When I was a kid, I was terrified of the song “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band. I realize that is an absurd sentence to type, if you know the song. In fact, the only reason I was recently reminded of this is because my oldest told me that he likes this song. As an adult, I can barely remember why I might have been terrified of this light rock song. I remember associating the song with a short animated segment on Sesame Street, the source of so much childhood fear and wonder for me and countless number of other people my age. In this segment a dog dreams of…I don't remember exactly what. I could look the short up on YouTube or wherever, but I’m not sure that’s the right course to take. The effort it takes to remember these things, like reminiscing itself, is enjoined with the feeling the episode triggers in me as an adult while explicating the childhood fear. All that’s left is the image of a cartoon dog with a bubble over its head dreaming of whatever dogs dream (perhaps the source of the fear is a realization in the loss of omnipotence—if dogs can dream like I can dream what exactly makes me special). In the original cartoon, an interchange of male and female voices incessantly intone the letter “D” in a slight melodic tone. Is this supposed to force children to learn the letter “d?” I suppose the Children’s Television Workshop is no more or less cruel in its own way with regard to the repetition of psychological triggers as their forebears in the 19th century. The new, gentler, kinder Schreber.
There’s also the added affection of memory: the way in which nostalgia can create physical pain. Maybe a song about reminiscing while reminiscing becomes too much. Maybe I already anticipated this in my original comprehension and apprehension of the song: the song itself is about imagining what it will be like to reminisce about THIS MOMENT when the singer and his paramour are older. “Hurry don’t be late / I can hardly wait / I said to myself when we’re older” Can you imagine what damage has been done to the subject in the present in order for them to fantasize what it will be like closer to death and reminiscing about that time you wished you were closer to death? I’ve been waiting for the moment my entire life when I can reminisce about waiting my entire life to reminisce about the moment I thought about reminiscing when I’m older. Maybe I thought about this as a kid (before spending another sleepless night staring at the wall). Who knew that Magic 106.7 FM in Boston could cause a lifetime of damage significant enough that one might create an entire aesthetic persona therefrom?
“Reminiscing” is also track three on a mix CD I made of “Yacht Rock” sometime in 2005 or 2006. It was shortly after the series Yacht Rock premiered on YouTube. The series is a fictionalized “Behind the Music” about a number of musicians who made pop music in the late 1970s. Your milage may vary on how funny you find the enterprise, but it introduced the concept of “Yacht Rock” into the vernacular. I’m not interested in debating what is and is not YR. I am relieved (?) That this particular variant of music has a discernible label. I think the label itself is as evasive as the music, and my memory of the music, insofar as any number of people, institutions, algorithms have a hard time pinning down exactly what defines the genre. And so, as someone trying to understand the source of anxiety, it’s helpful to have a label for that which cannot, by the essence of its appearance, be labeled and named.
One thing that is interesting about the genre of Yacht Rock is how obsessed it actually is with reminiscing. “What a Fool Believes,” Arguably the greatest Yacht Rock song, begins with the line “he came from somewhere back in her long ago,” a startlingly poetic line that leads to a story of a schlub who runs into a woman he imagines as an ex and she imagines as a one-night stand at best. It’s all about memory and perception: what a fool believes, he sees. What we believe about our past becomes real and then we reminisce about it. My personal favorite, and what gives this essay its title, is Al Stewart’s “Time Passages.” This song is the most self-reflective of the genre: it’s a song about the act of reminiscing and the bittersweet pleasure it brings. Unlike “Reminiscing” and “What A Fool Believes” there’s no event outside of the act of remembering that triggers the memory. It isn’t a hopeful pean to the act of reminiscing at some future point about what a great life you’ve had, nor is it a song about the gulf between memory and reality. It’s about a person, alone, able to conjure up whatever scraps of memory he has, frozen with whatever feelings he has about that memory, until it naturally fades from his mind. “I know you’re in there / you’re just outside” I always think of A Christmas Carol with these lines: the ghost of Christmas past showing Scrooge memories of life, a girl he once used to know, etc only to realize that, in the end, you’re all alone with these memories. I also think of Daniel Day Lewis in Phantom Thread, a personal favorite, feverishly hallucinating his mother while whispering "are you in there?"
I imagine this type of reminiscing yacht rock was popular among aging boomers in the late 1970s moving from their 30s into their 40s, thinking about old loves, might have beens, decisions that should or shouldn’t have been made. A sentimental version of David Byrne barking the lyrics to “Once in a Lifetime” on another radio station: “how did I get here?!” What was it like, though, to grow up in this environment of memory and regret without having had made memories of one’s own? How did it existentially shape me? Did our susceptibility to nostalgia and capital’s ability to manipulate those feelings generate from the soundtracks of our earliest memories? Is this what is terrifying in the abyss of “Reminiscing” and reminiscing? That you might be as foolish as the fool who believes what he sees? That these sonic scraps, these coke fueled mid-life crises of our parents generation, could sustain a life looked back upon with pride when we’re dancing in the dark, walking through the park and reminiscing? Will we ever get there from here?
