45RPM: TMBG Birdhouse in Your Soul.

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

Theme from Flood

   
Birdhouse in Your Soul
 
There are periods of respite in the high school band schedule.  One of them is the point before winter break after the holiday concert is done.  It was senior year Drum Corps and we were counting down to the break.  In the fall semester, Drum Corps had their own class, separate from the rest of the band, so the drummers could work on their very important drum things.  Secretly, I always thought it was because it was easier to work with the rest of the band when the drummers weren’t always rat-a-tat-tating away on their drums, because they never shut up.  But no matter! It was nearly break and we had an entire class of nothing to do.  We brought in music and played it while we gossiped, did homework and played cards.  At one point during the hour, someone changed the music and the glorious intro of Flood played, followed swiftly by the opening notes of the “Birdhouse in Your Soul.”  Soon the syncopated rhythms and odd tonal qualities that are They Might Be Giants were filling the room.  Our band director paused in what he was doing, and his eyebrows wrinkled together, listening.  “Who isthis?” he asked incredulously, befuddled and amused once again at the quirky nature of the adolescents he was charged to shepherd through life.  We laughed, delighted to introduce him to the magic of They Might Be Giants.