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If you don’t know who Roy Harper is, don’t blame Led Zeppelin. Zep saluted harper with “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper,” the final track on 1970’s “Led Zeppelin III.” Kate Bush, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Faces’ Ronnie Lane, and Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page are among the A-list musicians who have made appearances on Harper’s own albums. Plus, that’s Harper you hear singing “Have a Cigar” on Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” album.

Yet Harper remains scarcely known in the U.S., his work long unavailable here.

Harper has reissued his catalog on his own Science Friction in the U.K., and this year he issued some select titles in the U.S. - 1971’’s “Stormcock,” frequently cited as one of his finest albums, along with 1970’s “Flat Baroque and Beserk,” 1985’s “Whatever Happened to Jugula” and the 20005 compilation “Counter Culture.”

That two-disc anthology might be the best entree to Harer’s work. Harper compiled it himself, and while it doesn’t short change what’s commonly thought of as his best period - “Stormcock,” 1973’s “Lifemask” and 1974’s “Valentine” - it doesn’t dwell on them, either. The set covers a lot of ground, opening with the title track to his debut, 1966’s “Sophisticated Beggar” to closing with the title track of 2000’s “The Green Man.”

Tim Buckley may be the closest U.S. counterpart to Harper - both are classified as folk yet their music is far too idiosyncratic for any such narrow categories. Both can be maddening as well. Just as Buckely’s forays into sex-soaked funk alienated some fans, listeners may find Harper’s politics strident("I Hate the White Man"), while his progressive politics could be regressive regarding women, as some tracks on “Valentine” reveal.

Yet he is worth pursuing, even if he is sometimes off-putting. “The Same Old Rock” and “Me and My Woman,” both from “Stormcock,” are entrancing, creating an alternate reality you’ll be reluctant to leave. “One of These Days in England,” at nearly 20 minutes long, is fascinating and original, both musically and lyrically. Later material such as “Miles Remains,” a tribute written on the 1991 death of Miles Davis, and 1998’s “I Wanna Be in Love” retain the quality, if not the audacious adventurousness, of his earlier work.

Harper’s music is dynamic even at its most hushed, and he’s fiercely individual fro start to finish. “Counter Culture” is essential as a road map to delve into Harper’s work.

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Obviously, there is no justice in the world. If there were, The Kinks would be considered rock royalty the way The Who and Led Zeppelin are, “Waterloo Sunset” would be a staple of oldies radio and the original foursome would reunite for a tour that would set them firmly in Mick Jagger’s tax bracket.

Perhaps these things should be but they are not. There is an upside, though. Had these things come to pass, would a crowd of 837 gotten to see King Kink Ray Davies play songs old and new in the gorgeous and intimate setting of the Tampa Theatre Friday night?

One doubts it.

So fate gave one to the fans. Davies was brilliant, whether accompanied by guitarist Bill Shanley or raving with a full band for the numbers that closed the show. 

Davies was anything but the retiring singer-songwriter, egging on the crowd to clap and sing along to vintage The Kinks numbers. Not that they needed much encouragement, because when you’ve lived with songs such as “Sunny Afternoon” and “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” for most of your life, the tendency is to sing aloud when you hear them.

Davies opened with “I Need You,” the nastiest, most sneering little number ever to pass itself off as a love song. The original version rides in on a gale of feedback, but Davies and Shanley’s acoustic guitar version was equal in force to the electric take.

Sure, the set offered a flood of Kinks’ favorites, from “Tired of Waiting” to “Low Budget” with stops for “Victoria” and “20th Century Man” along the way.

But what was most heartening was the way the new songs slotted in so well. “Here’s one from the new album” usually is the cue for the crowd to hit the lobby. But the songs from 2006’s “Other People’s Lives’ and this year’s “Working Man’s Café” held the audience rapt.

“The Morphine Song” was particularly notable. The song was inspired by Davies’ hospital stay in New Orleans after being shot by a mugger a few years back. The song shows that Davies songwriting abilities still are growing, his powers of observation more acute and his ability to convey the images even sharper.

“I guess you had to be there for that one,” he mused as the song ended. In truth, it felt as though he had taken you there.

“See My Friends” may have been the high point, Davies’ and Shanley’s guitars twining together on the song’s gently psychedelic melody.

