45RPM: Laid by James

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

I lose songs sometimes.  I will hear them once or twice, think, “that song is awesome, what is it?” and then, poof, it is gone.  If I have no snippits of lyrics there is no way to find the song again and I have to wait until it comes to me.

This song came back to me in a bar in Medford, Massachusetts.  I came to be in said bar because of a guy who I met working for Whole Foods.  He was short and charming.  The Boston Metro Area is chock full of short, and charming guys, thanks to the combined immigrant past of the Irish and Italian.  The guy’s hair line was receding at an alarming rate for his age, he wasn’t much to look at, but man, could he flirt.  He was also a musician–guitar player–and the son of Italian immigrants which meant he had a classic Italian name that rolled off the tongue.  We will say it was something like Donatello Gribiasi.  At the point I came to be sitting in the bar with him, we had both quit Whole Foods, but I called him up to see if he wanted to go out before I moved away.  He did, and that’s how we came to be sitting together bar when this song came back to me.  “Who is this?” I exclaimed as the song amped up. Donatello Gribiasi, being a musician, knew the title and the artist and, just like that, I had the song again.

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