By Crystal Hohenthaner
Journal Staff

Okay all my music aficionados (is that how you spell aficionado?), I need help. I need to get a Christmas present for my boyfriend. He is a big music lover – and I don’t mean the way Brittany Spears fans love music. He is actually a skilled and talented musician and he can even write music – which completely baffles me. In fact he has actually produced several indy CDs.

Cool, right?

Not so cool for me at the moment, because I really want to get him something ‘musical’ for Christmas, but his abilities and understanding are so far above mine that I am basically paralyzed with fear over the possibility of giving him something lame.

I already got him something small and funny … er, lame. That’s right I have exhausted all of my silly points and I still want to get him something more. Unfortunately, I’m basically out of money too.That means, I’m thinking musical and cheap – would it be totally lame to burn him a CD of love songs? And, if it isn’t too lame, what songs should I put on the CD?

Help me! Please!

By Aubrey Watts

Jounal staff

As a newbie to Rapid City — by way of Denver — I have found while adjusting to life in a small town that my music, both old and new, has kept me going strong. Some of it seems to be down right the soundtrack to my life. All I would have to do is push play and others would know what I was about. On the other hand some of it goes along with my moods. Whether I am sad, happy, angry or just here it seems that I can find a song I like. Until tragedy happens, that gut wrenching feeling that life is no longer what you want it to be……….

Have you ever had a day where nothing seemed to fit? No song, group or lyric could hit that certain emotion you are seeking to put into words and then *BAM* there it is. Like a light bulb that has suddenly jolted to life in a darkened closet.

For me that song was “Stranger things have happened” by the Foo Fighters. Down on a gloomy day I found myself searching to match the emotions I was running through with a song that could say it all. Flipping through my Ipod it hit me like a ton of bricks. The opening notes of the guitar. Mellow yet extremely seductive notes. Dave Grohl’s voice dripping into the song and there it is.

I would love to know if any of you have a song like that in your life. When you heard that song you knew it would define that exact moment.

By Crystal Hohenthaner
Rapid City Journal staff

I have an unusual condition that I think is caused by the fact that I have watched millions of movies in my life. As a result these films have somewhat altered my perception of reality, creating several special conditions – I’ll call the condition Movie Ego.

As a result of my Movie Ego I often think about my life as though I were the lead character in a perfect movie.

When I think about important moments in my life they are like pivotal scenes in this perfect film – graduation, for example, my first kiss, the last time my heart was broken or when I had to attend my friend Andy’s funeral. As I recall these ‘scenes’ from the film that is my life my Movie Ego often inserts music under the action.

For example, when I was in junior high I discovered my parents’ old records and subsequently the 70s supplied the sound track to those years. Especially the music of Guess Who and Three Dog Night.

Melissa Ethridge’s album “Yes I Am” is the sound track to my break-up with my first boyfriend – whom I was certain I was in love with and whom I knew, at the time, I would never get over. But I knew he was still going to be sorry someday because I would act like I was over him and when he finally wanted me back.

He never did want me back. Oh, sigh.

He got married about two years ago, and the theme song to my life on the night of his nuptuals was “Fighter” by Christina Aguilerra.

In high school I was the biggest theatre nerd who ever walked the earth. I’m in recovery now, which mostly means I am a theatre nerd in secret. My theatre obsession meant that show tunes would supply the sound track to my life during high school. But not the peppy, silly Rodgers and Hammerstein type of show tunes. Oh no, I was a “serious” actress, which meant I had to like the dark, moody stuff, like “Chess,” “Les Miserables,” “Into the Woods” and “Rent.” I even have a penchant for “Phantom of the Opera.”

In fact, “Seasons of Love” plays under a lot of my senior year in high school and it is always the music I hear when I think of the funeral I had to go to that year.

I must have reached a higher spiritual plane by the time I got to college because worship music was the sound track to my first few years of college. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the fact that I was dating a worship leader.

I also had a brush with the Bee Gees, when I was a freshman in college. The girl who lived down the hall from me was enthralled by them; she and I spent a lot of time dancing in the hall to their high falsetto stylings.

I transferred to SDSU half way through college and as that shift in my life also triggered a shift in my sound track. I was a bit more angsty then and, although Evanescence wasn’t popular at the time their first album does underscore a lot of my SDSU days.

I haven’t had a lot of soundtrack-memory flashbacks lately. I guess my more recent years are still tied up in editing. But every time I hear Greenday’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” I am reminded of my friend Sky who ran off to NY and deserted me a few years ago. We got to spend one great month together in September of 2005 before he left me for the “big time.”

Every now and then I do wonder to myself “What will underscore this moment of my life.” It will probably be one of the songs I constantly sing at karaoke, but I’m a pretty big fan of Matchbox 20, Maroon Five and Lisa Loeb these days. That’s not to mention the fact that classic rock is still in my soul and that stupid Sara Bareilles song is still on my mind

How about you all? Do you associate certain songs with certain moments in your life? If so please tell us about them. Let’s bond over music, life and nostalgia.