Opening act Locksley crowded onto the stage to join Davies and Shanley for the she’s finale, which included rowdy takes of “You Really Got Me,” “Victoria” and “Lola”

The members of Locksley probably are young enough to be Davies’ grandsons, but the quartet showed a grasp of British Invasion pop that belies their youth. Locksley showed its well-crafted songs no mercy, playing them raw, rough and fast. Some of the speed may have been due to excitement – the members were openly thrilled to be on this tour and lead singer Jesse Laz barely could complete a sentence by mid-set. But that hardly mattered because he and his band mates were saying all the needed within the songs, making a huge impression on a crowd that likely didn’t know them from Adam.

In fact, the whole evening was so enjoyable you might not have even noticed that Davies didn’t play “Waterloo Sunset.”

Oh, or “Misfits.”

Or anything from “Village Green Preservation Society.”

Or …

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There ain’t no rock ‘n’ roll no more / Just the music of the young

That line, from Ian Hunter’s “Apathy 83,” struck me as odd the first time I heard it. Isn’t rock ‘n’ roll supposed to be the music of the young?

But when he later replaced the “music of the young” line with “the sickly sound of greed” and “music of the rich” in the 1976 song, it started to make more sense.

And when a co-worker mentioned Sunday’s American Music Awards, it all came together.

The American Music Awards were created by Dick Clark, who made his career bowdlerizing rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘60s with teen idols such as Bobby Rydell and Fabian.

The formula mixed good-looking performers with a watered-down version of the rock ‘n’ roll that had electrified (or scandalized) the nation just a few years before.

Fast-forward to Sunday night. The AMAs featured a bunch of good-looking kids — Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers, Chris Brown — performing pale imitations of country, rock and R&B.

Their versions sound close enough if you don’t pay attention. Go listening for heart, soul, muscle and a backbeat made by a human instead of a machine and you’ll go away disappointed.

In the ‘60s, The Beatles combined teen idol appeal with a love of — and ability to play — real rock ‘n’ roll, plus a knack for expanding the genre beyond its known borders and, well, you know the rest.

In other words, the Fabs knocked the Fabians of the world off their perches and rock ‘n’ roll became the music of the young.

Today, the teen idols rule and no one rebels. “Rock” means product such as Hinder or Nickelback — as lifeless as the AMA pap, only louder and with more dirty words.

The real deal is consigned to “Guitar Hero.” When did rock ‘n’ roll become a video game?

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Few albums have had the initial impact on me as did R.E.M.’s 1983 debut full-length, “Murmur.” By the time the needle had reached the first chorus of “Radio Free Europe,” I knew I was hearing music I had waited for most of my life.

I was a student at The University of Alabama. R.E.M. hailed from another Southern college town, Athens, Ga.

Their music was Southern in a way Southern Rock wasn’t.

R.E.M. didn’t sing about the South - not in an explicit, “The South’s Gonna Do It Again,” way, at least - but you could hear the South in every chime of Pete Buck’s guitar, in the subtle but insistent rhythms of drummer Bill Berry and bassist Mike Mills, and in the murky vocals of Michael Stipe which revealed almost nothing but insinuated so very much.

I have no idea what Michael Stipe is singing, much less singing about, on most of “Murmur,” but I understand it in a way I do very few other albums. And nothing I could ever learn about Stipe’s literal meaning - assuming there are is any - would shake my belief in that understanding.

The music was humid, dense, the way it feels just before a summer storm, or warm and hazy like a spring afternoon when motion seems so unnecessary. It’s got the rhythms, the inflections and the accents of the South embedded in every note.

“Murmur” is the sound - not the soundtrack, but for me the actual sound - of a pre-dawn hike through the woods to the banks of the river. It’s sitting on a friend’s porch watching the rain. It’s walking everywhere because every place worth getting to is within walking distance. It’s drinking draft beer at Egan’s and having my last cigarette bummed as my night ends around 7 a.m.

A deluxe edition of “Murmur” will be released Tuesday. The original album has been remastered and there’s also a bonus disc, a live set from 1983.

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“The Beatles,” the Fab Four’s 1968 release better known as ”The White Album,” was sprawling and stylistically diverse, created under conditions so fractious that drummer Ringo Starr and engineer Geoff Emerick both quit at different points.

