Ambushed by unexpected emotion

OK, apposite to another thread this, too.

I was at a disco with Isabel. It was full of pricks - we hated it, really bitchy atmosphere (it was some kind of school reunion thing of hers, none of her friends had turned up). I had nothing to say to anyone and got steadily drunker and refused to dance. She, rightly, got cross at this and at the general atmosphere and sulked.

Finally I agreed that the next time a slow song came on I would dance with her to it. Lo and behold it was Bob Marley, "Redemption Song". As all the lowest representatives of my 'social strata' swayed in their DJs and cummerbunds and tried for a quick grope I was filled with images of BOB'S RIGHTEOUS STRUGGLE and how all that had happened was that he'd died and his LIBERATION MUSIC was being used to soundtrack the fumblings of catty debs in training, and like Mark, my cheeks they did moisten.

Later on as I recall I threw up in Isabel's toilet. Not my finest critical hour.

since then i listen to it occasionally - to remind me why im racing, and what im racing from.

(exhales)

Um, anyhow, I get really tense when the song "Good Morning" by the Beatles comes on. Not because of the fact that the song is awful, but because I went through about 5 years of my life being woken up every single morning, even weekends, by my mom putting on the Sgt. Pepper's vinyl to "Good Morning" and just playing the rooster crow and "GOOD MORNING! GOOD MORNING!" over and over and over again until I'd get up to entertain her. Because she thought it was funny. So when that song comes on, I get really, really tense. It happened tonight, I couldn't even finish my dinner because of it. It's just a learned response, I guess.

Oh, and I've totally flipped out at Jem before. It's really weird but I used to think about it all the time. It'd really upset me, Jem's boyfriend (Rio?), he'd go out with Jerica AND Jem, but he didn't know Jerica and Jem were the same person so in his mind he was dating two chicks, but since they were the same girl she knew he was cheating and didn't that bother her? What's going on here? I'd get really upset to the point where my mom had to take away my Jem dolls because I kept defacing the boyfriend doll. I'm honestly not making this up. I can't deal with Jem because of this.

Most recent occassion was hearing that Brian Adams trance track extremely loud in a clothes shop down Oxford Circus. Seeing the video on a mega-screen above a melee of girls fighting over the reduced racks, it was like a vision of the future, lucky I was in a good mood then.

Mind you, I cried at The Fly so I am a pretty unreliable one on that count.

Record wise "Grudge Fuck" by the Scud Mountain Boys (previous mentioned) always brings a tear to my eyes, which as I have said before I found rather unlikely due to it being a song called Grudge Fuck.

Music: I'd listened to The Cure's "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" quite a few times and enjoyed the ripping guitar throughout, but one time the lyrics just caught me. I was fascinated throughout, like a trainwreck, but when Smith got to "...just as I'm breaking free/she hangs herself in front of me/drops her dress like a flag to the floor/and hands in the sky surrenders it all..." I just lost it. Felt a chill run up my back and had to sit down.

Visual: Sometimes it's the stupidest things that set me off. Once I welled up with tears at a Star Trek:TNG episode, for pete's sake. Most notable, though, was the episode of the Simpsons where Homer leaves his job at the power plant and has to come crawling back to Burns afterward. Burns installs a sign in his workstation that reads "DON'T FORGET: YOU'RE HERE FOREVER". Later in the episode someone wonders why there are no photos of Maggie in the photo album, and it pans back to his workstation, where the photos of Maggie are pasted all over that sign, obscuring enough of it so that it now reads "DO IT FOR HER". I wept. How lame.

The reason I haven't posted a specific song is that songs used to be able to make me cry with an alarming frequency -- I don't think I could even begin to remember them all. Nothing lately though, though I am loving a lot more music this year than I have the past couple of years. That's probably more to do with me than with the state of music. However, I do find something really poignant about One More Time though -- something about it to me suggests it is the last party they will ever be having, so they're making the most of the situation. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, though.

as far as the simpsons go, in the episode where homer meets his mother, the end leaves me misty-eyed, when the credits are run and instead of the normal black background, it's an image of the sky filled with stars and of a relatively small homer sitting on the hood of his car just looking up at them.

That's why I feel slightly befuddled when I hear people talking about the new Missy video, etc. -- when does MTV show videos??? Every time I turn it on it is some "making of such and such video" or one of those ridiculous "real world/road rules challenges", so I have pretty much given up on mtv. Maybe if I had m2 it would be a different story.

