Lovestruck Adventurer

My second class of the day during my sophomore year of high school was computer programming. During this class, our instructor would get the ball rolling, and then leave us to get our work done through the rest of the day. That classroom was used for a special program called EAST, and accordingly, it had a separate domain and wasn't subject to the same access controls the main school network was. I listened to a lot of music as I worked, and as I did that, I formed a connection between this song and the girl I liked at the time.

There were quite a few drizzly, rainy mornings towards the end of 2016, and accordingly, I had been listening to a lot of rain-related songs. Around the same time, the important videos playlist was popular, and a remix of this song was used in a now-deleted video (can be seen in this consolidated video). I wanted to know what the original was, so I looked up the name, and I found it. It has become one of favorite songs to listen to on a rainy day, especially when driving.

As 2017 began, I found myself in a strange predicament. I had two potential interests at the time, and since there were two, I found that my head was balanced between the two. However, after conversing with an outside party, the second interest quickly evaporated, and the first one began its rapid intensification to a level that I'd never experienced before (and I dare to say, since). This song entered my music rotation just as the second interest fell away.

This song entered my listening habits for one single reason: my discovery of the video Daft Hands. This was a pretty big video in the days of early YouTube, but I had never encountered it as I started using YouTube in late 2009, well after it was uploaded in the summer of 2007.

I found the video pretty entertaining and a creative idea of how to express the song's lyrics, and I found the song pretty interesting as well, as it was completely different than anything else I listened to on a regular basis.

Jackie Blue is one of my favorite songs ever since I discovered it during the time of Lovestruck Adventurer. It's very catchy and the instrumentation is enjoyable. That being said, it is one of a very small collection of songs where I think a live performance actually outdid the studio version. Specifically for this song, there was a live performance on the British television show The Old Grey Whistle Test. To this day, I still prefer that specific performance over the studio recording.

I heard this version of the song before I heard Johnny Rivers' original version. I remember standing outside one cloudy morning waiting for school to start, and I played this song. As I generally did at this time, I sat and thought about the girl I was intensely interested in at the time. However, it also gave me a feeling that harked back to Calm and Collected Fun, specifically, when I'd return home after an evening out in late 2014. It will forever be tied to the feeling I had for her.

I began riding home from school with Jake on March 27, 2017. Soon thereafter, I began to actively hang out with friends outside of school, something that I'd never actually done before this point in my life. We'd often play music through his car speakers and phone, and one day, he asked me to play this song, which was one of his favorites. I did so, and loved it. From that day on, this song permanently became Jake's theme song, at least in my head. That period of March to May 2017 will forever be one of the best in my life.

This song entered my life as a meme, but it's legitimately a good song, despite its origins as being from a children's show. One night in the summer of 2017, a few of us found ourselves in the parking lot of the local ball fields, and we were sitting in the bed of one of our friends' trucks. We listened to several songs, including this one, and to this day, when I hear it, I think of that night. It was a simple night, and a rather warm one at that, but it was definitely a memorable one.