Saturday’s tribute to “The White Album,” presented by listener-supported radio station WMNF, 88.5 FM, was far less fractious although perhaps even more diverse.

The sold-out Skipper’s Smokehouse crowd, ranging from pre-schoolers to those old enough to have purchased “The Beatles” the day of its release 40 years ago Saturday, saw the four vinyl sides of the album performed by The Ditchflowers, Rebekah Pulley & the Reluctant Prophets, Four Star Riot and The Vodkanauts.

The Ditchflowers, led by area scene veterans Brian Merrill (Barely Pink) and Ed Woltil (Mad for Electra), were the most overtly Beatles influenced band on the bill. That didn’t stop them from giving the rinky-dink “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” a much needed roughing up, though. The Ditchflowers’ portion soared from the start but hit its peak on with Woltil holding his own, trading scorching lead guitar with Steve “Best Guitarist ‘Round These Parts” Connelly in a minute or two of sheer guitar heaven.

For Side Two, Pulley’s Prophets were augmented by a cellist, keyboardist and, for “Martha My Dear,” a trumpeter. When they stayed close to the originals, Pulley had trouble finding her footing. When she made the songs her own, though, the results were excellent. “Blackbird’ got a soulful, piano-led reading. The rather slight “Don’t Pass Me By” was transformed into something muscular, gritty and funky. Pulley used a looping effect to layer guitar parts for a haunting solo “Julia.”

Four Star Riot attacked Side Three’s leadoff track, “Birthday,” and didn’t let up until the final cut, “Long, Long, Long.” Singer Steve Alex seemed intent on shredding his vocal cords while guitarist Chaz Winzenread excelled in capturing those nasty, distorted guitar lines that powered “Yer Blues” and “Sexy Sadie.” The Riots sounded dazed while finishing off with “Long, Long, Long,” but considering what they did to “Helter Skelter” (or maybe what “Helter Skelter” did to them), it’s understandable.

Surf-lounge hep cats The Vodkanauts successfully redid Side Four’s numbers in their own style, giving “Savoy Truffle” a hard-swinging backbeat and turning “Cry Baby Cry” into a bossa nova. And if any band was meant to play “Honey Pie,” it’s the ‘Nauts.

They ceded the stage to Ray “Rayzilla” Villadonga and Robert Constable for the audio-collage “Revolution 9.” Sadly, the backing track prepared for the number wasn’t always audible – the parts that were sounded phenomenal – but the two soldiered own, leading the crowd with cue cards (“Number!” “Nine!” “Block that kick!” etc.) for a brave experiment that surely would have had John Lennon smiling.

The evening ended with a stage full of performers and most of the crowd singing along to non-album track “Hey Jude.”

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It’s Brendan Canning’s album but it’s Broken Social Scene’s tour.

Of course a large percentage of Broken Social Scene plays on the album, and ihe album, “Something For All of Us,” is credited to Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning.

Welcome to the world of Broken Social Scene, a Canadian group inevitably referred to as a collective, centered around songwriters Canning and Kevin Drew.

The group, which sometimes swells to 15 on stage, has included at one time or another, Feist, Emily Haines, members of Stars and Apostle of Hustle, and seemingly every Canadian musician who isn’t in The Arcade Fire (or Rush).

For “Something For All of Us,” Canning took “the lead in the directorial sense,” he says. “There was a little more pressure on me. Not everyone had to had to spend countless hours in the studio like with a band record. It was mainly me and the guys who produced the record,” Ryan Kondrat and John La Magna.

Canning didn’t have far to travel to work on the album.

“Ryan is my next-door neighbor and John lives a block and a half away,” Canning says. “Ryan’s been saying for a couple of years they had a studio just up the street. They primarily had done work on TV shows there. I went in and helped them a bit with that sort of work in January 2007 and we had a big old time.”

The resulting album is a fine addition to the Broken Social Scene catalog, a collection of carefully ornamented guitar pop, spotlighting Canning’s voice, which bears an eerie resemblance to Elliott Smith on the quieter material.

Broken Social Scene, meanwhile, is working on a Broken Social Scene which will feature God knows how many members peripheral and otherwise. You could think of them as the Wu-Tang Clan of alternative rock, minus the arrest record.

“Yeah, our arrest warrants aren’t too many,” Canning says. “We like to cross the border freely.”

