Undone

While wandering around Whole Foods last night, I found myself becoming unbuttoned over the muzak -- the life-weary moaning whine of Gregg Allman twining around the liquid ribbon lament of Dickey Bett's guitar, reaching out to grab my brain out of my head and plunging it into some pungent state of pure feeling.

I occasionally try to explain about the Allman Brothers to my Scottish-born husband and have only recently been able to remember that my Eat a Peach album never made it to California with me so I can't show it to him. Like dozens of other records, it was peeled away on a move, cross town, cross continent, or cross border. I have a box of lps in the garage, a bad place for them I know, but they are just the ones that managed to stick to me like lint through the transformations. They are not my favourites, or the best. But I can't bring myself to get rid of them either.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were both huge in my northwestern Ontario town. All the high school guitar players worshiped Dwayne. A lot of partying went down to the soundtrack of these southern counterparts to our own northern redneck hippiness. For me, a song like Melissa is a 3-minute, 56-second punch in the head, the whooshing distillation of 5 years of teenage passion instantly unpacked, inconveniently in a genteel shop of California yuppiness, a kick in the gut that punts me to the cashier, rubbing my eyes furiously, ready with a cheap excuse about pollen.