ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
i love love love those notes.  

 aflanigan wrote: 
Smackaroo baby.

GREAT THREAD SCOTT!!  

Iggy Pop's The Passenger.

My first trip to Istanbul, we'd been out all night and it was early in the morning.  My brother's friend was driving on the road that parallels the Bosphorus River and the Passenger came on his player.  It was a perfect moment in an amazing new place.  Every time I hear that song, I think of that ride.   

 OCDHG wrote: 
Yeah I wish I played guitar or some kind of music because I'd know how to describe the 4 notes in Impossible Germany bum, bumpum-bum that I realized today made me fly away just for a second.

Smoke on the Water...
Takes me to the back seat, right side of the bus during high school, next to Andy C. singing "Boat on the water!"

It was a bad joke.  But hey, we were teenagers.

Here's an album chock full of hook filled songs (check out their version of Johnny Cash's Get Rythym, Want You Bad, Green Lights, etc, etc,)  Sadly, rereleased CDs don't include Riding in My Car, a bonus track that was included in the original LP.

Smoke on the Water...
Takes me to the back seat, right side of the bus during high school, next to Andy C. singing "Boat on the water!"

It was a bad joke.  But hey, we were teenagers.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

Usually reminds me of the time I saw them in concert in an outdoor ampitheater (I think they were touring to support Low Budget)

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

Wow yes.
Down By the Seaside (Led Zepplin) now instantly transports me back to the shack in Alaska (can smell the sea and feel the fog, even) because I bought that on iTunes while I was there.  Was spending a lot of time making a mix and ended up playing that one a million times over the course of about a week or so

Have to remember to make mental note next time a hook gets me though.  Not coming up with one off the top of my head, but that does happen often.

 aflanigan wrote: 
Where does it take you?

I thought about naming the thread something like Where Do You Go? but that would never work.

(It's Only) Juke Box Music (the Kinks, of course)
Talk to Me (Springsteen tune, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes)
From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come) (Springsteen again, by way of Dave Edmunds)

The chorus to Translator's "Everywhere That I'm Not"

Any track off The Housemartin's The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death.  Seriously, any track — it's the perfect pop album (with wonderfully dark lyrics to counterbalance it all).

Good Vibrations puts me in the hatch of my brother's MGB, while visiting him at the U of Mich, after a truly eventful Greyhound bus trip from Cleveland to Toledo.

How about the mandolin riff in REM's Losing My Religion? Love it, very cool tone and progression.

 katzendogs wrote: 
I don't think he said they weren't...

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Well...not exactly a "pop" riff but the opening chord to "The Rain Song" by Led Zeppelin instantly puts me back in the pine forest, sitting on a boulder by a little creek with the girl I honestly believed was the love of my life (I know better now) and her brother, down the road from our house in Georgia in 1973.  Yes, it was in fact raining.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
And here I thought they were flashbacks from the blotter.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
so anyway I was listening to Wilco and futzing around the house but when they hit those 4 or 5 notes in Impossible Germany (you know the ones) I'm instantly transported for about 3 seconds to Jackson in August when I saw them... crazy from the heat... and beer... and not eating ... nearly passing out ... and they hit that hook and I rallied and charged back down front where Kevin & Anna & Sean were and wow that's so cool that a few notes can do that so thoroughly. There are a few songs that do that for me. Sweet Jane, when the Steve Hunter intro is over and they finally hit the chunky riff and I'm back on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley and I can smell the falafel and patchouli and eww and I'm flipping thru the records at Rasputin's until they kick me out and I go get some Blondie's pizza and catch the late bus home....

All in about 1.5 seconds worth of music.

I'm  sure you all have stories like that. Yes?

• Sweet Jane
• Impossible Germany