Broken Social Scene with Land of Talk performs at Jannus Landing in St. Petersburg tonight (Nov. 22). Call (727) 896-2276 for ticket information. 

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Some guests go through your medicine cabinet. I go through your CDs.

That’s me, sidling over toward your CD tower, easing next to the entertainment center, stealing glances at the spines of your jewel boxes.

And judging you harshly.

No, I’m not. Yes I am. No, I’m not. Yes I am.

Yes I am.

Sorry, it’s a conditioned reflex. In high school, friendships were made over shared love of The Dictators or Devo. Others were diminished when The Clash didn’t elicit the proper enthusiasm.

Need I mention that I remain close with people who had no opinion one way or the other on “London Calling” and have lost touch with my fellow Dead Boys fans?

I have met many a person with enviable record collections who turned out to be a jerk. And there are plenty of people with great wit, intelligence and compassion, people I am honored to call friends, whose CD collections should be taken out and burned.

There’s a pivotal scene in Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” in which music snob Rob meets a couple, friends of his fiancée, Laura. They are lovely people, warm, smart, funny, the sort with whom you hope to form lifelong friendships.

Rob, by this point in the book maturing ever so lightly, studiously avoids the couple’s CDs, but Laura forces his hand. It is, as he suspected, dreadful and Rob learns a Very Important Lesson.

Check a non-fanatic’s CD stack and it’s the sheer randomness that stands out. A classical selection remembered from school, a soundtrack to a film he or she liked, a classic rocker’s best-of, a long-forgotten one-hit wonder’s one hit. Something that caught their ear on the radio once, a Christmas gift from several years back, a calculated risk from the bargain rack.

My collection is anything but random. But my priorities are a little askew.

Really, I’m not judging you. I’m judging me.

Really.

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Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson used to talk excitedly in interviews about creating the atmosphere he heard on live albums such as Humble Pie’s “Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore,” a standard-bearer of sweat-drenched, cannabis-fueled rock.

Well, tony Ruth Eckerd Hall sure ain’t the Fillmore, and the strongest smell emanating through the auditorium Monday night was from the copious amount of incense the Crowes’ crew lighted before the band’s set. And despite Robinson’s beard and bell-bottoms, the Crowes stopped trying to recreate the ‘70s a while back.

But they continue to embrace the musical adventurousness of that period as well as the sense of a concert as a communal event. At a time when so many concerts have the spontaneity of a computer virus detection program, experiencing a band not only playing but playing off of each other, listening, responding and creating in the moment, is an all too rare treat.

The Crowes are an even greater treat now with ace guitarist Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi All Stars) among the ranks. His playing not only was a joy in itself, it seemed to spur guitarist Rich Robinson to new heights.

Moody lights and an extended intro set a soulful mood for opener “Movin’ on Down the Line,” followed by the bare-fist rock of “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution,” to which Dickinson added some particularly fluid slide guitar.

The Robinson brothers’ harmonies were spotlighted on “Wiser Time,” and even more so later in the set on William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” performed a la The Flying Burrito Brothers. 

Rich Robinson took the lead vocal on Bob Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo,” which followed the affecting country rocker “Locust Street.”

The superbly paced set peaked with “Let Me Share the Ride” and “High Head Blues.” The former began as a Cream-style blues-rocker, then unfolded into something looser and funkier. Adam MacDougall contributed a jazzy piano solo before the band shifted into the Creedence Clearwater Revival meets Santana riff of “High Head Blues.”

Closing with The Band’s “The Shape I’m In,” the Crowes saluted an obvious role model as well as making a statement about the powerful, organic rock they help to keep alive.

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A minivan rolls through the streets of St. Petersburg. In it, your scribe and Violet, his 3-year-old daughter, listen to the “Madagascar 2” soundtrack without incident until Track 11, “More Than a Feeling,” by Boston.

Violet: Why’d you turn it up so loud, Daddy?

Me: Daddy loves this song, Sweetie.

Violet: Why?

Me: Well, the guitars are killer, the melody is irresistible, and Brad Delp’s vocal is amazing.

Violet: This song is old, isn’t it, Daddy?

Me: Well, if 32 years old is old.

Violet: Yes, Daddy, 32 is very, very old.

Me: Thanks, Sweetie.

Violet: Daddy, this music is sad.

Me: Just wait for the chorus, Honey. It resolves the ...