It isn't lame either, obviously.

there's this part at the end of a mystery science theater tape i have where joel and the robots sing some intentially- sentimental 20s vaudeville-type song about taking off the greasepaint and then the no- lyrics credits version of the theme plays and the part where it says 'keep circulating the tapes' and they thank the teachers of america just gets me every time. there's really a melancholy mood around that whole episode actually (it's 'pod people', for those familiar with the show. probably the best thing they ever did).

is transcending your own irony the ultimate goal of humanity today? re: that episode and this thread.

Good taste in shows you have there. ;-)

Stop me before I quote everything. Love that show. And the thing is, that instrumental end music is beautifully emotional as you say, the more so because if it was presented as a straightforward piece on a serious show, it wouldn't work as well. Context is important.

There was a very clever, heartstrings-yanking use of "Angels" on the recent end-of-series epsiode of "Casualty" about two weeks ago (more trash Robin). I won't bore you with the details but anyone who saw it will know what I mean.

('a-ok' handsign)

'it STINKS!'

I find it impossible to imagine *any* use of "Angels" being clever or yanking the heartstrings. God how I hate that song.

And that's what this thread is about: except your story, Robin, was about being pushed from anger to more anger — I couldn't work out where the SURPRISE came in.

So I suppose I've got to think of something more appropriate. In that case, quite recently: after a moment of acute, profound public humiliation, hearing Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" entering at number one. Suddenly its defiant plea of innocence became wholly personal and, essentially, what I wanted to believe was true, but I knew wasn't.

Scritti Politti's "Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)" has done that to me after a couple of recent minor depressions, as well.

2. Stevie T's story is so sad!

3. October 1991, looking out a window at night on the grass running down to the lake, and the Yanks romping outside (always seemed funnt when 'Nightswimming' came out a year later). Eurythmics' 'Shame' plays, and its tinkling seems like the sound of the passing of our years; as, come to think of it, did the lonesome keening fade-out of the Psychedelic Furs' 'Love My Way' on the east coast of Ireland 2 months earlier.

The spooky climax to Benny Hill's "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)" - "Ernie was only 52*/He didn't wanna die" [...] "was that the trees-a-rustlin'? Or the hinges of the gate?/Or Ernie's ghostly gold-tops a-rattlin' in their crate?" - always jerked chilly tears from me as a toddler (it's the angel's chorus, the strings and the way Benny phrases 'of the gate'). Utterly astounded and not a little embarrassed to find myself choked seeing the video again on TOTP2 recently.

(Nick - do we have 52 yet?)

Also, driving with a friend recently and both of us singing along to "I Promise" and me feeling sad that we weren't dating.

i have zero expertise in child psychology or moral psychology

me, either. i speak only from my own experiences and as the father of a 12 -- soon to be 13 -- year old daughter, who i worry about all the time, even if she seems so much more emotionally together than i did at her age.

(as i sometimes say, my invisible child psychology degree hangs framed on the wall, next to my invisible engineering degree.)

when I analyze it, I think part of my emotion is the feeling of wanting to let go of all that resentment

my ford KA -- in the family since 1999, mainly used by a friend the last 2xyrs -- just went off to be cubed

i am not a wreck but i am sad: in 2007 i travelled the vertical length of france and back in that trusty little thing w/o mishap (lol except for backing into someone and scrunching up their driver's door in the languedoc hamlet of ASPIRAN)

when the saxes come in on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oanAeie_Tag

In about 2006 I saw Brian Wilson and the Wondermints doing the rejigged Smile in Sydney. It was all beautifully performed and Brian himself was kind of a curio on stage, present but not quite, as the elaborate music unfolded around him. Then they started "Surf's Up" and it suddenly hit me that this man's life had been a shattered wreck from the time he wrote this song until now, and here he was performing it in all its glory as an aged, frail man, it just hit me like a hammer and I bawled in my seat.

So there I am, cleaning my kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, decided to have a little nostalgia trip by putting on Parklife. Singing along to 'To The End' I hear my voice crack and before I know it I'm standing in the middle of the room weeping.. Sometimes you think you're over someone..

Surfs Up is such a masterpiece, so much feeling

Meadow Soprano graduating high school. She reminds me of my daughter.

Bawled.

