Nothing like a post like this to give you some sore of memory whiplash as fragments of the past flash into your brain one after the other:

I didn't really have musical tastes until college.

We only had AM radio in the car for most of the time, where 10,000 watts of music power beamed from over the border, pipeing in mono pop "hits" and probably causing some sort of cancer.

My mom wasn't that much into any current music, and for some reason, neither was I. It wouldn't be really until college, exposure to other people playing all manner of stuff, and having enough actual income to buy used cassettes myself.

But I remember before the divorce, when I actually lived with him, my dad was into rock. Rolling Stones, The Who, and their ilk. I'd look at the album covers from under a table in the first house I remember living in. The parents were playing cards with neighbors, and in an age where children were seen and not heard, I flipped through the albums, most of which I never actually heard myself until years later.

But I remember Queen.

It was an age of wetbars with corkboard and marbled glass. We had multilevel shag carpet throughout the house called "Indian Summer" where the low parts made great paths for Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.

I remember singing most of the tracks on Night at the Opera, Sheer Heart Attack and News of the World.

When I finally got around to listening to most of the other albums I rembered seeing in my youth years later, I wasn't interested in them. It was like a connection to the past I didn't have an urge to revisit.

I listen to all kinds of stuff now. Very few genres are uninteresting to me, and only certain ones within certain years.

But even if I think I've forgotten, Queen always comes back to me nearly as clear as when I first heard them as a tyke.

Memory is definately funny like that.