Violet: No, I mean the whole classic rock thing in general. Couldn’t the producers of “Madagascar 2” - you’re taking me to see it this weekend, right, Daddy? - find a song from this century with the same resonance instead of taking the easy way out with yet another boomer classic? With Rock Star and Guitar Hero, not to mention half the stations on the radio force-feeding us hits from 20 to 30 years ago, what chance does new music have?

You’re always raving about some new band or other - Blitzen Trapper and The Week That Was come to mind - but if you weren’t listening to new music for a living, I’d probably hear nothing but Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick. It’s one thing for you to drown in nostalgia. Your life’s half over. But what about me? Am I going to miss out on having new bands of my own to discover because nostalgia is so much easier to sell?

Me: Honey, this conversation makes Daddy’s head hurt. Wanna watch “Dora the Explorer”?

Violet: Depends. Can I eat Halloween candy for breakfast?

Me: Yes.

Violet: OK.

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Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have taken heat from Jackson Browne, Heart and Foo Fighters for playing their songs at rallies. The performers complain that the use of their songs implies endorsement of McCain-Palin.

This might suggest rock ‘n’ roll is a bastion of liberalism. But not all rockers lean left.

Heck, the late Johnny Ramone, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop and Ted Nugent all are either Republicans or have expressed conservative sentiments over the years. And their rock credentials can’t be questioned.

Outdoorsman Nugent has saluted Palin as a fellow hunter. Social conservatives may blanch at some of the Nuge’s more ribald material, but “Hibernation,” an instrumental that conjures images of the great outdoors, could be great walk-on music for the governor.

McCain could fortify a no-nonsense, get-tough image by taking the podium to Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”

The lusty chorus of “Lust for Life,” by Reagan fan Pop, would convey an image of energy and vitality for McCain, dogged by questions about his age and health. (The song’s really about scoring smack, but years of use in Royal Caribbean Cruise Line commercials surely have denuded it of any unsavory connotations.)

Finally, The Ramones’ “Commando” not only would remind crowds of McCain’s service in Vietnam, its chorus is a statement of purpose itself:

First rule is the law of Germany

Second rule is be nice to Mommy

Third rule is don’t talk to Commies

Fourth rule is eat kosher salami.

If you can’t get a political platform out of that, brother, better start writing that concession speech now.

(Note to the humorless: The preceding was satire, not an endorsement. I’m Liner Notes and I approve of this message.)

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(Originally ran Oct. 24)

When the world falls apart some things stay in place/Levi Stubbs’ tears run down her face.
— Billy Bragg, “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”

The problem with heartbreak is it’s never as thrillingly dramatic as it sounds in song. You feel empty but you have to go to work, school, pay the bills. Friends refuse to let you wallow. Eventually, it heals.

When Levi Stubbs sang “Bernadette” or “7 Rooms of Gloom,” that heartache was never going away.

Stubbs’ mighty voice was stilled Oct. 17. He was 72.

Like heartache, life and death sometimes seem impossibly mundane. The man who sang so powerfully of broken love and desperation was married to the same woman for about 50 years.

No cause of death has been disclosed, but he had suffered a series of strokes that forced his retirement from touring in 2000. By all rights, he should have died of heartbreak, pleading his case on stage with The Four Tops.

“Some say it’s a sign of weakness for a man to beg,” goes the lyric to the Tops’ “Baby I Need Your Loving,” but who would dare call Stubbs weak no matter how much he pleaded?

Stubbs had the voice of a full-grown man. When he sang “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” he didn’t sound so much like a friend in need as he did like Superman.

And when he begged, when he cried, when he sounded like he couldn’t go on anymore, he was nothing short of apocalyptic.

Now, you tell me who sound more like a man: Stubbs begging for his baby and, by extension, his life; or the callow misogynists and dime-store lotharios who boast about what unfeeling bastards they are.

It takes strength to feel. That, I think, is why Billy Bragg chose Stubbs for the song of desperate loneliness quoted above.

To misquote Dylan, it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a man to cry.

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With “Chinese Democracy” finally getting a release date - well, another one - a free Dr. Pepper may be only a few clicks away.

Dr. Pepper pledged months ago to celebrate the release of Guns n’ Roses’ years-and-years in the making album - were it ever released - by giving a free can of soda to every American.

