The prozac buzz

I have a new date to look forward to: May 9th.

That's the day that Young@Heart comes to Richmond, according to Fox Searchlight's website for the movie. T and I saw the preview for the movie on Saturday, when we went to see Bajo La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon). Young@Heart is a documentary about a choir of elderly men and women who sing rock and roll cover songs. The trailer looks amazing!

On another musical note, I heard a song on my way to work this morning that I waited 4 years to hear.

Back when I lived on Charlotte Street, my roommate TL told me about a country song she'd heard on the radio that made her cry. According to her description, the song's narrator described growing up along a red dirt road, where he and his girlfriend got pregnant, decided to have an abortion, and then broke up shortly thereafter.

This description confused me when I heard the song I was sure she was talking about, "Red Dirt Road". The lyrics were nice enough, but pretty uninspiring and certainly not tear-inducing:

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
It's where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
I learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers
I've learned; I've come to know
That there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road

For four years, every time I heard that song on country radio, and it's a pretty ubiquitous song, I've wondered about how TL got a storyline about abortion from the song, and how the couple broke up, if in the song he sings, "I lost Mary, but I got her back again."

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I heard another song, for the first time, called "Red Rag Top" and I realized I'd been wrong all along. I'm writing about this song now because I heard it again on the radio on the way to work today and, like TL, I was pretty moved both times I heard it.

So, here are the lyrics, and you can Limewire or iTunes it for yourself to decide if you like it or not:

I was twenty and she was eighteen,
We were just as wild as we were green,
in the ways of the world
She picked me up in that red rag top,
We were free of the folks and hiding from the cops,
On a summer night runnin’ all the red lights
We parked way out in a clearin’in a grove and the night
Was hot as a coal burnin’ stove,
We were cookin’ the gas we were had to last

In the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop...

Well the very first time her mother met me,
Her green eyed girl was a mother to be for 2 weeks
I was out of a job and she was in school,
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets
In the morning light,
But on the way home that night

On the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop..
Lovin’ me

We took one more trip around the sun,
It was all make believe in the end,
No I can’t say where she is today,
I can’t remember who I was, back then
Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins,
And there’s no such thing as what might’ve
Been, that’s a waste of time; drive you outta your mind
I was stopped at a red light just yesterday beside a young girl
In a cabriolet and her eyes
Were green
I was in an old scene

I was back in that red rag top
On the day she stopped
Loving me