Latest column: Music

Hello, friends!

Look at this -- yet again, I'm giving you a three-day jump on my column. This one will run 5/23 in the Post-Bulletin (www.postbulletin.com). Shhh...

In other news: My picture totally flopped on my last post. What's up with that? Will work on that tonight... Jen

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Behold the power of the J. Geils Band.

I was pulling into the grocery store parking lot this weekend — quietly resigned to the drudgery ahead of me — when “Centerfold” came on the radio.

Of course, I couldn’t exit the van until the song ended. Instead, I danced in the driver's seat — screaming, “My blood runs cold, My memory has just been sold, Angel is a Centerfold” to the entertainment of the shih tzu in the Ford to my left and to the chagrin of the grandfather in the Chevy to my right.

My countenance reversed, I bounded in Hy-Vee’s automatic doors — head held high, shoulders swinging, thisclose to hugging my fellow shoppers. “What a wonderful life!” I wanted to exclaim. “Look at those fabulous oranges! What sweet asparagus!”

I love how music can change a mood, or even an entire day. I love how it can provide a soundtrack to experiences — whether you use it to augment a slow, Sunday afternoon (Sinatra) or add life to a party (Pink). Even more, I love the nostalgia of music. How a single song can bring back an entire period of your life.

In 10 years, I’ll look back on this summer as my Amy Winehouse phase. I’m obsessed with the bluesy, soulsy Brit, watching her videos on YouTube every night before I start work.

In the summer of ‘91, it was They Might Be Giants. My friend Nenna and I listened to their album, “Flood,” for 11 of the 12 hours it took us to drive to our summer jobs at Wall Drug.

Pink Floyd is my first real kiss. The Cars is dancing in my lace-curtained bedroom in high school. Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” — a fabulous song by all accounts — was totally ruined for me by an ex-boyfriend who tried to convince me that the girl I caught him bringing home from a party was just a friend. (A “friend” wearing his shirt and holding his hand.)

The Isely Brother’s “Shout” is my husband and my’s first dance. India.Arie is my youngest son’s six months of colic. Willie Nelson is family.

My dad would play Willie & Family Live in the basement of our split-level house, he and my mom watching my sisters and I dance around the pool table, singing, “If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time….”

When my parents were out, I’d dig through their vast record collection — the music becoming the soundtrack of my growing-up years. My sisters and I put on elaborate performances to Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. We discoed to Saturday Night Fever. We memorized The Doors.

I wonder how my kids will remember the music of their formative years. Will they, too, think it’s fun to belt out Prince’s “Kiss,” Alabama’s, “High Cotton,” or Beck’s “Where It’s At” like their mother does?

Or will they roll their eyes in embarrassment when they recall how I’d rap to them when they complained about my rules: “I’m a big bad mama and I’m here to say, we’re gonna do things my way!”

I can see them now.

Child (head hung in shame): “And then she’d cup her hands around her mouth and pretend to make microphone-aided sound effects.”

Therapist: “It’s OK, it’s OK. You’re out now. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

Child (staring into distance): “You don’t understand. I’ll never be able to erase the way she crossed her hands under armpits and said, ‘Word’ when she was done.”

Or maybe, instead, they’ll remember me fondly, recalling how I swung them in the circles, singing Paul Simon straight to their hearts: “Oh, my mama loves me, she loves me… She get down on her knees and hug me….”