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Summerland
Everclear
Sparkle & Fade
1995

Everclear is a big nineties nostalgia trip for me.  It's like, I recognize the fact that all of their music kind of sounds the same, BUT.  I didn't actually own this CD, but my friend Erin did.  I remember this album cover.  It's one of the ones that has really stuck with me.  So many of my music-related memories are connected to Erin; we spent hours and hours listening to music in each others' rooms when we were younger.  Our taste in music differed, but we were always interested in listening to what the other was obsessed with at the time.

I put this album on my iPod a few weeks ago.  I hadn't listened to it in a while and when I saw it on my hard drive a little rush of summer came over me.  "Summerland" shuffled up one sunny afternoon when I was nursing my daily latte at Cafe 92.  I smiled as soon as I heard that opening drum beat, that repetitive clash of cymbals.  And then:

Let's just drive your car
We could drive all day
Let's just get the hell away from here

and it was like being reunited with something I missed, but didn't know I was missing.  I thought of you; how perfect a summer road trip would be, music filling the car, taking our time, a destination.  I grinned even wider when I heard:

Get some cheap red wine and just go flying
We could do the things
All the things you wanted to

All
the
things

It was a let's-forget-about-everything-and-escape song heard at precisely the right moment.  I didn't run joyously back to work at the end of my lunch break, but I didn't trudge either.  This song lifted my spirit a little, dulled the work-time aspect of my day and brightened all the hopeful possibilities that exist in the time outside of it.