Songs with Memories, Part 1

More music-ey posts: I’ve had this sitting around as a draft because I couldn’t be bothered to upload the songs. It seemed apt as I’m very aware of my growing up-ness currently. More on that soon.

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Phantom Planet – California. Summer exam week, 2005, and I was 13 and in year 8. We had to move classrooms that week for some reason, and in any free time we had California was playing the most. That was the summer the card games craze swept our year, and we spent all our free time (we were allowed some between class tests) playing card games on the desk, or gathered around a game of speed – the most popular was a game called Spit. That week was boiling hot, and I remember we got used to simply ignoring the sweaty marks we left on tables and chairs wherever our skin had touched them. It was at that time we discovered TV programs like The O.C. too, and I got hooked on that particular series, although I quit as soon as I could see the Taylor/Ryan thing about to happen. Argh, annoying.

Orson – No Tomorrow, and this was summer exam week of 2006. Similarly to the previous year, this happened to always be playing during any free time we had. I remember our last test on the Friday afternoon finished about 15 minutes before everyone else’s did. The teacher who was supervising us was probably trying to get into our good books since he would turn out to be our class teacher the next year, let us put this song on as loud as possible, and we all got up and jumped up and down, dancing like idiots, because our final lot of middle school class tests were over.

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Nightwish – Ever Dream – End of an Era version. Late 2006 was when I discovered my favourite band, Nightwish, and early 2007 I discovered my best friend, who also liked them. Together we set about finding more music by them, and I researched into the band’s history, to discover all about the famous “last concert” they’d had in 2005. We used to sit in our classroom over lunch, and watch the End of an Era concert in stages online – it’s still there on Google Video. I absolutely fell in love with the song Ever Dream (I can still remember that it’s after the song Planet Hell, which should be at about 9 mins into that video. Kick me if I’m wrong), and it’s still my favourite to this day. That year was a bit of a rubbish time, quite often – I’d just found new friends and then everything seemed to go wrong for them. I remember watching End of an Era one morning, getting past the intro of Ever Dream, and then bursting into tears with Tuomas. LOL. ( I just checked the video and Ever Dream starts at 9:52. Oh yes.)

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Nightwish – Come Cover Me and Dead Boy’s Poem. In the summer of 2007 my family all went to Switzerland for a couple of weeks, which I HATED. Don’t get me wrong, I love the people, the place is very beautiful, and I love any chance for me to speak French, but Mum forces us all out on long walks up mountains which I hate with a vengeance. Apart from being tiring and too hot (and I think of beaches and swimming when I think of a summer holiday), I find walking a long way awfully uncomfortable due to a problem I had with my hips when I was younger. So, armed with my slowly dying Mp3 player, I went on all these long walks (and train journeys – it took us 3 hours by train from the airport to our apartment in the mountains) with only music to comfort me. I’d filled it with music I’d rarely listened to before, most of which was from the Wishmaster and Oceanborn albums. I first really took notice of Come Cover Me on the train, as I watched all these tiny streams winding through the perfectly flat fields, until the mountains suddenly rose up in an emerald wall (I’m quoting my English creative writing coursework here), and I first noticed Dead Boy’s Poem on a torturous walk up a steep mountain. In such circumstances I liked to go on ahead out of sight of my family, and then play air guitar, piano and drums to the songs I’m listening to. I noted Dead Boy’s Poem was a particularly nice one for the drum beats, and Ghost Love Score was one of my favourites for trying to mime the whole orchestra, guitars, piano and drums at the same time. I also remember standing on a hot station with no seats, trying to sit on the shiny round metal handrail, listening to Devil and the Deep Dark Ocean (listen below).

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If you’ve got this far then presumably you’re a Nightwish fan: the video’s rather gay but I laughed.

2008 has way too many songs rolled into one, so I’ll leave that for later.

Tags: exams, memories, Music, Nightwish, school, story, Switzerland