Last Friday Night: Santa Monica, CA

Glitter all over the room, pink flamingos in the pool.

Last weekend, I made my now-routine drive up the 101 to the Bay Area. It was all so familiar to me, the scenery, the traffic, the road itself. The only thing that made this drive stand out was the fact that this was the final drive I would be taking in my Blue Camry.

It was finally time for me to let it go. I’ve had my Mazda for two months now, and I found a family member who agreed to give the Blue Camry a good home. And so, I packed my car, left Santa Monica, and made the long drive up the coast.

Making the journey alone, as I typically do, allows me the opportunity to wildly press every button on my radio in a vain effort to find the right song control the musical experience in my car. As I was making the drive, I broke from my typical manic music curation and decided to just let a playlist on my phone play out for the final two hours from Paso Robles to Santa Cruz. As song after song played, I was reminded of all of the memories attached to each one. Of course, I’m always reminded of those memories when I hear those specific songs, but the nighttime setting coupled with the emptiness of the road somehow made them more vivid. I could literally go on for thousands of words and go over each memory attached to each song, all in excruciating detail, but instead, here’s a small sampling of my bittersweet memories and reminiscing from Last Friday Night (for the record, there is no Katy Perry on my phone):

Snow Patrol / “Run” – Highway 101, somewhere near Novato, CA, August 2004. While sitting in heavy traffic on my way up to Rohnert Park to visit my then-girlfriend away at college, something different started playing on Live 105. This was different from the angsty, angry-young-man stuff that dominated the early 2000’s and spoke to my teenaged self. This was unashamedly earnest. This was a game changer. Everything was going to be okay.

Velvet Revolver / “Fall To Pieces” – Highway 101, Sausalito, CA, three days later. Everything was not going to be okay. Scott Weiland’s mournful wail and a classic guitar lick from Slash JUST SPOKE TO ME, MAN. FEELINGS. Fun Fact: if you saw me with iPod earbuds in my ears at any time during my first year of college, there was roughly a 300% chance I was listening to this song.

Foo Fighters / “Rope” – I-5/I-8 interchange, San Diego, March 2011. During a period of time that spring, I was driving down to San Diego just about every weekend for one reason or another. I still can’t quite figure out what Dave Grohl is singing about in this one, but at the time, I felt like I was on the brink of something big.

Sixx:A.M. / “Lies Of The Beautiful People” – Highway 395 near Bishop, CA, July 2011. “Saaaaaaaaave your-seeeeeeeeelf from, aaaaaalllllllll the, liiies of the beautiful peoplllllllllllle”. Well, then.

You know, I sense a theme developing here. Let me change things up a bit…

Sick Puppies / “Rip Tide” – Highway 50, Crystal Bay, NV, July 2011. The angsty, angry-young-man eff-off song that I needed at that time. Fun Fact: I met the band in person a couple of months ago, at which time I told them that their “Tri-Polar” album (which “Rip Tide” comes from) was basically the soundtrack to my life that summer. Fun Fact #2: I am a 26 year old man, and completely shameless.

Audioslave / “The Last Remaining Light” – Interstate 10, Chiriaco Summit, CA, March 2004. On the latter half of a marathon 11 hour drive from Santa Cruz to Phoenix, I played my newly-acquired Audioslave CD for the first time. Since a friend of mine burned the CD in reverse order, this song, the final track from the record, was track one on the CD, and therefore the first one that I heard. Speeding through the seemingly endless Sonora Desert towards the twilight provided the perfect setting to the lyrical desperation and sonic desolation of this song.

Blink-182 / “Always” – Cabrillo College parking lot, January 2005. You know, it could have just been my general mood at the time, but I can’t help but think of a cold, rainy day when I hear this one. It’s practically painful to this very day to listen to this song by one of my favorite bands of my late teenage years.

Smashing Pumpkins / “Freak” – I-5/CA-15 interchange, San Diego, July 2010. Before there was “Rope”, there was “Freak”, an obscure Smashing Pumpkins track that also instantly reminds me of change afoot, backdropped by San Diego. This song soundtracked a trip to see two of my best friends while on the precipice of what would be one of the biggest changes of my life to that point.

Katy Perry / “I Kissed A Girl” – Interstate 605, Baldwin Park, CA, July 2008. Okay, so I totally lied about not having any Katy Perry on my phone.

Looking back, frankly, a lot of these memories are sanguine at best, and downright tragic at worst. If you had caught me in the middle of any one of those moments above, I’d be an emotional wreck and probably tell you that things looked pretty bleak. The truth is, I’m still not totally comfortable with some of the feelings that get stirred up. I have few regrets about the past, but I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t change anything. Nevertheless, even if I’m not completely at peace with the past, I can still sing/shout along to those songs and feel okay about the life I’ve lived and the lessons I have learned. Quite a few of those lessons were learned while sitting in the driver’s seat of a cornflower-blue Toyota Camry.

In case you were wondering, the last song I listened to in my Blue Camry? Obviously.