A couple of months ago I found a nice little animation that Queen had made for when they reissued News Of The World, for the song "All Dead, All Dead", I never realised it was about Brian May's long-gone childhood pet cat, because I'm colossally soft and the little cat in the animation is very sweet, I just broke into bits out of nowhere.

https://bsmrocks.bandcamp.com/album/i-spent-the-winter-writing-songs-about-getting-better

in 'white sheep':

I hate myself for feeling this way
'Cause if my dad showed me anything, it's that anyone can change
He went from always angry, smoking a pack a day
To calling me up to say he’s proud of the life that I made

i'm havin a fuckin cat's in the cradle moment over here or something

When I first heard the choir thunder in on the chorus towards the end of Selena Gomez's otherwise ordinary 'Lose You To Love Me' I had a serious moment. Although the real lip wobbler for me last year was Shura's 'Tommy'.

That bit in Lumpy Gravy about 9 mins in with Motorhead Sherwood talking about what jobs he had, there's all these background voices come in, then the sound of doors slamming for no reason and the doors make me really, really anxious.

Alameda, Elliott Smith, 7/31/1997 @ the Knitting Factory. but right now. the bootleg. It's a great show

I knew there was eventually going to be a song that would tip me over the edge. Honestly, never in a million years did I think that song would be 'November Rain'.

The third guitar solo represents the winter epidemic long after the peak.

In 2001 my girlfriend and I took a road trip from our home near Houston to San Jose to scout out places to live in anticipation of an impending move for grad school. This was going to be the first time that I had left my family and our close circle of friends and there had been endless going away parties and shit. I was excited and handling things pretty well, although in the back of my mind things were sort of jittery. Towards the end of the time in San Jose we went to see AI, the Spielberg/Kubrick movie. Liked it well enough but I felt sort of odd afterwards. When we walked out of the theater and got into our vehicle I broke down hard and couldn't talk well enough to explain what was happening. Gasping sobbing ugly crying. I was a total wreck for about an hour. I guess the little boy/robot being separated from his family is what triggered the episode, but it wasn't that I found the movie terribly sad or even compelling. It just happened to be the key that unlocked all the junk in my head.

We had somewhere we had to be in San Francisco and my lady had to drive because I was incapable. I remember laying on the bench seat in the truck with my head on her lap just like I did with my mom when I was little.

I can't really remember if I liked the movie that much and I periodically think about revisiting it but I turn chicken every time.

Bowie at the end of Jojo Rabbit broke me.

I’ve knowingly only cried 3 times to a piece of music. But the three culprits make me somewhat ashamed so I’ll never tell.

it can't be that bad. one of my most memorable time of crying was at the end of terminator 2 (arnold with the thumbs up in the lava), and my dad calling me out on it.

I am so starved for human companionship atm.

had to postpone my trip to visit my best friend in Virginia. she's on the spectrum, also struggles with depression, and is very misunderstood by people, because she's really fighting herself in her own head all the time and beats herself up for it.

some of my fav memories (and least fav memories) were with her in the last year. she worries (like I do) about unexplained medical symptoms and had herself freaked out that she needed to go to the ER for neurological issues, and her boyfriend, god bless him, rushed home from what he was doing and tucked her in and gave her her stuffed animal and I just started crying because I was relieved she has someone as wonderful as him in her life (I've met him, he's good people) and I dote on her like a big brother.

I miss her so much :(. I keep worrying that I missed my last chance to see her, as paranoid as that sounds. but when she talks about wanting to die or having suicidal thoughts, I can't help but think those things. we talk on the phone almost every day and have for about 2+ years.

i'm doing ok through this quarantine but every week I feel more starved for human connection. going to Asia alone for work last year was tough, but I was able to make connections with co-workers, who took me out to show me a good time.

I live with a roommate who I barely know and is never home, and although I thought of the idea of proposing shacking with my other best friend (who I've known 16 years), idk if it's a good idea. i may hint at it anyway, but I don't like inviting myself to things, even though this guy would give me the shirt off his back.

i've been drinking so I'm a little emo. but got kinda hit by an unexpected wave tonight that's for sure.

Thanks for sharing that. A lot of us are going to need to unburden over the coming weeks.

agree.

