Certain songs take me very powerfully to times in the past, and I’ve had opportunity to experience this a number of times in the last few weeks. Usually, the song itself has nothing whatever to do with the incidents that it reminds me of, but merely binds to that incident in my mind by virtue of having been being played at the time.

I can feel no sense of measure
No illusion as we take
Refuge in young man’s pleasure
Breaking down the dreams we make
Real

The entirety of the album 90125, but most particularly “Leave it”, take me back to 1988 or thereabouts. Well, actually, not 1988, but the Pliocene Era. That’s right, the era which went from roughly 5 million to 2 million years ago. Because 90125 was the sound track when I was reading Julian May’s books “The Saga of Pliocene Exile”. It was a trilogy, although more recently he’s added a fourth book.

I laid on my bed for hours at a time, reading these books, while 90125 played again and again. Hey, there was precious little to do, and my music collection was rather limited. It was pretty much either that, Led Zeppelin, or Rush.

And so, now, whenever I hear the opening notes of “Leave It”, I am drawn to thoughts of The Many Coloured Land, and the tourists being drawn through the portal to the prehistoric time, unexpectedly inhabited by aliens with golden torcs.

If they ever make a movie of these books, they’ve *got* to use 90125 as the sound track.