Maybe I dissed Tim’s Japanese video games soundtracks on his Top 100 list. I have no recollection of that. (At this point, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!) I do not recall. I was in another meeting. And so forth.

But unlike the federal government, I actually listened to three of his musical recommendations, because he had a story behind all of them.

Since you asked, RL, I will try to explain the Japanese stuff concisely, without making your eyes glaze over. Admittedly, it feels silly inserting this into these other ongoing conversations about some heavy musical hitters. Anyway, there is a canon of shared experiences amongst anyone who has played the Final Fantasy video game series. Much of it is useless stuff that occupies my brain cells, like Star Trek TNG trivia. One exception, though, is the music. I still like a lot of the music.

The theme from the Suteki Da Ne song is woven into several other tracks throughout one particular game and, what can I say, it got stuck in my head. Definitely an autobiographical track, like you said.

Similarly, the JENOVA song is from an earlier game and plays during certain battles. This song popped into my head whenever I had to walk around on campus during my plebe year of school. We couldn’t talk and had to walk at a very rapid pace and absolutely wanted to avoid being stopped by any upperclassman. Every “stroll” out of the barracks was a battle, and I would never be stopped for walking too slowly if I walked in time with this fast-paced tune. And I never was. Didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. We don’t have much control over which songs get stuck in our heads.

Here’s the JENOVA song:

Anybody out there who doesn’t get it? There are warrior times in life, whether you’re in the military or not, and there are times when you need a soundtrack in your head to propel you through the daunting parts. For me it’s usually Stones or Ennio Morricone music from Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns. For Tim, it’s drawn from the burrow where the Iliad has been hiding throughout the age of Christendom. In the place where fables and myths and heroes always hide from the scornful eye of the judgmentalists, the popular culture.

Hector and Hecuba, Achilles, Helen, Briseus, Ajax, and Agamemnon continue to flourish in locations where many never look. And in Tim’s case, how interesting that an Asian inspiration would presage his assignment in Korea, where he discovered another of his Top 100:

About the string quartet song: Like a Stone was played on the radio constantly while I lived in Korea. It’s a dull song, like I said, and it could actually be a contender for theme song of my time spent over there. I volunteered to go to “freedom’s frontier” before 9/11, thinking that would be where all the action was. Instead I found a culture that had been mired in bureaucracy & bullshit for about 50 years. All the training was fake. When we weren’t doing fake training, we were picking up soldiers from the MP drunk tank. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Browsing iTunes one day years later, I came across this group called Vitamin String Quartet. They specialize in doing covers of atypical things, like pop & rock songs. I saw they had one for Like a Stone and couldn’t conceive how it could possibly be performed by a string quartet. It blew me away. They give the music a passion & intensity that is absent in the actual song and transformed something I was never fond of from a time in my life I wasn’t fond of into something I really liked.

Plus, I played in a quartet while in band so I know how tricky it can be. Each person has a role to play and no one can hide in the section. From a musical standpoint alone, I think the performance is great.

So here is that song too.

There’s always a story that makes sense of your music, and always music that makes sense of your story. Now that we have lists, we have the basis for exchanging real experiences with one another. Music is the knock on the door. Words are the welcome into a hospitable home.