One time I was singing Muskrat Love at the karaoke, and I totally got this lump in my throat, choking back a single, tiny sob, just as I hit the lines about where Sam asking if Suzie will be his Mrs, and Suzie saying yes with her kisses. Some girl, all but snuggling with her boyfriend a few bar stools down, audibly says "Aww he kinda choked up there on that part, did you hear it honey?" thus ensuring everyone shared in my humiliation at my karaoke bar that day.

aw

i have had this happen to me today

I was just listening to Tempest again because of the new Dylan song. I always liked the title track fine but never found it particularly meaningful or moving, but today I was hit hard by "The watchman he lay dreaming/ the damage had been done/ he dreamed the Titanic was sinking/ and he tried to tell someone."

listening to late period Pizzicato Five and maybe it’s just the whole “haven’t heard these great great tunes in 10+ years” thing working its magic but... I get such strong feelings from this stuff. Maki Nomiya is such a fabulous vocalist, especially when she really belts it out. This P5 thing.. Something about the mixture of the Bacharach-y (?) chords with her assured delivery, on top of the sometimes cartoonishly bright PARTY DOWN vibes, it’s a really powerful righteous message of fabulousness, like just kicking down the door of self-flagellation and letting yourself be glamorous and awesome in your own personal way in everyday life. It’s all about her singing, though for me, it totally seals the deal. Why the hell I’ve never bothered to check out her solo career is a tragic mystery. I know, “get a blog”.

!!!

Now Playing Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag wheatus

— BBC Radio 3 🎵 #NowPlaying Bot (@BBCR3MusicBot) December 24, 2021

AMBUSHED!

oh yeah!!!

How could I have forgotten about this stone cold classic thread!?!
Reminds me I want to read this recent book---intro'd here on Fresh Air:
In his new book, 'Music is History,' Roots co-founder Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson moves year-by-year through his life, writing about memories and turning points, and the songs he was listening to at the time.Terri Gross plays the hits, incl. "Freddie's Dead"'s vamp: when it first goes up on the last note is just when he burned his leg on the radiator---says he had scars into his teens, and you can hear his intake of breath when it makes that little change---talks about the good associations too---stream or download: pr.org/2021/10/12/1045272890/questlove-on-the-soundtrack-of-his-life
(The interview where he talks about Summer of Soul is also cool, duh)

This one I posted about on the Bootleg Series thread got to me:
This latest issue of xpost enewsletter Flaggin' Down The Double Ees, which always includes downloads of Dylan shows, old and new (free: a couple times a month, paid: more), also tells the story, via various sources, of Dylan half-assing "Dark Eyes," then getting it together w Patti Smith, and then---well, it's a lovely story indeed, I think, even though haven't yet checked the linked musical results https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/dark-eyes

Especially what she says about it---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFXsJ49CIt8 my mother hasn't died yet but this hit me hard because my mother is in the process of dying and this came up coincidentally

Don't do this to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moz6XOAKK5U

XP I'm sorry to hear this Jonathan. Best wishes to you

My sympathies, Jonathan.

Not quite tears, but certainly chills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC3y9llDXuM

https://steidl.de/Books/Gas-Stop-0317385059.html

Gas Stop by David Freund

This is a four-volume set of books featuring photos of gas stations made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I am moved to tears just about every time I look through it.

A couple of years ago my (now 8-year-old) child heard Maroon 5's "Memories" somewhere, and liked it, and asked to play it a lot. I don't like Maroon 5 or this song (though I do like Pachelbel's canon). My child added it to one of his playlists. Some time passed, and when it popped up on his playlist again he said he couldn't listen to it because it reminded him of one of our cats who had died in the interim. So now when I hear this song that I really don't like in the grocery store or wherever, it makes me well up a little.

I found out in my facebook feed that a guy who went to the same law school as me (ten years after me, didn't know him) died of cancer. He was given his diploma early. His girlfriend, a magazine writer, made a wedding for them a few weeks before he died (I'm p sure when she knew he was dying). This story is turning me into a weepy mess. I don't think I've cried at anything for at least months.

https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/ashley-reese-and-rob-stengel-wedding

sorry, she did know he was dying, it says that

delighted to say that the effect documented nearly twenty-three years at start of thread still operates: i remain (mildly) dirtbag-pilled wheatus-ambush-wise 😭😭😭

enough time elapsed to make it unexpected again

Some chat about the Beautiful South on another thread led me to put on "A Little Time". It's a slightly corny AOR duet from the early 90s that I remember from a Now comp I used to have, about a couple going through the five stages of grief over their doomed relationship.

Before the end of the song I admit I was wiping away tears

Cafe Del Mar, Monday night, first ever visit, Louis Armstrong: What A Wonderful World as the sun set, reader I blubbed.

Why does the song Happy Talk always get me? It's not a sad song. Is it the "You've got to gave a dream" sentiment? I dunno, it low key kills me

lol I still only know it from the Dizzee Rascal song, but that one always hit unexpectedly hard.