This song is actually my third-favorite Beatles song, behind "Here Comes the Sun" and "Across the Universe." But the thing that makes it really memorable for me is that it is one of the first two songs that I remember specifically from when I was a kid. I always thought the phrase "with the eyes in his head / sees the world spinning round" was really strange. But when I hear it, I visualize sitting in the living room of our house in Germantown, Wisconsin, watching my mom clean the house in the middle of the day.

Coincidentally, "Touch Me" is my third-favorite Doors song, behind "When the Music's Over" and "Break On Through." It's the other song that I remember hearing earliest, and these two songs will always be paired in my head because of that picture of the living room and my mom. My dad was never a huge Doors fan; in general, my mom seems to like the edgier stuff more. What strikes me about this song is that because it was so odd- the horns, the standard-singer tone in Morrison's voice, I just never really pictured him the way he actually was. I still imagine him in the Frank Sinatra mold when I listen to it.

I didn't know about Chuck Berry's "Rockin' USA" when I first heard this song, so I didn't know it's basically just a riff on somebody else's idea. But from about the time I was six, "Surfin' USA" was always one of my favorites because surfing and surf clothes were a big fad in the mid-'80s (T & C Surf Designs, anyone?). This makes me think of riding on our family's boat on the intracoastal, singing along with my brother and sister. It's just a purely fun, fluffy song that still makes me smile.

OK, so the real meaning of this song escaped me as a child. Whatever. When we would take car rides, my parents would bring big boxes of tapes to listen to in our crappy Chevy Beauville van. We made them play this song over and over and over, and my dad would always try to get us to listen to the album. So we got to hear other hippie songs like, "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." So really, this entry is just a stand-in for all those songs like "Blow'n in the Wind" by Peter, Paul & Mary that were childhood car ride favorites.

My dad is a huge Allman Brothers fan, and this song was another car ride staple, and thus branded into my memory. Of course, until I was about 13 and discovering real music on my own, I always thought it was the "Almond Brothers Band," and it never occurred to me that the song was an instrumental- I just never thought about the fact that there were no lyrics. Then, Publix adopted this song from one of their ads, well after I was an Allman convert myself, and to this day, my sister refers to this as "the Publix song" to aggravate me.

This is a song about a train that fills out the primary "car ride/childhood" song category. I always enjoyed this song and I remember how we would all sing along to it in the car. It wasn't until a few months ago, though, that I actually asked someone who sang it. And I still can listen to this song over and over without getting sick of it.

hey little fella, how are you doing today?: awake
soundtrack: Aerosmith - Rag Doll