One of the things I find fascinating about music is how a song or an album can bring you back to a certain part in your life instantly. This is the case with Wire Train's "Should She Cry."
In 1991, I was working as a construction worker and taking classes toward my teaching certification. In the summer, we would work with asphalt-- working on driveways and parking lots-- and in the winter we would primarily do kitchen renovations. We had to make the countertops and cabinets in the northside Chicago shop my boss rented. The fall and winter of 1991, I spent a lot of time in the shop making cabinets and countertops and listening to the radio. I would switch between WNPR, which was giving coverage to the horrifying civil war erupting in Yugoslavia, and WXRT, our local "progressive rock" station. The two songs that got a lot of airplay at that time, and will always be associated with that time in my life, are Richard Thompson's "I Feel So Good (I'm Gonna Break Somebody's Heart Tonight)" and Wire Train's "Should She Cry."
Wire Train was formed in San Francisco in 1983 as The Renegades. They were on the same label, 415, as Translator and Romeo Void.
"Should She Cry" was on Wire Train's self-titled 1990 album. The vid for "Should She Cry" is simple and elegant, like the song itself. I've long conjectured about the meaning of the song. My favorite interpretation is that of an old friend, who thinks the "she" of the song is the sea-- taking in her men-- sailors-- and giving them back to their women at the end of the voyage, taking consolation in the fact that they'll always return to her.
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4 comments:
Thanks for that. I've never heard that song before. I was pregnant through a lot of 1991, so I was WAY out of the loop on every front...Especially music.
That's funny, Churlita-- I'm the same way about 1994, the year my son was born. I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I completely missed one of my favorite-ever songs, "Interstate Love Song," for several years. I was busy diapering, feeding, working, going to school, etc. Fortunately, as he got older, and into music, I was able to catch up musically as well.
So cool, as memory trigger and the other way around. I remember '91 well-- friend Bob Sheldon was killed just before the Desert Storm, finished library school, internship in London. It's all so Proustian ;->
1994-1998 existed? What? Blur of diapers, crying and driving small people places. I also think that many of my brain cells died an untimely death in those years as well.
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