July 30, 2008 Earworm

By sheer persistence, Matt Bianco's "More Than I Can Bear" may be my ultimate summer song. As track two on "Whose Side Are You On", their debut LP, it closed out my summer of '84 and, in this mix, forever conjures up the smell of New York and the not so fresh feeling that accompanies the steamy heat of that city in August.

The remixed single version or, as I call it, Basia's last dance, was one of the few records that I carted around as I tried to reaffirm my footing in the hazy heated blur that was Baltimore in the summer of 1985. It played constantly as a main character of my childhood suddenly wandered into my second attempt at one, and as three new characters, all of whom I'm happy to now find within reach if not close enough to touch, joined in the dramedy of my life.

The inclusion of the remix on the US edition of the band's second album filled the summer of '86 with moments where I would play it as the evening began at The Depot, dropping the tone-arm and rushing to the bar to join that childhood friend in a campy duet, the soda dispensers as our microphones; lying on the living room floor in the dark with Renee, drunk on her despair, and chain smoking our way through repeated plays while singing every word as an attempt at exorcism; make out sessions with a beautiful boy in his tower high rise, in front of a wall of windows as the headlights from the cars below crawled across the ceiling and down the wall, stopping briefly on our faces before returning to us our privacy.

The next three summers brought new characters - fresh crop, we'd call it - and inevitably one of them would love the song as much as I and so it played on and on until it was time to go. Rummaging through endless mix tapes made over the years confirms its endurance and, by examining what proceeds and follows it, how it has fit so many occasions and moods, becoming timeless in my process.

As I look back at how the time has flown, realizing that it was nineteen years ago this week that I left home again, and finally for good it appears, and as the temperature rises into the 90's, the appreciation of my treasures from the 80's climbs even higher. And while I wouldn't change a thing that has happened since then, I'd give anything to have all those treasures together again, if only long enough to listen to "More Than I Can Bear", and to see if we've held up as well as it did.