Oh heck yes! Today we have another reader submitted Flashback Friday song/story. This one comes from TDB:

There are a handful of songs that have imprinted themselves in my mind for the time, place, and feelings they bring back when I hear them years later. Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction is one of those songs. I was in my first semester of college at George Mason, living in a dorm, about 30 minutes from the town I grew up in. My dad and step-mom had moved to Florida a month before I left high school. The only family I had close was a step-brother, who I’d spent the summer with, and he lived an hour away. The last good friendship I had fell apart sometime during 10th grade and anger and resentment ruled my personality. I was a loner and I was alone.

About half way into the first semester I started drinking and smoking out with the guy down the hall from me, John. He introduced me to a friend of his, Mike, a frat guy whom he met while pledging, and soon we’re all drinking, getting high, dropping acid, and eating mushrooms. School gets blown off, I fall behind in studying, and soon enough I?m failing all but one of my classes. The thing is, I didn’t care. For the first time in years I had two good friends to hang out with, and what brings that time back for me is music.

I first heard Nothing’s Shocking one night at Mike’s house, sitting in his basement at 3am, drinking beer, and taking hits from a three foot glass bong while his mom slept upstairs. Jane Says wasn’t the first song on Nothing’s Shocking that grabbed me, but after repeated listens it was the one that stuck. Looking back I can see my life was in a similar place — drug habit, no direction, and no escape. Farrell?s haunting vocals and the slow melodic chords inspire thoughts of time passing so slowly that every moment becomes a desperate act of trying to survive in a chaotic world. As lost as I found myself, what made the experince significant was the human connection with my friends, that we were all lost together.

Jane’s Addiction – Jane Says

Have a song with a story? Email it to me!