When, or if, “Chinese Democracy” is released Nov. 23, soda fans can go to the company’s Web site to register for a coupon for a free 20-ounce soda. Apparently, no purchase of “Chinese Democracy” or any other Guns n’ Roses title, is necessary. 

If someone can explain the connection between Guns and Dr. Pepper, please let me know.

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As Bullwinkle J. Moose was wont to say, “This time for sure!”

“Chinese Democracy,” the perpetually delayed new Guns n’ Roses album, has been given a release date of Nov. 23 (a Sunday), available exclusively at Best Buy stores and its Web site.

Long-in-the-making barely begins to cover it. This album, the subject of litigation over leaked tracks recently, was begun before most people knew there was an Internet on which to leak tracks.

Singer and sole original member Axl Rose’s control freak tendencies have scuttled many other proposed release dates. So why should we believe this one?

The most convincing evidence is that the title track was released to radio today. Besides, this shtik is getting old. The hold-ups are beyond a joke and if “Chinese Democracy” doesn’t hit the racks sometime soon, Guns n’ Roses will be yet another generation of fans removed from its heyday. And at some point, no one’s going to care anymore.

Of course if anyone has been able to abuse fan’s good will and get away with it, it’s Rose, what with his history of cancelling concerts or forcing crowds to wait hours for him to finally take the stage.

Will “Chinese Democracy” be worth the wait? Stay tuned.

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Talking to the Tribune in 2001, Tim McGraw was steamed because he said his label, Curb, had released his “Greatest Hits” album a year earlier without telling him.

And according to McGraw, they’ve done it again.

McGraw released a statement Tuesday apologizing for his latest album, “Greatest Hits, Vol. 3.”

“I am saddened and disappointed that my label chose to put out another hits album instead of new music,” McGraw said in the statement.

“I had no involvement in the creation or presentation of this record,” McGraw said, pointing out that he had only released one album of new material since 2006’s “Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.”

He called the situation “an embarrassment to me as an artist” and concluded, “In the spirit of an election year, I would simply say to my fans, ‘I’m Tim McGraw, and I don’t approve their message.’ ”

McGraw is smart to distance himself from “Greatest Hits, Vol. 3,” a shoddy collection that cannibalizes 2007’s “Let It Go,” adds cuts from older albums, tacks on some previously unavailable but inessential tracks and sells it to McGraw’s fans as his “new” album.

Nashville is a notorious industry town, with producers and label heads calling the shots, and performers — it wasn’t so long ago you’d be hard-pressed to hear a country artist refer to himself as “an artist,” as McGraw did — going with the flow or finding themselves shut out.

On the other hand, McGraw is a huge star, a household name even to non-country fans. Surely this gives him some clout, no? Can you imagine this happening to Springsteen?

And he’s still signed to Curb after all these contentious years. What were/are the terms of this contract, Tim? Don’t you have a lawyer?

Like Keith Richards supposedly once said: Never sign anything, kids.

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I got an e-mail announcing the reissue of two albums by Volcano Suns, the band formed by Peter Prescott following the breakup of Mission of Burma.

The news immediately put the riff to “Balancing Act,” from the Suns’ 1985 debut, “The Bright Orange Years,” in my head. But it did more than that.

It brought back vivid memories of the time when that album was on regular rotation at my friends’ place, a stucco party house in the student ghetto of Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Seriously, I could almost smell the spilled beer and cigarette smoke, that moldy scent endemic to run-down abodes only college students will inhabit, the cat litter box no one bothered to clean - I didn’t say they were all good memories. Or appetizing ones.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think any movie or a book could rocket me back in time so powerfully.

Somehow a song can burn its impression on your memory so that it’s impossible not to hear it when recalling the scene, even if the song has nothing to do with the situation at hand.

Were there any justice, we’d be able to choose our life’s soundtracks - Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald for those romantic moments, for instance.

It rarely works out that way.

Trust me, there are people who first made out with their future spouses to “Surfin’ Bird” or “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” There are couples who broke up to “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” or “Baby Got Back.” There likely are couples who broke up because of “Baby Got Back.” But that’s not the point.

The point is they’ll recall that scene when they hear the song. Music is insidious. And damned inconvenient.

Oh well, I’ve heard the sense of smell is even stronger as a memory trigger.

I just hope it’s not that cat litter box.

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