Music can transcend time and place like nothing else (except apparently smell). Hearing a song can bring back memories that you didn’t know you even had. And then make you wonder why you have them.

Here are my two examples. Except I know.

Before I give you those, though, here’s my preemptive strike against all you wise guys who want to say that I remember these songs because they stink: No, they don’t.

Exhibit A:

This may be the only song I know exactly where I was when I heard it for the first time. It was the summer of 1981, and I was standing in the middle of a high school gym in Joensuu, Finland. The week-long sports camp was over, it was the last night, and it was time for disco.

The DJ was a young curly-haired guy who, I later learned, was mostly known as a hockey player. He had his gear up on the stage, and from there, he announced the song, which cut right through me. As luck would have it, a week later, I found a tape at my Dad’s appliance store. Because they sold stereos and car stereos, they often bought new albums to the store, and then made copies to play in the cassette players.

Somebody had made a tape with this song on it. I still have the yellow tape, that’s got “Rainbow” written on it, in red, in my handwriting.

A few years later, that high school became my high school, and I rehearsed prom dances in that same gym.

Exhibit B:

That one was a big memory. This one is just as vivid, but just not as big. I remember taking the train to Helsinki in the summer of 1986, and just as the red commuter train arrived at platform 3 at the central station, I heard the chorus:

“As soon as my heart stops breaking
Anticipating
As soon as forever is through
I’ll be over you”

And I remember it because – wait for it – that’s when I learned the word “anticipating.”