takes me right back to the fall of 1983 and my senior year of high school

It’s fall. And if you’ve been following me then you know I love nostalgia.  And fall makes me nostalgic.

I used to love fall.  Not as much as Ioved summer, but I enjoyed fall clothes and fall activities when I was a kid.  And as someone who spent most of my life in a classroom I always associated September as the start of a new year rather than January. I like starting something new every fall.

Fall weather came in like a wrecking ball this year- fall sky, fall clouds, dark early and a chill in the air. As I was driving home this afternoon, and gazing at the fall sky, Synchronicity II came on Sirius First Wave on the radio.

Ooooh boy, if that song doesn’t send me. And that got me thinking about the entire Synchronicity album.  This whole album to me reeks of autumn. I cannot hear any of the cuts and not be transported to 1983. 

Everyone associates this album with Every Breath You Take, which I do NOT love.  The tracks from this album that I do love are Wrapped Around Your Finger, Synchronicity II and my favorite favorite,  the absolutely stunning King of Pain.

When I hear King of Pain I hear wind rustling dried leaves, I see the moon peeking from the intermittent dark clouds floating in the sky on a chilly night.  Walking through town after a high school football game on my way to a party. Youth. Fun. Excitement. Anticipation.  You know, all those seventeen year old feels on a Friday night.

I will forever associate this album with my senior year of high school.  It was released in June 1983 and was their last and most successful studio album.  There was a time when The Police were New Wave royalty and if you listened to them you were the ultimate in cool. If you had Zenyatta Mondata or Outlandos D’Amour you were on a whole other level of awesome. I had the good fortune to see them perform at the Aud in Buffalo.  We had floor seats and I clearly recall smoking clove cigarettes in the parking lot under the Skyway before heading in and standing on our chairs so we could see better.

It’s funny because I rarely if ever listen to The Police.  I do not own any of their albums.  And I don’t hear or see anyone listening to them or talking about them these days.  They are another of those groups that put out some amazing work and then just kind of fell off the end of the earth.  I mean I know Sting obviously went on to have an amazing solo career and Andy and Stewart have done some cool things, but who’s talking about them? And where?

As I said, King of Pain is the standout to me on this album. It was the second single, written by Sting, and reached the top of the charts, reaching number three on Billboard’s Hot 100 in October.  There is a melancholy pain, hurt, loneliness that appealed to seventeen year old me and to an extent still does.  The keyboard and Stewart Copeland’s xylophone at the beginning of the song…

I have stood here before in the pouring rain…..it’s my destiny to be the king of pain.  There’s a flagpole rag and the wind won’t stop- that’s my soul up there.

Wow- just wow.  And Wrapped Around Your Finger the other perfect song from this album has that same feeling. Alienation. Searching. It’s moody and dark and mysterious. And that black and white video that was on heavy rotation on MTV.  I’m a sucker for any song that has references to literature and myths- Scylla and Charybdis- Mephistopheles.  At the end, the story turns from the singer being wrapped around her finger to having her wrapped around his finger- table turned. Some dark stuff there.  And that’s what makes it so damn delicious.  And it still sounds fucking perfect today.  It’s fall.  Time to listen to some fall songs.  Add The Police to the top of your list, revisit some Gen X angst and excitement, spin  Synchronicity and the King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger- they are perfect songs.