

this is a unique piece that comes from the depths of iceland, 4 piece dark electronic group Mum have there shining moment with this gem. Smell memory is a 9 minute epic of errie substance, it has grown on me since the day i bought the album - yesterday was dramatic, today is ok - to really absorb this you must be the a mood where you really want to lose yourself and see where you are at the end of it.

this is one of his new/old songs that may be on his new album
if/when that is released. it's a great song that actually dates back to
when he was admitted to a mental hospital/lockup type situation.
i have a live acoustic version of it that is pretty good.